Tag: blogger

Book Review: Searches – Selfhood in the Digital Age

January 13, 2026
Book: Searches - Selfhood in the Digital Age
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

Occasionally, a sociological book comes along that effectively captures the Zeitgeist of people and society within the scope of current events. These books articulate our experience such that we want to read these books. Vauhini Vara’s Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age (2025) is one of those books.

When I recently saw this title on Publisher’s Weekly, the book’s title made the subject and its’ sociological relevance in today’s digital age immediately self-evident. It wasn’t until the last two to three decades that we could – in the course of human history – find bread crumbs of our own thoughts-experience-lives-searches-postings-etc. (lives!) and the collective experience of everyone who ever goes online (i.e., “everybody,” essentially) “on the internet.” Our individual and collective search histories are cumulatively aggregated online. A dream for sociologists and marketers.

Relevant example #1: When I started reading Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, the author self-disclosed that she looked back at her own Google search history over several years and at her Google account. Based on her cumulative search history, Google had accurately figured that she’s a married high-income-earner with a child. Google had also assumed that she works in tech because she does so many searches about the tech industry; in that case, Google was mistaken….. Similarly, many people complain about targeted search engine advertising based on one’s search history (when you search for shoes, your search engine starts showing you advertisements for shoes….) and/or that “Google probably knows where I live…..” Then, there are the less-common tech privacy geeks like me who literally clear my cache and search history between EVERY search. I never get online advertising as there’s no cumulative history for search engines to use to identify my interests or life-trends (although the contours of my life could likewise be privately inferred by scanning the content of my email history…..).

Relevant example #2: When I want to tweak one of my websites to make the content relevant for the people who I want searching for my website, I go to Google Trends and look up society’s collective search histories from 2004 to the present to find which topical words and/or phrases – relevant to my website(s) – people are currently searching. Ditto when I periodically pay for online advertising. Then, I populate my website(s) or advertising with relevant search terms that match what people are searching for so I can make my content relevant to the people with whom I am looking to connect.

I am glad that Vauhini Vara had the insight to write this book (extra bonus: I learned in the book that she and I have lived in several of the same cities). I appreciate having this book be part of our collective reading for sociological naval-gazing.

Bibliophile and would-be-antiquarian Kim Burkhardt reviews books at The Books of the Ages and at The Hermitage Within. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).

Book Review: Ars Celebrandi

June 18, 2025
Book
Book: Ars Celebrandi

This book, written for priests to inspire artful presiding at mass, brings to life the nuts and bolts of how the Catholic mass brings liturgy – the work of the people – is celebrated. For the non-ordained among us, Ars Celebrandi: Celebrating and Concelebrating Mass provides insight into how the liturgy is designed to invigorate the faith of the faithful.

In practical terms, this book picks up where the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the “GIRM”) ends….. The GIRM is the instruction manual of “how to do a Catholic mass,” whereas Ars Celebrandi gets into the art of how to preside.

Two examples of this book’s insights come from the foreward of Ars Celebrandi (written by Bishop Mark Seitz):

“The liturgy is the action of the entire people of God who are being more perfectly formed into the Body of Christ.  The Second Vatican Council’s seminal teaching that the people of God are called to full, conscious, and active participation is based upon this fundamental recognition.”

“The liturgy, as we know,  is a language and a certain style of communication that comes down to us from the ages but is also constantly adapting under the guidance of the Spirit in every age.  It a language of signs and symbols that are read universally by people in the church.  To be sure, there are regional and cultural aspects that are rightly represented as local communities worship, but these are secondary to the expressions that unite us across times and places.”

Then, we lay readers learn in this book about the complexity of presiding at church services. For example:

“[Presiding at a liturgy] involve a marriage of books and ministers. The liturgical norms [i.e., what is suppose to be done] encounter a real-time relationship with the individual persons ordained to carry them out….The relationship presumes that priests know the liturgical norms. However, the rules are complex. The books detailing them are many. Some laws keep changing….Furthermore, not every aspect of liturgy is prescribed. When presiding, a typical priest is suppose to do certain things, is free to do certain other things, and takes freedom to do even more….” [Subsequent paragraphs delve into specific examples of these “certain things” and “certain other things.}

Reading this book is of interest for we lay people in that we become more observant of the nuts and bolts of what happens at church. A book worth reading.

Bibliophile and would-be-antiquarian Kim Burkhardt reviews books at The Books of the Ages. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).