{"id":2080,"date":"2009-01-28T07:30:01","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T12:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christandpopculture.com\/?p=2080"},"modified":"2009-01-28T07:30:01","modified_gmt":"2009-01-28T12:30:01","slug":"looking-forward-books-and-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2009\/01\/looking-forward-books-and-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Forward: Books and Music in 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>


\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Many Christians remain on the defensive in response to the culture around them, pointing out dangers and condemning anything that makes us uncomfortable. We find warning and condemnation to be a valid position, but not a valid default position. In order to demonstrate an alternative, we thought we\u2019d demonstrate what it\u2019s like to give popular culture the benefit of the doubt.All this week, the writers at Christ and Pop Culture will be playing the role of evangelist for some of the things we\u2019re most excited about this year.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not exactly recommending these things. Christians have different weaknesses and convictions, not to mention the unfinished or unrevealed nature of the concepts, releases, and artifacts we\u2019re discussing. Nonetheless, this week we humbly present to you, the reader, a list of trends, films, television shows, albums, games, and books that we think you should give a chance.<\/em><\/p>\n

Books<\/h2>\n

2008 was the year many of my favorite contemporary authors\u2013Marilynne Robinson, Leif Enger, Kathleen Norris, Toni Morrison\u2013released new books. Since many of them value quality over quantity, I\u2019m not expecting anything new from them this year. Maybe 2009 will be the year we hear from some great new writers. That said, there are a couple of new books from familiar writers that I\u2019m eagerly awaiting:<\/p>\n

Jonathan Stroud, <\/strong>Heroes of the Valley<\/strong><\/a> (January 27)
\n<\/strong>Jonathan Stroud is one of those writers who gets classified as \u201cYA,\u201d but whose works can be read and enjoyed by not-quite-so-young adults as well. His Bartimaeus Trilogy\u2013featuring a genie who speaks in footnotes and dueling 19th-century magicians Gladstone and Disraeli\u2013may bear some surface similarity to the Harry Potter series and Susanna Clarke\u2019s\u00a0Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell\u00a0(the first and second Bartimaeus books preceded\u00a0Jonathan Strange), but, for my money, it\u2019s deeper and more satisfying than either. The Bartimaeus Trilogy, while a good deal darker than the Harry Potter books, has a good deal more to say about the allure of power\u2013and the difficulty of relinquishing it.\u00a0 The plot summary for\u00a0Heroes of the Valley looks a little generic: hero\u2019s quest, coming-of-age, and all that. My hope is that, in Stroud\u2019s hands, the standard story elements will come alive in surprising ways.<\/p>\n

J. R. R. Tolkien,\u00a0The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun\u00a0(May)
\n2009 must also be the year of Scandinavian sagas\u2013which generally I\u2019m not that excited about, but this one\u2019s from Tollers himself. (Then again, having just discovered from the Wikipedia article about the Volsung Saga that it involves otter death, I may skip this one. However, I don\u2019t remember anything about otters in Wagner, so maybe it\u2019s not a necessary component of the story.) Sigmund is the same character as Siegfried in Wagner\u2019s Ring Cycle,\u00a0 if you happen to be more familiar with that version of the story. Yep, there\u2019s a ring. There\u2019s a dragon. If nothing else, digging up Tolkien\u2019s version of Sigurd may shed interesting light on how he reworked Scandinavian myths in\u00a0The Hobbit\u00a0and\u00a0The Lord of the Rings. Is his Christian belief obvious in the way he deals with the pre-Christian legend of Sigurd, or was he more interested in creating something \u201cfaithful\u201d to the original saga (which could also be an expression of Tolkien\u2019s Christianity, just in a different way)?\u00a0 I\u2019ll also be curious to see, since this is a work of \u201cnarrative verse\u201d (that means \u201cpoetry\u201d), whether people will actually read it.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps 2009 will also be the year in which I catch up on a couple of 2008 releases that I haven\u2019t gotten around to yet. Toni Morrison\u2019s new novel\u00a0A Mercy<\/a> is still at the top of my list, especially since it deals with community, race, and religion in late-1600s America. Speaking of the 1600s, I\u2019m still kicking myself for not getting around to\u00a0The Wordy Shipmates<\/a>, a cultural analysis of the importance of early American Puritans like John Winthrop\u2013written by Sarah Vowell, perhaps better known as the voice of shy Violet in\u00a0The Incredibles.<\/p>\n

Music<\/h2>\n

U2,\u00a0Horizon\u00a0(March 3)<\/strong>
\nYou may have already heard the new single \u201cGet on Your Boots,\u201d which, as of the moment I\u2019m writing, is\u00a0streaming for free over at U2\u2019s web site<\/a>. Now, I\u2019m a big fan of boots, whether they\u2019re made for walkin\u2019 or stompin\u2019 out poverty or whatever, and I\u2019m also a fan of U2. But I\u2019m not sure whether I\u2019m a fan of the song yet. Something about it feels too calculated, too much like \u201cI\u2019m Bono and I know the same folks who like Obama are the same folks who like me, so . . . \u2018Hope! Change! Boots!'\u201d Maybe it\u2019s just that I\u2019m one of those people and my own pride is rebelling against the stuff my \u201ctribe\u201d is supposed to like. Given that it\u2019s U2, though, probably at least half the tracks on the new album will win me over. \u201cCedars of Lebanon\u201d sounds promisingly biblical. If there\u2019s a song on there that\u2019s anything like modern-day Psalm \u201cYahweh\u201d from\u00a0How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, I\u2019ll probably be pretty pleased.<\/p>\n

An issue that\u2019s likely to surface for many of us as we read books and listen to music in 2009 is how to justify spending money on \u201cfrivolous\u201d entertainment when our neighbors, near and far, are suffering from economic and natural disasters. Obviously, here at Christ and Pop Culture, we think arts and entertainment have pretty deep significance, and that they give us something other than bread to share with our neighbors. I\u2019d like to think that it\u2019s not an either\/or issue. Actually, Stephen King had a pretty good solution to this conundrum in his\u00a0\u201c2009 Wish List\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cLast, I wish that every appreciator of the American pop cult \u2014 and I count myself very much in that number \u2014 will remember that books, music, movies, and videogames are important\u2026but not all-important. There are millions of people in the world who are more concerned with getting their hands on enough to eat than they are with whether or not they\u2019ll be able to score a new-generation Kindle or\u00a0Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for their Nintendo. I know that all the fight-hunger, work-for-peace Bono blah-blah can get a little old, but none of the bad stuff is going away soon. So in 2009, I\u2019m going to contribute a buck to some useful charity like Save the Children or Physicians for Social Responsibility for every one I spend on movies, DVDs, or iTunes downloads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arts\/entertainment expenditures and poverty relief can be a both\/and. And I encourage you, if you choose to take this approach, not to think of your charity giving as a kind of \u201ccarbon offset\u201d to counteract your \u201cbad\u201d spending on entertainment. My hope is that our participation in culture, which can be good in itself, becomes all the more joyful when we connect it to providing for people\u2019s physical needs. (P.S.\u00a0 If you choose to practice this both\/and approach to spending and giving, please don\u2019t tell anyone that you\u2019re doing it, because then you\u2019ll just be self-righteous and annoying.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carissa Smith shares the literature and music she’s most looking forward to in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1236,"featured_media":2081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-headline","category-literature","category-music"],"yoast_head":"\nLooking Forward: Books and Music in 2009<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Carissa Smith shares the literature and music she's most looking forward to in 2009.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2009\/01\/looking-forward-books-and-music\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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