The Weekly Wrap

The Weekly Wrap: September 27-October 3

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: September 27-October 3

A Reading Paradox

I have over 4,000 books in my pocket. And the device in my pocket can access the libraries of the world. Never has it been more evident to me that there are SO many books and so little time. Yet at a time of such unprecedented access, statistics would suggest that many of us are reading less than ever.

So what is the deal? I can’t help but think that the same device offering access to so many books also serves to distract us from them. Social media apps are designed to keep us scrolling. And it trains us to read in bits and bytes. Consequently, our longform reading muscles are going flabby.

I also wonder if many of us are simply too busy and too spent when we are not busy to read a book. Watching a video or listening to a podcast are far easier. And there is a wide range of good options.

If that’s you, no problem. But for a change of pace, may I suggest that some evening you grab a mug, and spend a quiet evening with an engrossing book. The stories we watch on the screens of our minds can be far richer than on our other screens. Need a recommendation? Your local bookseller or librarian would be glad to help. There’s a world of books available.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Several years ago, I had the chance to host physician and ethicist Lydia Dugdale in a forum talking about end of life issues. In “The Literacy Cure,” she discusses childhood literacy and explores why we are failing children when we know how to teach kids reading.

“Librarians on Libraries” features a host of librarians talking about what they actually do, the challenges they face, and what libraries need.

As we get older, we pay attention to our mental processes for signs of any deterioration. But what if you were from a family suffering from a hereditary condition leading to dementia? “The Mysteries of Human Personality” reviews Robert Kolker’s The Vanishing Family. While focusing on frontotemporal dementia, the book considers broader issues of dementia care and treatment.

Philosopher Matthew Adelstein posited the provocative idea that insects matter more than people. Sounds like something a philosopher might do for a good argument. It’s caused quite an online stir. In “Do Insects Matter More than People?,” Paul Nedilisky explores what arguments can and cannot do.

October is LGBTQ+ History Month. Whatever your beliefs, I’m persuaded that it is valuable to understand other communities from the inside. JSTOR has assembled another of its fabled article collections that can help with this in “Reading for LGBTQ+ History Month.”

Quote of the Week

Poet Wallace Stevens was born October 2, 1879. He said something that sounds like me.

“It’s not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of the window.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Earler, I mentioned the plethora of books and resources at our disposal in the internet age. The folks at Mere Orthodoxy are adding to that with “The Faith Received,” an online collection of 19,597 (currently) theological texts from the early church to the early modern period. There are scans of texts, original language, and English translations. And its all free. The website offers six different tours to show how to make the most of the resources available.

Computers hit the scene a few years before I was born. Jill Lepore’s new The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State begins with chronicling a history of all the development I’ve scene in our lifetime and the warnings as early as the 1950’s of how our technology could come to shape or even control our society. It’s a conversation that has gone on for sixty years, one, by and large, that the tech industry has preferred we not have.

It’s funny how TBR piles work. I currently seem to be in a patch of long books. Just finished one on Jonathan Edwards, am in the middle of one on early Christian theology, and have awaiting me the longest of these, a landmark work on the Apostle Paul. I try to compensate with shorter and easier to read books, including some children’s books.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Ryan Lokkesmoe, Accidental Pagans

Tuesday: Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

Wednesday: Laurie Brink, Practicing Radical Advent

Thursday: Stuart Kaminsky, A Fatal Glass of Beer

Friday: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for September 27-October 3.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: September 20-26

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
vintage gifts with candle and radio background
Photo by betül nur akyürek on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: September 20-26

Withdrawn From Publication

There is a first time for everything. One of the things I do with each review I write is link to the publisher’s description of the book. As I was setting up one of my reviews this week, I discovered the book was nowhere to be found on the publisher’s website. Wondering if it was a glitch, I searched the author’s name. Nada. So that was perplexing. The publisher had sent me a finished copy of the book, published in June, for review.

