The Weekly Wrap

The Weekly Wrap: April 5-11

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The Weekly Wrap: April 5-11

They Made It Too Well

I was among many Kindle users who received this email, which I will quote in part, from Amazon:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We’re glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here’s what this means for you:

* You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not be able to purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date.
* If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.

Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation.

I have used a Kindle Keyboard to read e-books. It was registered January 30, 2012. I like it for mysteries, science fiction, and other books I’m not interested in putting on physical shelves. I’ve read hundreds of books and have hundreds more stored on it. Most important of all, it works! It’s lasted longer than any other electronic device I’ve used. If nothing else, whoever manufactured it for Amazon built it well. So well, in fact, that I planned to keep using it until it died. I love the low glare screen and the ability to set font sizes.

Well, it appears I can still use it until it dies or as long as I don’t de-register it. But after next month, I won’t be able to download new books. No one with a pre-2013 Kindle will be able to do that.

I’ve heard a lot of us old Kindle users are furious. I’m not happy about it. Amazon’s solution, unless you use the Amazon app on other devices, is to buy a new Kindle e-reader, the base cost for which is $109. To ease the pain, they are offering a 20 percent discount and a $20 credit on e-books.

I haven’t made up my mind on what to do. I’m not crazy about Amazon in general. It seems to me this is a great time for other e-book platforms to lure new customers. I might just jump ship if a competitor offers a good deal (hint, hint!). Want to know more about what’s behind Amazon’s email? Here’s a good article I found.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Many of us have had notions of reading “the Great Books.” Ted Gioia has created a 52-week humanities program. In “How to Read the Great Books in 52 Weeks,” he’s interviewed by one of his readers who completed the course.

Are you troubled by the world we are leaving to our children and grand-children? I am. But how are the children doing with that? Tae Keller’s new children’s novel, When Tomorrow Burns, explores through the eyes of three seventh graders the question “What do you do when your biggest fear comes true?” Craig Morgan Teicher reviews this new book in “Kids: It’s Not All on You to Save the World.”

Rebecca Ackerman argues for human ghostwriters as “The Literary Job AI Can’t Replace.”

It inspired Ray Bradbury. And it launched the careers of many science fiction writers. In “How Amazing Stories Served as the Blueprint for American Science Fiction,” Ed Simon chronicles the history of this pulp publication.

So, it must be Ed Simon week! In a different publication, he explores the influence of Francis Bacon on the scientific research enterprise on the quadricentenary of his death. “The Man Who Invented the Future” explores the complicated legacy of his 1620 Novum Organum.

Quote of the Week

Irish poet George William Russell was born April 10, 1867. He offers this counsel for anyone engaged in some form of “resistance” or activism:

“We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I received an unusual gift yesterday. She Teaches Me Still is a memoir of Phyllis Strong LePeau, who died in 2022. It is written by her husband, Andrew T. LePeau. Phyllis was one of the most joyful and caring people I ever knew. I look forward to reading this account…and remembering.

I am thoroughly enjoying Frank Deford’s dual biography of Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, The Old Ball Game. Their time together with the New York Giants transformed baseball as one of the greatest pitchers and greatest managers, respectively.

I’m reading Tom Holland’s Dominion, subtitled “How the Christian Revolution Remade the World.” Others have raved about this book. So far, I’m less than impressed, making me wonder what I’m not getting.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today

Tuesday: Robert J. Coplan, The Joy of Solitude

Wednesday: Susan Mathew, Enabling Grace

Thursday: Marietje Schaake, The Tech Coup

Friday: Frank Deford, The Old Ball Game

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for April 5-11.

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 29-April 4

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The Weekly Wrap: March 29-April 4

First Authors, Now Reviewers!

Last week, I wrote about Mia Ballard’s book being pulled by Hachette when it was found to rely heavily on AI. This week, a story broke about New York Times free lance reviewer Alex Preston’s use of AI in a review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s Watching Over Her. It turns out, the AI inserted passages into the review from another review of the book in The Guardian. A Times reader recognized the similarity of the reviews and contacted them.

When they confronted Preston, he admitted his use of AI in the review and acknowledged the serious mistake he’d made. The New York Times has ended its relationship with Preston and linked his review to that of Christobel Kent in the Guardian. You can read more about this incident in this Guardian story.

Preston has written other articles and books and insists he has not used AI-generated text. But like any case of plagiarism, one discovered incidents taints the whole. I expect he will have a hard time publishing anything going forward.

However, as a reviewer, I understand the temptation. Sometimes I’m tired or have to fit reviews into other obligations. I suspect professional reviewers struggle with the same temptations, with paychecks at stake. AI can speed up the writing process. Preston’s failure was not properly citing his source. Instead, he represented the AI text as his own.

