Raucous Recess Ruckus

I was standing outside the woodchips bin, looking away toward the monkey bars and waiting a turn, when WHAM!--a slap on the shoulder, children's voices laughing, the patter of feet running off. Stunned, I turned around to survey the situation. I saw that naughty Gaunilo was the closest of the scattering group, and as he looked back smiling I realized that I had been drawn into a game of tag. Wanting to be a good sport, I stumbled awkwardly into the mulch zone, wondering who to pursue.

1. Number of books owned? I believe MarianEvans is working on that one. I'll let her do the calculations.

2. Last book I bought? Critical Theory: Selected Essays, by Max Horkheimer. Class requirement provided the excuse to get this. Do class texts count for this tag game?Well, I did want to own it eventually. Along with Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Theodor Adorno), this collection provides a great introduction to what has become one of the most influential schools of thought in contemporary criticism. Provides critical assessment of bourgeois economy and its exaltation of Reason. Also great critiques of positivism, mass culture and the hegemony of science. Though Horkheimer (and others in the Frankfurt school) exhibited a certain romanticism and elitism (eg exalting high culture over mass culture--strange for Marxist influenced theory!), these writings are still critical for gaining a vision for how cultural studies/criticism took the direction it did. For those into lit crit, this stuff influenced Eagleton, Belsey, Steiner, R. Williams, etc. For the theologians among you, this all trickled down into liberationist thought and other political theologies.

3. Last book I read. Justine by Marquis De Sade. Ahem. No, I was not looking for S&M inspiration. In part, it was preparation for reading Lawrence Durrell's quartet - I figured I should have some background. Also, I'd never read anything by the grand Marquis. It was providentially tossed into my lap by MarianEvans, after she scored it at a used book sale. Fascinating little book. He provides a number of theories undermining virtue- evolutionary, economic, naturalist, etc, all in this fast-moving tale of the misadventures of a pretentious young girl.

4. Five that mean a lot to me (I'm not reading this as top five, to ease the burden):
a. Moltmann's The Crucified God. Absolutely foundational. The suffering God. God's solidarity with the outcast and victim. The Son's experience of separation from the Father. Death in God.
b. Fragments, by Binjamin Wilkomirski. All Holocaust narratives are disturbing. This one, told through the eyes of a child, is absolutely. I only read it once, about ten years ago, but it sticks with me and haunts me.
c. Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. All heckling of evangelical pop books aside, I can't ignore the role this book played early on in my development to set me on the course I've taken. Decent biblical exegesis, some theological reflection, ok social analysis. Not scholarly, not elegantly written, but life-changing nonetheless.
d. Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. Helped me to hang on to something.
e. Watership Down, by Richard Adams. Leadership, vision, solidarity, community-not to mention good social criticism--all done through BUNNIES!! Who can resist Hazel, Fiver, and Bigwig? The fact that Hauerwas has written about it (a piece I have yet to read) doesn't diminish it in my mind.

After a flurry of sprints and near tags, I realize there is no one left. Cyberspace, I tag you...