Saturday Good Reads – Jan. 31, 2026

I get amused when I see stories about how entitled Baby Boomers are, or how we supposedly lived the life of Riley back in the 1950s. While there are obvious differences to today – families were far more likely to be intact with both parents living together – it wasn’t all like the television shows Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. John Cochrane at The Coolidge Review explains that the 1950s weren’t such a golden age as many believe today believe. 

I’ve known of at least four pastors who read fiction, only because they sent me notes about my own novels. It’s not something we expect, figuring they’re always reading the latest books on theology, church issues, and pastoral counseling. T.N. Suffield has some reasons why it is a good idea for pastors to read fiction.

 

It’s not a story that the mainstream media will cover, but there’s been a spate of articles about nurses posting on social media about ways to harm ICE agents or Trump supporters in general, including one nurse who posted a really vicious attack on the White House press secretary. That nurse was fired and de-licensed for what she said, so at least sanity prevailed. If you want to read these stories, you can google them; I have no interest in providing links other than to note that mental illness seems to have seriously infiltrated the medical community. 

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Putting the American Revolution in Context by Transcription – Carolyn Osborn at Library of Congress.

 

Ulysses S. Grant, from Semicentennial to Semiquincentennial – ben Kemp at Emerging Civil War.

 

Advertising a Revolution: An Original Invoice to “The Town of Boston to Green and Russell” – George Bresnick at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Founding of Jamestown (1607) – Britain’s First Permanent American Foothold – Jonathan Thomas at Anglotopia.

 

Faith

 

Elites and the Evangelical Class War – John Ehrett at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Minneapolis, ICE, and the Christian Response – Kevin Briggins at Informed Takes (Hat Tip: Mike Duran). 

 

The Generational Narcissism of Always Thinking We Face the Biggest Crisis Ever – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

News Media

 

One Must Have a Heart of Stone – John Hinderaker at Powerline.

 

Why Nobody Is Convinced by Footage – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Summons Our Blood Knows – Mark Botts at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Leaf Collector (a very short story) – Seth Lewis.

 

Grateful for the War – Yours Truly at Cultivating Oaks Press.

 

Nick Carraway & Charles Ryder: Observers of Delusion & Decadence – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why “Plot” Isn’t a Four-Letter Word – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Poetry

 

“The Boston Evening Transcript,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Twigs – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Open – David Whyte.

 

Tolkien’s Beowulf : A Man of the Twilight – Bradley Birzer.

 

British Stuff

 

Lost Portrait of Robert Burns by Scotland’s Greatest Painter Found After 220 Years – Jonathan Thomas at Anglotopia. 

 

The Skater’s Waltz – Emile Waldteufel

 Painting: A Girl Reading, oil on canvas by Alfred Stevens (1823-1906).

Death by oak tree

After 2 Samuel 18 

The son, favored,

natural leader,

ambitious, the son

with his famous mane

of hair, escapes defeat

and gets his famous

mane of hair entangled

in an oak tree. He’s

caught, dangling,

defenseless. His

ambition and rebellion

have been brought

to this moment,

this humiliation

of one’s pride

entangled and 

immobilized, until

it ends with archers

letting arrows fly.

His pride and

his ambition are

buried in a pit,

buried in stones.

 

Photograph by Andrew Shelley via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Apostle! – a sonnet for St. Paul – Malcolm Guite.

 

“The Burden,” poem by Vasile Voiculescu – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“O Zion, Haste,” hymn by Mary Ann Thomson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

Noir Poetry: Weldon Kees and Kenneth Fearing

I’m not sure when I first ran across the reference to noir poetry. Several years ago, I read a novel in verse form, The Long Ride by Robin Robertson. I can’t say Robertson was a noir poet so much as he’d written a noir novel as poetry.  

Recently, I read another reference, so I decided to find out what it was about. Noir novelists I knew about – Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, writer usually associated with crime stories from the 1920s to the 1950s. And noir movies, movies like Notorious, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Maltese Falcon, Strangers on a Train, Laura, Double Indemnity, and Sunset Boulevard. (My favorite noir movie, though, was released in 1974 – Chinatown, with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

 

But noir poetry?

 

Yes, as it turns out. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Ballet School,” poem by Babette Deutsch – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Little Free Library – poem by Karen An-hwei Lee at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The film – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Faithless Nelly Gray,” poem by Thomas Hood – Joseph Bottum at Pomes Ancient and Modern.

