Entertainment and More

Fireproof

Lou and I saw Fireproof last night on my parents' very nice widescreen TV. Mom and Dad had seen it before, but they watched it again with us--Dad used to be a firefighter himself, after all.

It was an unspeakable relief to watch a movie that didn't savage things I believe--so much a relief that if there was much of the particular cheesiness that tends to creep into films with a strong salvation message, it generally missed me. It was a delight to know that it was his wife Chelsea, not lead actress Erin Bethea, that Kirk Cameron was kissing in the big yay-they-make-up scene, and I enjoyed seeing an honest-to-goodness happy ending.

Honestly, I think we can look to independent filmmakers like the Sherwood Baptist Church and Metanoia Films (makers of Bella) for many--if not most--of the best films of the future. Hollywood seems to be running out of plot ideas and making up for it by throwing around a lot of CGI. Give me a good story any day.


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Twitter

Some months ago I signed up for a Twitter account, which seemed the thing to do at the time. I have since logged in approximately thrice. The Twitter logo should be the picture in the text-speak dictionary next to TMI (Too Much Information, if anyone reading this doesn't recognize the acronym.) I've never met anything so annoying as the possibility of logging one's drollest mundaneities in short blurbs for all your friends to read, and then reading all theirs. I haven't the time. I have not unsigned myself, so if you want to follow absolute silence, look up "librarylily" on Twitter and follow away. Feel free to post your own tweets. I won't swear not to read them, but the chances are very good that I won't.


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Books

In case you really did want to hear about my drollest mundaneities, here's one for the day: My reading list has become something like the challenge of Everest for a mountaineer. Out of the usual desire to overachieve, I have gotten myself stuck climbing the following pile "Because it's there":

The Divine Comedy by Dante. Hell took me many months to escape; Purgatory is a slow climb, but much more pleasant. Heaven sounds intriguing. No one as interested in literature as I am should find poetry so shamefully difficult to read.

The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis. Lewis is smarter than I am. Not fair.

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. I love MacDonald's work--couldn't put Phantastes down--but must have gotten distracted somehow, because I'm only one chapter into this.

A Study of Literature by David Daiches. This was a Cornell University publication, written by one of their English professors, and so far it's much easier reading than Lewis's book.

Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West. I just heard most of this book in speech form, having listened to his CDs with Lou during our engagement, but my book club is reading this. At least it's an easy (and excellent) read.

The Deer on a Bicycle by Patrick McManus (his book on writing). Mom and Dad got this for me for Christmas. The preface and first chapter are hilarious.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, again, because I always have to have out at least one book that doesn't absolutely require the 'capacity for abstract thought.' Unfortunately, my brain works against itself because there is depth of thought in that book, and I find it fascinating.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, again. Superb.

A Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. I read most of this immediately after my friend Naomi gave it to me, but have been slowly making my way through the rest of the book by discovering it at odd moments. Good stuff.

Biographia Litteraria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. That one is online, so I keep forgetting that I'm reading it, but it's interesting.

And that's just the stack I've started ...