Saturday Good Reads - April 12, 2025

If you’re a Charles Dickens fan, you might be interested in the Annual Conference of the Dickens Fellowship that’s being held at the conference center of Canterbury Cathedral in England. The web site has full details. A collection of prints illustrating the novels of Dickens has been posted at The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery. And via the Gad’s Hill Place Museum (the author’s final home and where he died), you get a view from his study and listen to a reading of an excerpt from Dombey and Son.  

You’re not going to find this in the mainstream media – the New York Post and Fox News was as close as I could find on Google – but Rutgers University announced the findings of a study that reported that political violence and “killing billionaires” is now accepted by a significant portion of people identifying with one political party. You can read the full Rutgers report here. And this is how the New York Post reported it. 

 

Three good posts popped up this week about writing and publishing fiction. Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule discusses the promise and peril of the ‘Christian novel.’ Randee Dawn at Writer’s Digest explains what she learned from “un-trunking her novels” and getting them published. And Henry Oliver at The Common Reader considers how fiction publishers are increasingly dismissing male writers, and says if men want to get published again, they need to write great novels.

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

On My Grandfather’s Novel” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at 100 – Eleanor Lanahan at Literary Hub.

 

Touches of sweet harmony: Music and The Merchant of Venice – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Faith

 

State of the Church: More men attending than women, volunteering rebounding – Diana Chandler at Baptist Press.

 

Was John Milton a Puritan? – Jack Heller at The Priory.

 

What’s Missing in the Calling Conversation? – Arianna Malloy at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

The World of St. Augustine – Regis Martin at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

America 250

 

National Gallery of Art marking 250^th anniversary of US with loans to ten museums across the country – Benjamin Sutton at The Art Newspaper.

 

American Stuff

 

Timeline: A Recent History of Tariffs – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

When Americans Gave Up Their Freedoms – Martin Gurri at The Free Press.

 

Surrender at Appomattox: Grant Claims Victory for the Union – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

The Strange Case of Dr. Barret – Greg Wolk at Emerging Civil War.

 

Life and Culture

 

In Praise of Old Fencerows – Reid Makowsky at Front Porch Republic.

Burn It All Down - Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Poetry

 

How to Start a Poetry Club: Part 1 and Part 2 – Every Day Poems.

 

Lent with Van Gogh, Part 6: Sunflowers – Megan Willome.

 

The Love That Used to Move Me – Andrew Calis at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Rise My Soul, The Lord is Risen – Matt Papa, Matt Boswell, & Kristyn Getty 

Painting: Portrait of Rodo Pissarro Reading (the Artist’s Son, oil on canvas (1893) by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). 

What we bear

After Romans 12:2 and Luke 6:43-45 

We are known

by the fruit we bear,

and we all bear

fruit. A good, healthy

trees bears good, healthy

fruit; a bad tree, and 

an evil tree, do not.

Good comes from good,

evil comes from evil.

Our hearts are storehouses

of treasure, an abundance

of treasure. Good treasure

produces good; bad treasure

produces bad. Good treasure

comes from renewal, 

renewal of your heart,

renewal of your mind,

renewal of your soul,

not from the word but

from the Spirit. Renewal

becomes transformation

becomes production

of good.

 

Photograph by Mary Jane Duford via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

On Netflix and Narnia: Three Questions and a Convicting Scene – Ryanne Molinari.

 

Hymn for Advent: Or Christ’s Coming to Jerusalem in Triumph – poem by Jeremy Taylor at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

Five Years After Gentle and Lowly, Evangelicals Still Need to Remember the Love of Jesus – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

“Children of the Heavenly King,” hymn by John Cennick – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Learning to Listen: Engaging with Longer Prayers in Worship – Erik Raymond at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Poets and Poems: Michelle Ortega and “When You Ask Me, Why Paris?”