I found the book at commercial sites, I’d already read it, so I wrote the review. Before I began, I wrote the publicist for the book, noting when the review would go “live.” I heard nothing and so scheduled the review. The review went up the next morning and generated moderate interest. Then I heard back from the publicist. It turns out the publisher withdrew the book from publication. I received a basic explanation, but not specifics. So because of the lack of specifics and because I only had the publisher’s reasons and not an author response, I won’t say more than that.

But what do I do with the review? I decided to leave it up. You can’t really delete things from the internet and a number had already viewed it. And since the book dropped in June, I assume a number have read the book. But I also decided to add this note at the top of the review:

Editor’s Note (Date): This book has been pulled from publication by the publisher. The review, posted before this became known, remains for archival purposes.

I also raised the issue with the publicist of notifying those who have received review copies of the withdrawal of the book. Had I known this prior to reading/reviewing, I would have tossed the book. For this particular book, I’d invested about six hours in reading and reviewing it that I can’t get back. Longer books take even more time.

I also made a decision that I would I would check the publication status of new books proactively. If I can’t locate publication information with the publisher, I’d hold off, pending confirmation of the book’s status.

This was a rare occurrence for the publisher. And it’s the first time in over 2000 reviews that I ran into this problem. Hopefully, it will remain rare. But I wonder with the increased use of AI and the increasing temptation to cut corners…. But I have a better handle on how I’ll handle this as a reviewer.

Five Articles Worth Reading

I’ve written on AI a number of times. I don’t believe it belongs in publishing. I’ve been concerned about the shortcuts to real thinking by humans, the elimination of large numbers of jobs, and the huge sums of money connected to the tech industry. And I continue to be concerned about the energy, water, and land use involved in data centers. What I should have thought about is idolatry. “The Deep Spiritual History of AI” explores the chilling spiritual dimension of AI. Consider this pull quote from the article:

“Transcendence, liberation, immortality, singularity, the uploading of consciousness—these are religious structures that organize how the field talks about itself.”

Since the death of Annie Dillard, I’ve seen a number of articles about her life and work. “The Enduring Mystery of Annie Dillard” asks the intriguing question of why she left so much of her personal life out of her writing. For example, did you know that when she was spending time in the Roanoke Valley, she was living with her first husband?

Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections published eleven days before 9/11. It seems he sensed what was coming when he wrote in the second sentence “You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen.” In “The Last Great American Novel” Ed Simon considers what has happened to “The Great American Novel” in the twenty-five years since 9/11.

“T. S. Eliot and the Holy Grail” made me want to go back to Eliot’s “The Wasteland” to see if I could find the Fisher King of Arthurian legend in Eliot’s poem. I don’t remember that from college lit class.

I’m an Agatha Christie fan. But I’ve read most of what she wrote. Sadie Stein has me covered in “Love Agatha Christie? Read These Books Next.”

Quote of the Week

Kristin Hannah was born on September 25, 1960. She imparted this piece of wisdom:

“We can’t live other people’s lives for them. Even if we love them.”

Wise advice for couples, parents, and those who care for any community of people.

Miscellaneous Musings

The reason I link to publishers websites is to avoid directing people to a particular bookseller, including that big online seller. I realize I could make a token amount of money if I became an “associate.” But I support local booksellers including indie sellers. This seems the best way I can allow others to make their own book buying decisions.

The Cleveland Guardians just clinched their Division title and are in the playoffs. Maybe that explains the recent traffic to my review of Our Team by Luke Epplin, an account of the 1948 World Series Champion Indians, the last time this franchise won the World Series. Who knows…this could be the year.

I think I read mysteries to balance some of the dense theology books I read. Right now, I am delighting in J. Warren Smith’s Early Christian Theology. Dense but clear and delightful history of how the early church wrestled to understand things like the Trinity and the Incarnation. Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die is number four in the Thursday Murder Club mysteries–great good fun!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life

Tuesday: Marilyn McIntyre, Start with a Word

Wednesday: Fritz Leiber, The Night of the Long Knives

Thursday: The Month in Review: September 2026

Friday: John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for September 20-26.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: September 13-19

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
vintage gifts with candle and radio background
Photo by betül nur akyürek on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: September 13-19

Consenting to Read

“Say ‘Yes’ to reading!” Sounds like the slogan for a literacy campaign. But do you realize that every time you pick up a book, you are saying “yes”? You are saying “yes” to another voice speaking into your thoughts. It means opening your mind to the world they have built in a story or the argument they are making. Your “yes” doesn’t mean “I agree.” But it does mean that you have decided to listen, to pay more or less attention to what they are saying.

