A Busy Busy Summer

I realize that I have not posted for quite some time. This is because my summer is a little busier and more tiring than I had hoped it would be. I have one more proof-text test to do, but I can't seem to get these texts into my memory. And because it has not rained since early June, the grass is no longer growing, and I am stuck picking rocks, which is a lot of walking, and over-all a boring, boring job.

But, I did order a new book, which Sherri is picking up (or has picked up) from the Post Office. It is A History of Preaching by O.C. Edwards. Dr. de Visser suggested it to us in Homiletics early this year, and we used parts of it for class. Edwards looks into the theory and practice of preaching throughout the history of the Christian Church, starting with the early Church Fathers, and going up to fairly modern times (I can't remember exactly how far, though). I ordered this book in the hopes that reading the great preachers of the past might make my own preaching better. My preaching style seems to be more lecture-ish than I would like, as my sermon proposals over the last school-year have shown me. And hopefully this book will make for some good reading as well. (It also comes with a CD which has sermons on it from whomever Edwards writes about, a 'primary-source' CD.)

When I start reading that one, I may have more to post.

Oh, and I just finished reading "The Davinci Code," or, as I like to call it: "the Crapinci Code." I will not get into the whole business of Dan Brown's character's views on Christianity and Scripture, or his character's assessments of history and historical texts. Many, many other people have already done this, and some of them are even worth reading. All that I want to say is that Dan Brown seems to have gone to the Soap Opera School of Story-telling. His technique of making the plot suspenseful is to reveal an important plot element one sentence at a time, interrupted by other plot elements, which are not so important. He reveals that there is a big secret, and then ignores it for a few pages, going back to it only to reveal the beginning of it, and then interrupting with some more story-line. Much the like the writers for Soap Operas do. And I must thank Sherri for pointing out this analogy to me as I was explaining Dan Brown's craptacular writing style to her. As a friend of mine from my undergrad Comp. Lit. days said: "Dan Brown tells a really good story rather poorly." I say, if the plot is not good enough for it to stand on its own, without the Soap Opera techniques, then it doesn't deserve to be published. I will simply echo the advice of my brother Piet: read Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" instead. A much better read, and one that doesn't have 2-dimensional characters (and here I am being generous to Dan Brown's writing style), and actually has both a good plot that doesn't need embellishment, and Eco's grasp of history and literature is far beyond Dan Brown's.

Well, hopefully I will have time to post again soon. Especially if I start reading Edward's book, or the books that I borrowed from Piet a while ago...