Ways to Celebrate National Reading Awareness Month

We are now halfway through National Reading Awareness Month. What have you been doing to celebrate reading? If you’ve been struggling with coming up with ways to celebrate other than reading more, have no fear. Today I am going to offer a list of suggestions of fun things you can do to celebrate.

1. Post a List of Your Favorite Books to Social Media 

By posting some of your favorite books to your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, or other social media venue of choice, you can share the joy of reading with your friends and followers. Often times someone decided to read a book because one of their friends recommended it to them. You can even post multiple lists throughout the month of different categories of favorite books, such as favorite romances, mystery novels, short story collections, science fiction, historical fiction, etc. The possibilities for book lists are endless. It’s also a good idea to add a 1-3 sentence blurb for each book stating why you chose this particular book, what you enjoyed about it, or what it means to you. You can even challenge your friends to post their own favorite book list.

2. Tell Others about the Books You are Currently Reading

One of the best parts of reading a work of literature is sharing it with others. Post on social media what you are reading and how it’s influencing you right now. Meet with a friend for coffee and strike up a conversation about your book and inquire about his or her current reading life. Create a Goodreads account to allow other readers to see what you’re reading and follow friends to see what they’re reading.

3. Start a Book Club 

Decide with a group of friends which book you would like to read together or alternate who gets to decide the current book to read. The great thing about a book club is that it can be as flexible as you want it to be. Have a busy schedule? Meet once a month. Want to become more connected with your fellow book club friends? Meet weekly or bi-weekly. A book club presents an atmosphere for fellowship and fun. You can meet at a person’s home and have a shared meal, go to a nearby park and soak up some vitamin D, or meet at a cozy coffee shop, all while discussing your book. Life was meant to be lived in community, and having a book club is a great way to foster community while challenging others to grow mentally.

4. Publish a Book Review

In a sea of countless books available for consumption, book reviews are a vital tool in helping readers to select books they want to read. Goodreads allows readers to post reviews or comments on books they have read. You can also post reviews on your Facebook page or a blog. If you are feeling particularly adventurous you can even submit your book review for publication in a magazine or newspaper. Some websites, such as Poets & Writers, have lists of places that accept book reviews.

5. Check Out Your Library for Ways to get Involved in the Community

Most libraries have a reading program for the children in their community, especially during the summer when school lets out. Libraries may even be hosting special events in celebration of National Reading Awareness Month. Even though the opportunities to volunteer with children may be slim this time of year, inquire about other ways to get involved. Libraries can be short staffed and lack funds, which increases their dependence on volunteers. See if your library needs help reshelving books, sorting through inventory, or participating in a community event. If there are absolutely no opportunities for you to get involved with your local library, make an effort to get to know your librarians. Make their day by giving them a small gift or a card letting them know how much you appreciate what they do for the community.

6. Donate Gently Used Books to Your Local Community or School Library

Some libraries rely heavily on donations to stock their shelves with books. Sort through your old books to see if there are any you no longer desire to keep. Maybe you have old children’s books that your teenagers have no use for. Donating to your local library is a great way to give back to the community and support literacy.

7. Send Your Favorite Author a Note of Encouragement 

Fan-mail is still a great way to share what you loved about an author’s work with him or her. Many authors have websites or blogs that can provide readers a way to get in contact with them. You could send a hand-written letter, card, e-mail, or comment. Some authors even answer questions about their work. Authors who are just starting to get their work published or who are not as well known will particularly appreciate you taking the time to send a note about their work.

These are just a few of the many things you can do to celebrate reading this month; however, I encourage you to make the celebration of reading a life-long habit. Comment below on what you are doing to promote and celebrate reading in your life and community.

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch

Culture is ubiquitous. From the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we listen to, and the movies we watch culture in inescapable. In my experience as a Christ follower, I have listened to dozens of sermons either tackling the issue of culture head on or mentioning the alleged depravity of the world in which we live. Often times reality is split in the drastic dichotomy of “things of the world” and “things of Christ”, a distinction taken from the New Testament of the Bible. When such a dichotomy is made, culture gets lumped into the category of “things of the world” which are inherently evil and will pass away at the second coming of Christ. The advised approach to culture then becomes either isolation or drastic transformation through becoming a “world changer,” both of which leave us frazzled and wanting of real progress.