"The Prodigal of Leningrad" by Daniel Taylor

I’m trying to remember when I first became interested in Russian history. Most likely, when I was 10, and one of my Christmas presents (my mother knew me) was a Horizon Caravel book entitled Russia Under the Czars. I must have read it a dozen times. And I still have it. 

My senior year in high school, I discovered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle. In college, I took two semesters of Russian history, and I was glad I knew more about Russia’s past than most people. The professor was a great lecturer; he was also an unapologetic defender of the Soviet regime. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

Is Carney’s Davos sermon the way forward? – David Robertson at Christian Today.

 

Only Mozart – Joseph Sobran at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How Holocaust Denial Became Mainstream – Simon Sebag Montefiore at The Free Press.

The Friend Who Turned Out to Be a Poet

For many years, until they changed the closing time, my wife and I could be found most Sunday afternoons at the YMCA in out suburb of St. Louis. I had a routine – start with cardio like the treadmill or stationary bike and find in the Cybex machine room. There was a fairly regular crowd there each Sunday, working out from about 5 to 6 p.m. One of those regulars was an older man, about six-foot-five. We knew him as Paul. 

My wife started chatting with him first. And then he spoke to me one Sunday, saying he’d heard I was from New Orleans. He had relatives there, too, even though he was from St. Louis. We’d talk while on the Cybex machines, and he didn’t say much about his own life, other than he liked poetry as much as I did and he loved to visit New Orleans.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The same – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust – Douglas Century a The Free Press.

 

“Comin thro’ the rye,” poem by Robert Burns – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Cultivating, Winter 2026: Renewing Gratitude

The winter issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is live, and the theme is renewing gratitude. This issue includes some wonderful essays, articles, and stories by Rob Jones, Annie Nardone, Sheila Underwood Vamplin, Adam Nettesheim, Christina Brown, Lara d'Entremont, Kelly Keller, Maribeth Barber, and many more. I have a short story, "Grateful for the War." 

Some Monday Readings

 

C.S. Lewis Returns to Earth – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Dispatch No. 4: Jayber Crow – Amelia Friedline at Dispatches to Jack.

 

Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

The forest consumes

After 2 Samuel 18 

The slaughter of battle

is great that day,

thousands falling

to sword and lance

and knife. The dead

lie in heaps, wasted

piles of life destroyed.

And yet, in spite of

sword and lance and 

knife, it is the forest

that consumes more

than the battle, 

the forest with

its trees and logs and

pits and ditches and 

streams and rivers,

the forest capturing

warriors and showing

no mercy.

 

Photograph by Sebastian Unrau via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Who Is Rich and Who Is Poor? – Eric McLaughlin at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Chilling Time – Kelly Keller at Story Warren.

 

It Doesn’t Matter What You Remember – Tim Challies.

 

Where is God’s Love When Life Goes Wrong? – Seth Porch at Desiring God.

 

The Burial of the Faithful – poem by Benjamin Myers at First Things.

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 24, 2026

Back in 2007, spent a week in Williamsburg. I was biking a lot at that time, and I was able to rent a bike at a local shop. I biked the historic triangle – Williamsburg to Yorktown, and Williamsburg to Jamestown. The parkways connecting them had little car traffic and were generally flat. We visited all three by car as well; 2007 was the 400^th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. If you can’t go, Christopher Klein at History.com explains how the three towns shaped the course of American history.  

It’s been less than week (it seems like months) since the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., experienced a serious disruption in its worship service by protestors looking for a pastor supposedly involved with ICE. We learned a lot of things from that disruption, including protestors were unaware of the FACE Act and former CNN anchor Don Lemon didn’t understand the First Amendment. Several people had some thoughtful responses. Samuel D. James at Digital liturgies wrote that we have to let the church be the church. Jesse Johnson explained that the First Amendment doesn’t give anyone the right to disrupt a worship service. And Al Mohler, often controversial across the evangelical spectrum, wrote in World Magazine that the disruption should be a wake-up call for the church.

 

While we wait to see what happens next in Iran, reporter Ashley Rindsberg at The Free Press took an unexpected look, not at Iran but in her own media world. And she discovered that, for the past year, Wikipedia editors have been helping Iran rewrite its record on human rights.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Course of Human Events by Steven Sarson – review by Gabriel Neville at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

America’s 250^th Isn’t Just a Birthday – Yuval Levin at The Free Press.

