Today’s Long and Short Reviews blogging prompt is funny book titles. I sometimes begin drafts for posts weeks in advance and accidentally posted this week’s last week — so, now I have to post last’s week’s topic this week! But first, WWW Wednesday!
WHAT have you finished reading recently? James Madison by Richard Brookhiser; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, full-cast audio edition. (SO GOOD.)
WHAT are you reading now? Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft; With Malice Towards None, Stephen B. Oates. The former is a study of Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Song of Solomon; the latter is a biography of Abraham Lincoln. I’m mostly done with The Real Lincoln but am trying to investigate some of its claims, so I haven’t finished it yet. With Malice is also huge, so place your bets on if it appears next week. Believe it or not, I am tiring a bit of the mid-19th century…
WHAT are you reading next? Your guess is as good as mine! I got an early birthday present from the ladyfriend, a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, but I’ll probably wait on him until I’ve finished the pre-Civil War presidents. (Remaining: Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Polk.)
L&S review’s prompt is an interesting one for me because I grew up in a Holiness church that did not allow televisions: they were “worldly entertainment”. The strictness of this rule, though, varied by the preacher, so my parents had a TV when I was very young, got rid of it when I was around 5, accepted a black and white set from a cousin when I was a bit older, got rid of that set when the preacher changed, and so on and on until at some point computers and the internet overwhelmed those strictures. (I left that church at 20 and do not have a TV: my parents now constantly watch tv or tv programs on their phones. Go figure.) Anyhoo, I have very dim memories of watching Rescue 911 when I was young and we still had a tv, but they’re hazy. I know for sure I watched a lot of Full House as a young kid, because we’d literally drive to a family member’s house to watch it with them.
My name is Stephen, which translates to something like ‘crown’. I was named after the Biblical personage of St. Stephen, who is regarded as the Church’s first martyr — stoned to death for preaching. (Or, as one jokster-pastor put it, ‘rocked to sleep’.) I’ve known STEPHEN means ‘crown’ since I was a kid, though in St. Stephen’s case I wonder if that’s not a crown of martyrdom. According to Etymonline, only monks used the name in Anglo-Saxon England: the name became more broadly popular after the arrival of the Normans. According to that same source, Stephen and ‘nephew’ are tied together in a particular way, as their use of ‘ph’ is atypical in English usage. I spell my name the traditional way, of course, or as I sometimes say — the right way.
Reading Freely 
Thanks for sharing your upbringing, Stephen. It’s understandable that only a couple of shows stand out. We lived with a TV from 4 – 10 pm. Not sure it was always the best. Appreciate your visit to my blog today.
I hated it as a kid, but I very much appreciate the stance now. All the time I could have lost to a screen I gave instead to books and playing in the woods!
Full House was great. I wasn’t so impressed with the recent reboot ‘Fuller’ House, though.
Me, either. I gave it a shot just for Jodie Sweetin — I was somewhat enamored of her as a kid. XD
I watched Rescue 911 as a kid, too!
My in-laws refused to let their kids watch tv when my spouse was growing up, but now they have the tv on all day long at their home. I think it’s hilarious how some folks do that.
I think computers and the internet up-ended those strictures: people were watching TV shows online even when I was still part of that world. By then they had a preacher who not had a TV and used it to play Ghost Recon and flight simulators, so the rules were a LOT more loose — more like, “Don’t watch trash”.
You had quite a childhood. It is interesting that you still don’t have a TV and your parents went the opposite, though. Full House was a good show though, I watched it often myself.
Here is my post.
Ha, yeah, no real idea what I’ll read next either. Whatever appeals in the moment!
We had a TV in our house, we just weren’t allowed to watch it very much. 1.5 hours a week and my father had a little book where he wrote what we said we wanted to watch. At all other times we had to be out of the room, if others were watching something that we hadn’t booked. News was the exception, we could watch as much of that as we wanted. This persisted until we were in our teens.
That’s an interesting approach! Do you think that changed the way you developed hobbies/interests?