Study, Learn and Grow: Introducing: Page turners

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Introducing: Page turners

Storytelling, Robert's Rules and banned books

Dear Outlook Readers,

There’s nothing like the feeling of receiving a long-awaited new book. Just over a year ago, as the new book review editor at the Outlook, I opened my mailbox to discover Kate Bowler’s upcoming book and Rachel Held Evans posthumous release — in one day! When I pop into my neighborhood branch of the Chicago Public Library to pick up an eagerly awaited new release, I always look for my favorite librarian — the one who offers the kids a sticker and who tells me, “now you go home and make a cup of tea … put your feet up … and enjoy that book.” She gets it.

Outlook readers are notorious book lovers; so we’re launching Page Turners, a monthly books newsletter to further support our community of readers. We will engage with books and one another as we share new releases and revisit old favorites. Of course, we’ll continue to offer book reviews in the pages of the Outlook as well as online, but the flexibility of a newsletter allows us to seek out works that don’t quite fit our criteria but that still educate, enlighten and entertain. Sure, this will include theological and biblical studies, but also young adult lit, graphic novels, popular fiction and more.

So welcome to our virtual book club – you are always welcome (whether you read the book or not!), and I will never ask you to bring a dish to share.

Happy reading,

Amy Pagliarella
Presbyterian Outlook's book review editor

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"In an interview, author Barry Lopez relates how a traditional Native American storyteller taught him the distinction between authentic and inauthentic stories. 'An authentic story is about us, an inauthentic story is about you.' I wanted to create a space for authentic stories that would function as a source of connection. To help make this happen, I borrowed practices from spiritual communities—silence, song, meaning-making, shared food and drink, an offering of funds to give to a local charity, a moral imperative to serve the greater good.”

Mark Yaconelli, Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us.

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Just in time for the first Session meeting of the year or for your non-profit’s board meeting: Jim Slaughter’s slimmed-down version of Robert’s Rules clocks in at under 175 pages and is so easily organized that a moderator or parliamentarian can thumb through it during a meeting. An ideal gift for a new clerk of session or moderator of any board, this is the book I wish I had used in polity class.

READING BANNED BOOKS

Books matter. Words and ideas matter. When I object to something in a book or prefer that I (or my kids) not be exposed to something disturbing, I still affirm its right to exist and to be disseminated, as well as the fact that it may have something to teach me. And perhaps by engaging the material together, we will learn from one another.

"The imaginary land of Terabithia is no evil place; it is a place of innocence, a kind of Eden, a sanctuary. I see a book that lets children be children, use their imaginations, learn acceptance and love. I see a book where faith has room for anger, and questions about God amid our own, private hells.

I want to ask, 'Why are you so angry about this book that you want it banned from the very readers who need it?'
...

Tell me where your anger comes from. I promise not to judge.

And instead of building walls, how about we build a bridge?" — Kathleen Long Bostrom, "Reading banned books: Bridge to Terabithia"

"It comes as no surprise that all of Morrison’s work is being put on the chopping block of school curriculums across the country. Her writing unabashedly centers Black characters and the experiences and perspectives that shape them, which inevitably exposes the falsehoods of American exceptionalism and threatens a politicized sanitation of our national history. And Sula certainly features moments of unsettling violence, sexuality and emotional turmoil.

But as a seventeen-year-old reader, these features made the reading impactful. For perhaps the first time, I was reading literature that seemed to genuinely trust me to hold complexity that I had already become well-aware was present in real life. The moral ambiguity at the heart of Morrison’s novel didn’t lure me into parallel waywardness. Rather, it equipped me to better wrestle with the ambiguity I found within myself and those around me." — Luke Hillier, "Reading banned books: Sula"