Tag Archives: blogroll

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Writing

Renting Books to Impress Visitors, Terry Teachout, and Sigrid Undset

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Last week, an independent bookstore in Chicago splashed up attention for many Twitter users with a tweet complaining about a customer who wanted to rent rather than buy some expensive books. Rebecca George, a co-owner of Volumes Bookcafe in Chicago’s Wicker Park, wrote in Jan 9 tweet: “Turns out one of our biggest sales last month was for the person to stage their home for the holidays and now they want to return them all. Please don’t do this to a small business, people. That one sale was a third of our rent.”

The books were eye-catching art and cook book, no doubt published to show off the reader’s good taste. The most modest book in the set was entitled Authenticity: The Vain Attempt at Finding the Real You. (I’m sorry. I made that up.)

The tweet has been seen almost seven million times and picked up by news outlets, making January a very good month for sales by good-hearted book-buyers showing their sympathy.

What else is online?

Reading Good Books: An essential freedom that builds character more than we know. “American kids, more than ever, are stratified into those who read—those who have regular access to books—and those who don’t. I’m not talking here about basic literacy, but being open to the human good that is the enjoyment of literature.”

Kristin Lavransdatter at 100. Sigrid Undset wrote a “medieval romance in the twentieth century (published between 1920 and 1922), [and] she somehow reverses a thousand years of morbidity, bringing a long dead genre back to life. . . . Kristin Lavransdatter is really just a love story—but one of the most savagely honest love stories ever written.”

Mystery: All About Agatha is a podcast that has read all of Agatha Christie’s novels, discussed them, and ranked them against each other. I look forward to looking up All Hallow’s Eve to see if they place it within the worst five.

Writing: Backstory brings characters to life, making them appear as real people, except when it floods the reader with irrelevant details. So it’s a very good, except when it isn’t.

Terry Teachout: The New York art critic died last year on Jan. 13. Patrick Kurp calls that fact “comparably difficult to believe. It’s like saying France no longer exists. Seldom in my experience was so prominent and successful a writer so generous with his success.”

And Titus Techera talks about the conversations he had with Terry about film noir and its relation to men in post-war America.

Photo by Hatice Yardım on Unsplash

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Bookselling

Comfort in Christ, Acceptable Sins, and Fantasy Nihilism

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This afternoon, I was wishing for comfort food, blankets, and books. It’s been a long week. Will I take my fatigue to the little comforts around me and drink too much coffee, or will I remember my weakness before the Lord? Will I console myself with my gifts or with the Giver? (There’s a phrase that’s probably said in a pulpit somewhere at least once every Sunday.)

A child may not have a penny in his pocket, yet he feels quite rich enough if he has a wealthy father. You may be very, very poor, but oh! what a rich Father you have! Jesus Christ’s Father is your Father. And as He has exalted His own dear Son, He will do the same for you in due time. Our Lord Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren and the Father means to treat the other brethren even as He treats Him. Your Father has made you one of His heirs—yea, a joint heir with Jesus Christ—what more would you have?

Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon delivered Sept. 17, 1899

And what links do we have today?

Wendell Berry: “The public certainly retains a keen sense that some actions and attitudes are wrong, and public figures often condemn particular offenses with totalizing ferocity. As Berry notes, the ‘old opposition to sin’ remains, but he worries we have narrowed the acts that count as sin. He warns that ‘nothing more reveals our incompleteness and brokenness as a public people than our self-comforting small selection of public sins.'”

Fantasy nihilism: “HBO has succeeded in identifying popularity and prestige with immorality. Things that could not have been shown in prime time 20 years back are now the only prime time fare there is.”

Graham Greene: In 1950, author Graham Greene was stuck on an America-bound ocean liner with a reporter who shoved a mic and camera in his face. The reporter was Jack Mangan, who was working on his ABC TV series “Ship’s Reporter.” Dwyer Murphey shares a video and some details.

Reading: Need a device to help you read several volumes without requiring you to move? Consider this design by Italian military engineer Agostino Ramelli: the bookwheel.

Bookstores: Booksellers adapt to new customer patterns. “We like having browsers, but we don’t depend on it. This idea that a person is going to come to a bookstore and browse, it doesn’t sustain the business now.”