That’s an insight I came across in Marilyn McIntyre’s Starting with a Word, a book on writing. She is a wise writer who cares about words. For McIntyre, the work of writing and the joy of reading begins with words. She reminds me of how different reading is from watching a video. Books call upon me to actively engage with the words, to think about what is written, and to discern the intent of the writer. Books also invite me to turn on the screen of my imagination and visualize the story in my mind. We say “yes” to all these things when we read.

We also consent to give an author our time. For a long book, that can be fifteen hours or more of your life. Our “yes” means no, for at least the present, to another book. And we can decide to withdraw our consent if the book isn’t worth the precious hours of our lives. I’ve also given up on series. After the first, very long book, I gave up on The Wheel of Time. Too many very long books, and I wasn’t crazy about this world.

To what books will you say “yes” this week? Our “yes” is actually a precious gift both to ourselves and to those who write books. It is, in the words of poet Mary Oliver one of the things you will “do with your one wild and precious life.”

Five Articles Worth Reading

Dónal Gill believes Jonathan Swift anticipated the dangers of AI, particular the sacrifice of human intellect to our machines. In “Jonathan Swift v. AI” he argues for our moral responsibility of self-cultivation.

In Live Laugh Love, Kristin Kobes Du Mez turns her attention to Christian women after taking on masculinity in Jesus and John Wayne. Caroline Fraser considers her argument that women have embraced materialism as a sign of divine favor in “Like My Jesus Sweatshirt? How Christianity Went Consumerist.”

Cormac McCarthy was a struggling author when he turned 40 in 1973. He took his truck, set out on a cross-country journey. Finally, he settle in El Paso and began work on Blood Meridian. Michael O’Donnell explores this turning point in “Cormac McCarthy’s Midlife Crisis.”

When I read “Laurie Anderson’s next manuscript to be locked away for 88 years in Future Library,” I discovered that since 2014, authors have contributed a work, revealing nothing more than the title, to be opened in 2114. “Future Library opens secret archive of unseen texts in Oslo” describes the project and some of the other authors who have contributed works.

Lastly, haven’t you wished to say more with fewer words? That’s what minimalist fiction strives for. JSTOR posted “Minimalist Fiction in Six Short Stories” with stories by Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Frederick Barthelme, Jayne Anne Phillips, Mary Robison, and Ann Beattie.

Quote of the Week

Queen of Crime Agatha Christie was born on September 15, 1890. She made this wise observation about money:

“Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.“

Miscellaneous Musings

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” I haven’t read much of any Dillard, never finishing Pilgrim at Tinkers’ Creek. But I’ve used this quote in several talks. We lost her this week, when she joined another recently passed pilgrim, Wendell Berry.

I’ve always enjoyed Barack Obama’s reading lists and have been baffled by readers who pan these simply because of his political associations. He’s doing it again with a six part podcast series, “A Great Book.” In “Tom Hanks, Ta-Nehisi Coates and More Join Barack Obama’s ‘A Great Book’ Podcast at Audible” you can read about the books he will be discussing and the guests who will be joining them. A great lineup all around.

I’ve always wished I could be paid for reading. The closest I’ve gotten is some free books for review. So I thought it was interesting to learn that “Singapore pays people to pick up a book in battle against doomscrolling.” But readers need to put in 50 sessions of at least 15 minutes to earn S$1 (one Singaporean dollar, currently 78 U.S. cents). Somehow, that doesn’t seem much of an incentive.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: James F. McGrath, Beyond Deconstruction

Tuesday: William Kent Krueger, Lightning Strike

Wednesday: Patricia Allen, The Strain of Other Blood

Thursday: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Friday: Douglas Groothuis and Lindsey Medenwaldt, What if Jesus is Right?

