What Are You Reading? Sean Dunbar

I am Sean Dunbar. I am a husband to Marcia, a father to Lance and Katlyn and the Director of Children’s Ministry at St. James UMC in west Little Rock.

If you can’t find me at church, or with my family, I can usually be found at the soccer fields, where I coach kids for Arkansas Rising, the local competitive youth soccer club.

 

What are you reading at the moment or what is next on your list?

Right now I am reading White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo as part of a small group.  White Fragility is a tough but important read in today’s climate.

For fun, I’m reading The Philosophy of Football: In the Shadows of Marco Bielsa, by Jed Davies.

Marco Bielsa is the legendary Argentinian soccer coach who is known for a specific playing style of “vertical football.” Bielsa’s theory of seven lines of play has influenced many of the current great coaches in world soccer.

When I’m walking I like to listen to thriller fiction.  Right now Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places is in my earpods as I try to work off the dreaded COVID-19 pounds.

What book or other media do you keep coming back to again and again?

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is a book that I loved as a young boy, and I enjoy reading that story from time to time. It’s cool to think about it originally being a serial and having  to wait for the next installment like we wait for new seasons of our favorite Netflix show.   But I look most forward to the monthly delivery of FourFourTwo, a magazine which provides latest football news, in-depth features, tactical and statistical analysis of Soccer worldwide.

What role has reading played in your life?

Most of the reading in my life has been for education or work, but I do love the temporary escape reading provides, especially fiction. While I am absorbed in a story, I’m not thinking about my own personal concerns or any of the drama associated with scrolling through news headlines.

What children’s book do you wish every child could read? 

It’s not so much what book that I would wish they read, but that they would read any book.  I will never forget reading the Bridge to Terabithia as an elementary school kid and attempting to hide the tears that were streaming down my face in the bus on the way home from school. Reading forces oneself to open up and experience emotions and thoughts that we wouldn’t feel otherwise. It makes us vulnerable to learn and grow as a person, and reading can very much help us find who we are.