Andy Crouch, executive editor of Christianity Today, redefines how Christians should interact with culture in his award winning book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Culture Making is a must-read for any Christian who has felt this obligation to become isolated from culture or to become a “world changer” and experienced the inevitable discouragement and anxiety from failed attempts to live that way. Instead of automatically condemning culture as evil or worldly, Andy encourages his readers to reevaluate the role of culture both in their own lives and in the story of God’s interactions with humanity.  Through an in depth analysis of culture, Crouch reveals that culture is much more complex than what people generally think and cannot be avoided or so easily changed. Instead of aspiring to be world changers, Crouch suggests that we should primarily be cultivators and creators of our spheres of culture and offers practical questions for us to answer and advice to follow in our attempts to do so.

An important take-away from Culture Making is the concept that before culture can be changed it must first be understood. Crouch promotes paradigm shifts in the way culture should be understood and the foundational nature of culture in our lives. Culture is defined as what human beings make in order to make sense of a world that is cultural from the beginning. Culture is not an amorphous intangible entity; it is a composite of the plethora of cultural goods found within society.These cultural goods determine what is possible and impossible for those within the culture. Crouch emphasizes that we don’t make culture; we make cultural goods that eventually become integrated into the framework of culture and have the potential to shift the cultural horizons of possibility and impossibility. Crouch also explains that there is no such thing as a global culture. Instead, there are multiple spheres of cultures ranging from as small as two person family units to as large as entire nations. Any attempts to change the culture is hindered by the fact that the larger the reach and influence of a culture, the more difficult it is to change.

Crouch’s two options of responding to culture, postures and gestures, promote a liberty in our approach to culture. Crouch defines posture as the unconscious stance toward a culture that one takes and gestures as the momentary intentional stances taken toward particular aspects of a culture.  Over the history of the church, Christians have opted to adopted postures of either condemning, critiquing, consuming, or copying cultural goods in an attempt to change culture; however, none of these positions taken by themselves are adequate means of dealing with cultural goods. Instead, we should adopt a posture of creating and cultivating while utilizing condemning, critiquing, consuming, and copying as gestures. The posture of creating and cultivating place us in a stable position that allows us to evaluate each cultural good and determine which gesture is most appropriate. The best approach to changing culture is to create novel cultural goods and cultivate the existing culture through preserving beneficial and life giving cultural goods while weeding out cultural goods that increase injustice and hinder life.

In order to change culture it is vital to understand how God interacts with culture. Crouch retells the history of Israel with the emphasis on God being foundationally cultural in His attempt to redeem creation. From the beginning of creation, God has intended humanity to live within culture and be both creators and cultivators of culture. Adam and Eve are first placed within and instructed to cultivate a garden, a cultural good. Crouch reinterprets Genesis 1-11 in order to illustrate how humanity initially used culture as a means of separating themselves both from God and each other and as a means of ensuring self-preservation, security, and sufficiency. At each turn of the way, God responds to humanity’s sinful acts of rebellious culture making with making more culture, reinforcing Crouch’s statement that the only way to change culture is to make more of it. The culmination of God’s cultural redemption of humanity is found in the culture cultivation and creation of Jesus, who is innately cultural as a result of his humanity. Jesus’ ministry is filled with positive examples of responding to culture through the gestures of condemning, critiquing, consuming, and copying the cultural goods he experienced. Crouch exemplifies Jesus as the pinnacle example of culture making, highlighting how His acts of cultivating and creating culture have dramatically shifted the horizons of possibilities and impossibilities even to this day. Crouch insists that the power behind such drastic change in culture is the result of Jesus redirecting the reasons for creating culture. Instead of using culture to secure his own security, Jesus disregarded his own welfare and acted on utter trust and dependence on God’s power. Revelation is retold with the emphasis on the preservation and transformation of cultural goods. The cultural of the world will not be destroyed and replaced with a culture-less afterlife. Instead, Crouch claims the afterlife will be as full of culture as the present life; however, only cultural goods that promote glory and life will be permitted. Through viewing the narrative arch of the scriptures in the light of culture, we can take comfort in embracing the good of culture and be empowered to change our culture.