I do not use AI in writing, apart from a “readability” aid integrated into WordPress software. But the content comes from my interaction with the books I’m reviewing. Afterall, readers can seek AI reviews of books if they want. But I assume those who come to this page do so to learn what I thought about the book in question. If I can’t do that, it’s time to hang it up.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Tracy Kidder died last week. In “What Tracy Kidder Stood For,” Cullen Murphy reviews his career and the impact of his writing.

July 4, 2026 is the 250th birthday of the United States. Beverly Gage, in This Land is Your Land takes us on a road trip to 300 historical sites, a kind of road trip through our history. Reviewer Jennifer Szalai considers Gage’s effort in “Road-Tripping With a Historian Through America’s Past.”

So, I find almost anything Alan Jacobs writes worth a read. And so it was with “How Not to Save the Planet.” Instead of abstractions like “saving the planet,” he argues “If you learn to love a pond or a creek or a valley, then what you love others will love—and will perhaps also come to find some element of their own local environment dear to them, dear enough to conserve and protect.”

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month. Therefore, it’s a good time to do something about that floating resolution to read more poetry! And the folks at JSTOR have compiled the grand-daddy of resources in “A Reader’s Guide to Poetry for National Poetry Month.”

Finally, I discovered a real treat in “Hear Aldous Huxley Read Brave New World. Plus 84 Classic Radio Dramas from CBS Radio Workshop (1956–57).” Not only can you hear Huxley read his famous work, the Open Culture article points you to where you can hear 84 more productions from the CBS Radio Workshop, back when you could hear quality productions around the family radio before TV supplanted it.

Quote of the Week

Jane Goodall, who died just last year, was born April 3, 1934, She made an observation that both seems simple, and perhps one of the hardest things for human beings to do consistently:

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I don’t know if you knew this but we lived for nine years in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland–and loved our time there. Recently, heard of a new store opening up in a cool part of Cleveland Heights, The Checkered Bookshelf. There are a number of interesting bookstores in the city. Two on my book crawl bucket list are Loganberry Books and Zubal Books. Remember when I visited John King’s in Detroit? Zubal Books looks and sounds like that.

I’ll be reviewing George Saunders’ Vigil next week. It was an engrossing read but I found the ending both disappointing and puzzling. I wonder if any other readers of this book had that reaction?

Literary Hub ran an article that had me written all over it: “What Are the Routines of So-Called Super-Readers?” I wasn’t interviewed for the article, but the five things they found that super-readers have in common ring true. So who else out there are super-readers?

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Darrell L. Bock and Timothy D. Sprankle, Matthew

Tuesday: W. David O. Taylor and Daniel Train, eds., Naming the Spirit

Wednesday: Stuart M. Kaminsky, Not Quite Kosher

Thursday: George Saunders, Vigil

Friday: Amanda Hope Haley, Stones Still Speak

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 29-April 4.

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 22-28

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The Weekly Wrap: March 22-28

The Latest AI Brouhaha

Last week, Hachette pulled Mia Ballard’s Shy Girl after The New York Times provided evidence that the book text relied heavily on AI. In an email to the Times, Ms. Ballard denied using AI in writing but conceded that a friend, who helped edit the self-published version of the book, used AI.

What is interesting about this, according to a story in Publisher’s Weekly, is that readers and reviewers in online discussion widely criticized the book for AI use, describing it as “flat.” Given that online chatter is one of the reasons publishers pick up self-published books, a PW editor in a blog post suggested it stretches credulity that no one at Hachette was aware of the criticism. (On a related note, the author’s explanation also stretches credulity and is a blatant denial of authorial responsibility.)

According to PW, the episode exposes the muddiness of major publishers on AI use. Only PRH requires “original work,” but even this is slippery. Hachette only pulled the book after public pressure. Did the book fool editors? Or did editors not look closely enough to notice?

I personally would like to see a “no AI generated text” policy on the part of publishers. Alternatively, if a work uses text generated by AI, disclose it publicly. I would handle deception on these matters as a version of plagiarism. Authors tempted to use AI as a shortcut without disclosure should realize that such a shortcut may be career-ending.

All of this reflects the conundrum of the rapid imposition of AI by high-tech companies. So several articles this week explore different aspects of AI use.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Geoff Shullenberger argues in “Critique of ‘Agentic’ Reason” that delegating agency to AI is a bad idea, particularly as this makes war on introspection.

Peter Wayne Moe was a deeply depressed English professor, due to the heavy reliance of his students on AI. Then he enrolled in a course to learn to play guitar, an experience leading him to ban screens in his classes, requiring students to read print books and PDFs, and write with pens in college-ruled notebooks. “Hollow Body” is a marvelous article describing his process.

