Saturday Good Reads – May 30, 2026

I don’t select my “favorite story of the week,” but if I did, this one would be it. If you read nothing else here today, or anywhere else, read this. Bring tissues. And feel gratitude, and perhaps some wonder: Judson’s Last Ride by Sean Trende. 

You have a book idea. You start researching and perhaps even writing. You’re excited about it. And then, in a bookstore or an online column or post, you see it. Someone has already published a book that sounds like what you’re working on. Your response is something like feeling all four of your car tires deflate at once. What do you do? Writing coach Ann Kroker has some suggestions.

 

The controversy over writing and artificial intelligence continues to rage. A prizewinning article in a literary magazine that may actually have been written by AI. Books in which quotations of other works turn out to be invented by AI, Books written partially or more than partially by AI programs. Writing using what suspiciously looks like AI-pirated plagiarism. But with all this, not unusual when a new technology is developed, Joel Miller suggests that perhaps writers are focused on the wrong AI battle.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Why 1776 matters to modern Britain – Clement Knox at The Critic Magazine.

 

This Jewish Community in the Caribbean Smuggled Gunpowder to the Patriots During the Revolution – John Hanc at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

The Sound of Independence – Lois Bliss Herbine at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Constitutionalism of The Federalist Papers – William Allen at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Treason on the Floor: Patrick Henry’s Defiant Challenge to King George – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Faith

 

What’s Wrong With Boys? – R. Scott Clark at The Heidelblog.

 

American Stuff

 

Property No More: The Quiet Emancipation of Dred Scott – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Dolley Madison’s World – Catherine Allgor at American Heritage.

 

The Lobby, Fox Theater – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Return of Buccmaster – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abby of Misrule.

 

An Ounce of Clarity vs a Pound of Cleverness – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Film

 

“Les Miserables:” A Rousing Tale for Slumbering Souls – Barbara Elliott at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

News Media

 

Stephen Colbert Didn’t Get Cancelled – Mass Culture Did – Aaron Renn.

 

The Media’s Inversion pf Hezbollah’s War Against Israel – John Spencer t the Mir Yam Institute.

 

Poetry

 

“Sea-Shell Murmurs,” poem by Eugene Lee-Hamilton and “The Ecchoing Green,” poem by William Blake – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Bell Ringer – David Whyte.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Dignity of Dependence: How the Vulnerabilities We Share Become the Ties That Bind – Alisa Ruddell at Front Porch Republic.

 

Christ Our Hope in Life and Death – Jordan Kauflin

 Painting: Books and Reading, illustration by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978).  

Tongue as predator

After James 3:1-12 

The tongue is a restless

predator, wandering

the landscape, seeking

its food, the unsuspecting

and the nourishing; 

this predator is hungry

for nourishment. It is

an evil, restless; it is

full of poison, a toxic

instrument of destruction,

which can bless and curse

simultaneously. No salt

sea can produce fresh water;

no fig tree bears olives. 

No human can control

a tongue, especially

one’s own. It lashes,

it destroys, it demeans,

it insults, it undermines,

it reduces, it erodes,

it exhausts, it makes

its object less than it is

by elevating itself.

 

Photograph by Lukas Vanatko via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Turn the Other Cheek – Jason Clark at This is Jason.

 

Sundays for the Young Son of a Theologically Conservative Pastor – Jon Wildeman at Front Porch Republic.

 

“Ploughman,” poem by Patrick Kavanagh – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

One Day, God Will Wipe Away His People’s Tears – Randy Alcorn.

 

Feeding – poem by Seth Lewis.

Writing Poetry: "The Art of the Almost Said" by Robert Hudson

It’s one of the most intriguing definitions of Poetry that I’ve read. “Poetry,” writes Robert Hudson, “is for people who have something genuine, heartfelt, interesting, or quirky to say.” He goes on to say who the intended audience poetry is: “It should be written for people who ride the bus, work the late shift, bag the leaves, or play vide games … people who send birthday cards, struggle with their weight, forget to take their meds, tuck in the kids, check Facebook, and drive the dog to the vet.” 

And then he throws done the gauntlet: “…unless poetry makes sense to us ordinary folks, it’s not poetry. It’s just highbrow puzzle constructing.”

 

Hudson’s The Art of the Almost Said: The Christian Writer’s Guide to Writing Poetry may be aimed at Christians, but’s a poetry how-to guide for all of us. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Something understood: How to read poetry – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“Radio,” poem by Harriet Monroe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“On Shakespeare,” poem by John Milton – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

The Strangest Job Interview I Ever Had

I was cleaning out some old files when I came across a small blue address book – the kind we used before iPhones had contact lists, or even before we had iPhones. It dates from 2003. When I looked at the listings, I realized I was holding an artifact of my career. 