We were there for an anniversary trip – Paris in the springtime. It’s a beautiful city, but it has its quirks. The museum workers were staging wildcat strikes to protest government pension changes. The government didn’t care. The tourists did. The Louvre and other cultural institutions might or might not be open, and they might suddenly close when they were open (this happened to Versailles the day after we visited). Our hotel concierge did his best to keep guests informed, but there was no way to tell for sure until you arrived. 

What the wildcat strikes taught us to do was to be flexible in the extreme. We discovered the Museum of the Middle Ages (“the Cluny”), with its famous “lady and the unicorn” tapestry. The Rue des Martyrs was three blocks from our hotel, and it was like a miniature of every Paris stereotype – the bakery, the coffee shop, the flower shop, the wine shop, people doing their shopping with baguettes in their arms. The Au Petite Riche restaurant with its surly French waiters quarantined us in a side room with two other couples – an elderly couple from Salisbury in England and a honeymooning pair from Australia. They probably thought they were isolating their French diners from the boorish Anglos; instead, they turned our meal into a party and a treasured memory.

 

Poet Michelle Ortega has had a different Paris experience, or at least what she writes about in When You Ask Me, Why Paris? reflects a different experience. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Things We Leave Unsaid – poem by Andrew Calis at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“The Soote Season,” poem by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poems on Solitude and Aloneness – D.H. Lawrence via Poetic Outlaws.

 

“Straws in the Wind,” poem by Gerald Dawe – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Crystal Downing’s Subversive Sayers and 21^st Century Society – Seth Myers at An Unexpected Journal.

Rereading the "Dancing Priest" Series

Someone once asked me if I reread my own books after they’re published. And the answer is yes. Part of the reason is research and “story-checking.” When I was writing the Dancing Priest series, I had to reread the early books to make sure I was keeping story line, characters, and settings consistent and accurate.  

But I must confess that, sometimes, I reread the books simply for pleasure. Occasionally, I get so wrapped up in the stories that I forget I wrote them. I suppose that’s a good thing. Yes, I have favorite scenes in every book that I like to reread, but I do reread the books in their entirety, about once a year.

 

I’ve had readers tell me that they reread the Dancing Priest series, too. Last week, Bill Grandi, a pastor in Indiana, started writing about it at his blog Living in the Shadow. This is part of what he had to say about the first book, Dancing Priest; he captured the very heart of the story in just a few words:

 

“Glynn has weaved together a wonderful story that even a non-religious person would enjoy. Even though Michael is a fictional character, one begins to admire this young man and his passion for life. Grounded without being preachy, Dancing Priest is a wonderful story of faith, hope, caring for others, putting other’s interests before your own, and being sensitive to those around us.”

 

And here’s what Bill wrote about the second one, A Light Shining, after summarizing a conversation between the Anglican priest Michael Kent and a 15-year-old boy on the steps of Michael’s church in San Francisco:

 

“…Each one of us matters to God. He sent Jesus to die so that we could be forgiven. While a story written by Mr. Young, the conversation is heard all over the planet. Every person has value and merit. Each one matters. We are all sinners, for sure, but we still matter to God.”

 

It might be time to reread my books (again). Thank you, Bill Grandi.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Kids These Days Need The Black Stallion – Larissa Phillips at The Free Press.

 

Grant and Whiskey at Shiloh – Sean Michael Chick at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Span of a Season – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

“Try not to think what we are going to do to ourselves”: Grant at the Wilderness and Shiloh – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Cvil War. 

 

Who controls our histories? – Barb Drummond at Curious Histories.

Robert Waldron Imagines the Creation of "The Hound of Heaven"

I’d heard of the poem “The Hound of Heaven” decades ago; I’d read it back in college in an English literature course which used the Norton Anthology of English Literature. I checked my copy, which I’ve held on to since 1971; sure enough, it’s included. But I remembered nothing about the poet, Francis Thompson (1859-1907). As it turns out, I’m not alone; his name doesn’t come immediately to mind when thinking about the great Victorian and late Victorian poets. 

