15 Favorite First Lines

15 Favorite First Lines

While I’m certainly no professional critic, I read dozens of books—both fiction and nonfiction—each year, so I’ve piled up plenty of reading experience. This week let’s take a break from some of the more spiritual themes and have some bookworm fun. What are your favorite first lines of fiction, any genre? After a quick perusal…

How to Spend the Bonus Ten

How to Spend the Bonus Ten

Our lives add up to threescore and ten—seventy years to invest—plus yapa, with good health and strength (Psalm 90:10). The extra decade of life that some are blessed with beyond the average is like the few extra grams of produce they occasionally give you at the Chilean open-air markets. When weighing out potatoes, it’s hard…

How to Grow a Thinking Culture

How to Grow a Thinking Culture

“Developing a thinking culture”—that’s what the sign outside the school said, a couple of years ago when we were house-hunting in the port city where we now live. Wow, that’s kind of a novelty, I reflected. A definite novelty in a culture that frequently doesn’t read beyond the local newspapers—and even that’s rare now, replaced…