Reviews for Story Celebrations: A Program Guide for Schools and Libraries

The average rating for Story Celebrations: A Program Guide for Schools and Libraries based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-10-07 00:00:00 Laurens Steenbergen Should religious texts be read like any other text? Paul J. Griffiths answers with a compelling "No" in this captivating work, Religious Reading. Throughout the book, Griffiths contrasts two different styles of reading: consumerist reading and religious reading. To read religiously is to read "as a lover reads, with a tensile attentiveness that wishes to linger, to prolong, to savor, and has no interest at all in the quick orgasm of consumption." For Griffiths, to be "religious" is to offer an account of reality that is (1) comprehensive, (2) unsurpassable, and (3) central. Offering such accounts is a skill acquired through various practices, including'for Christians'worship, prayer, and the use of Holy Scripture. Though the book is called Religious Reading, Griffiths employs an exceedingly broad definition of what it is that religious readers "read." For Griffiths, a literary work is simply "an ordered system of signs," which includes written texts, spoken works, sculptures, or even an ordered pattern of tastes and smells ("Religious readers, paradoxically, need not know how to read"). A basic element of such works is that they resource readers with meaning, imperatives, aesthetic wonder, and more. Whereas western higher education assumes consumerist reading as the standard model, Griffiths argues that religious readers should read religiously, emphasizing rumination, meditation, orality, memorization, and the like. "The sumo wrestler's program of diet and exercise is different from the gymnast's, and for good reasons," he states. "Why should not the religious reader's way with reading be different from the consumerist's, for equally good reasons?" Along the way, Griffiths discusses the context of religious reading, its fundamental genres of commentary and anthology, and then spends two chapters examining the reading practices of Buddhist India and Christian Africa. While Griffiths (a Roman Catholic theologian with a doctorate in Buddhist studies) is the perfect tour guide in these areas, these two chapters feel more tedious than the rest of the book. And yet, any rumblings of impatience one feels over these seventy pages serve to remind the reader that they are shaped by and complicit in modernity's default preference for consumerist reading. There is a lot here for anyone interested in questions of epistemology, authority, pedagogy, consumerism, and of course, religion. I highly recommend this thought-provoking work, though I assume its exorbitant purchase price will continue to curtail the wide readership it deserves.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-05-14 00:00:00 Michael Burke I both love and hate this book. I love the fact that he is taking religious reading seriously and trying to characterize it. His idea of religion as an account is interesting inasmuch as he talks about giving an account as a practice and a disposition, but his criteria of comprehensive, unsurpassable and central seem overwhelmingly slanted towards 'orthodoxy'. The centrality of memorization for religious reading is certainly important especially for the kind of relationship it creates between text and reader. Most of all, his characterization of religious reading as something traditional that has been lost or in decline in the modern era is problematic. Ultimately I would have found it more interesting to see him talk about modern examples of religious reading and they would have forced more diversity into his account. Also, his comparand, 'consumerist' reading in the academy is a straw person...there is much diversity in academic reading and the fact that he doesn't even treat 'secular' aesthetic reading is a problem.