 

Thomas Nelson of Yorktown, Virginia – Nicholas Marsella at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

‘Freedom plane’ to take US founding documents on tour for country’s 250^th anniversary – Benjamin Sutton at The Art Newspaper.

 

The Unlikeliest Hero of the American Revolution – Johnathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

Faith

 

I Might Owe My Students an Apology About Josephus – John Dickson at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Why Is Christianity the Best Religion? – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Times New Roman Font War: I’m on Charlemagne’s Side – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

What Efficiency is For – Thomas Kidd.

 

The Semester the Lights Came On – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

 

Save the Humanities from the Slop – Alan Noble at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Tobacco Ruminations No. 4 – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Poetry

 

The boy Will goes skating in the frosty night – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Yeats, Auden, Eliot: 1939, 1940, 1941 – Colm Toibin at London Review of Books.

 

“The Bust,” poem by W.H. Davies – Joseph Borrum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

An Invitation to the Wonders of Reading – Alex Sosler at Front Porch Republic.

 

Like Walking on Water – Jeff Johnson and Phil Keaggy, poem by Luci Shaw

 Painting: John Keats in His Study, oil on canvas by Joseph Severn (1793-1879). 

The only acceptable sacrifices

After Psalm 51 

Not animals slain, nor

birds plucked, nor bowls

of blood, nor fragrant

incense burned. No,

none of these are

acceptable sacrifices. 

What the Lord demands:

a broken spirit,

a contrite heart.

That’s it.

That’s the list.

That’s what’s needed.

That’s what’s expected.

That’s what’s required.

 

Photograph by Remi Clinton via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Rebellion – Kyle Borg at Gentle Reformation.

 

Don’t Overthink Your Problems – Wyatt Graham.

 

“Half-Light,” poem by Sarah Rossiter – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Hibernation – poem by Joy Lenton at Poetry Joy.

 

“I to the Hills Will Lift Mine Eyes,” hymn in the Scottish Psalter – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Just the thing – poem by Seth Lewis.

The Poetry of Gregory Corso

I have to admit that I was not only unfamiliar with the poetry of Gregory Corso (1930-2001) but I also had never heard of him. That is, until I walked into an exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum and saw a monumental painting (roughly 30 feet tall), with its title written into the top of the painting: “For Gregory Corso.” 

I pulled out my phone and Googled him. A Beat poet, an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Neil Cassady, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Bookstore, among several others. That clicked; it placed him in the 1950s in counter-culture San Francisco, a decade before the hippies. Allen Ginsburg’s famous Howl. Beatniks. Cool, man.

Some Thursday Readings

 

We Have Butterflies to See: Four Walks in Central Park – Geoffrey Smagacz at Front Porch Republic.

 

Top 10 Dip into Poetry – Every Day Poems.

 

“The Watchers,” poem by William Stanley Braithwaite – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Island Games" by Luke H. Davis

DI Gareth Benedict and his team are assigned to help police the Island Games, a sports event held every two years and attracting teams in some 13 sports from various islands, and not only those around the United Kingdom. This year, the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales is the host, and teams are coming from as far away as the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. 

The reader knows, before the police forces do, that the games have also attracted two assassins. We don’t know yet their intended targets, but we will. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Learning to Dine with Sinners – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

We’ll Catch Up Sometime – short story by Br. Seth Bauer at The Imaginative Conservative.

Poets and Poems: Noa Grey and “The Elegance of Sadness”

One of my earliest memories involves my mother, sitting in the screened porch between our kitchen and the carport. I might have been four or five, and she would have been in her early 30s. She had her legs drawn up under her, and she was holding a handkerchief, crying. I ask her why, and she said she was just feeling sad.  

Decades later, when she was reaching the end of her life, and I asked her if she remembered that. She did, and she was 89. She said she felt terrible that I had found her crying, but she had been deeply unhappy. I had unexpectedly walked in on it. She said that, at the time, she was realizing that her life was turning into something entirely different from what she had imagined when she was younger, and she felt like it was losing a dream. 

