Faith, Fiction, Friends: Saturday Good Reads

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a new national cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of the Battle of Gettysburg in July of that year. His speech (“The Gettysburg Address”) disappointed many of the people in the audience because it was only two minutes long. Much better received was the two-hour oration by Edward Everett, one of America’s premier orators at the time. Later generations made Everett’s speech the butt of the joke over long orations (especially compared to Lincoln’s), but, as Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War points out, Everett had many important things to say.

Anthony Horowitz is the writer behind the popular British TV series Foyle’s War, which aired for some 14 seasons. He’s also the author of Magpie Murders, which he’s adapted for the PBS Masterpiece series of the same name. At Writer’s Digest, Horowitz explains how he imagined himself into Magpie Murders.

If I had to nominate the most beautiful post of the week, I would give the nod to Tim Suffield at Nuakh. In “After the burning,” he visits the site of destruction after a forest fire in the hills above Birmingham, England, and he finds something quite unexpected.

More Good Reads

Poetry

'Do Not Return' and 'Traveler's Rest' – Martin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

Silence – Jane Dougherty at Jane Dougherty Writes.

Writing a Poem – Sally Cook at Society of Classical Poets.

The pillow – John Poch at New Criterion.

Life and Culture

Do Universities Educate? – Sarah Soltis at Plough.

Domestic Economies – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

The Burden of Youth – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

Decline: On the rot in American institutions –New Criterion.

British Stuff