One of the first things I did when visiting Stephan’s apartment for the first time was check out his bookshelves. They made an impression then and now I’m making more of an effort to find time to read those books on his shelves that I haven’t read before. Stephan recommended Graham Greene and I started with Travels With My Aunt. It is certainly an entertaining and thought provoking book. I would not want my children reading it and I don’t think HJJN would find it worth it, but it is well written, insightful, and full of character development, which is one of those important elements in a book or movie for me that is often poorly dealt with or left out altogether. In this case the main character leads a simple life that is blown to pieces as his Aunt enters his world late in life and opens his imagination to an exciting way of living. In this case, that way of living is less than godly, though comparatively the descriptions are mild. It is an insightful journey through the mind of one slowly wooed by the excitement of sin. I think it illustrates well how important it is for our imaginations to be shaped by what is good. Life is not meant to be boring and dreary and empty of excitement because we can’t have the fun of sin. Yet how many examples of exciting, beautiful lives lived for the Lord? One thing I appreciate about George MacDanald is how he expands the imagination beyond that which we know and creates desire for the purity, bliss and excitement of abiding in God and growing in his will and discovering the wonderfully exciting world he created. So watch out for your imaginative influences! If you know of inspirational ones and really get you thinking on a different (and good) track, let me know!
“Surely that’s a legend.”
“There speaks a Protestant,” Mr Visconti said, “Any Catholic knows that a legend which is believed has the same value and effect as the truth.”
"Watch out for your imaginative influences!" So true, so very, very true. That's the down side of our trek through the Oscar "Best Pictures" -- each movie makes an imprint on my mind, and some of them are not so nice, especially once we got into the last quarter of the last century. After my experience with The Deer Hunter, I'm opting out of Platoon. I need to find Heather's movie analysis website, because ratings don't help me. I'll be watching Rain Man this weekend because of what I've heard about it, despite its R rating, yet sometimes I find even PG unacceptable.
I'm not saying it's always wrong to watch movies or read books that have a bad effect on one's imagination. Sometimes there are mitigating factors, such as being able to discuss the film/book with others, or for educational purposes, or because the excellence of other values (acting, writing) outweighs the negative. But I believe it's crucial that we be aware of their influence and make our choices wisely. Sad to say, most people don't think twice about the effect of media on imagination and of imagination on character. The influence is significant on adults, but exponentially more so on children.
As for inspirational books, I could list many, but you know most of them already, so I'll just mention The Lord of the Rings. The book had a strong, positive influence on my imagination that was totally lacking in the movie. I'm not saying the movie couldn't have influenced others positively, but for me it was like canned orange juice from concentrate after pure, unpasteurized, freshly squeezed juice from varietal oranges. Or maybe Aunt Jemima pancake syrup after pure, dark amber, "grade B" maple syrup. :)
I can help but note that the two examples you gave are equally lost on the guest coming to your house next weekend. I suggest maybe you try to make the examples more meaningful when you have the chance. ;)
I found TLOTR one of the greatest books in terms of character development and imaginative influence. I failed to mention it because my experience of the book was so unlike the movies that I don't want to bring up the wrong image in people's minds about what I like. I should also mention, that I could only get through the serious on the second or third try, which was in college. A book doesn't always speak to a person right away, and that's part of the fun.
I certainly shall. :) It may not be with the varietal oranges, which I've only had on-site at the grove that no longer exists :(, but it will at least be unpasteurized. The good maple syrup is not available in Florida, though store-bought Canadian isn't bad at all, but I have the real, real thing thanks to Heather's source and our freezer.
Actually, I'm surprised about the orange juice. As you know, I was leery about having orange juice when it came with our breakfast in Paris, but it was fresh-squeezed right in the cafe, and delightful. What forms of OJ do you get in Switzerland?
Just one kind: expensive. That's another way of saying I don't know because I don't buy it. I can't say with 100% certainty that Stephan doesn't know the difference, but I remember somebody teasing me about my orange juice snobbery . . .
Kids-in-mind has a number rating for three different potentially objectionable aspects. It will take reading through a few descriptions to teach yourself what your threshold number is for each category. Once you have that, you no longer need to read the descriptions. (Some descriptions are graphic enough that you might as well have seen the movie.)
For what it's worth, I remember enjoying Rain Man. Any objectionables are at least forgotten by me, and should be fine for you, Mom.
I just went to kids-in-mind.com to see what they said about Rain Man and discovered they don't have it. So I went to screenit.com which I used to also use as a resource, but they have changed to being subscription-only.
