Revenge of the Books

I was down in D.C. for the National Books Festival on the Mall on Saturday and scored a cool poster of the event and a nifty fluorescent orange book bag from C Span 2. Both items were free. Comcast really ticked me off when they took C Span 2 out of our line-up. No more author interviews on Sunday. Someday, I will have the special pleasure of cancelling Comcast.

In an interesting and convoluted process, I got to watch Laura Bush live give a talk about her book. I say watch because it was far too loud, with generators humming away and the din of the hoi polloi, to hear her. So, I pulled up CSpan radio on my I-Phone, called a D.C. number, and listened to her time delayed (about 30 seconds) talk. I arrived too late to get a seat in the inner tent and instead was with the outer orphans straining to hear her words. The triumph of technology.

Once Laura Bush finished her talk, the tent she spoke in emptied about a third to half. And, like catching a wave, I surfed in and found a seat and then camped for the rest of the day out in the Biography tent as a squatter. Events like the National Book Festival shows that words are still alive in an image-obsessed culture. As long as people continue to read and value books, the Bible has the opportunity to be read.

I like biographies because they are real life. Works of fiction, to realistic me, always cause me to go, "Yeah, but. It didn't really happen." But, the Bible is the true story of how ordinary men, women, and children, have crossed paths and connected with the extra-ordinary God in time and space. And, when we pull the Bible off the shelf, it pulls us in with a supernatural power.

Take up and read...Tolle Lege


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