When I'm talking with friends about a book I enjoyed, I sometimes catch myself sheepishly confessing, "Well, I listened to it," as if listening didn't count as reading. I still believe that reading a printed copy of a book, pen in hand, is the most satisfying and enriching reading experience and that reading a book … Continue reading Five (Plus Five) Favorite Audible Narrators
I once grabbed a paperback called 3 by Flannery O’Connor to occupy the hours on a road trip from Colorado to Missouri. My husband was at the wheel and our two sons, armed with snacks and action figures, were belted in the back seat. At the time, I was finishing my English degree at the … Continue reading Wildcat Was Worth the Wait
I watched Oppenheimer twice. By now, whether you’ve seen the film or not, you’ve at at least heard that this year's Oscar winning Best Picture is beautiful, mesmerizing and thought provoking, with incredible performances at every level of its cast. The glittering, destructive power of the atomic bomb, the intensity of American concern that Nazi … Continue reading Resentment’s Destructive Power: Watching Oppenheimer while Reading René Girard
My father passed away on Christmas Day. Even though he was 89, the hospital call informing us that he was "letting go" was a sad surprise: it wasn't his long struggles with COPD and atrial fibrillation or even the suspected prostate cancer worrying him that ultimately caused his death. A stone lurking invisibly in his … Continue reading A Story Doesn’t Always Go the Way You Had in Mind: Thoughts on Faith and Suffering
Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson's beloved comic strip, once depicted Calvin in a philosophical stance, opining to his stuffed tiger that “today’s TV-reared audience is hip and sophisticated.” “This stuff doesn’t affect us,” the impish Calvin continues. “We can separate fact from fiction. We understand satire and irony. We’re detached and jaded viewers who aren’t … Continue reading Favorite Reads of 2023: Four Unexpected Delights
It’s a Sunday evening many years ago. I’m newly married and my husband and I are watching a news show, 60 Minutes most likely, on the little bookshelf TV we'd sacrificed a good chunk of our budget to buy. The camera pans a hopeless inner city neighborhood where crime is high and gangs tempt young … Continue reading No Man Is an Island: One of Many Reasons Why I Still Show up at Church
Once upon a time when my mother was a kindergarten teacher, a little girl walked into her classroom and brightly announced, "my grandma blew up in the space shuttle!" What? The incongruence seemed humorous at first. Why on earth would a child say such a thing? It was late January, 1986. The tenth mission of … Continue reading The Power of Story in Dark Times
When it comes to news consumption, I mostly have two kinds of friends. The first backs away from any conversation about current events. “Oh, I don’t pay much attention to the news,” they say with a dismissive wave of the hand. “It’s too political for me.” I know what they mean. Many of us are … Continue reading Books Before Newsbites: Curating the News with C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Day
"All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in 1877, "And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell." Nevertheless, the poet marvels at the natural world's resilience in the face of industrial degradation: And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things... I recalled … Continue reading Nature’s Best Hope: Your Yard and Mine
When I was a young mother trying to finish a Bachelor of Arts in English, I relished my Tuesday evening class at the local college. The English department head, a kind woman with twinkling eyes and exacting standards, required us to read a book a week and come prepared to spend the first 30 minutes … Continue reading “Go and Be Human” with Close Reads: A Podcast for the Incurable Reader
