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Sip n' Read
Book Picks Winter 2007
By: Mary Elise Chavez
Posted February 2007

A good book can inspire you, educate you, and entice you to get involved. Check out our picks to start your new year with an intelligent bang. Amazon has some incredible deals on used copies, see below.

1. "Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families" / Pamela Paul / $16.50
2. "Knowing God" / J.I. Packer / $12.24
3. "Never Again Again Again" / Lane H. Montgomery / $26.40
4. "Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival" / Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, Adam Shapiro, Paul Rusesabagina / $11.32

1. "Pornified" by Pamela Paul

It's time to start asking questions about porn:

Have you ever looked at pornography?
Do you look at online porn every day?
Do you think your husband/boyfriend looks at it every day?
Are you afriad your children are getting hooked on porn?

Over the past ten years, technological advances, cultural shifts and social attitudes have transformed the pornography landscape. PORNIFIED is the first book to look at how this new culture of pornography is transforming people's lives in the 21st century.

Using a mix of original qualitative and quantitative research, extensive interviews and vivid narrative, PORNIFIED tells the story of how men, women and children are affected by the ubiquity and mainstreaming of porn. The Internet, in particular, has made pornography more anonymous, more accessible and more affordable than ever before, bringing in new users, increasing use among existing fans, and catapulting others into sexual compulsivity. Children are being exposed to pornography earlier than ever before, in ways that may profoundly affect their sexuality. At the same time, child pornography is on the rise.

Yet while most people are disturbed by these trends, we still approach the issue of porn in outdated and ineffective ways. PORNIFIED shows why it's important for all Americans - those who look at pornography and those who do not - to understand how porn has changed and what we need to do about it.

Courtesy pamelapaul.com

2. "Knowing God" J.I. Packer

A lifelong pursuit of knowing God should embody the Christian's existence. According to eminent theologian J.I. Packer, however, Christians have become enchanted by modern skepticism and have joined the "gigantic conspiracy of misdirection" by failing to put first things first. Knowing God aims to redirect our attention to the simple, deep truth that to know God is to love His Word. What began as a number of consecutive articles angled for "honest, no-nonsense readers who were fed up with facile Christian verbiage" in 1973, Knowing God has become a contemporary classic by creating "small studies out of great subjects."

Each chapter is so specific in focus (covering topics such as the trinity, election, God's wrath, and God's sovereignty), that each succeeding chapter's theology seems to rival the next, until one's mind is so expanded that one's entire view of God has changed. Author Elizabeth Eliot wrote that amid the lofty content Packer "puts the hay where the sheep can reach it--plainly shows us ordinary folks what it means to know God." Having rescued us from the individual hunches of our ultra-tolerant theological age, Packer points the reader to the true character of God with his theological competence and compassionate heart. The lazy and faint-hearted should be warned about this timeless work--God is magnified, the sinner is humbled, and the saint encouraged. --Jill Heatherly

Courtesy amazon.com

3. "Never Again Again Again" Lane H. Montgomery

A powerful photographic essay with text on the six major genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries: Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda and Darfur. More than a chronicle of dates and death tolls, it gives a personal history of victims, perpetrators and consequences. With introductory texts by Archbisop Aram of Lebanon, Terry George, Richard Holbrooke and others.

Courtesy amazon.com

4. Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, Adam Shapiro, Paul Rusesabagina

In February, 2003, the Sudanese Liberation Army in Darfur (the western region of Sudan) after years of oppression took up arms against the Sudanese government. The government and allied militias answered the rebellion with mass murder, rape and the wholesale destruction of villages and livelihood, resulting in one of the world's largest humanitarian and political crises. Up to 2 million people were displaced; 400,000 people killed.

In October and November, 2004, after watching woefully inadequate media coverage on the crisis in Darfur, a team of three independent filmmakers trekked to Darfurian refugee camps in eastern Chad and crept across the border into Darfur. They met dozens of Darfurians, and spoke with them about their history, hopes and fears, and the tragedy they are living.

Refugees and displaced peoples, civilians and fighters resisting the Sudanese government, teachers, students, parents, children and community leaders provide the heart of Darfur Diaries. Their stories and testimonies, woven together through the personal experience of the filmmakers, and conveyed with political and historical context, provide a much-needed account to help understand Darfur. These are people whose lives, homes, safety and rights deserve to be protected as vigilantly as those of peoples all over the world.

Courtesy amazon.com