Saturday Good Reads – Feb. 7, 2026

The image that come to mind when I think of the American Revolution are the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, crossing the Delaware, Bunker Hill, the winter at Valley Forge, Paul Revere’s ride, the Declaration of Independence signed at Philadelphia, and Yorktown. Do you see what’s odd about that list? Except for Yorktown, the story in my head centers in the northeastern colonies. Alan Pell Crawford, writing for The Coolidge Review, talks about  another war – the Revolutionary War that history forgot, one that just as important as what happened in the North.  

I like the writing of William Faulkner. My wife does not. “Didn’t the guy ever hear of punctuation marks?” she says. Well, yes, there is that. Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review asks a very pertinent question for writers: how long should a sentence be? To be fair to my wife’s criticism, Miller points out that Faulkner has one sentence in Absalom, Absalom that is almost 1,300 words long. But Faulkner is a piker compared to last year’s Nobel Prize winner, Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorkai, who has a novella of 17,800 words – all in one sentence. The mind boggles.

 

J.P. Moreland, professor of philosophy at the Talbott School of Theology (Biola University), has a relatively short article adapted from a longer paper. It’s about how three worldviews – Christianity, postmodernism, and scientific naturalism – view government. It will be no surprise that two of the three almost by definition favor big government. If you’re interested in the longer paper, you can download it here.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Ten of the Most Exciting Ways to Commemorate America’s 250^th This Year – Laura Kiniry at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

The New Dominion: The Land Lotteries – Gabriel Neville at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

When Revolutionary War Heroes Became Enemies of the State – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

The First War for Hearts and Minds – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

The Monmouth County Jail and the Jailbreak of February 1781 – Michael Adelberg at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Victory or Death: Trenton, December 1776 – Charlton Allen at American Thinker.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Charles Dickens and the Upside-Down Kingdom – Kari Cope at Story Warren.

 

Why Literature Needs a Punk Rock Mindset – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Faith

 

Lincoln on Reviving Truth in Public Discourse – John Pletcher at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

Tiptoeing to the Edge of Cliffs – Tim Challies. 

 

The Need for Father-Scholars – Ian Harber at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Softly, Softly, Break a Bone – Kristin at The Palest Ink.

 

Life and Culture

 

Don’t Call It a Comeback – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

 

Poetry

 

“Ode” by Arthur O’Shaughnessy – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Madam Would Speak with Me,” poem by George Meredith – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

What is Lyric Poetry? - L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

American Stuff

 

After Trump comes reform – Simon Jenkins at The Spectator.

 

Psalm 116 (I Love You Lord) – Mission House with Andrew & Skye Peterson

Painting: St. Francis of Assisi in Prayer, oil on copper by Cigoli (Ludivico Cardi) (1559-1613), Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Love or justice?

After 2 Samuel 18 

Is the focus to be

love, or is the focus

to be justice? Is

this life about grace,

or is this life about

righteousness? It

seems a cop-out

to say, well, both 

matter. They do,

but we want one or 

the other to rule.

Instead, we discover

a tension, a tautness,

and exhaustion to hold

both together,

at the same time,

as if they were one

entity, not two. The mind

boggles, the heart

struggles more. We do

not expect to be called

to this divine tension.

 

Photograph by Jon Tyson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly,” poem by Jupiter Hammon – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Life is a Vapour. Enjoy It – Seth Lewis.

Poet Liz Ahl Beats the Bounds

It wasn’t something I read in history class, but rather from actual “being there” experience. I first read about an ancient practice called “beating the bounds” from a blogger based in London that I follow. It’s a longstanding tradition in which people walk the boundaries of their church parish or community every seven years. The idea is to maintain boundary lines and resist encroachment.  

The practice carried over when the English colonized America. The surprise is that some states still require “beating the bounds” as a statutory requirement. It’s officially called “perambulation,” and it still exists on the law books in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It’s applied to towns, and it’s often not enforced, but it still is something of a regular practice in New Hampshire. 

 

A 2017 poetry collection by Liz Ahl is entitled Beating the Bounds. Ahl lives in New Hampshire. The wonderful title poem is about perambulation. Not only does it frame the rest of the poems to follow in the volume, it also stuck in my head as I read two other collections by Ahl, a chapbook entitled A Stanza is a Place to Stand (2023) and A Case for Solace (2022). “You must walk the path you think you know again, / to see how, again, you don’t fully know it,” she writes.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“The Fish,” poem by Marianne Moore – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poems from the Coffee Shop: Pine Needle Tea – L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

An installation – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“The Cupbearer or the Baker?” and “Decisions” – poems by Paul Millan at Society of Classical Poets.

Some Reviews of "Brookhaven"

Reviewers have had kind things to say about my novel Brookhaven. Here are a few of them. 