Pope Leo XIV has urged priests not to use AI to write homilies. Jim Morin, in “A Disembodied Gospel,” extends this argument to the sacraments (no bots as confessors!) and other pastoral work. I’d love to see other Protestant church leaders address this!

Former kickboxer and social media influencer Andrew Tate says books are too slow. Joel Halldorf defends slow and deep reading, arguing “Andrew Tate Doesn’t Get the Point of Books.” I love what he says when he writes, “So I try to see reading not as a plate of vegetables, but as a glass of wine. Just as we don’t sip an earthy red in order to work our way through the stocks in a cellar, we shouldn’t read just to diminish the pile of books on our desk. There is pleasure in an attentive sip.”

I think I found my baseball book for this year after reading “Like Baseball? In This Book, You Can Play in Your Kitchen.” It is a review of Robert Coover’s 1968 classic, The Universal Baseball Association, once again in print. It was written before the rise of fantasy baseball leagues and eerily anticipates them.

Quote of the Week

Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925. Her bluntness is not limited to her stories. She commented:

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Ever get a treasured book soaked in a rainstorm or drop it into a swimming pool? Open Culture posted a great video from Syracuse University Libraries on “How to Rescue a Wet, Damaged Book: A Handy Visual Primer.” The key thing is, don’t let the book dry out before following this process!

I’ve been reading The Joy of Solitude by Robert J. Coplan. It’s a fascinating exploration of the fine line between being alone and loneliness. One factoid: students preferred inflicting electric shocks on themselves to sitting alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes.

I’ve had Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament on my shelves, unread, for years, nearly 30 as it turns out. Eerdmans just sent me New Testament Ethics, a collection of essays on Hays’ book on its 30th anniversary of publication. So. both books are now in my review queue! That’s one way to get me to read those unread books!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Julian Peters, Nature Poems to See By

Tuesday: Edith Stein, A Sure Way

Wednesday: The Month in Reviews: March 2025

Thursday: Harold Ristau, Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance

Friday: Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 22-28.

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 15-21

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The Weekly Wrap: March 15-21

Retiring a Saying

A saying that has become nearly a mantra among bibliophiles is “So many books; so little time.” For example, my family even bought me a t-shirt with this saying. Yet the longer I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to conclusion that it might be healthy to retire this slogan.

It’s not that both parts of the statement are not true. I just read that four million books were published this past year. And, if I live as long as my parents did, I have twenty years or less of reading left. But I think the statement can foster a kind of frenzied compulsiveness to try to read as many as one can. Don Quixote, move over!

That’s a temptation to which I am prone. But I think its time for a new saying. Maybe something like, “So little time; so savor your books.” Whether I’m enjoying the twists of a good mystery, the suspense of a thriller, the wonder of a life chronicled or an exposition seeking to unravel the majesty of God, I want to savor.

Somehow, I don’t think the One Who has written the greatest story will mind.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Those of a certain age will remember The Baby-Sitters Club novels, published by Scholastic. In all 213 were published and it led to a TV series and film. And apparently they are still popular. Jennifer Hubert Swan offers ten recommendations of other books like these in “My Kids Love the Baby-Sitters Club Books. What Should They Read Next?“

I learned a new word today–“looksmaxxing.” It is the practice of maximizing one’s physical attractiveness, one’s “sexual market value” on social media. Anna Louie Sussman, in a review of The Intimate Animal explores “The Basic Drive That Humans Might Be Losing.”

Needless to say, AI is one aspect of looksmaxxing, as well as many other emerging developments in our relationship with machines. However, that interaction is not new and Peter Wolfendale explores some of that history and the recurring question of machine souls in “Geist in the machine.”

Do you ever find yourself in a conversation grappling with so many global issues, all of which have moral implications, that you wrestle to find moral language to respond? Ann Frances Margolies suggests we might find help in the work of Simone Weil in “Speaking After the Noise.”

And lastly, it’s time for a little fun. With St. Patrick’s Day celebrations this week,  J. D. Biersdorfer asks “Do You Recognize These Lines From Great Irish Poets?” Just five questions. I got four out of five, but a couple were guesses!

Quote of the Week

I do think the breakdown of our collective sanity may be attributable to our loss of neighboring and other forms of community. John Updike, born March 18, 1932, thought so as well:

“We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Standard Ebooks describes itself as “a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks are already believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing the entirety of each ebook file into the public domain. All the ebooks we produce are distributed free of cost and free of U.S. copyright restrictions.” They have quite a library and their renderings surpass other versions of Public Domain works.

Yesterday was delivery day–five books from four different publishers. I’ll be highlighting them over the next weeks on my social media platforms (Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram). You might find it worthwhile to follow me on one or more of those platforms.

