Curated literary articles

The Weekly Wrap: March 23-29

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Becoming Real

An image of some tattered old books brought to mind this quote from The Velveteen Rabbit: on how one becomes Real:

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

We often take what it means for stuffed animals to become Real and apply it to people. Hair, eyes, joints, shabbiness–by those tokens I’m becoming more real all the time! Much of this for stuffed animals comes down to being beloved companions. And I suspect that whatever “Realness” there is in me could not be apart from my wife and other loving companions.

But I mentioned books. Certainly they are already real, tangible objects. However there are books with many words on many pages that sit on my shelves that are little more than that. Then again, other books have become “Real” to me. I’ve come to live in Middle-earth, the ancient biblical world, “The Road Not Taken.” Most of the works of C.S. Lewis are “Real.” The pages are yellowed and marked up, the cover worn and curled.

The richness of reading consists at least in part of those books that become Real for us. One reading is not enough. But during first readings, we hear the book’s invitation. And something inside us answers, “I want to know you better.” You know a book has become real when it filters into your conversation. You describe a particularly hospitable home as like Rivendell. Or you refer to those times of encountering the Transcendent that changed you as “burning bushes.”

Do you have books that have become real? If not, are there books that resonated deeply whose invitation to know them better you’ve yet to heed. In answering that call, not only will some books become Real. You will as well.

Five Articles Worth Reading

One of the most “Real” writers I’ve encountered is Flannery O’Connor. This week marked the centennial of her birth. “The Immanent Grace of Flannery O’Connor” offers a glimpse into her insights into both our humanness and the grace we need.

This year also marks the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald. A.O. Scott, in a visual piece, “It’s Gatsby’s World, We Just Live in It“,” portrays how Gatsby turns up everywhere from Seinfeld to Peanuts.

It’s only been forty years since Neil Postman published a somewhat academic book title Amusing Ourselves to Death. It became Real for me because of its explanatory power. “Still Amusing Ourselves” explores why this book continues to have “legs.”

The idea of citizenship has come up quite a bit in our recent political discourse. “Eight Books About the Complicated History of U.S. Citizenship” offers a crash course on its often contended history.

By the way, Citizen by Claudia Rankine was ranked number one in the Atlantic’s “The Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far).” Looking for contemporary poetry to read? This is a list of twenty-five collections you might look for.

Quote of the Week

As I noted above, March 25 marked the centennial of Flannery O’Connor’s birth in 1925. Here’s a quote in which she “keeps it real”:

“I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s little book, The Serviceberry is a ray of sunshine amid trade wars and sinking stocks. She writes of a different economy–one of generosity, abundance, and reciprocity–in short, a gift economy. One of the reasons I’ve never tried to monetize this blog or any other platform is that I receive so much from books (and the publishers who send them) that it just makes sense to pass along the gifts.

I wonder if a seed of much of our discontent is that we have not learned the meaning of “enough.” We want more and more (which we then have to figure out how to get rid of), we build economies around never having enough, and of late, in the U.S. have taken to thinking that this great land we call our national home is not enough. I think this will end very badly, and we will never be content so long as we live this way.

But I continue to be grateful for the fine writing of William Kent Krueger. I just began Vermilion Drift. Not only does he portray a middle-aged man dealing with loss as children move away (among other losses) as well as the fate of aging mining towns. It doesn’t hurt that his stories are page-turners as well.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Han Kang, We Do Not Part

Tuesday: The Month in Reviews: March 2025

Wednesday: Todd C. Ream et al, Habits of Hope

Thursday: Michael F. Bird, Religious Freedom in a Secular Age

Friday: Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for March 23-29, 2025!

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 16-22

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Library Love

“Feel good” stories seem increasingly scarce. This one involved a woman walking into her local library to renew her library card. What is unusual is that Lily Walter is 104 and received her first library card 100 years ago in Latvia. An immigrant to the United States in 1949, she describes her passion for reading in this way: “You learn things by reading, I think. Or you should.” In her eighties and nineties, she worked as a volunteer at the Hubbard Public Library, near my home town of Youngstown.

Lily’s story is one of the reasons I am a passionate believer in the importance of our libraries. It’s why I spent part of Monday this week calling my House and Senate representatives to protest proposed cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. While such cuts are only a small part of most libraries’ total budget, they usually fund targeted programs like veterans outreach or summer reading programs at libraries. This means libraries are faced with diverting funds, raising local levies, or cutting programs.

Lily began reading at four years old. I was a childhood reader as well and a visit to the library was as much fun for me as a visit to the candy store. My family had modest means. The library gave me access to resources wealthier children had at home, enabling me to be valedictorian of my high school class and win an academic scholarship to college. Libraries were a part of my “success story.” That’s what I told my representatives–that, and that I wanted others in my shoes to have the same opportunities.

If you want to know more about the President’s executive order and sign a petition opposing the cuts, visit the EveryLibrary site. And if you want your heart warmed, here is an interview with Lily Walter:

Five Articles Worth Reading

Speaking of reading for life, Ted Gioia, in “My Lifetime Reading Plan” shares how he, though a college grad, largely educated himself through his own reading. He describes the reading practices that helped him. One interesting insight: he read old books when he was young and young books as he grew older.

Have you ever picked up a book you thought was new to you, started reading it, only to realize that you’d read and forgotten it? I have. Turns out we’re in good company, as we learn in “The Patron Saint of Forgetting” on Michel Montaigne’s famed forgetfulness of things he’d read.