Thompson’s story begins with his father, Charles, who was a doctor and Roman Catholic convert in northwest England. Charles wanted his son to be a priest, and the boy at age 11 was duly sent to seminary. Francis, however, was far more interested in history and poetry than theology. When the priesthood plan failed, his father sent him to study medicine at what is now the University of Manchester. Thompson was even less interested in being a doctor than he was in being a priest and left for London. Determined to be a writer, he found himself living on the streets, working in fits and starts, and soon addicted to opium. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

100 Great Poems for Boys, edited by Leslie Pockell – review by Betsy Farquhar at Redeemed Reader.

 

“Apologia,” an essay in verse – T.M. Moore at The Society of Classical Poets.

 

Spring springs – poem by Pádraig Ó Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

A Close Reading of the Poetry of Val Kilmer – Nick Ripatrazone at Literary Hub.

 

“To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve,” poem by John Dryden – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

50 States of Generosity: Iowa -- Sandra Husk King at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"Turpitude" by Pete Brassett

A series of seemingly unconnected crimes are assigned to DCI Charlotte (“Charlie”) West and her team at the Scottish police. Drive-by robberies have been occurring, in which nothing is stolen. A jeweler is based on the head in his shop, but again, nothing is stolen. And workers at a recycling center discover some human fingers in a discarded tin (can) of dog food.  

Retired DCI James Munro (and Charlie’s mentor) is brought in to help. The wheels of police investigation begin to grind, if slowly. The team talks with the recycling center people, the owners of the unrobbed shops, and the spouse of the jeweler, who soon becomes the widow of the jeweler when the victim dies in hospital. The widow is of particular interest, as she takes off for their vacation home on a sunny Spanish island.

 

Pete Brassett

It won’t be long until Munro’s experienced eye and West’s ability to fit pieces together leads to the conclusion that all of these seemingly unconnected crimes may actually be connected.

 

Turpitude is the tenth Munro and West crime novel by Pete Brassett, and it’s a winner of a mystery read. Brassett has an ability to keep you guessing, mixing legitimate clues for the reader with a few red herrings. With the laugh-out-loud banter between the members of the police team, Turpitude is a highly entertaining story.

 

Brassett, a native Scot, has published 13 novels in the Munro and West series, as well as several general fiction and mystery titles.   

 

Related:

She by Pete Brassett.

 Avarice by Pete Brassett.

 Duplicity by Pete Brassett.

 Terminus by Pete Brassett.

 Talion by Peter Brassett.

 Perdition by Peter Brassett.

 Rancour by Peter Brassett.

Penitent by Pete Brassett.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“Resentment is anger that has not been resolved.” – Alain de Botton – American Civil War & UK History.

 

Even Me? An encounter with Watership Down – J.E. Kerstner at Story Warren.

 

Hawthorne in Rome – John Miller at National Review.

 

3 Ways to Make New Stuff Happen – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

“Turn, Turn, Turn”: Sometimes a song – Anthomy Esolen at Word & Song.

A measure of kindness

After Galatians 5:22-23 and 2 Samuel 9:1-7 

Summoned, he thinks,

to his condemnation

and death, he learns

instead that lands

are to be restored,

position is to be

restored, honor is

to be paid. Instead

of condemnation

and death, he’s been

summoned to honor,

summoned to life.

Kindness to a man

changed his life;

kindness to people

transforms empires.

 

It is a picture, a photograph:

summoned to expected

death, we instead

have been summoned

to life.

 

Photograph by Andrea Tummons via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Back When We Had Friends – Greg Morse at Desiring God.

 

“Air and Angels,” poem by John Donne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Thus with the year, seasons return” – Anthony Esolen at Word and Song.

 

I Used to Race the Sun – Henry Lewis at Story Warren.

 

Hallowed Be Thy App – Madeleine Kearns at The Free Press.

 

The Prayer Without Ceasing – Dwight Torkington at The Imaginative Conservative.