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for September 13-19.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: September 6-12

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

The Weekly Wrap: September 6-12

September 11 Twenty-Five Years Later

It was a day I remembered in minute detail. I was in Cleveland for the funeral of a friend. Driving up the evening before, I stayed with friends who I would see later that day. I was meeting another friend for coffee around 9 am that morning. Like so many others throughout the country, I remarked how clear the azure blue sky was that morning. On my drive to the coffee shop, I was listening to NPR when the reports came, first of one plane strike, then another, then the Pentagon.

There was a TV on at the coffee shop, and we sat riveted as the tragedy unfolded. Images I will never be able to unsee. When I could, I called my wife, as did so many around the country. At the funeral, I remarked to the friends I’d stayed with how much our world had changed in the few hours since I’d seen them.

I remember the tremendous sense of unity we experienced for a short time. And how it seemed so quickly to unravel and has continued to do so down to the present.

If we are basically good, as so many believe, why are we so cussedly fractious? While not as immediate as the 9/11 attacks, we face threats far more ominous. A massive surveillance society, which we can trace, at least in parts to those attacks. The existential threat of a planet becoming increasingly uninhabitable. And this week, the news from AI developers that AI could have the capability in the next few years to exterminate humanity. Yet we go along blithely banning books and specifying what teachers cannot say. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I’d love to see us unite to meet the existential threats facing us. But the experience of our response to a deadly global pandemic doesn’t encourage me. Which leaves me hoping for the Deus ex machina of ancient theatre. Or the second coming of Jesus. Personally, I’m coming to believe that if God doesn’t save us, we’re toast.

Five Articles Worth Reading

We often think of evil in personal rather than systemic terms. Jennifer Szalai reviews a new book by philosopher Susan Neiman that argues the contrary in “This Philosopher Thinks It’s Time We Call Out Evil in Our World.”

Another of those big issues, indeed the final one, is death. Emma Cline’s new book Switzy explores the last days of a former executive with Alzheimer’s who has arranged his death in a right-to-die country. Hillary Kelly reviews the book in “The Novel That Looks Death in the Eye.”

I have always considered That Hideous Strength the most prescient of the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Annie Crawford discusses what we learn about living as people of faith and hope in our chaotic tech world in “From Babel to Belonging: C. S. Lewis’s Fairy-Tale Cure for the Modern Machine.”

Then, on a different “note,” Alan Jacobs writes about the distinctive interpretations of Bach by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould in “Hearing Gould.” The one thing I missed in this article was any discussion of Gould’s vocalizations, certainly one of the most distinctive things you hear on his recordings.

Finally, Odyssey has awakened interest in Homer’s works, the other of which is Iliad. Open Culture has images of one of the best manuscripts of Iliad that you can magnify in “One of the Best Preserved Ancient Manuscripts of The Iliad Is Now Digitized: See the “Bankes Homer” Manuscript in High Resolution (Circa 150 C.E.).” The only hitch? You need to be able to read Greek.

Quote of the Week

This quote by James McBride, born on September 11, 1957, speaks to my comments above.

“The things that hold us together are much stronger than the things that drive us apart.”

Sadly, I think we are often lacking the sense to see the things that hold us together.

Miscellaneous Musings

I often have books I am looking for when I visit our “big box” retail store. I’ve found it frustrating that often books are not arranged in any order that I can discern. But it has given me the chance to get to know some very helpful booksellers! Although on a recent visit, it turned out that a recently published work advertised in an email was not in stock! No wonder I couldn’t find it.

I’m delighted with the boom of new indie bookstores around Central Ohio. And this listing is already out of date. Last week, The Whispering Page opened in Worthington, Ohio, just down the street from Celestielle Books. I understand readers can pick up a “passport” for all of these stores at any of them. I love it!

