Today marks the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which officially launched the American Revolution. William Anthony Hay at Real Clear History considers the battles and their impact. The scholarly / popular blog site Emerging Revolutionary War is celebrating all weekend. I had a post Thursday at Tweetspeak Poetry about how Longfellow turned Paul Revere’s ride into a national legend, and American Revolution scholar Phil Greenwalt has a review of a brand new book all about the ride, and what did and didn’t happen. An invoice in the Massachusetts State Archives tells not of one but many rides. And here's what Paul Revere himself said about the ride, 23 years later: the letter and the transcription.
Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa died Monday at 89. I was introduced to his work when I took a course in the Latin American Novel in the 1980s and coincidentally heard him speak on campus. Our class read his novel The Green House. On a business trip in Kansas City, I found The War of the End of the World, about a little-known messianic movement in Brazil in the 19th century, and I read it almost non-stop. My class paper was on his Conversation in the Cathedral, a large, complex novel that seems too difficult to read until you figure out the structure, and then it becomes an incredibly enthralling story. Since then, I think I’ve read almost everything he’s written. Two obituaries published this week that I thought were especially good were by the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.
In 1951, British mystery writer Josephine Tey published one of the most remarkable detective novels ever. Her police detective, Alan Grant, is recovering from surgery in a hospital. He’s restless and bored, so he turns to solving a mystery that’s never been solved – did Richard III really murder the two young princes in the Tower of London? What’s unusual about Tey’s book is that Grant solves the crime from his hospital bed – and it’s an entirely credible solution. Sarah Weinman at CrimeReads considers The Daughter of Time as “a mystery like no other before.” (I read it 50 years ago, and it remains one of my favorite mystery stories.) If you’re interested, here’s the Richard III Society’s take on what happened to the princes, and here’s a clue to the mystery that was reported as recently as last December.
More Good Reads
Faith
Knights of the Round Temple – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.
In Between on the Camino de Santiago – John Murdock at Front Porch Republic.
Ben-Hur (1926, silent film) – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.
Art
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 at the National Gallery is a remarkable achievement – Martin LaMonica at The Conversation.
Writing and Literature
A response from Tyndale Publishing on cursing – Mark at Thoughts of a Sojourner.
Max Allan Collins on Continuing the Work of Dashiell Hammett – at Crime Reads.
Middlemarch is a novel about sympathizing with everyone – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.
Faith
Bible stolen from unsuspecting churchgoers – Stephen Steele at Gentle Reformation.
Is the Resurrection of Jesus Likely or Unlikely? – Michael J. Kruger at Canon Fodder.
Why poetry? – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.
Truth, Goodness, & Beauty – Chris Buckle at Providence Podcast.
Life and Culture
Why Progressives Increasingly Support Violence – Zack Dulberg and Max Horder at City Journal.
Poetry
“Hawks in Holy Week,” poem by Sally Thomas – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Christ’s Last Words Were a Poem – Abram Van Engen at Rabbit Room Poetry.
Hold Him High – Citizens
Painting: Lady Reading in an Interior, oil on canvas (circa 1795-1800) by Marguerite Gerard (1781-1837).
No comments:
Post a Comment