Some Monday Readings - May 18, 2026

A Realist Outline of History – Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Why Read? Reading, print culture & liberal democracy – Roosevelt Montas at Commonweal Magazine.

 

God vs. Machine: How to Handle the Rise of Religious Objections to AI in the Workplace – Kit Eaton at Inc. Magazine.

 

David Copperfield: A Hero Beside the Point – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“Octopus’s Garden” – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Lord Byron’s Memoirs – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Case Study: 80-Year-Old Author Crushes It! – Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.

 

“Language matters: On the media’s anti-American animus – The New Criterion.

 

Fuel for Another Disappointment – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Consider the Small Town – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

St. Irenaeus on Christian Memory & Tradition – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

Painting: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824).

“David Copperfield:” Why Dickens Has Endured

In high school, I studied three assigned novels by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). In 9^th grade, our English class read Great Expectations. In 10^th grade, we studied A Tale of Two Cities. And in 12^th grade, it was David Copperfield.

Over the course of some 40+ years, what I remembered most about David Copperfield were the two villains, James Steerforth and Uriah Heep, and the terrible thing Steerforth did (but only that Heep was an evil character). But a few visits to the Charles Dickens Museum in London over the past five years led me back to David, his childhood nurse and housekeeper Peggoty, to Dora and Agnes, Heep, David’s Aunt Betsey Trotwood, Mr. Murdstone and his odious sister, Ham and Emily, and, well, to story of David from birth to manhood.

What a crackerjack story it is!

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetspeakPoetry.

Illustration: The original 1849 cover for the first episode in the serialized David Copperfield.