I’m about 80 pages into On Fire For God by Josiah Hesse. He explores the evangelicalism of the Seventies and Eighties that formed his parents, its influence on him, and how so much of it morphed into what we know as “The Religious Right.” It’s fascinating as I consider the different way my life went while being shaped by similar influences. I also find myself observing, as does Amy Grant in her recent “The Sixth of January (Yasgur’s Farm),” that “we’ve lost our way.” This is one of those instances of hoping to understand in retrospect to discern the way forward.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Elaine Howard Ecklund and Denise Daniels, Working for Better

Tuesday: Jonathan A. Linebaugh, The Well That Washes What it Shows

Wednesday: William Kent Krueger, Sulfur Springs

Thursday: Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Friday: Daniel G. Hummel, The University of Wisconsin and the Ideal of Nonsectarianism

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 15-21.

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 8-14

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The Weekly Wrap: March 8-14

Becoming a Reader

As a toddler I often observed my mother reading. She was always quite attractive, and never more so than when she was reading. There was something magical about reading and I couldn’t wait to get in on the magic! So, when we began reading in the first grade, we learned to decode the sounds words made, and as we sounded out words and put them into simple sentences (See Dick Run), it was amazing. I was eager to learn more words and move from simple sentences to short stories.

It wasn’t long before regular trips to the library were a must. How wonderful to discover the children’s section and graduate from short stories to chapter books. Eventually, mom shared some of her books she thought suitable. Often, I read with a dictionary to understand words I hadn’t seen before. Some days, I just read interesting articles in our encyclopedia and if all else failed, the cereal box!

I know there are reasons this magic doesn’t happen for every child from family influences to temperament to learning disabilities that just make reading hard. But I hope it is a magic to which every child has access. In my case, role models, good teachers, access to books at home, and library trips were all part of it. Personally, I think a commitment to wanting every child to have access to the magic of reading is a mark of a great society.

Five Articles Worth Reading

It is often argued that religion has been the great enemy of the advance of science. In “Reformation of science,” Peter Harrison argues that Protestantism actually played a vital role in the emergence of the modern scientific enterprise.

Reason didn’t convince author Christopher Beha to go back to church. Falling in love did. In “What Atheism Could Not Explain,” Luis Parrales explores the stories of other atheists who turned to religious faith.

George Scialabba proposes that “perhaps the greatest repository of moral beauty in English literature, [is] the voice of the narrator in George Eliot’s Middlemarch.” He makes an argument for the beauty of a hidden life in “The Moral Beauty of Middlemarch.”

Ivan Keneally explores the moral contradictions of American life in “Mark Twain’s Absurd, Noble America.”

Finally, it seems that encouraging children to continue to read in the middle grades is a crucial link to forming a lifelong reading habit. In “Without Her, These Beloved Classics Might Never Have Been Published,” Mac Barnett profiles Ursula Nordstrom and her career of editing books for middle grade readers.

Quote of the Week

Part of what inspired my thoughts on the magic of reading was this quote from Alberto Manguel in The History of Reading:

“At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.”

Miscellaneous Musings

We had widespread power outages due to wind yesterday. Fortunately, we were not among them. I’m struck by how much we depend on electricity for so much of what we do including reading books at night. At one time, we would have been confined to reading by candlelight. But now at least, smartphone book apps and some e-readers are backlit–for as long as their charge holds out!

Kathleen Schmidt, in her Publisher’s Confidential Substack called out USA Today for adding books that were just announced to their bestseller list. Sarah J. Maas announced two new books to be published in late 2026 and early 2027 that were already on the list. I suspect this is based on pre-orders. The galling thing is that this is not indicated. I personally don’t tend to look at them but rather reviews. Sometimes, I’ll browse bestsellers in my bookstore, but they almost never are what interests me.

Plough Publishing has published a number of graphic art works on everything from a biography of Arvo Part to Anabaptist history. They just sent me a book that accompanies nature poetry with graphic art. For some reason, I find this enhances my reading versus just reading lines of text.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Roger Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation

Tuesday: Fritz Leiber, Gather, Darkness!

Wednesday: Jeffrey Kluger, Gemini

Thursday: Michael S. Moore, Jazz Trash

Friday: W. Ross Hastings, The Glory of the Ascension

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 8-14.

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 1-7

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The Weekly Wrap: March 1-7

Reading as Work

I saw a comment on the “Book Threads” part of Threads in which someone was lamenting reading having become work. On reflection, it seemed that this was being said as a bad thing. Now, for many, reading is a leisure activity and if one is working at their leisure, that could be bad. I think this can particularly become the case if one is preoccupied with reading goals and metrics.