Saturday Good Reads - April 5, 2025

The New York Times had a surprising report this week about the war in Ukraine. The newspaper reported that the United States was far more deeply involved from the beginning, and that the Biden Administration both misled and outright lied to the American people about U.S. involvement and the threat of nuclear war. As one pundit noted, it was U.S. General Mark Milley who was calling the shots. 

Still another international surprise: Western media have been criticized for accepted war casualty figures reported with both immediacy and specificity by Hamas (or its health authority) in Gaza. One example: some 70 percent of the deaths have been reported to be women and children. This week, Hamas quietly revised the numbers; 72 percent of the deaths turn out to be combat-aged men. Notice the widespread coverage of the revision in American media? I didn’t either.

 

I’ve been watching a “equal protection under the law” train wreck approaching in Britain. The Sentencing Council, essentially a group of British judges who issue guidelines and polices for the court system there, was proposing a two-tier sentencing system – more lenient sentences for minorities and harsher sentences for whites for the same crimes. It was so bad (and causing such a bad public reaction) that even Keir Starmer’s Labour government was compelled to oppose the plan, even saying it would introduce legislation to stop it. Thankfully, the Sentencing Council has backed down. For now.

 

More Good Reads

 

Art

 

The art of experience: Caspar David Freidrich – James Steven Curl at The Critic Magazine.

 

Neater – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Faith

 

What is Man? – Carl Trueman at The New Jerusalem.

 

Maintaining Friendships in a Lonely Age – Thomas Kidd.

 

Why Hospitality in the New Testament Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

Be Wary of 1%-er Rhetoric – Just Poythress.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Demons and Monsters in George Bernanos – Cyril O’Regan at Church Life Journal.

 

Life and Culture

 

Secularist Violence in Modern History: An Interview with Thomas Albert Howard – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Other Cancel Culture – Dixie Dillon Lane at Front Porch Republic.

 

Restoring the Humanities: An Education That’s Not for Dummies – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

American Stuff

 

Jay Bhattacharya Was ‘Dangerous.’ Now He Leads the NIH – Bari Weiss at The Free Press. 

 

Stacking Arms: The Cockade City Unravels – Aaron Stoyack at Emerging Civil War.

America 250

 

Mapping the American Revolution and Its Era  – John Sellers at the Library of Congress.

 

Patrick Henry: From the American Revolution to Saving the Union – John Ragosta at Ben Franklin’s World.

 

Poetry

 

Ad Astera – Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

 

“Wind in the Grass,” poem by Mark Van Doren – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Planets: Jupiter – Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra Flash Mob

Painting: Woman at a Window, oil on canvas by Albert Andre (1969-1954, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Waiting

After James 5:7-11 

We want this over,

whatever this is:

an illness, persecution,

a hurt, a traffic jam,

a trial, a tribulation,

a suffering. Get it over

and we’re back in

control.

But it doesn’t quite

work that way; it never

has. Wishing and 

wanting and hoping

doesn’t equate to instant

or any other kind 

of fulfillment. Instead,

wait like the farmer

waits for the rain. Wait

on each other. Wait on

the Lord, for his return

is his timing, not ours.

And remember that

patience is another form

of forgiveness, just as

forgiveness is another

form of patience.

 

Photograph by Zac Ong via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Send Our Best to the Nations: Missionary Education with Henry Martyn – Jon Hoglund at Desiring God.

 

Even Me – J.E. Kestner at Story Warren.

 

Traveling light – poem by Suzanne Underwood Rhodes at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Christian Artists Are Not Priests – O. Alan Noble at You Are Not Your Own.

 

A Poem About Life – Seth Lewis.

 

It’s Never Too Late to Learn How to Pray – Casey McCall at Remembrance of Former Days.

Poets and Poems: Luci Shaw and "An Incremental Life"

Luci Shaw has been writing poetry for more than half a century. She’s seen poetic fads, trends, and movements come and go. And she’s seen what endures. With that experience has come insight, an insight she distills into the 72 poems of her newest collection, An Incremental Life. 

