Saturday Good Reads

I’ve been reading Cometh the Hour, a historical novel of Anglo-Saxon times by British author Annie Whitehead. I’ve previously read her novel To Be a Queen and her non-fiction work Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom. Yes, I’m a fan. I’m amazed at how she can take a distant time and turn it into something real and vital. She also writes regularly for the English Historical Fictions Authors blog, and she had a post there this past week on the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. 

William McClay, the author of the highly regarded history of America Land of Hope, took aim at The New York Times and its 1619 Project – for distorting American history.

In addition to fighting, try to avoid disease, and sometimes sheer boredom, soldiers in the American Civil War also did some else – write poetry. Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War had a story about one of them – Union general Philip Kearney, who wrote poetry about the Battle of Seven Pines.

Back in the 1970s, I discovered the mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, who published a series of remarkable novels in the 1920s, and 1930s, like The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, and The Big Knockover. I still have those paperbacks published then – for $1.50. Christie’s, the auction house, has a fine article about Hammett: America’s ‘smartest and most literate detective story author’.

More Good Reads

Faith

Do Not Weep When I Die – Samuel Sey at Slow to Write.

Modern Research about Happiness Repeatedly Parallels Biblical Principles – Randy Alcorn at Eternal Perspective Ministries.

Dear Lonely High School Student: Your People are Out There – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

Writing and Literature

A Return to Normalcy? George Babbitt's America – Mark Malvasi at The Imaginative Conservative.

News Media

Long Live the ‘Big Bend Sentinel.’ Viva ‘El Internacional’ – Sterry Butcher at Texas Monthly (Hat Tip: Megan Willome). 

Reading political news in the age of Trump leaves people stressed, angry, and overwhelmed – Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab. 

False charges: Did journalists spot a crucial fact about Karen Pence's Christian school? – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.

Poetry

Listening to “Dry Salvages” – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

Birds and Angels – Eleanor Parker at A Clerk of Oxford.

‘A Breeze Came Out of the North’ – essay by Jack Ahlers at Society of Classical Poets.

Apollo 13 – Lee Oser at Literary Matters.

Film

Revisiting ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

American Stuff

Why Patriots Really Fought the American Revolution – Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition.

The Changing Use of ‘Evangelical’ in American History – Thomas Kidd at The Gospel Coalition.

British Stuff

The Best Biographies of William Wilberforce – Thomas Kidd at The Gospel Coalition.

The Faroe Islands Trail Runner – The Atlantic

Painting: Interior with a Man Reading a Letter and a Woman Sewing, oil on canvas (1670-74) by Pieter de Hooch(1629-1684).