Saturday, April 10, 2021

Saturday Good Reads


This past Thursday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. At Tablet Magazine, David Mikics discusses a “fierce, brief book” about the Holocaust, in which author Wendy Lower considers a photograph that many still don’t want to face or acknowledge. And Jeff Dunetz at The Lid looks at how Dwight Eisenhower assured that the horrors of the Holocaust would never be forgotten. 

In any discussion or recognition of banned books, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is almost always included. The people demanding its banning, exclusion from libraries, and removal from school reading lists usually haven’t read it, but instead rely on what others tell them (a growing problem in this age of social media). Christine Norvell at Front Porch Republic offers a lesson in how to teach banned books

 

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been part of a small group reading all of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry in 2021. In high school and college, I read what the curriculum required us to read – Julius CaesarMacbethHamletKing Lear, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I read Romeo and Juliet only after seeing the 1968 movie version directed by Franco Zeffirelli. And both a reader and theatergoer can find great pleasure in the language of the bard. Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily asks a surprising question: are we (and performing actors) getting Shakespeare’s rhythms all wrong?

 

More Good Reads

 

News Media

 

Looking back at a day when small-town newspaper editors could be heroes – John Miller at Poynter. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

Why Murder Mysteries Are a Lot Like Science, According to a Neuroscientist and Novelist – Erik Hoel at CrimeReads.

 

In Praise of Reading Aloud – Ali Kjergaard at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Blackbird Letters #2: Writing as Imitation of God – Lore Wilbert at Sayable.

 

Larry McMurtry and Wendell Berry at the Dairy Queen – Seth Wieck at Front Porch Republic.

 

Imaginary Histories: How Tolkien’s Fascination with Language Shaped His Literary World – Damien Bador at Literary Hub.

 

Life and Culture

 

It’s All America’s Fault – Ed West at UnHerd.

 

Saints and Sinners in a History-Haunted Age – Matt Hoberg at Church Life Journal.

 

Faith

 

A Runner in a Race – Patrick Ramsey at Reformation 21.

 

The Internet’s Unofficial Patron Saint – Daniel Jose Camacho at The Revealer.

 

Chains, Change and Chesterton – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

American Stuff

 

The Virginians 800-Mile March to Save Charleston – Mark Maloy at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

Poetry

 

The silence between – Joe Spring at Joe Spring writes.

 

“Night Verses” and “The Hills and Hours” – Brian Palmer at Society of Classical Poets.

 

God Bless America – King’s Return



Painting: Men reading, oil on canvas (1820-1823) by Francisco Goya, Museum del Prado, Madrid.

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