Saturday, December 9, 2023

Saturday Good Reads - Dec. 9, 2023


I’m taking a free online course right now on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Taught by Dwight Lindley, professor of English at Hillsdale College (yes, there are a few colleges left where English departments teach literature), it’s six lectures about the novel, the author, the literary and social contexts, and a lot more. I’ve reread the short novel, and I’m always surprised at what I do and don’t remember, and how I get the original book confused with the movie versions. Writer and poet Megan Willome has a poetry series going this month on the book; last year, she published (with TS Poetry Press) an edition of the Dickens classic. I read it an enjoyed it; the edition I just finished is a facsimile of the original, published by the Charles Dickens Museum in London.
 

You wonder what you would do in a similar situation. Via The Free Press, a 70-year-old man describes what he didwhen his kibbutz was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. 

 

Christmas has had a rather curious mystery, writes Scott Hubbard at Desiring God. It’s been celebrated, canceled, transformed, and secularized, but its meaning still prevails. And Robb Brunnasky at The Cripplegate says that Christmas fulfills three of God’s promises.

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

Who Can Repair the World? – Nadya Williams at Plough on the novels of Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

The Forgotten Giant of Yiddish Fiction – Adam Kirsch at The New Yorker.

 

The Great Books of the Great War – David Hein at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

The Anti-Poetry of John Milton – David Anderson at The Hedgehog Review on Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost by Ed Simon.

 

(Nobel laureate) Jon Fosse says he would have stopped writing 40 years ago if he had listed to critics – Ella Creamer at The Guardian.

 

Life and Culture

 

Not a Nothingburger: My Statement to Congress on Censorship – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

One Good Day: Part 1 – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Languages – Etgar Keren at Alphabet Soup.

 

On Finding Common Ground – Jillian Kramer at Kent State Magazine.

 

CRT, Genocide, and the Importance of Christian Universities – Jesse Johnson at The Cripplegate.

 

Poetry

 

Time’s Winged Chariot Hurrying Near – Douglas Murray at The Free Press on “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell.

 

Horror – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Miller.

 

News Media

 

Does the Media Hate Israel? – Russ Roberts at Listening to the Sirens.

 

Jordan Peterson and the Condescension of Times Columnists – Ethan Green at The Critic Magazine.

 

Faith

 

Cooperating Under Persecution – Paul Platinga at 9Marks.

 

The Long, Forgotten Reformation in France: A Brief History of the Huguenots – Stepehn M. Davis at Desiring God. 

 

Don’t Let All the Conspiracies Be Evil – Seth Lewis.

 

American Stuff 

 

Why Tea? Events Leading Up to the Boston Tea Party – Roy Orrison at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

British Stuff

 

George Cruikshank’s Christmas in London – Spitalfields Life. 

 

It is Well with My Soul – Brentwood Academy Singers.


Painting: Reader, oil on canvas (1906) by Brunner František Dvořák (1862-1927).

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