Jokes are evil? Here’s a YouTuber who talks about writing and breaks down comic book stories and select movies to learn more about writing well. Last month, he riffed on an issue of X-Men: Years of Future Past to discuss a theme in that story, that jokes are evil.

Photo: Texaco gas pumps, Milford, Illinois. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Poetry

Will We Overcome by Faith, Remembering Poetry, and the Importance of Librarians

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Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory begins in a Mexican state that has outlawed the church and attempted to drive Christianity out of its culture. Priests have been executed. Churches have been repurposed or destroyed.

The first section contrasts two priests. Both are despicable, but one deeply believes God made him a priest and that duty is irrevocable. Even when he wants to run away to save himself, he turns back at the call of duty. The other, Padre José, is a priest in name only.

In one scene, José is walking alone between grave stones and interrupts a family burying a child. “They had been quite resigned until he had appeared, but now they were anxious, eager.” They are familiar with and resigned to the patterns of death, but when they see José, they remember their hope. They beg him to pray for their daughter, saying he could trust them not to say anything to the authorities.

“But that was the trouble–he could trust no one.” He fears one of them will naturally tell someone else, and he will be found. The family has more faith than he does. All he can do is tremble in the grip despair has on him.

Believer, it doesn’t take a murderous state to press you into fear that sharing or expressing your faith publicly will get you condemned. Mere criticism can do that, but God is greater and calls us to overcome the world and our own pride by being transformed by the knowledge of him.

Poetry: In this old blog post, Patrick Kurp shares an anecdote of Shirley Hazzard talking with Graham Greene about remembering lines of poetry.

Coffee: A rambling post on coffee, writers, and books. Camus asked, “Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” Did that man say anything worth hearing?

Book Blogs: Are these the 50 best book blogs of 2022? How could they be? We aren’t on the list.

Librarians: “A Good Research Librarian Can Help You Find Information You Didn’t Even Know You Needed” (via Books, Inq)

Photo: B.P.O.E. Elks Lodge, Alturas, California. 1991. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Publishing

No One Said Liberty Would Be Easy

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The Critic: “Most of all Johnson wrote to drive away demons.”

Religious Liberty: A new book by Norte Dame political scientist Vincent Phillip Muñoz “provides one of the best treatments we have on the meaning of the religion clauses” focusing on the debates held in each state “about establishments and religious freedom. . . . These debates, and the views of a spectrum of Founders, allow Muñoz to craft a convincing argument. He contends that the founding generation’s concept of religious liberty was rooted, first and foremost, in natural law and inalienable natural rights.”

Science Fiction: Disney now has creative input into the BBC’s Doctor Who series, boasting it with financial support. I loved the classic series growing up. I watched every episode broadcast on PBS from Jon Pertwee’s run (#3), Tom Baker’s (#4 and still the best ever), Peter Davidson’s (#5), and Colin Baker’s (#6). I may have watched all the episodes with Sylvester McCoy, but the show lost its appeal for me during that time. Recently, I watched the new season 5 and part of 6 with Matt Smith, who is great as a title character, but over half of the stories were so much nonsense, I lost interest again.

Book Banning: At least 520 Penguin Random House staff and connections are arguing that Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book contract be cancelled. They don’t oppose free speech, they write. They aren’t calling for censorship. “Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.”

Photo: Tivoli Theater, Stephenson, Michigan. 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Religion, The Press

Don’t Call It a Culture War. Call It Being Salt.

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Last week, I wrote about an English teacher encouraging her students to read challenged books. Yesterday, World’s Doubletake podcast released a story on diversity libraries in schools and parents and teachers pushing back against school boards who advocate immoral reading. They mention a book “about a 17-year-old alcoholic girl in a sexual relationship with a 38-year-old man. . . . Other books describe teenagers in homosexual activity with adults. Others depict incest.

“Some parents, teachers, three school board members, and a librarian defended the material at that 2020 board meeting. They said young kids should be able to see themselves ‘reflected’ in the books. They said it was important to read about pedophilia because it was, quote, ‘culturally enriching.'”