So I suspect that kids in mind will not be useful for the older movies.
The only reasonably affordable orange juice in Switzerland is the concentrate stuff, which is why during my one year in the US and on most visits I feasted on Tropicana. If you have even better, I'm happy to try it.
Annie Dillard's book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek always stirs my imagination...she also says just enough un-orthodox things to keep me flustered (and therefore thinking) for a long, long time. Mostly though--beautiful writing about the most facinating things you never noticed.
Regarding movie reviews...
I have on occasion used a website called Rotten Tomatoes. They have viewers remarks as well as those of professional film critics. Sometimes you can find a reviewer that shares similar values with you and then see what they thought of other movies.
Rain Man is reviewed, just type it into the search area and then choose the result that says Rain Man - Movie Review, Trailers, etc...
Rain Man turned out to be pretty good. The premise is a little thin, and the language quite objectionable, but Dustin Hoffman is amazing and there is one beautifully intense and well-done scene.
There's a funny thing about objectionable language. I know I didn't grow up on the streets of New York City or Los Angeles, but I did go to public school and knew a fairly diverse set of people -- and no one I knew talked that way until very recently. Not my parents, not their friends, not my friends or their parents, not the other kids on the playground. If there was a segment of the population where such language was common, there was at least another large segment where it was virtually non-existent. Yet books and movies started including it -- calling it "realism" -- and now it is common.
What wasn't real, the movies, by showing what they thought was real, or what was real for a few, or maybe even what they wanted to be real, have have made it real for the rest of us.
Oddly enough, it's not just fiction that stirs my imagination for the better. Books such as those by Don Aslett, Stephen Covey, and Mary Pride have inspired me more effectively than many sermons.
Back to fiction, I also recommend Tolkien's The Hobbit and his short story, Leaf by Niggle; while not deep in the way LOTR is, they are rich in inspiration and goodness.
True goodness is hard to portray. (And the better, the harder. Let's just say I've been less than impressed by attempts to portray Jesus in film.) But even "ordinary goodness" is refreshing and cleansing. In Miss Read's Fairacre and Thrush Green novels nothing extraordinary happens, yet the goodness running through them (in all the ups and downs of English village life) bestows on me a sense of contentment and peace.
For movie reviews, there's also www.movieguide.org. Ted Baehr is a Christian in Hollywood who makes a living proving that wholesome films about faith and hope make more money than gratuitous blockbusters. There is a subscription required to access archived reviews, but anything released in the last few weeks can be seen on the site for free. The reviews suffer sometimes from being written in a hurry, but the clear deliniation of virtues and pitfalls is helpful.
For inspirational books, there is vivid imagery that inspires the imagination and vivid characters that inspire the heart. For me, at least. Stephen Lawhead wrote a trilogy, 'The Song of Albion', that is breathtaking in its scope. (But beward if you decide to read it...It's the best of his work, so both his own novels and any most others you read immediately afterwards will seem unsatisfying.) L.M. Montgomery - of Anne of Green Gables fame - wrote another series about Emily of New Moon, and the first two books are so amazingly detailed and pointed about characters - protagonists, side-kicks, and incidentals all - that the people around you suddenly become a great deal more interesting. (I don't recommend the 3rd and final volume of the Emily books.)
That Lawhead trilogy is not the same as the Pendragon cycle, is it?
No, the trilogy and the Pendragon cycle are two different series.
I do have a personal qualification to add about them, though. I read these as a teenager, and I remember being a bit troubled by certain descriptions of goings on between a husband and wife. Not graphic, but enough so that you knew what had been happening. You might not even notice this if you're married when you read it, but those scenes still stick in my mind.
Hmm. I don't remember the husband-and-wife scenes, but I think I enjoyed both of those Lawhead series. I probably rushed over any "questionable" sections though. Another fantasy series with great character development is the Belgariad series by Eddings. There are like 8 books that I read through in a weekend with an assortment of characters and lots of history. Well, I guess that's enough for my advertisement. I hope everyone is well.
Wow. All these great recommendations and not enough time to read!
I need to learn how to skim over objectionable material, but I read slowly (nearly out loud in my head), tasting every word and picturing the action. I get so into books I often won't realize I'm thinking about something I shouldn't until I'm in the middle and something shocks me out of it. In that way, I found some "Christian" books nearly pornographic in the way they deal with marriage (it's a good thing after all, but I'm still single!) I don't like to skip even a boring class because I think to myself that this one time something important will happen, and in the same way I can't skip in books. Just another skill to learn, I guess.
