Saturday Good Reads – Oct. 31, 2026

It’s Halloween, and we have several good reads for the day: Bradley Birzer looks at Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House;  Amelia Freidline has a go at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; you can read about “The Witch Hunter Who Helped Shape America’s Witch Trials;” Beth Daley at the Conversation explains where the modern vampire originated, and it’s not where you might think. Joseph Bottum provides the background of Robert Herrick’s poem “The Hag;” And Spitalfields Life takes you on a tour of “The Tombs of Old London.” 

There has been an abundance of posts and articles lately about the death of reading, the end of the traditional book, the decline in book sales, and so one. Everyone seems ready to pronounce the death of books as we know them. Not so fast, says Daniel Darling at One Little Word. He makes the case for why paper books will endure.

 

In the category of “I am not making this up,” Nellie Bowles at The Free Press cited a new report by the United Nations Women organization, “Facts and figures: Women, peace and security.” The big concern: nearly one in four civilian deaths associated with war and violent conflicts around the world are women and girls. The organization also highlighted the statistic with a dramatic graphic on X, formerly known as Twitter. The report does acknowledge, in an offhanded kind of way, that three in four civilian deaths in war and violent conflict are men and boys, but I suppose we need to focus on what’s important.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Sentence That Defines America – M.C. Murphy at The Coolidge Review.

 

Discovering White Plains – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Writing and Literature

 

What Haunted George Orwell – John Miller at The Wall Street Journal (story unlocked). 

 

The flesh and bones of Gulliver’s Travels – David Womersley at Engelberg’s Ideas.

 

Souls at Stake – Algis Valiunas at First Things Magazine on the Gothic novel. 

 

Have a Plan for Your Writing – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

The Daunting Art of Selling Fewer Books – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

American Stuff

 

New Monument Rising: The Gateway Arch Is Completed in 1965 – Jason Clark at Ths Is the Day.

 

In Defense of Daylight Savings Time – Brevin Anderson at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

Descended from Woden: Why Anglo-Saxon Kings Claimed a Pagan God as Their Ancestor – Calogero Nicosia at English Historical Fiction Authors.

 

Poetry

 

Reading Emily Dickinson at Hallowtide – LuElla D’Amico at Church Life Journal.

 

The Famous Christian Poem We’ve Never Heard Of – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

“La Belle Dame sans Merci,” poem by John Keats – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Faith

 

Your Cross – Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory.

 

What Remains of Our Remains – Emily Carrington at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

And Can It Be – The Village Chapel Worship

 Painting: Man Reading a Letter in His Study, oil on oak panel (circa 1670) by Adriaen Van Ostade (1610-1685).

Poe, Rilke, and Our Black Cat

Think Halloween, and what comes to mind (after tick-or-treat candy) are the big 3 icons of witches, pumpkins, and black cats. Mummies, skeletons, and zombies are more Johnny-come-latelys in the Halloween extravaganza. These days, witches have gone mainstream respectable, and Linus and Charlie Brown own the Great Pumpkin, and so the black cat is left to shoulder Halloween largely alone.

My family had a black cat, once. Actually, the cat had us. One day in the middle of winter the cat showed up in the neighborhood. She had a collar but no tags, and she looked healthy. The neighborhood children fed her potato chips and milk, guaranteeing it would hang around. My wife warned the children that, if they kept feeding it, the cat would never leave (not the best argument to make to a child).

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

Saturday Good Reads

It’s Halloween, and Chris Yokel asks why ghost stories and tells a tale a Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Rod Dreher at American Conservative has been telling the story all week of the Catholic liberal theologians who wrote a letter to The New York Times, protesting a column on Pope Francis by Catholic Ross Douthat. The pixels are flying all over the place; Dreher decided to take a look at one of the academics who signed the letter, and it’s amazing what passes for adacemic scholarship these days.

Good poetry – good stories about writing – and a wake-up call about Planned Parenthood.

And the Piano Guys do what only the Piano Guys can do – combine a fight song with Amazing Grace, way up in Scotland.

Halloween

Why Ghost Stories? and The Spiritual Quest of Jack Skellington – Chris Yokel.

Top Ten Spooky Poems for Halloween – Lyla Lindquist at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poetry

Through the Windy – Robbie Pruitt.

Perfect Dragonfly – A Cento – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

The Seven Types of Poetry – Robert Peake at Huffington Post Books.

After the Exile – Corey Mesler at Curator Magazine.

Sylvia Plath Reading Her Poems – via Englewood Review of Books.

Writing

Five Minutes with Peter Ackroyd – BBC News.

The Writing Life Podcast: Never, Never, Never Sit on a Story – Ann Kroeker.

Tiny Distractions and Silent Vows – Mick Silva.

A Sincere Thank You – My Final Post – Matt Appling at The Church of No People.

She’s So Lovely – Travis Thrasher at The Journey is Everything.

Photography

The Champion Table Build, Part 3: Leg Joinery – Jack Baumgartner at The School of the Transfer of Energy.

Fall Hydrangea – Tim Good.

Faith

Why Study Academic Theology? – Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

When God Goes Away, Superstition Takes His Place – The American Interest.

Refugee Stories: The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back – David Rupert at Red-Letter Believers.

On Revivalist Christianity – Owen White at The Ochlophobist.

Can I Love My Children Enough to Let Them Fail? – Shawn Smucker.

Planned Parenthood

This is Your Wake-Up Call – Betsey Childs Howard at First Things.

Amazing Grace – Scottish Style

Top photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.