Shaw might be what I’d call “the poet of the quiet.” This isn’t the quietness of meekness or shyness. Hers is the quietness of the spirit, of experience lived and learned. This experience shines throughout the collection.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Who Made the Stars? – poem by David Whyte. 

 

“Magnification,” poem by Maryann Corbett – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: The Beats, National Poetry Month, and Earth Day – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The curious rebirth of the Gregorian chant – Adam James Pollock at The Critic Magazine.

 

“A Boy’s Song,” poem by James Hogg – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Meeting with a Monthly Book Club on "Brookhaven"

Last week, I sat with seven or eight members of a local St. Louis book club. I was there at their invitation to discuss my historical novel Brookhaven, which they’d chosen for their monthly reading. I was there to talk about the book and answer their questions. 

The hostess was more than knowledgeable about the Civil War, having an ancestor who served on the Union side. She even had his picture and other memorabilia. Her husband had an ancestor who published Origins of the Late War in 1866.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: The Brookhaven, Miss., train station about 1915.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Le Pen mightier than the sword? – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

 

Another Look at Ulysses Grant – review by Gould Hagler at Emerging Civil War.

 

Contemplation in Action: Booth Tarkington and the Art of Business – Steve Soldi Jr. at Front Porch Republic.

"An Axe for the Frozen Sea" by Ben Palpant

Occasionally, you come across a book that feels like old home week, like you’ve returned to your college alma mater and almost nothing has changed. Poet and writer Ben Palpant has written a book just like that. 

The book is An Axe for the Frozen Sea: Conversations with poets about what matters most. Over the course of many months, Palpant interviewed 17 poets. He talked to them about what they write, why they write, how they view poetry (their own and others’), and generally focusing on the question most poets likely ask themselves throughout their writing careers: Why poetry?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A Seeming Stillness – poem by David Whyte.

 

“The Restoration” and “Quo Vadis?” – poems by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Estuary – poem by Luci Shaw at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Pansies – poem by Kate Seymour MacLean at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Waste Land,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Caution: Death at Work" by Rhys Dylan

A young London securities trader is getting married, and his best friend since childhood (and best man) takes him on a weekend bicycling trip through the forest they both knew so well as kids. But while camping out, they’re attacked while sleeping. The securities trader is killed and the best friend seriously injured in a brutal knife attack.  

The clues are few. The friend couldn’t see what was happening in the dark or identify who the killer might be or even look like. The only clue of substance is the friend’s hearing a motorcycle or motorized dirt bike. 

 

Detective Chief Inspector Evan Warlow and his team begin an investigation of a crime that looks random, and yet it doesn’t. Slowly they check everything possible – video footage of nearby roads, backgrounds of the victims that might suggest something, exhaustive interviewing of family, friends, and acquaintances. Some indications point to an incident in the past, but it looks at best inconclusive.

 

Rhys Dylan

Warlow has been coaxed from retirement, but his health issue is still there, and he’ll learn more in about two months. In the meantime, the case gets his full attention, and he soon learns that, like in too many murder investigations, people don’t always tell everything they know.

 

Caution: Death at Work is the second in the DCI Evan Warlow series by Rhys Dylan, and it’s every bit as good as its predecessor, The Engine House. In Even Warlow, Dylan has created an experienced police detective who’s struggling with a (still unknown) health issue and who often has to allow clues and conversations simmer in his mind before the light bulb pops on. 

 

Dylan has published 15 novels in the DCI Evan Warlow series. A native Welshman educated in London, Dylan wrote numerous books for children and adults under various pen names across several genres. He began writing the DCI Warlow series in 2021; The Engine House was published in 2022. Dylan lives in Wales.

 

Related:

 

“The Engine House” by Rhys Dylan.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

How One Town Turned a Child’s ‘Cru for Help’ into a Hate Crime – Frannie Block at The Free Press.

 

Noble Street: The Ruins of London’s Industry – A London Inheritance.

 

The Burning Season – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Finding the Lost Generation on a Stroll Through Paris – Jackson Lanzer at Literary Traveler.