This may be what school-choice supporters need to fuel their fire.

However, some have reacted negatively to this and any aspect that smells of a culture war. They would much rather Christians keep to themselves: “For all the voices calling our attention and energy to school-board politics right now, discipling our kids in a holistic and faithful way is a more constant, difficult, and worthwhile task.” Influencing your school board or, I guess, being a voice in your community is not within the scope of discipling your children. Maybe if we thought it as being the salt of the earth?

The World and Everything in It, another excellent podcast, has a segment reacting to the above article.

Discipline: “Religious discipline confounds the modern sensibility because it upends our ideas about the value of discipline and sacrifice. To a person steeped in modern heroics, religious discipline looks solely like abstention, with none of the benefits of lifestyle discipline. It is giving up pleasurable things just to make your life less enjoyable; it is overcoming, ignoring, or dismissing your own desires solely from masochism, or because of communal expectations, which is the worst possible sin these days, to do something because someone or some group expects you to.”

Faith: “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge,’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.” (1 Tim. 6:20 ESV)

Poetry: A cottage in which John Milton resided for a short spell survives and is open to the public for half a year. A couple weeks ago, a group met there to read Paradise Lost.

Used Bookstores: Carl Lavigne writes about his time at The Dawn Treader Book Shop in Ann Arbor, MI. “Is there a German word for being surrounded by stacks of once-feted, now forgotten novels piled in a deeply haunted basement wondering, ‘What if this is where my book ends up?’

“A customer demands a book recommendation. ‘Something good.’
‘Sorry,’ I joke. ‘Fresh out.'”

Poetry: Speaking of Ogden Nash (see post earlier this week), his last surviving daughter, Linell Chenault Smith, “an extremely classy woman,” died last month at age 90.

Photo: YMCA, Geneva, New York. 1995. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reading

Who Gets Hurt, The Scandal of Holiness, and Norman Lear

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I was reading some introductory sociology texts recently, and in trying to encourage students to critique their own biases and lay aside their cultural preferences, the author brought up infanticide as an example. Other cultures practice infanticide for their own reasons, and while it would be easy to condemn them for it, who are we to judge? The author didn’t actually say we should not condemn this cultural difference. She said it would be easy to believe we are right to condemn it, in the context of paragraphs on being open-minded and meeting diverse people where they are.

What is easy to believe is that this example of cultural differences is a stand-in for abortion. If the example were honor killing or the less lethal shunning, would the author be willing to simply roll with it? In both cases, the natural remedy to work toward would be to work against the social groups who accept these things. Because two of these things are evil and the third can be.

Is this where our current secular mindset takes us, the belief that we are above all morality and everything is mere difference of opinion? I keep thinking the reason this sociologist is willing to dismiss infanticide as a mere social difference is she isn’t the one getting hurt.

Reading: In The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson argues for reading fiction to see God at work in the others and expand Christian imagination. Reviewer Justin Lonas found this true for him. “The Holy Spirit used those who influenced my learning to read literature and poetry to protect me from making a shipwreck of my faith.”

Comedy: Norman Lear, the comedy writer who gave us shows such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, turned 100 on July 27. He drove America’s morality to the left, Albert Mohley writes, “by creating the stories that made America laugh … and sometimes cringe. In any event, Americans watched Lear’s television shows by the millions. They could hardly avoid them.”

Brisket with the Best: This article on eating at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is remarkably funny and goes in an unexpected direction while keeping its feet on the ground.

Noting: I try to read my books gently–as few wrinkles as possible, but I also am fairly ready to grab a pen or pencil and mark them up. Here are reasons for writing marginalia.

Gothic Novels: British historian Jeremy Black is written a literary series of series. The Age of Nightmare is coming in November. “The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution.”

Photo: McDonald’s, Azusa, California. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Music, Poetry, Reading, Religion

Give Duke Ellington His Due and a Good Reason to Read Poetry

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The great American composer Duke Ellington would have been the first African-American composer to win a Pultizer Prize for Music back in 1965 had the award board agreed with its own jury. This week, scholar Ted Gioia has been raising awareness of this oversight in judgement and support for pressing the Pulitzer Prize board to reverse this decision.