However, I’m one who does not think of work as inherently bad. And reading often is a part of many forms of work. Scholars read for research. Many leaders consider reading critical to their effectiveness. And for book reviewers, reading is essential to the work of writing a review. If reading is part of purposeful activity that is meaningful, then often the work and pleasure of reading go together.

There are also also books that are worth reading that involve something approaching work to read. They demand our full attention. We may even need to read them more than once, look at footnotes, or even check other references.

But I can see how reading like many other things can get out of hand. Two of this week’s articles concern our penchants for optimization and gamification. My sense is that these are destructive to flourishing as a reader. And flourishing is what I think matters.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Nicholas Clairmont explores our societal obsession with optimization in “The Enemy of the Good.”

On a related note, gamification may be a form of efforts to optimize our lives. We have apps to monitor and optimize our finances, to track our steps, and our exercise and our weight loss. We even have apps to track our reading. Many of us started gamifying reading in those library summer reading programs we did as kids. Marissa Levien explores “What We Lose When We Gamify Reading.”

Remember in The Graduate when Mr. McGuire advised Benjamin Braddock that the key to success could be summarized in one word: “Plastic”? As it turns out, plastics have turned out hugely successful for the petrochemical industry. But now, plastic is so ubiquitous that we average seven grams (the weight of a plastic spoon) of plastic in our brains. “Life in Plastic: It’s Not Fantastic” is a review of a new book by Beth Gardiner.

More fathers are staying at home to raise families. Eric Magnuson, a stay-at-home dad, surveyed the portrayal of stay-at-home dads in recent literature and contends “Literature Has a Stay-at-Home-Dad Problem.”

Finally, in “The Chronicler of Decline,” Ed Simon both profiles Edward Gibbon and explores the relevance of his signature work on the decline of the Roman empire to the United States on its 250th birthday.

Quote of the Week

Novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1927. He observed:


“The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.”

Miscellaneous Musings

At least some of my love of history, especially in my seventies, is recalling the events that occurred during my life. Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger recounts the history of the transition between the Mercury and Apollo programs. I was an avid follower of the space program and I even built a model of the Gemini capsule. I’m enjoying revisiting this history.

I’ve noticed that many great writers keep writing, even when their best work is in the past. I wonder if there is a time when writers, like aging baseball players, need to retire. Yet I also think of the unique perspective that may come with age. Though the writing wasn’t perhaps his best, I think of Wendell Berry’s Marce Catlett, which strikes me as an eloquent valedictory work, written when he was past 90.

I just began a wonderful new book on the Ascension of Christ. I found that I was delighting in the first forty pages with the sheer wonder of what Ross Hastings was setting forth as the significance of this often overlooked Christian belief. This is one I look forward to reviewing!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Tuesday: Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross, The Authority of the Septuagint

Wednesday: Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation

Thursday: Mark Goodacre, The Fourth Synoptic

Friday: N. T. Wright, The Vision of Ephesians

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 1-7.

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

The Weekly Wrap: February 22-28

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The Weekly Wrap: February 22-28

Intelligence

I look for juxtapositions in my life. This week I’ve been reading of Anthropic’s unwillingness to give the Pentagon unfettered use of its Artificial Intelligence tools. That seems a scary proposition to me and I’m glad that Anthropic, so far, has resisted.

I also just finished reading Elyse Graham’s Book and Dagger. It’s the story of how our government recruited nerdy academics to play a key role in the nascent OSS, the predecessor to the CIA, during World War 2. Someone figured out two things about these people. One was that they weren’t bored by spending long hours searching for information in dusty archives. The other was that they had an uncanny ability to recognize the important information to be gleaned from mundane things like phone books, railway schedules, flyers and ticket stubs.

They also had the ability to look at problems from different angles, and sometimes arrive at counter-intuitive solutions. For example, they were given the task of figuring which parts of bombers should be reinforced against anti-aircraft fire. They studied bombers returning from runs and noticed lots of holes in fuselages, wings, and tails. Did they recommend reinforcing those areas? No. Instead, they recommended reinforcing the engines, even though they found few bullet holes in them. Why? Planes survived the other damage. There weren’t any with lots of bullet holes to engines. Those didn’t return.

This is an age that seems to devalue academics, and exalt computers. While I believe computers have their place, I wonder if the different kind of intelligence of humans will continue to be vital, in war or peace. Who knows what dogged researchers and analysts might uncover? Who knows what that booknerd might find? I just hope someone is intelligent enough to notice.

