Saturday Good Reads

I’ve been reading The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, part of a determined effort to read more of the classics. It seems these days that the classics are being thrown out in so many literature classes, and it will take time but eventually we’ll discover that is was a cultural disaster to do so. Italo Calvino, author of If on a Winter Night a Traveler and the most translated Italian writer until his death in 1985, write an article published posthumously in The New York Review of Books: Why Read the Classics? It’s still well worth reading today.

An even older document is worth your time to read, and it speaks to how Americans understand what their country is. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. They were eulogized by no less a speaker and a great American by himself, Daniel Webster: They live forever in the American constellation. 

Movies, television shows, documentaries, and numerous books have been produced about one of the most fascinating topics of the 20^th century – the looting of Europe’s art by the Nazis. Lawrence Dudley at CrimeReads at why: Stolen Art, Nazis, and the Eternal Search for Justice. 

More Good Reads

Writing and Literature

The Ghost of Dickens Past – Cicero Bruce at The Imaginative Conservative.

Simple Truths for Writers – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

Poetry

The Durable Art of Elizabeth Bishop – David Mason at The Hudson Review.

Summon – John Sibley Williams at Juxtraprose.

Reversed Thunder – Malcolm Guite at Literary Life.

In Flight from the Fugitives – Mark Jarman at The Hudson Review.

Toward a finished poem – Robert Rife at Rob’s LitBits.

Life and Culture

The Past as Battlefield: The Power of Historiography – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

Understanding Why Religious Conservatives Would Vote for Trump – Andrew Walker at National Review.

Faith

The 4 Books You Probably Shouldn’t Write – Samuel D. James at Letters & Liturgy.

Why the Church Needs Artists – Micah Harris at Mere Orthodoxy.

Who Are We? – Kyle Sims at Gentle Reformation.

The Art of Preserving – Gina Sutphin at The Rabbit Room.

Art

Relief Carving the Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest – Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

Sacramentality on the Western Front – Josh Noem at Church Life Journal.

Swampland Sublime: The Landscapes of Louisiana – Zachary Fine at The New York Review of Books.

News Media

As Newspapers Fade, Journalists Are Finding New Ways to Cover Local News – Alexandra Hudson at Quillette. 

21 Years – Toby Mac

Painting: Young Woman Reading a Book of Hours, oil on panel by Ambrosius Benson (1532).