 

Sadness is a word I associate with her. It’s a condition that can come from many sources – disappointment, loss, health setbacks, family upheavals, or sometimes no reason at all, to mention only a few. It’s a very human condition, something we’ve all experienced to varying degrees. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

There I Go Again: On pessimism and the poetry of Stevie Smith – Alexander Fayne.

 

Two Cities and Two Men – poem by Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory.

 

Pilgrim Verse – poem by Jody Lee Collins.

 

“L. The Snow,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Every Day Poems.

 

“The Bells,” poem by Edgar Allen Poe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Some Monday Readings

The Day NY Publishing Lost Its Soul – Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker. 

The Beautiful Mess of Steinbeck’s East of Eden – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Weimar America & A Smoldering World – Rod Dreher’s Diary.

 

Erich von Daniken and the modern paranoid style – James Snell at The Critic Magazinbe.

 

An apology and a revelation – Lancia Smith at Cultivating a Writer’s Life.

 

The nature of nature writing – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

How to Deliver a Legendary Speech – Yuri Bezmenov at How to Subvert Subversion.

 

MLK’s Final Act of Faith – Jonathan Eig at The Free Press.

 

Letters from Triune: ‘Fat,’ ‘lazy,’ and the high price of whisky – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

A plea

After Psalm 51 

He pleads to hear

God’s joy and gladness,

the rejoining of broken

bones, hiding his face,

blotting out iniquities,

creation of a clean heart,

renewing a right spirit

within, returning home

from exile and 

abandonment, restoring

to joy, upholding him

willingly, delivering

him from judgment, 

a tongue to sing

of righteousness,

opening his lips

to praise.

 

Photograph by Buse Doga Ay via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 17, 2026

This week, the Iranian government shut down the country’s internet, trying to stop the protests that threaten to topple the ayatollah and his regime. Something odd happened: the Iranian shutdown also caused numerous social media accounts promoting Scottish independence from Britain to go dark. I wonder how that happened. 

Author Gayle Feldman is publishing a biography of Truman Capote this month, and in an excerpt posted at Literary Hub, she describes how Bennett Cerf at Random House guided In Cold Blood to publication. I can remember reading it in high school, mesmerized by the book and simultaneously horrified at the story of how cold-blooded the two killers were. Capote was part of the wave known as “New Journalism,” which included Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion, and others.

 

Agatha Christie was known for avoiding the spotlight. She hated giving interviews. But she did relent, at least once, in 1955, and talked with the BBC. A great line from the interview: “There’s nothing like boredom to make you write.” 

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The American Revolution and the Fate of the World by Richard Bell – review by Timothy Symington at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Stoke the Fire for America’s 250^th – Andrw Zwerneman at On Classical Education.

 

The American Revolution Comes to Georgia The Battle of the Riceboats, 1776 – Robert Scott Davis at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Writing and Literature

 

“A little learning is a dangerous thing” – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song on Alexander Pope’s 1711 essay.

 

Tools I Use to Run My Writing and Coaching Business – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

In Praise of Bibliographies – Christine Norvell at Front Porch Republic.

 

Why Contemporary Fiction Can Be Great – Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

C.S. Lewis Goes to Venus – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Faith

 

The Remnant: The Last Christians of Denmark – NorthHugr (video).

 

The Closure of the World’s Oldest Monastery – D.P. Curtin at Real Clear Religion.

 

The Sticky Sin of Always Being Right – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Life and Culture

 

Against Very Online Candidates – Alexander Salter at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Foreign Fraud Gangs Are Ripping Off West Coast States – Christopher Rufo. 

 

News Media

 

Why Twitter matters – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

British Stuff

 

A Muslim state loses faith in British education – James Price at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poetry

 

“The Fly,” poem by William Blake – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Life in a Northern Town – Justin Hayward with Mike Batt

 

Painting: Girl Reading, oil on canvas (1872) by George Cochran Lambdin (1830-1896).

Why does he ask?

After Psalm 51 

Why dies he ask

for a clean heart

to be created within?

Because the friend,

the prophet, had

confronted the sin.

He was a man known

for being after God’s

own heart, and here

he is, asking for

a clean heart. He lays

out the process: 

a request for mercy,

a blotting out of sins,

a cleansing, knowledge

of what he’d done,

purging with hyssop,

washing to cleanness.

 

Photograph by Fabrizio Conti via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“The Hymn of Ceylon,” poem by W.S. Senior – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Reject the Religion of Efficiency – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.