Between October of 2003 and May of 2004, I was Director of Communications for St. Louis Public Schools. The school district, with many of the problems of an urban school district, had been in upheaval since June. A reform board had been elected, and it had promptly hired an outside management firm from New York to design and implement a total overhaul. It wasn’t a simple reorganization; instead, think Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency without the charm.

 

On its first day, the outside firm discovered that the district wasn’t technically but actually bankrupt. Suddenly, change came. Schools were closed and consolidated. Hundreds of staff positions had been eliminated. Operations were outsourced. Chaos and protests were the watchwords. As in, daily chaos and protests.

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

Photograph by Chelaxy Designs via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Brutality & Compassion: Howard Pyle’s “Otto of the Silver Hand” – David Deavel at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

What If the World is Enchanted? – Zak Schmoll.

 

The Right Stuff: President Washington Needed a General in 1792 – Bradley Crytzer at Journal of the American Revolution.

Poets and Poems: Angela Alaimo O’Donnell and “The View from Childhood”

We all have childhood and family stories, good ones, bad ones, and usually some of each. Childhood shapes us, helping us be the adults we eventually become. We learn things, directly and indirectly, by living in the families we have. 

In The View from Childhood: Poems, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell takes both a candid and loving look at her Italian Catholic immigrant family. It’s a loving look, one that includes thankfulness to her elder siblings for introducing her to serious poetry (she says she originally wanted to be an opera singer). But like all families, there are things you don’t want to learn and prefer not to see. But they’re there, and you learn to come to terms with them. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Orthodoxy – poem by Scott Cairns at The Rabbit Room.

 

Praise Song for My Mother – Andrea Potos at Every Day Poems.

 

The Charge of the Light Brigade – poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson at Every Day Poems.

“A Summer Shadow” by H.L. Marsay

The summer is unusually and rather miserably hot for York in northern England. Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow of the York Police is attending a cricket game. Cricket happens to be about the only sport he enjoys watching. And being outside has the advantage of catching whatever cool breezes might unexpectedly arise. His detective sergeant, Jimmy Chang, is there as well. 

And the during a break in the game, the elderly man who’d been serving as scorekeeper is discovered dead in the scorekeeper’s shed. And rather gruesomely murdered, in fact. At first glance, Shadow wonders who could possibly have wanted to kill an elderly man who was simply keeping score.

 

 H L Marsay

As Shadow and Chang will learn in A Summer Shadow, the ninth DCI John Shadow mystery by H L Marsay, the list of suspects is longer than one might initially think. It turns out that the man, a retired city planning officer, had something of a habit of expecting bribes from developers, and then, after retirement, expecting payment from people he was blackmailing. It almost becomes a case of who isn’t on the list of suspects.

 

It’s a fast-paced, entertaining story, with enough twists and turns to keep a slalom skier on constant alert. The case takes on an entirely different turn when a skeleton is discovered in the basement of the former newspaper building – and it might possibly be related to the death of the cricket scorekeeper.

 

A member of the Crime Writers Association, Marsay lives with her family in the city of York in England. She’s also published The Secrets of Hartwell trilogy and The Lady in Blue mysteries. 

 

A Summer Shadow shares a number of characteristics with its eight predecessors – a DCI who is curmudgeonly on a good day, an irrepressible detective sergeant who keeps his bubbly charm intact no matter what his boss throws at him, and a stop at one if not several York restaurants. It’s great fun.

 

Related: 

A Long Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Viking’s Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Ghostly Shadow by H L Marsay.

 A Roman Shadow by H.L. Marsay.

A Forgotten Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Christmas Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Stolen Shadow by H.L. Marsay.

A Saxon Shadow by H L Marsay.

Betrayal at the Old Hall by H L Marsay.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Calvin Coolidge, Christianity, & the American Founding – Nathaniel Urban at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why did police handcuff Henry Nowak? – Andrew Tettenborn at The Spectator.

 

Soiled Work – Adam Gustine at Comment Magazine.

 

Ground Zero in the Reading Crisis – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Whistler in Wapping – Spitalfields Life.

The tongue as metaphor

After James 3:1-12 

Of all the works of man,

none is so powerful as

the tongue. It does

great good, and it does

great harm. If we teach,

we must remember

it is the tongue which

makes us stumble. It

guides the whole person,

like the bit in the horse’s

mouth, like the rudder

of a ship, like the fire

in the forest, the fire

that provides heat 

in the cold and destruction

among the trees and brush.

The tongue can be tamed,

but only as an act of God;

none of us can tame

our tongues.

 

Photograph by Izzy Park via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Our Mother-tongue is Live: A Sonnet for Pentecost – Malcolm Guite.

 

Steve McQueen, born again, set free – Patrick Luscri. 

 

Even Now, God Can Rescue Your Prodigal – Jill Noble at Desiring God.