I’ve finally waded into George Marsden’s magisterial biography of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps America’s most brilliant theologian. It was the winner of the 2003 Bancroft Prize. So you can see it has taken me awhile to get around to it. A great, but long read.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head

Tuesday: Tracey Rowland, Introducing Coimmunio Theology

Wednesday: Jacqulyne Horbrook, How to Be a Christian Influencer

Thursday: Mitali Perkins, Doing Something New

Friday: Terry Pratchett, Eric

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for September 6-12.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: August 30-September 5

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

The Weekly Wrap: August 30-September 5

Remembering Wendell Berry

I wanted him to live forever. But Marce Catlett, published a year ago reminded me that Wendell Berry was a mortal, like us all. I loved all of his writing, his fiction, essays, and poetry. On Tuesday, he crossed over Jordan.

Hannah Coulter was my favorite novel. It’s the story of a woman whose husband didn’t return from war, her decision to remain on her land in Port William, and share life with a second husband. Like everything Berry wrote, it is filled with communion both with the land and one’s people.

Land and people. Wendell taught me that love and careful attention to both are central to the calling of us all. We cannot care for the world if we do not love our people and our place.

He warned us to be slow to adopt the new and only do so if it was truly better, simpler, more energy efficient, and easily repaired locally. I don’t know if he wrote about data centers but I suspect he would shake his head at the folly of sacrificing arable land at the cost of huge expenditures of energy and water to impose AI on our population while we increasingly import our food from other countries, often with questionable food safety practices.

Yet amid the folly, he took joy in the bubbling stream, the changing seasons, and conversations with other men while harvesting. Few things were so beautiful as well as useful as a good team of horses. And few things so sustaining as a midday farm meal, with family and workers gathered round.

Thankfully, he left us so much of his wisdom in his books. Meanwhile, Wendell Berry is living his final Sabbath poem.

Five Articles Worth Reading

My first article is really three of the many tributes to Wendell Berry. First, verse from Gracey Olmstead, “In Memory: Wendell Berry.” Secondly, Norman Wirzba combines personal memories of meeting Wendell Berry with reflections on Berry’ sense of people and the land in “Wendell Berry’s vision of a sacred world.” Finally, Barbara Kingsolver, whose father (also a Wendell) worked with Berry to preserve threatened Kentucky lands, summarizes Berry in “Wendell Berry’s Message to Readers: All We Need Is Here.”

Perhaps it is fitting we remember Berry on Labor Day Weekend. One way to do so is to take a deep dive into JSTOR’s archive of articles on labor in “Labor Day: A Celebration of Working in America.”

However, contrary to Berry’s vision, our modern day “tech bros” have pursued a very different vision. In a review of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, Gal Beckerman fantasizes about taking a time machine to confiscate the science fiction these men read (or misread), that inspired their vision of the world. The review is suggestively titled “We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys.”

She’s an Oxford John Donne scholar and the writer of the middle grade Impossible Creatures fantasy trilogy. Now, Katherine Rundell has published a book for adults: Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. Amanda Ramirez interviews the author in “Voracious Appetites: PW Talks with Katherine Rundell.”

Finally, Mark Bauerlein writes in “Saved by the Norton” how the two-volume Norton anthology transformed him. It gave a structure and coherence to his studies and view of the world. He thinks these things are lacking in contemporary literary studies.

Quote of the Week

Mary Renault, who wrote historical fiction, was born on September 4, 1905. She offered this watchword for how we ought live:

“One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Last week, Dolly Parton. This week, Wendell Berry. I’ve remarked that it seems that I go to more funerals than weddings these days. And it seems this is the season of the passing of many heroes. Perhaps this makes one long all the more for the great reunion!

Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head is deliberately titled. He contends our modern world has each of us living in our own autonomous mental worlds. He argues real knowing involves getting out of our heads and into the world of things and flesh and blood people. Crawford talks, as do Michael Polanyi and Esther Lightcap Meek about knowing as personal. I think this is an important message as we are tempted to immerse ourselves ever more in digital worlds.