He describes the decision in his post, “Let’s Give Duke the Pulitzer Prize He Was Denied in 1965.”

That missing award from 1965 has long been a source of disappointment and frustration to jazz fans, and a genuine disgrace in the history of the Pulitzer. The jury that judged the entrants that year decided to do something different—they recommended giving the honor to Duke Ellington for the “vitality and originality of his total productivity” over the course of more than forty years.

This was an unusual move in many ways. First, the Pulitzer usually honors a single work, much like the Oscar for Best Picture or other prizes of this sort. In this instance, the jury recommended that Ellington get the honor for his entire career. But even more significant, it would be the first time a jazz musician or an African American received this prestigious award.

But it never happened.

The Pulitzer Board refused to accept the decision of the jury, and decided it would be better to give out no award, rather than honor Duke Ellington. Two members of the three-person judging panel, Winthrop Sargeant and Robert Eyer, resigned in the aftermath.

If I have my facts right, the only African American with a Pulitzer before 1965 would have been poet Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950.

Reading Classics: Two books argue for reading Socrates and other classics and for “literature [as] a proven path to character formation.”

Resist or Compromise? “In 1981 I was sitting on a washing machine in Willow Grove, Pa., reading a Bible, when an elderly man approached and struck up a conversation. We spent the whole washing and drying cycle on chairs outside the laundromat, him telling me in detail of the persecution of Christians under the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) and of his imprisonment along with others who refused to bow to the Shinto shrine.”

Prufrock: Micah Mattix’s arts & literature roundup is now on Substack. He explains the reason here.

Poetry: Reading “rhythmic poetry” can help you handle stress, according to some biofeedback responses. Surely hymns would fit this pattern too. (via Miller’s Book Review)

Poetry: Irish poet Eamon Grennan says in a recent interview, “Of course, at the bottom of all is your engagement with the language itself. Loving that, loving and being able to admire how words make sense, how they fit into rhythms that give them a different kind of heft: the potential music of language, I suppose, needs to be part of your breathing.”

This kind of thinking gives him lines like this:
“Moonwhite the garden lightens
And the moon, a pealed clove of garlic, pales.”

Aliens in UFOs: Ron Capshaw says Jordan Peele’s “NOPE” captures the horror and wonder of an old-school UFO movie but doesn’t quite payoff in the end because we’ve seen many aliens who want to kill us over the years.

Photo: Cream Castle sign in Sikeston, Missouri, 1979. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Poetry, Publishing

Writing as Reality TV, Old Tech, and the 2022 Bestsellers

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Writers everywhere say their craft is much like a reality show–their every action watched and analyzed, applauded and jeered. Looking awesome while writing or typing have been the notable skills of great authors such as Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, and Willy Makeit. The first reality star author, Dante Alighieri, is supposed to have said, if he were any more verbosely handsome, he’d be king.

Big Brother is after American authors in Kwame Alexander’s proposed show America’s Next Great Author. He’s putting together a pilot and calling for contestants who will pitch novel ideas to the judges. Six contestants will be selected for a month-long reality show retreat during which they will write the novel they pitched. And that’s not all.

“Throughout the retreat, they’ll also participate in storytelling challenges and work with mentors to develop their stories,” Publishers Weekly reports. Show co-creator David Sterry said “the challenges will ‘show off a writer’s ability to use words, think fast, be creative,’ but also help them to learn to market and promote their books ‘because writers are called upon to do so many different tasks now in modern publishing that have nothing to do with writing your book.’”

And will they have anything like their book or their sanity when they finish? (Via Prufrock)

Surely they took this idea from Monty Python’s Novel Writing sketch, featuring the athletic writing talents of Thomas Hardy.

Old Tech: Frank Adams’s Writing Tables, 16th-century English writing technology via 𝕊onja Drimmer on Twitter – “It’s especially famous for two things: its erasable pages and the survival of its original stylus.”

Bestsellers: Among the bestselling books of 2022, Colleen Hoover is making a killing. Publishers Weekly has the list. Hoover’s novel It Ends with Us is #1 and three other novels are on the list too.