Crouch insists that God frequently uses both the powerful and powerless to create and change culture. Crouch warns his reader that while it is possible for someone to propose a new cultural good, it is impossible for someone to impose a new cultural good. It can never be known how a new cultural good will fare within the myriad of current cultural goods. In order for creative culture to change culture, it must operate on the edges of possibility and impossibility, which also ensures a higher risk of failure. Nevertheless, Crouch encourages the continual creation of new cultural goods. Such goods are best created locally through working within concentric circles, what Crouch encourages through the 3:12:120 model of people aiding in the creation of a new cultural good. As one last note of advice, Crouch encourages his reader to create culture at the intersection of grace and the cross, where our deep joy meets the deep need of the world, and where God rewards our efforts with the multiplication of fruit.

Culture Making encourages Christians to be empowered in their endeavors to be active participants in the God given calling to be a cultivator and creator of culture. The lifeless dichotomy of “secular” and “Christian” culture can be rejected in place of the much more satisfying understanding that creation at its core is cultural. Culture making should be modeled after the approach used by Jesus and take place in humility and utter dependence on God.

(This book review was published in celebration of National Reading Awareness Month. Continue to check back for more ways to celebrate reading during March).

National Reading Awareness Month – Or Is It?

In order to celebrate National Reading Awareness Month, I thought it would be a good idea to do a little research on the history of the holiday. There are multiple sites that claim March to be National Reading Awareness Month; however, I have had a heck of a time trying to find proof to legitimize the holiday. Despite all my futile searching, I have discovered that March 8 is National Proofreading Day, March 25 is Tolkien Reading Day, and, most notably, March 2 is Dr. Seuss Day [1]. Reading is celebrated globally in March on World Book Day, which takes place on the first Thursday of March every year [2]. This year World Book Day fell on March 5.

It appears that Dr. Seuss’s birthday, March 2, is the reason behind March being National Reading Awareness Month. In honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, President Barack Obama proclaimed March 2, 2015 as Read Across America Day [3]. It turns out that Read Across America Day actually celebrated its 18th birthday last Monday [4]. In 1997 the National Education Association, NEA, along with Dr. Seuss Enterprises created the holiday as a way to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday as well as foster the importance and joy of reading. NEA celebrated Read Across America Day this year with a Cat-A-Van week-long reading tour that visited schools in Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. The schools that were visited on this tour received $15,000 in library grants. Even though both holidays are connected to Dr. Seuss’ birthday, the now official Read Across America Day does not appear to be directly connected to National Reading Awareness Month.

A simple Google search of “National Reading Awareness Month”, however, does reveal that the holiday is connected to ReadAloud.org, the organization behind the 15 minute a day campaign circulating in the news [5]. ReadAloud.org was founded in 2008 and launched 15 MINUTES in 2012 as a national decade-long campaign to promote child literacy and improve the state of education in America. The goal is for every child, ages 0-8, to be read aloud to for at least 15 minutes every day. ReadAloud.org claims that by the time some children enter Kindergarten they will have been read to as little as 25 hours over their entire lifetime compared to other children that could have been read to over 1,000 hours [6]. Statistics like this listed in the campaign indicate that reading to children is a key factor in determining their ability to succeed in school. Child Focus, Inc. is jumping on the 15 minute bandwagon by promoting a Read Aloud Day on March 21 [7].

Despite the lack of available history on National Reading Awareness Month and evidence of it being an official holiday, it appears to be a widely recognized holiday. While all of the festivities surrounding National Reading Awareness Month seem to be focused on child literacy, I am expanding the reach of this holiday to encompass reading at all ages. Stay tuned for more ways you can celebrate reading this month even if you don’t have young children. In the mean time, share what you are doing to celebrate on social media with #readingawareness or leave a comment below.