Recently, I reviewed T.A. Gibson’s A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Invitation. As I was working on the review, I realized he authored an earlier collection, A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Mirror and made a note to get a copy, having liked its sequel so much. Yesterday, I learned the author graciously gifted me with one and gave me permission to use poems in my weekly Bob on Poetry readings. I don’t get paid for any of this, but things like this make it worth it!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Katherine M. Douglass and Brittany M. Tausen, Love Your Neighbor

Tuesday: Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount

Wednesday: Gerhard Lohfink, The Light of Faith and Reason

Thursday: Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

Friday: Tim Brown, Nolan

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 30-September 5.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: August 23-29

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

The Weekly Wrap: August 23-29

Personal Libraries

Build a personal library. Unless you are at the stage of deaccumulating, I would urge you to consider this. Many homes have a bookshelf or two. I’m suggesting a real library. It could be a designated room or distributed through your living spaces, as it is in our home.

This doesn’t mean keeping every book you read. Rather, think of those books each member of your household treasures. Our household has theology and history, literature and science, cookbooks and art books. One room has Ohioana and Youngstown books. When our son was living with us, the library included his books, including stories we treasured reading aloud together.

As a child, my parents books helped feed my love of reading–everything from fiction to encyclopedias. Often guests in our home would take a book to read before bed. Sometimes those books would go with them! Hospitality is not just about feeding the body, but also feeding the soul.

Books are a kind of memory palace. They remind us of where we were in life when we first read them. Some, such as favorite stories and poetry and books of devotion are friends we revisit.

I also ponder the pulping of books and the decline of reading and worse dystopian nightmares. I hope we may, in our lives and beyond, preserve what is best of what people have thought and written. So, my advice to those starting out in life: build a personal library. It will be a friend for life.

Five Articles Worth Reading

One of the reviewers I consistently read is Jennifer Szalai, with the New York Times. This week she reviews classics translator Emily Wilson’s new essay collection, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea in a review titled “For Emily Wilson, Translating the Ancients Requires a Dash of Cardi B.” That tells you something right there!

My newsfeed has been full of tributes to Dolly Parton, who passed this week. I thought “The Most Beautiful Woman” captured the many facets of Parton’s life and her cultural impact.

Those who devote themselves to the study of literature learn to engage in close reading. In “In Praise of Unclose Reading” Stephen Akey agues that there are also joys and a place for what he terms “unclose reading.”

It was many years ago, while working on a study of the theology of work that I came across josef Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture. I felt like Pieper wrote from another time or a different place, speaking into the dysfunctions of our culture. I was reminded of this by Griffin Gooch who makes the case for “Why You Should Read Josef Pieper.”

Finally, with students, teachers, and professors returning to the classroom, JSTOR ran another of its article compilations on “Back to School.” It includes articles on everything from primary sources to the mainstreaming of homeschooling, on libraries and reading lists and so much more!

Quote of the Week

Poet and essayist Rita Dove was born August 27, 1952. She offers this insight into the generous life that I really like:

“If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.”

Miscellaneous Musings

At a time when there are a record number of challenges and banning efforts against book, I am all the more impressed with the quiet work of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. During her life, this put over 330 million books into the hands of children, a great boost to reading literacy efforts. And during the time when so many are fighting about vaccines, she quietly donated $1 million of her own funds to provide seed money that led to the development of Moderna’s vaccine. If I had to choose, I want to be like Dolly.

I watched the American Masters documentary, Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World, on Tuesday. I’ve loved her poetry and was fascinated to learn that I had lived for a time in her childhood home of Maple Heights, Ohio. I was saddened to learn of the dark history of that childhood and her instinct, from the week she spent in the woods at 17, to seek out beauty and light, which shines through in her poetry, read by luminaries like Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert, and her neighbor, John Waters. If you missed it, you can still stream it from this link or on many streaming platforms.

My son sent me this reel from Facebook on how the Internet Archive scans books without destroying them by removing the bindings. I don’t approve of what AI companies are doing in buying old books to train AI, but at least they could adopt this method and then donate the books.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Alan Noble, To Live Well

Tuesday: The Month in Reviews: August 2026

Wednesday: Muriel Elmer, Night of the Fireflies

Thursday: Stuart Kaminsky, Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

Friday: Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 23-29.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.