Five Articles Worth Reading

A number of years ago, I was in the audience for a fascinating debate between a theist and an atheist. One of the most interesting admissions for the atheist was that the problem of explaining the origins of consciousness was the most difficult problem for his beliefs. David Eagleman states in “Michael Pollan Wants to Know Where Consciousness Comes From” that “A coherent explanation of consciousness eludes modern science.” Pollan’s book is A World Appears and this review makes me want to check it out.

This week, Antonio Melechi explores the other side of our mental life in “Daydreamers and Sleepwalkers: Crossing the Borderlands of the Unconscious.” Fascinatingly, this also continues to be a mystery to the greatest minds.

Ann Godoff died this week. I didn’t recognize the name, but she was the long-time editor and founder at Penguin Press. Among the authors whose work she edited were Ron Chernow, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, and Thomas Pynchon. In “The Ruthless Benevolence of a Great Editor,” Franklin Foer profiles her and describes his own experience of her as his editor.

Then I also learned that Michael Greenblatt died last week. Michael Who? Jynne Dilling asserts in “You’ve Done It Again, Michael” that Michael Greenblatt was the greatest reader of our generation. He recorded 48,000+ minutes of interviews with a Who’s Who of authors, and when he did this, he read everything each author wrote.

Finally, Thomas Pynchon’s name has already been mentioned here in connection with Ann Godoff. Whatever one’s experience of reading him, he’s one of the major authors of my generation. This is the year I’ve decided to try to read him. This profile, “It’s Thomas Pynchon’s America,” sets the corpus of his work in helpful perspective for me.

Quote of the Week

A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess was born February 25, 1917. I got a laugh out of this quote:

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I inherited from my mother what is now an over century old set of the works of Balzac that she loved as a young girl. While I’m not planning a trip to Paris, Michael Robbins “City of Blights” describes his Balzac pilgrimage through Paris. Is this a cue that it’s time to read Balzac?

Spring training for Major League Baseball began in mid-February and the season opens in just under a month, on March 26. That means it is time to find my baseball book of the year. Any suggestions?

As I go on with Mansfield Park, I find myself not rooting so much for Fanny as wondering when she and Edmund will wake up to their love for each other and why no one else sees this (at least as far as I’ve gotten). Yes, they were first cousins, but first cousins are not banned from marrying in Georgian England.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: The Month in Reviews: February 2026

Tuesday: Gerald L. Bray, Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers

Wednesday: Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger

Thursday: Brooke Borel, The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking

Friday: Greg Carey, Rereading Revelation

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for February 22-28.

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

The Weekly Wrap: February 15-21

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The Weekly Wrap: February 15-21

Am I Being Shelfish?

Do you have more books than shelves to put them on? So do I. And so do most bibliophiles I know. Books on tops of books. Books behind books. And books in piles on any available flat surface. I’ve used all those strategies.

I look enviously at those images on social media of elegant shelves of books lining the wall of a study. There is a wall in my office that is a mix of shelves, storage, and a low table. I dream of converting it to a wall of shelves.

And I realize that I would probably have those shelves immediately filled.

Then, in moments of stark realism, I realize I’m in my eighth decade. One way or another, the day is coming when those books must be disposed of. Perhaps it is time to think about shrinking my books to the shelves I have. My fifties might have been the time for that wall of shelves.

Sure, bibliophiles like Umberto Eco built huge libraries of books (50,000 in his case). But it seems to me that it might make more sense to pare my books to the ones I treasure. I have enough shelves for those.

Five Articles Worth Reading

I’ve read a couple of books recently that incorporate the idea of conferring personhood on nature. Another approach is to calculate the cost to nature of economic activity. Nick Summer reviews three new books that explore this idea in “Want to Put a Price Tag on Nature? Ask an Economist.”

I’m glad I’m not the only one put off by the look-alike book covers in the fiction sections of bookstores. Ted Gioia argues that the death of midlist publishing is part of the reason in “The Day NY Publishing Lost Its Soul.”

Yascha Monk argues that his colleagues in academia are wrong that AI is not creative or intelligent, that these tools are “stochastic parrots [that] can do some impressive things like summarize an email or write boilerplate corporate language; but they are congenitally incapable of making a genuine intellectual or artistic contribution.” In “The Humanities Are About to Be Automated” he describes how he used Claude, an AI tool, to create a credible academic paper in two hours. And he includes the paper.

Then there is the technology of war. In the past, it was aircraft, ships, armaments. People are present in the place where these are utilized. But the new face of warfare is drones. Nic Rowan explores the impact of this new dimension of warfare in Ukraine in “A Kiss in the Killhouse.”

Finally, there are times when it is hard to find time to read. Bekah Waalkes recommends “Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read.” One of her recommendations was Ali Smith’s Gliff which I thoroughly enjoyed last year.

