www.andrewmackay.net:

As the father of one boy, who is not yet old enough to read, I’m already starting to be concerned with helping him discover a love for reading. Looking back to my childhood, I can come up with a couple of themes that I enjoyed that I’d classify as being targeted at boys.

Among my favorites were The Indian in the Cupboard books along with The Castle in the Attic series. The latter more than the former, actually. In both books, something stationary comes to life. Certainly not an exclusive theme by any means (Toy Story… Toy Story 2… Toy Story 3…), but one that I think is appealing to boys.

I think I’ve professed my love for Walt Morey before, but if I haven’t… I love Walt Morey’s books. He does a very good job of intertwining the outdoors and adventure with the struggles a preteen boy goes through. My brother and I read through his books until they were dogeared. Then we read them some more. Again, not an exclusive theme (continuing the theme, The Call of the Wild, Iron Will), but one that I found appealing as a boy.

What are some other themes that work for drawing boys to read?

I’ve always been the type of person to keep up with the news. It’s not necessarily the best habit. C.S. Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy,

Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be seen before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.

He’s probably right. I’m not sure where to find the balance between paying attention to what goes on in the world around me and, as he put it, an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism.

This has come to the fore for me in the recent redesign of CNN.com. They now display a little graph of the most-read stories in the top right. As I write this, Heidi Klum’s Halloween is the most read story. It’s followed by three straight stories about extreme violence.

I have far more questions than I have conclusions, but perhaps the whole of western civilization could stand to take a look at what we’re interested in / fascinated by. Perhaps we should, as Lewis suggests, spend our time on things that will not be untrue or irrelevant ten years from now. I think our wonderous technology lends “news” to being irrelevant/untrue in ten minutes rather than ten years.

I think, according to new FTC rules, the fact that I’ve received a free download from ChristianAudio.com means that I have to disclose to you, dear reader, my relationship with them.

I’ll go one further: I’d like to suggest that you, too, engage in a relationship with ChristianAudio.com. See, they give away a free audiobook every month. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes not. But right now…

Need I say any more? That’s what I thought. Go… go… you can thank me later.

We Canadians don’t just have prettier money than you Americans. Sometimes we have good ideas, too. Evidence of this fact can be found in butter tarts, the CANADARM, Tim Hortons, the AVRO Arrow, and ice hockey.

Tim Challies, one of the most widely read Christian bloggers on the internet is also a Canadian. He’s just hit on a great idea, and is in the midst of executing. He’s started a project called 10 Million Words over at the Gospel Coalition. He’s going to read all the non fiction books that hit the New York Times Bestseller list over the next year.

It seems like an interesting project. I’ve recounted my attempts to read various “top novels of the x decade” lists in the past. I haven’t done so great. Part of the challenge there is, in my experience, a lot of “popular books” are just garbage.

But, there’s something to be learned from the garbage — it says something about pop culture when they celebrate garbage. Tim speaks well to this over at his blog. You should read it. Go now. Say G’day, eh, while you’re there.

A quote from a loved one:

The key to this whole “being an adult thing” is that you have to do it all the time.

My wife told me that the other day as we were talking through what we need to accomplish in the next month (including packing, cleaning, moving and unpacking). She’s so right. It’s just part of life. But it doesn’t mean it has to be a bad thing. I know that we’re using adult pretty loosely here. So, here’s what I mean: You have to prioritize life rationally. There was a time in my life where hours could be spent playing Gran Turismo 2 so that we could buy a certain car and win more races. (That’s a video game, for you old fogeys). I still play video games from time to time, but the adult thing to do is to prioritize so that things like laundry, cleaning, bill paying, and routine upkeep get done…  not necessarily first, but emphatically done.

It really does make the fun (whether video games, reading, writing, watching a movie with my wife, or playing guitar) all the sweeter.