Andy Unedited
Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
I am always on the lookout for something good to read. By that I mostly mean books. I love browsing books at a library or at a bookstore or online, but that can be hit and miss. Sometimes the title or cover or back cover pulls me in, and then I am disappointed when I …
When I was in elementary school, I struggled to read. I remember one particularly embarrassing episode when I was required to make a oral book report in third grade. I chose Winnie-The-Pooh, thinking it would be relatively easy to get through. Whether due to lack of discipline, lack of focus, or lack of confidence, I …
Recently I was interviewed by Melissa Wuske in Foreword Reviews, which has focused on independent book publishing since its inception. To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt below. You can find the whole interview here. Accessibility has been a huge boon to writers and editors. With so much information digitized, in a few keystrokes we …
The story is classic. The main character enjoys prominence and prestige only to sink into obscurity before slowly rising again. Mark Noll tells this tale in his benchmark book on the history of American evangelical scholarship (1880-1980), Between Faith and Criticism–a book full of insights which still bear fruit today. Some reasons for the decline …
Philosophy, notoriously, can be abstract and obscure. Yet philosophy is also a noble effort to grapple with some of the most difficult and pressing questions humans can face. What is the good? What is real? How can we know and be certain? In A History of Western Philosophy C. Stephen Evans provides a model of …
One of my favorite YouTube videos spoofs what a medieval help desk would look like as monks sought to transition from the traditional technology of the scroll to the new technology of the codex. Keeping the debate alive between eBooks and pBooks is Lev Grossman in the New York Times. His observation? That eBooks are …
For the last ten years I have lived with the Gospel of Mark–poring over its text, tracing down every Old Testament allusion, reading books, commentaries and journal articles, teaching the book in week-long intensive courses, letting its currents roll over me. All this is no accident, because I am the inheritor of a tradition.
Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe I’m out of style. Maybe I’m the hipster culture’s worst nightmare. But I still think books make a difference. David Brooks’s piece in the New York Times cites another study that shows the power of print. When students take books home for the summer, the impact is as great as …