Outstanding novel about the Civil War

 

“Though this is a novel, the author has included a lot of historical information about the Civil War times that amplifies the horror and destruction of this brutal war and its aftermath. The reader will find inspiration in the determination of the main characters. The book offers something for almost every reader-- historical insights, a bit of romance, family dynamics but, most of all, the book highlights the indomitable human spirit to survive the tragedy and almost unimaginable hardship brought on by the Civil War.”

 

Beautifully written. Impossible to put down.

 

“This wonder of a Civil War novel captivated me from the first page. Set ostensibly in 1915 when the only female reporter for the NEW YORK WORLD is sent south to learn details about a mysterious Confederate spy, author Glynn Young spins a family saga that details the heartache and loss not only of the war specifically but the broken relationships and twisted lives that came out of those devastating years.

“What begins as a mystery to solve quickly evolves into an elderly man’s own story of the nation’s worst war. Set primarily in the town of Brookhaven, Mississippi, and the homes of a family still caught in the grasp of the war's aftermath, the story moves back and forth between 1915 and the 1860s, taking readers on a personal tour of troop movement in the eastern border states, battles of Gettysburg and Wilderness, General Lee’s surrender, and ultimately, a very satisfying finale.

“As I read, the book and its characters felt very real. Not my ancestors, certainly, but people I learned to cheer for and care about as the ways of war and the world had their effect. That turned out to be not too surprising, as the author wrote an end-of-the-book note that BROOKHAVEN was inspired by tales he heard from his own family as he was growing up.

Finally, marvel of marvels for people like me who always “want to know more” after I’ve finished a historical novel, author Young provides readers with a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book that ranges from general Civil War books, to books about the war in Mississippi, to letters and memoirs that offer personal insights into those years.”

 

Beautifully told, fascinating in historical detail

 

Glynn Young has crafted a beautiful, engrossing story that shines with historical details. I've always loved historical fiction and Brookhaven does not disappoint. The many twists and turns in the story made this one a page-turner for me. The author's note at the end of the book relates how the book was inspired by an old family story, which I found to be so interesting. I could tell by the way the author handled the characters with such integrity that this story holds a special place in his heart. This book kept me company over the holidays and through a winter snowstorm. It was a very good companion.

Poets and Poems: Sarah Carey and "Bloodstream"

I’d read, a long time ago, that certain things become more important as you age. These included art, as in visiting museums, and family heritage, as in genealogy. I must have read it and dismissed it, so I can’t cite the source, but I later discovered it to be true.

 

An older cousin researching the family had led her to the old family Bible in my possession. The call became an extended conversation about old family stories, including one about the great-grandmother who allegedly killed a man and got away with it, and the great-grandfather who had reportedly walk home from Virginia at the end of the Civil War (I wrote a novel about that story). 

Poet Sarah Carey has taken a related but different approach. She’s written an arresting poetry collection, entitled Bloodstream, about family, heritage, and stories about odd relatives (if you’re from the South, as Carey and I both are, every family has odd relatives. In fact, in the South, odd and relatives may be redundant. She even writes about family pets. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Novel idea – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Elvis Costello Brought Poetry to Life – Peter Richmond at The Free Press.

 

“I Am a Little World Made Cunningly,” poem by John Donne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Tether – poem by Alison Luterman at Every Day Poems. 

Shirt Poems – Luci Shaw at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Some Monday Readings

The Pretti Case Exposes a Dangerous Lie – Walter Hudson.

 

From Yellow Pads to Bestseller: John Grisham and the Publication of The Firm – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Computers Can’t Surprise – Richard Beard at Aeon Magazine.

 

The World of Charles Dickens – A.C.S. Bird at Story Warren on two children’s books.

 

10 Unforgettable Superbowl Commercials – Zach Schonfeld at History. 

Brexit: Britain’s Forever War – Helen Thompson at History Today. 

A father's grief

After 2 Samuel 18 

Even after his kingdom

is almost lost, his family

torn apart, his country

sundered in two, his

throne threatened, 

the man grieves 

the loss of the one

who set near-destruction

into motion, the son,

the favored son,

the golden child loved

and followed and

praised by so many,

he grieves what might

have been, he grieves

the tearing of,

the cost to

his own soul.

 

Photograph by Noor Hossain via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Sunday, Feb. 1

 

When Peter Walked the Stormy Sea – poem by Esther Roth.

 

5 Reasons You Need Sabbath Rest – Megan Hill at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Beauty Will Win – Trevin Wax at Story Warren.

 

I Stepped Outside – Melissa Edgington at You Mom Has a Blog.

 

“Day by Day,” song by Stephan Schwartz from Godspell – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.