Welcome to the first edition of The Weekly Wrap, a new feature at the Bob on Books blog. As I follow book news, review books, post articles at my Facebook page, it struck me that it might be fun for me and useful to you to share some of my personal gleanings from the past week. Hopefully, what I share here will enrich your own reading life without needing to go hunting all over the internet.

I expect this feature to evolve in the coming weeks. I’d like to hear what you think and what you’d enjoy seeing in a weekly digest like this. To begin:

Five Articles Worth Reading

One of the foremost theologians of the last century, Jürgen Moltmann died this past week at the age of 98. Coming to faith while housed in a British prisoner of war camp during World War II, his The Crucified God and Theology of Hope were landmark works. Died: Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian of Hope is Christianity Today’s obituary, offering a summary of the life and work of the man who taught that “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”

I was studying at our local library in 1986, a part-time graduate student. I came home for lunch when my wife greeted me with the news of the Challenger disaster. It left me wordless to watch the footage of the explosion, realizing I was watching the death of seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher. The Atlantic ran an review (“What the Challenger Disaster Proved“) this week of Adam Higgenbotham’s Challenger–A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.

Fans of The Hunger Games will be excited to learn that Suzanne Collins will be publishing a new installment in 2025. Bookriot announced the new book this week in the article “Surprise! A New HUNGER GAMES Book Is Coming.”

“Kafkaesque” has become part of our vocabulary to describe anything “extremely unpleasant, frightening, and confusing” (Cambridge Dictionary). Claire Armitstead explore why Kafka has such a hold over our culture a century after he died in “Can’t get you out of my head: why pop culture is still under Kafka’s spell“

Have you kept a book for many years that had a profound influence in your life. Often, we see more than we did the first time, find depths we hadn’t discovered. But not always. Margaret Renkl explores the experience of re-reading and how the changes in our lives change our readings in “I Reread a Book That Changed My Life, but I’d Changed, Too.”

Quote of the Week

Children’s author Cynthia Rylant turned 70 on June 6. I loved this quote by her:

“It is when we are most lost that we sometimes find our truest friends.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation is a gripping and provocative read. He lays the blame squarely on the combination of the arrival of smartphone and the social media apps tailored to it and the decline of opportunities to engage in embodied play.

Over at my Facebook page, I’ve been running a #menreading series of images each evening until Father’s Day. Images of women reading probably outnumber those of men at least ten to one. This seemed a great practical application of my recent article “Real Men Read.” I care about this not only because I believe reading can enrich men’s lives but also that they can have a powerful influence with children, especially young boys.

I haven’t read many books in bed that keep me awake. William Kent Krueger’s Boundary Waters did. Krueger proves you can both write well and get people to turn the page. This is the fourth of Krueger’s works that I have read and none have disappointed, and I’m excited that there are so many more Cork O’Connors to read!

I’m going to leave it there. I’d love to know what you think. That’s a wrap.