I am now an associated Christian librarian.

In addition to the perquisites of lots of listserv emails and the “free” copy of the journal, I hope this means I will have the eventual opportunity to help with the Christian Periodical Index.

This officially explains why swot is my new favorite word.

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We now have four occasional and recurring featured posts here at CommonPlaces:

1. commonplaces, where I provide a list of sometimes related new books here where I serve as a theological librarian,
2. book provenance,
3. random quotes from stacks,
4. and now chorea scriptorum, a latin phrase which, roughly translated, means “writer’s cramp.”

Given my newly self-imposed deadlines for research and writing over the next few months, I thought I would record the effects of my swotting and write summaries, reviews, and whatever else I may find helpful from the books I am reading. You can view the full list of books I am presently reading, preparing to read next, and those which I have recently finished reading here, in the chorea scriptorum library.

First up: Lori Branch’s Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment And Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth which I finished yesterday.

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As you can see, I finally fixed the php code I broke when toying with the template for this blog. Now we are back to where we began, and I (for one) feel much better. This look just feels better.

I’ve also added a couple of new features.

1. The leftbar now contains a list of books I plan to read, am currently reading, and have recently finished reading, each of which links to a page where I will eventually provide reviews. Those pages still have some formatting bugs I need to work out, but they shall be fixed soon. Let me know what you think.
2. I have also removed the page links from the header, so if you are one of my students and are looking for the link to your class page please email me and I will forward it to you.

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The good people over at Monergism.com have begun a new service, takeupandread.com. In their own words:

At takeupandread.com our goal is to sift through the thousands of good volumes to recommend the very best literature for your time and money. Our goal is to expose you to historically important volumes, old books that are timeless in application, excellent contemporary books hot off the press, multi-volume facsimile reproductions, small single-volume books you can read in one day, and searchable electronic books on CD-ROM. Our weekly reviews are published in the hopes of helping you build a diverse library of Christian volumes with tested theology and reliability.

Thanks to The Conventicle for pointing this out.

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I am devoting the next five months to reading and writing about history. April will be on the history of books and libraries, May will be for writing an analysis of justification in Peter Martyr’s Romans locus in comparison with three of Thomas Cranmer’s homilies on the subject. June, July, and August are for finishing my Th.M. thesis before beginning a library science degree in August.

So, hold me accountable to this schedule.

As for the April books, I plan to read one book on the history of the written word, one book on the history of bookshelves, and another on the history of libraries. First up: A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel, followed by The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski, and Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. Reviews to follow, D.V.

I wonder if this site is covered: Books on Poster, entire texts, legibly printed on a single poster. But where do you put it? In the loo? On the ceiling above the bed? Above the microwave? On the ceiling in the dentist’s office? In the elevator at work? Others?

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