It’s just after 1:00 AM and the Hearts & Minds van just left, headed northeast up to
New York City.  Scott and Chris are valiantly doing the night shift to get our
books to the remarkably classy and wonderfully important IAM Encounter 2010. 
Spend a few minutes browsing through this link and you will be wowed by this
ministry among artists of all sorts–dancers, jazz players, art curators, poets,
sculptors, critics, advertisers and more.  Church folks of all sort should be
glad that such movements exist and we should support them as we can.  

Well, the book sale set-up will be in the
historic Cooper Union and our guys will spend hours messing with shelving and
crates and lights and getting the credit card machine plugged in and ready to
rumble.  As before, when we’ve worked with IAM, CIVA or Square Halo arts conferences, we
display an unusually diverse array of books on creativity, the arts, aesthetics,
popular culture, writing, and what we might call visual theology.  Pray for us
if you can, and join us in being glad for the chance to sell books at events
like this.  If you read this blog, order books from us, or shop here in
Dallastown, your part of our effort. Your support (buying books here) keeps us
going and we are more than grateful for role and common vision.

And so we thought we might ask: want to buy an autographed copy
as a keep-sake or a special gift?

We will in the next two days have
opportunity to snag some signatures on a few author’s titles, and if you order
one—we’ll sell ’em at 10% off—we can get you an autograph (while our supplies at the event last, of course.)  Sound
good?

Here are the authors we will be with and the titles we could get autographed for you.

Daniel Siedell  God in
the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art  (Baker; $25.00)  One of the more thoughtful and mature books in this field; we met him at Jubilee ’09 and he really, really is impressive.  A very important work.

Daniel gives a profound and serious invitation for Christians of all sorts to take modern art seriously.  He takes exception to some of the “in house” writers, critics, and patrons who have promoted “Christians art” and desires for us all to engage the real stuff.  Very provocative.  Read some of his critical thinking and other work, here.

Makoto Fujimura  River Grace (IAM; $29.95) This is an extended essay about his journey from and back to the East, his conversion to Christ, and the way in which art pointed him to a deep transcendence.  Nicely illustrated with his abstract work.

Refractions (NavPress; $24.99)  One of our very favorite book of recent years, this includes various essays by Mako, about art, shalom, the city, grief (after 9-11), public art and his culturally-renewing vision of faith. Or, consider his very new
Soliloquies (Square Halo; $19.99) which we’ve described several times in recent months (here.)  We have written about Mako often, and celebrated the new book (about he and Rouault) when it came out last November, and again in our end of the year “best of” lists.  He’s the man behind IAM and it is an honor to work with him and his crew.  See his beautiful website here.

Jeffrey Overstreet   If you even remotely appreciate fantasy novels, these are splendid: Auralia’s Colors (Waterbrook; $13.99) and its popular sequel, Cyndere’s Midnight (Waterbrook; $13.99.)  We just got the brand, brand new Raven’s Ladder (Auralia’s Thread) (Waterbrook; $13.99) and I know many will be glad to see it at the Encounter.  Classic, metaphysical fantasy stuff, very colorfully written, if I can use that pun.

 We are also very glad to be promoting Jeff’s great book on film entitled Through a Screen Darkly (Gospel Light; $17.99) which is a very widely-respected collection of faithful, but sometimes surprising, reviews. Maybe you’ve seen some of his reviews on line—really well done!  He’s a very smart guy, a good writer, and we’re facebook friends. For anyone who watches film and wants to enjoy the experience more, or who wants to talk meaningfully about various movies, or who wants to see a good writer who is a Christian doing this hard craft of serious review, this is a joy to behold.  

If you want an autographed copy, just go to our order
form and write in if you want it autographed. Tell us who it is to be inscribed
to and if we are able, we’ll do that, too.  Our big green book van will be back
on Monday from the big city.  We’ll be in touch.