Saturday Good Reads - March 29, 2025

This past Tuesday was the 100^th birthday of writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). I still remember when I discovered her writing. I was 24, working for Shell Oil in Houston, and a work colleague (who herself was a bit Flannery-esque) strongly me urged me to read her. Which I did. And I promptly devoured everything he’d written, including her letters, collected and published in 1979 as The Habit of Being. One of my favorite lines of hers was, “When I’m asked why Southern writers always seem to write about freaks, I say it’s because we’re still able to recognize one.”  

Her 100^th birthday meant she was just about everywhere you looked.

 

Poet and writer Sally Thomas has a reflection on O’Connor and her works, as does Chilton Williamson Jr. at Modern Age. Catherine Taylor at The Guardian wonders if we should still read her works. Shaun Usher at Letters of Note considers her letters (she was a marvelous letter writer), while Henry Eliot at Read the Classics recommends reading her short stories. Ralph Wood at Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal argues that her life and work embodied the three Lenten requirements of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Poet and writer Angela Alaimo O’Donnell has written three books about O’Connor, and she has three poems about the writer at Rabbit Room Poetry. If you want to read O’Connor, I’d recommend the edition of her collected works published by the Library of America. 

 

And if you’d like to hear O’Connor speak in her own voice, Open Culture has a recording of her reading “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.” (The early part is difficult to follow, but it gets better, and you can click on “Show transcript.”)

 

More Good Reads 

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Vanishing White Male Writer – Jacob Savage at Compact Magazine.

 

Twenty-one facts and opinions about A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

 

Building: How You Can, While You Can – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

 

The American Revolution: The 250^th Anniversary

 

Discover Parick Henry’s Legacy – Cassandra Good at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

“Never heard anything more infamously insolent”: Loyalist and British response to Parick Henry’s famous speech – Rob Orrison at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Virginia 250^th Events – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

American Stuff

 

The Man Behind Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’: Tony Dolan, RIP – Paul Kengor at The American Spectator.

 

Review: The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 by William Marvel – Civil War Books and Authors.

 

Israel

 

Israel’s Second War of Independence – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Poetry

 

“The Last Ship,” poem by J.R.R. Tolkien – Andrew Henry at The Saxon Cross.

 

“On Joy Harjo,” excerpt from Ambiguity and Belonging by Benjamin Myers – New Verse Review. 

 

At the Funeral Parlor – James Matthew Wilson at National Review.

 

“Spots of Time,” from the Prelude by William Wordsworth – Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Faith

 

You Were Made for This – Brianna Lambert at From Glory to Ordinary.

 

Friends Come and Friends Go – Tanner Kay Swanson at Desiring God.

 

Life and Culture

 

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

 

O Freedom – Anchor Hymns

 Painting: The Evening News, oil on canvas by Louis Charles Moeller (1855-1930).