National Poet: The Library of Congress has appointed the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón. (via Literary Saloon)

Photo: World’s largest buffalo, Jamestown, North Dakota. 1990. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Non-fiction

Debunking Electrifying Hobby, Oversharing, Blogrolling

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I subscribed to a video service in order to watch a movie last month, and since then I’ve tried to catch a few more in the package before cancelling. So far, it’s been a buy-one-get-four deal.

This week a couple of us watched the original Top Gun for the first time. I’ve heard it’s a frequently quoted movie. It can’t be more than any other well-received flick of its time. Only a couple lines stood out to me from the scant story that links the flying together. But the flying is cool. Dog fighting is cool. Faux drama about possibly running out of gas so you shouldn’t try to help a couple teammates return alive is not cool.

The F-14 Tomcats they fly in the movie have co-pilots, radar intercept officers (RIO). From what you see on screen, they appear to be only a second set of eyes, so I had to look up what they could do in the air–navigation, radio, electronics, and some weapons. Dave “Bio” Baranek, a Top Gun himself, has a book on it.

I don’t plan to watch it again, but then I rarely rewatch anything anymore.

Both sides: “The American body politic, Mamet tells us, is fundamentally diseased, and is slowly being consumed by an ideologically radical political class which, left unchecked, is sure to consume it.” A Playwright’s Life – (lawliberty.org)

Banned by YouTube: Ann Reardon has many great videos on cooking and other videos that debunk “life hack” videos that purport to demonstrate a cool, new time-saver, often food related. Her recent video exposing the dangers of fractal wood burning (“34 deaths”) was removed by YouTube, because somehow the artificial intelligence judged the debunk to be more dangerous than the how-to.

Star Rating? Tyler explains the reasons he doesn’t like Goodreads.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A book that changed the world.

Social demands: “Learning to say ‘no’ can be difficult; learning to not reveal one’s conscience on every single issue that hits the news can be even harder, especially in a society where it is seen as good and noble to have a ‘take’ or a strong moral stance on practically everything. . . .”

Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels by Jacob van Ruisdael

Feature Photo: Christie’s Restaurant sign, Houston, Texas. 1983. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Goofing, Non-fiction

Beautiful Summer, a Small Hotel, and Coffee Orders

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Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness everywhere.
Then, were not summer’s distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

— Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5, on the fading beauty of summer and distilling it into perfume to preserve it. Applies to making jams and canning vegetables too.

Sovereignty: Faith from Staton Island writes maybe her personality or being a first-born or Chinese heritage or being a mom has trained her expect to serve others all the time. “At church events, standing in line at Panera, on elevator rides with strangers, reading an email, as long as another person is in my physical or mental space, I’m “on.” Unless I’m completely alone, and sometimes even when I am, I can’t help being vigilant for needs I may be called on to meet, sensitive to what demands my presence may similarly impose on others.”

So, it’s a great relief to her that God needs nothing from us. “That he who made all things, owns all things, and doesn’t use his creation to supply his needs. Rather, he is ever the gracious Giver, ever the joyful Benefactor in our relationship, the Source of life itself.”

“If he needs nothing from me, I can pray— really pray, not worrying about my anxiety or anger or foolishness swaying his judgment or burdening his mind. I don’t need to hedge my request in polite, calculated consideration of his limited supply of patience and help.” (via Keith Plummer)

Lincoln: “Where did Lincoln stand in the vanguard of antislavery and abolitionist advocates, and did he change his views over time?” What can we learn from the many African-American visitors Lincoln received in the White House? Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church said, “President Lincoln received and conversed with me as though I had been one of his intimate acquaintances or one of his friendly neighbors.” (via Prufrock News)

Quaint Photos: “There’s a small hotel/ With a wishing well/ I wish that we were there together.” Here’s a photo essay of the Stockton, New Jersey hotel that inspired that Broadway song.

LOTR: You were asking yourself the other day what characters from The Lord of the Rings would order from a coffee shop, weren’t you? Kaitlyn has your answer. “Merry Brandybuck orders an Irish Cream Cold Brew with cold foam and cocoa powder sprinkled on top.”

Photo: Library (Allegretti Architects), Saint Joseph, Missouri. 1991. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.