Quote of the Week

Jewish novelist Chaim Potok is one of my favorite authors. His birthday was February 17, 1929. He offers this delightful invitation:

“Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.”

Of course, the books we are reading are among those happy things!

Miscellaneous Musings

In the Introduction to Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham quotes this statement from Jewish writer Heinrich Heine: “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.” She notes Germany began burning books in 1933 and began burning people in 1941. This makes me think about thresholds. When we breach one, burning or banning books, and get away with it, we are emboldened to breach others including getting rid of people we consider a threat. While we are not yet burning people, we are banning, disappearing and deporting those we don’t like, and not just those here illegally, in the United States. In the last ten years, we began increased efforts to ban books. Now we are buying warehouses around the country to “detain” refugees for “vetting,” even though the refugees came here legally and most have no criminal record. It should trouble all of us. If we accept all these things, it won’t end with them.

I’ve been reading a book on fact-checking. I find it challenging to see the rigorous standards for those who do this for a living, many as free-lancers. More of us are publishing than ever. I personally think all of us who publish in any form, including re-posting memes making claims, have the obligation to check our facts, if we care about truth and not just rhetoric. But that is a big “if’ that I think we increasingly are indifferent to.

I’m reading my second Jane Austen novel, Mansfield Park. There is a play that occupies a lot of space in the novel and I’m curious how much will turn on that play. And I find myself rooting for Fanny Price.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Matthias Henze and David Lincicum, editors, Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings

Tuesday: Rhonda Mawhood Lee, Suicide and the Communion of the Saints

Wednesday: Deborah Ann Appler and Terry Ann Smith, Ezra-Nehemiah

Thursday: Richard Powers, The Overstory

Friday: Karen J. Johnson, Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for February 15-21.

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

The Weekly Wrap: February 8-14

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The Weekly Wrap: February 8-14

Why We Love Old Used Bookstores

An informal poll on my Facebook group confirmed by a landslide that people prefer old used bookstores over shiny big box chain stores. However, some dissented because “old” often means musty and dusty, and for those with allergies, that’s a non-starter. But for the rest of us, that’s just how bookstores are supposed to smell. It just wasn’t a good trip unless you acquired a patina of dust!

Firstly, consider the personality of old bookstores. They have such unusual names. A local store that is no more was called Acorn. Another favorite was Blue jacket Books. Then some stores bear the name (and often the personality) of their owner. I think John King’s Books in Detroit is in the running for the king of bookstores. I could spend a week there! Then there is the name of a store in my son’s home town, Birch Tree Bookery. And often, as with this store, there is a story behind the name!

While serendipity is part of a trip to any bookstore, used stores offer the serendipity of the backlist. In those old stores, you might come across an old edition of a book you had thought about buying twenty years ago. Other times, I’ll hear about an older work, and then there it is! Whereas I’m often looking for a particular book at the big box store, my attitude at the old bookstore is surprise me!

Of course, price sometimes figures in. While I’ve found some great bargains, I’ve also discovered that booksellers who last know what they can get for a book, and many sell online as well as locally. Realizing that you are supporting an institution you want to survive helps.

Finally, old used bookstores are great for aging memories. For example, roaming through John King’s last summer, I was reminded of the books we were all talking about in the last half of the twentieth century! I spend most of my time reading and reviewing books from this decade, so it’s nice to refresh the library of my mind with some of those oldies!

Five Articles Worth Reading

We were out for an early Valentine’s dinner yesterday. However, it didn’t dawn on me for awhile why I was seeing all these articles about romance books! If romance is your thing, the New York Times “Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book” series just posted its Romance recommendations.

Speaking of great romances, if hearing about the film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has piqued your interest in the book, here are “Five Things to Know About ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Author Emily Brontë’s Only Novel.”

Another reading list that came to my attention this week is “100 Black Voices: Books for Adults.” The New York Public Library compiled this list. There are even 20 titles you can borrow via Libby! A great way to celebrate Black History Month!

Here’s your long read for the week. With government funding for the humanities drying up, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has become the premiere source for humanities funding in the United States. Tyler Austin Harper discusses the hidden danger of this in “The Multibillion-Dollar Foundation That Controls the Humanities.”

Finally, you may have noted that I review some children’s books and feature images from children’s books on my Facebook page. It’s not simply a matter of breadth of coverage. I believe reading starts here. Sally Rippin makes that case better than I could in “Parents, please don’t stop reading to your children – a great picture book could change their life.”

Quote of the Week

Composer and poet Thomas Campion was born February 12, 1567. He remarked:


“From heav’nly thoughts all true delight doth spring.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Well, I’m going to make it. I’ll be reviewing three very different Lenten devotionals next Monday to Wednesday, One even incorporates chant you can listen to or even sing along with, complete with Latin pronunciation. These are all gems and I’ll be reviewing them just in time for Lent.

