On Books and Reading

Related reading and listening

• Multi-leveled language and active spiritual engagement — FROM VOL. 95 Eugene Peterson talks about how Jesus spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and how the Spirit infused this normal speech. (14 minutes)
• Jackson, Maggie M. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her prescient writings on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity.
• Prescott, Catherine Porter — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Catherine Prescott taught painting and drawing at Messiah University for 20 years, and has taught intermittently in Gordon College’s Orvieto Program abroad since 1998.
• Gioia, Dana — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of six collections of verse.
• Living into focus — As our lives are increasingly shaped by technologically defined ways of living, Arthur Boers discusses how we might choose focal practices that counter distraction and isolation. (32 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 153 — FEATURED GUESTS: Charles C. Camosy, O. Carter Snead, Matt Feeney, Margarita A. Mooney, Louis Markos, and Alan Jacobs
• Taking words into the soul — Eugene Peterson on reading as an art of chewing, savoring, and digesting
• Reading reflectively during Lent — As Lent is a time of more deliberate reflection and renewal, Marilyn McEntyre talks about the kind of attentiveness to words that can refresh and enable readers. (21 minutes)
• Reading with our whole might — Marilyn McEntyre on engaging texts receptively
• Becoming a serious and receptive reader — David Lyle Jeffrey offers a thoughtful reading of C. S. Lewis’s account of thoughtful reading
• When masks obscure faces — Portrait painter Catherine Prescott discusses what is lost in communication when faces are obscured by masks. (20 minutes)
• Dana Gioia on poets and poetry — In this collection of interview excerpts, poet and essayist Dana Gioia comments on the literary significance and distinctive voices of Longfellow, Donne, Hopkins, and other fellow poets. (25 minutes)
• Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
• The priority of paying attention — Maggie Jackson talks about the increased relevance of her 2008 book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (15 minutes)
• Pastor, preacher, prophet — A gentle and generous man, Eugene Peterson (1932–2018) was not afraid of speaking prophetically — and hence pastorally — about the Church’s captivity to modern culture. This hour-long interview with Peterson was recorded in 2005. (73 minutes)
• Words made audible, dwelling among us — Abigail Williams describes how, in the eighteenth century, the practices of reading aloud survived even as private, silent reading was becoming more common.  (19 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 140 — FEATURED GUESTS: Matthew Rubery, James A. Herrick, Jack Baker, Jeffrey Bilbro, Timothy Gloege, David Hollinger, and Barrett Fisher
• Dana Gioia on Donald Hall — California’s current Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia, talks with Ken Myers about the life and work of Donald Hall, U. S. Poet Laureate 2006–2007). (19 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS: Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
• Universalizing Dr. Faustus — Eugene Peterson on the normalization of prideful ambition
• Fujimura, Hibbs, & Siedell: Abstraction, immanence, & the cultural landscape — Artist, philosopher, and art historian discuss the tension between self-expression, transcendence, and the material world.
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 122 — FEATURED GUESTS: N. T. Wright, George Marsden, Makoto Fujimura, David Bentley Hart, and Thomas Lessl
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 111 — FEATURED GUESTS: Siva Vaidhyanathan, John Fea, Ross Douthat, Ian Ker, Larry Woiwode, and Dana Gioia
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 97 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, Stanley Fish, James Peters, Scott Moore, and Makoto Fujimura
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 95 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stewart Davenport, William T. Cavanaugh, J. Matthew Bonzo, Michael R. Stevens, Craig Gay, Eugene Peterson, and Barry Hankins
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 94 — FEATURED GUESTS: Maggie Jackson, Mark Bauerlein, Tim Clydesdale, Andy Crouch, and Jeremy Begbie
• Dancing Lessons: On Theology and the Rhythms of Life — Pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson discusses the themes of his book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. (70 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 90 — FEATURED GUESTS: J. Mark Bertrand, Michael P. Schutt, Michael Ward, Dana Gioia, Makoto Fujimura, Gregory Edward Reynolds, Catherine Prescott, and Eugene Peterson
• Slower, longer, smarter — A veteran journalist laments “the sea change in the culture of literacy” and the decline of good book criticism
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 75 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Malvasi, John Lukacs, Steve Talbott, Christian Smith, Eugene Peterson, and Rolland Hein
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 73 — FEATURED GUESTS: Richard John Neuhaus, Nigel Cameron, Carlos F. Gomez, Michael Uhlmann, Patrick Carey, John W. O’Malley, Patricia Owen, Susan Srigley, and Ralph C. Wood
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 70 — FEATURED GUESTS: W. Wesley McDonald, C. Ben Mitchell, Carl Elliott, Richard Weikart, Christine Rosen, and Dana Gioia
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 53 — FEATURED GUESTS: Lawrence Adams, Dana Gioia, Elmer M. Colyer, R. A. Herrera, Margaret Visser, and Joseph Pearce
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 51 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nigel Cameron, David Blankenhorn, Robert Wuthnow, Mortimer Adler, Roger Lundin, Dana Gioia, Mary Midgely, and Ted Libbey
• The Word Made Scarce — Barry Sanders discusses teaching in the age of technology, the effects of literacy on society, and the links between illiteracy and violence. (54 minutes)