Saturday Good Reads

Five years ago, we signed up for a walking tour in London about the poet John Keats. Actually, it was less a walking tour and more a trotting tour, up and down hilly Hampstead and Hampstead Heath. My wife’s legs weren’t quite ready for it. The tour met at the Hampstead tube station and ended at the John Keats House and Museum. One area of Hampstead we visited was called the Vale of Health, a residential area surrounded by woods where Keats and some of his editorial friends lived for a time. A London Inheritance has a feature on the area, complete with many pictures.

Amid all the groaning and moaning about evangelical Christians supporting President Trump and progressive Christians supporting Joe Biden, Thomas Kidd at The Gospel Coalition has a timely reminder: traditional Christians have never been politically unified.

Cancel culture is still raging in the literary and publishing world, and this time it’s the National Book Critics Circle. One critic protested the usual statement that’s issued about racism by a literary organization, and the empire struck back.

In an era that celebrates noise and shouting, both in person and online, Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog has some different advice: be quiet and cultivate a gentle spirit

More Good Reads

Faith

The Final Salute – David McLemore at Things of the Sort.

Courage Takes More Than a Keyboard: Christian Nerve in a Digital Age – Samuel James at Desiring God.

No, Nicaea Didn’t Create the Canon – John Meade at The Gospel Coalition.

Piercing a Hole in the Heavens – Casey Shutt at Mere Orthodoxy. 

Faith

Cool Christianity Is (Still) a Bad Idea – Brett McCracken at The Gospel Coalition.

Five Ways Churches Will Have Changed One Year From Now – Thom Rainer at Church Answers.

Poetry

‘The Falcon’: A Poem After Blake’s ‘Tyger' – Cynthia Erlandson at Society of Classical Poets.

Nobody – Alice Oswald at Literary Hub.

Sestina Minus One; A Buoyant Future for Us All – Michele Herman at The Hudson Review.

A Grace Triptych – Andrew Roycroft at The Rabbit Room.

Writing and Literature

Forests of Ardens: On the Arden Shakespeare Series – Paul Dean at New Criterion.

Culture

On the Opioid Crisis and the Grief of Ohio – David Giffels at Literary Hub.

Ideology and the Pulitzers: It’s time for new prizes – Bruce Bawer at Claremont Review of Books.

Why ‘The Sting’ is Still the Ultimate Grifter Movie – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads. 

If you love me (Thomas Tallis) – The King’s Singers (Zoom version)

Painting: Seated Man Reading, oil on canvas, mid-20^th century; artist unknown but associated with the French School.