I missed this when it was first published and so picked up a secondhand copy at a used bookstore! Richard Powers’ The Overstory is an engrossing story exploring the ecology of trees and an unlikely group that comes together to defend the right of an old growth forest to exist. This book makes me look at the trees on my own property differently!

While I enjoy a good sports biography, particularly of someone in baseball, I think there is only one Olympic biography that I’d be interested in reading, that of Jesse Owens. Part of it has to do with his Ohio State connection and part is that his is a heroic story. Are there some I’m overlooking? I’d love to know!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Editors at Plough Publishing, Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

Tuesday: David F. Ford, Meeting God in John

Wednesday: Editors at Paraclete Press, Christ in our Midst

Thursday: Robert MacFarlane, Is a River Alive?

Friday: Nicholas Worssam, SSF, In the Stillness, Waiting

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for February 8-14.

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

The Weekly Wrap: February 1-7

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The Weekly Wrap: February 1-7

Is Book Coverage Dying?

One of the major stories this week was the Washington Post’s decision to lay off three hundred of its staff, gutting international coverage, sports coverage, and shutting down Book World, its coverage of books.

Now many readers loved Book World, and I suspect many cancelled their Post subscriptions for this reason alone. And it is sad to lose a major source of book coverage in the U.S. Capitol. It reflects to me what is, and is not, valued, in this city.

It follows a trend in many other smaller papers, struggling to keep afloat in a changing media environment. However, this doesn’t convince me we are seeing the end of book coverage. Instead, I think book coverage is shifting to different platforms. For one thing, you can bet some of those Post reviewers will be setting up Substack newsletters, or teaming up with outfits like The Metropolitan Review. There is vibrant book coverage in these newsletters, many of which I’ve re-posted here. Of course, there are also dedicated Bookstagrammers, BookTokkers, and of course, us old-fashioned bloggers.

It might mean re-learning some old habits. I’ve found some publishers still think they get their best exposure in print publications and don’t give online reviewers the time of day. Yet, I bet, in almost every publishing genre, there are online platforms far-outstripping print in views, and purchases of books.

I also post several articles that suggest the reports of reading’s death, while concerning, may be greatly exaggerated. So, without further ado…

Five Articles Worth Reading

For those who interested in the shuttering of Book World, and the history of book coverage at the Post, “The Washington Post is gutting its books coverage” gives a good account.

A psychologist who studies narratives of decline argues, with a lot of data to back him up, that reading is not dying in “Text Is (Still) King.“

A Case Western Reserve English professor describes what he learned when he resumed assigning students whole books to read in “Stop Meeting Students Where They Are.”

Thomas E. Miles describes in “A Mosaic” the transformative experience of reading in prison when he enrolled in the Bennington College Prison Education Initiative.

Finally, February is Black history Month. “Celebrating Black History Month” offers a wealth of readings from the editors at JSTOR Daily.

Quote of the Week

American novelist Robert Coover was born February 4, 1932. He said something that both makes sense and I’ve been arguing in my head:

“Language is the square hole we keep trying to jam the round peg of life into. It’s the most insane thing we do.”

To be sure, every time I sit down to write, I bang up against the limits of words to say what I want to say. But while language may be insane, it is one of the things that makes us human. And when God came to Moses on Sinai, he didn’t give him ten experiences or pictures, but rather wrote ten commands on tablets.

Miscellaneous Musings

I’m trying to get through three Lenten devotionals to review before Lent. One is Christ in our Midst (Paraclete) which couples readings with Gregorian chant accessible online. A second is an expanded edition of Bread and Wine from the good folks at Plough. It includes 90 readings covering the period from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost. Finally, Meeting God in John: Inspiration and Encouragement from the Fourth Gospel (Baker) by David F. Ford is a Lenten study focused in John’s gospel.

I finished Robert McFarlane’s Is a River Alive? What a beautifully written book! I’ve decided to follow it with Richard Power’s The Overstory, a work of fiction about forests that I’ve not read.

I love the names of bookstores. A favorite in my own town is “Two Dollar Radio” which not only sells books but serves as the headquarters for an Indie publisher by the same name. One I came across recently was “Beware of the Leopard Books” located in Bristol, England. And all this is really a buildup to an article on one of the iconic bookstores of our day, “The Radical Power of a Bookstore: On Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights.”

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries, Vol. 1

Tuesday: Lexa Hale, God Chose Me!

Wednesday: First Nations Version: Psalms and Proverbs

Thursday: Michael Innes, There Came Both Mist and Snow

Friday: Dominique Young, God, Where Are You?

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for February 1-7.

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