We hear of people who have changed their minds and celebrate this as a mark of intellectual honesty. In “It’s Hard to Change Your Mind. A New Book Asks If You Should Even Try,” Kieran Setiya reviews a new work by novelist Julian Barnes that raises questions about the possibility of changing our minds.

I’m a lover of crime fiction of all sorts. One sub-genre is the Private Eye Detective story. This week, The New York Times released “Classic Private-Eye Detective Novels: A Starter Pack” which includes some classics I’ve not yet read.

Can you imagine earning six figures for writing one article? Bryan Burrough describes how much he earned for one article in “Vanity Fair’s Heyday” under editor Graydon Carter, who was at the helm of the publication from 1992 to 2017.

Quote of the Week

Children’s writer and poet Phyllis McGinley was born on March 21, 1905. She observed:

“Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.”

Any of us who have had a friend “ghost” us without explanation know the truth of this.

Miscellaneous Musings

The book sounded intriguing, exploring Paul’s use of narrative, something we don’t usually associate with Paul’s letters. The writer amply made his case, going for a far deeper drive into grammar (in Greek!) than I had expected. I’m neither a grammar nor Greek geek, so this one was really a stretch!

I’m curious about a lot of things but it can get the better of me at times, especially when I try to write a review of a book plainly out of my “wheelhouse.” A recent read on monetary policy was a case in point. I hope the aficionados on the subject will be as gracious as the author, who re-posted the review. It was publicity, and I hope I accomplished what I always try to do, which is to give people enough to decide if they want to buy the book.

I wasn’t looking for another reason not to like Meta and then I learned how they used LibGen, a file sharing site for print articles and books, to train its generative language AI. LibGen itself is under accusations of copyright violations as is Meta. One thing that is clear is that authors neither gave permission for their works to be used in this way nor received any payment for their intellectual property. This Atlantic article describes the allegations against Meta and includes a feature where you can search authors to see what they’ve used. For example, a search of J.R.R. Tolkien turns up just about everything he has written.

Next Week’s Reviews:

Monday: Ronni Kurtz, Light Unapproachable

Tuesday: Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Wednesday: Stanley Hauerwas, Jesus Changes Everything

Thursday: Agatha Christie, The Hollow

Friday: Christoph Heilig, Paul: The Storyteller

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for March 16-22, 2025!

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 9-15

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The Dangerous Power of Books

I’ve been thinking a good deal about an article published in Aeon this week, “Dark Books.” Tara Isabella Burton argues that books can unmake or make us. They can disturb or uplift, oppress or liberate.

But how do they do this? It comes down to what happens in the act of reading. When we read, we open our minds, our psyches, ourselves to another. We “drop our guard” to some degree to enter the world of another, and permit them to enter ours.

By and large, we bibliophiles argue for the good of books. The article observes this was not always so. There was a time when commentators warned against novel reading. And sometimes books are freighted with messages oppressive to women, minorities, or others.

I do make choices of what I will and won’t read because of the power of books. It’s not that I cannot think critically about books. It’s just that I realize that, sometimes, the mental images formed by a book can persist. I left off reading one science fiction series because of the graphic descriptions of gruesome violence. I do not read highly sexualized or pornographic material because I want to honor my marriage.

I am not one to say what others should or should not read. I think adults should make their own decisions in this regard and parents with their own children (but not for others). But I believe we may be naive at times about the books (and other media) we let into our lives and how these influence us. Words are powerful things, for good or ill.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Here’s the article I’ve been discussing, “Dark Books.” I was challenged by Burton’s concluding words: “Only by respecting the potential of books to destroy us – terrifying as it might be – can we have an authentic faith in their ability to put us back together again.”

Marilynne Robinson believes Max Weber mischaracterized John Calvin. She has written about Calvin in essays and he comes up in her novels. “The Sum of Our Wisdom” reflects her efforts to recover Calvin for our age.

Some of us are trying to forget the pandemic and others of us are trying to make sense of how it changed us, and our lives. Lily Myers, an Atlantic contributing writer, reviews a number of pandemic novels in “The Novel I’m Searching For.” She previews the article with this statement: “Five years after the pandemic, I’m holding out for a story that doesn’t just describe our experience, but transforms it.”

The New York Times released its non-fiction and fiction spring previews this week. I thought the “21 Nonfiction Books to Read This Spring” had some interesting books, including Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain!

Finally, “Who is better, Dickens or Shakespeare?” The Guardian asked nine writers. To me it seems an apple and oranges comparison.

Quote of the Week

I post many quotes. This one gave me pause:

“People will assign irrational importance to almost anything in quotes on top of a pleasant image”

This comes from Colin Fletcher, a backpacker and travel writer born March 14, 1922.

Miscellaneous Musings

I’m debating whether to buy a copy of Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Meta exec. She has been enjoined by a court to not promote the book due to her severance agreement with Meta. So far, they have not stopped sales of the book. Although I’m not sure what the book could tell me to cause me to have a lower opinion of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta.

In the grand scheme of things this is a blip, but I’m a Louise Penny fan and was deeply saddened to hear the Canadian author has cancelled her US book tour, including an appearance at the Kennedy Center. She discusses her decision in this CBC story.

Simone Weil in Waiting for God has a wonderful essay on “attention” which she believes is central to the life of prayer. She argues in the essay that practice of all forms of attention, including geometry proofs (!) train us in spiritual attention. Her choice of geometry is interesting, given her inferiority about her geometry skills in comparison to her mathematician brother Andre!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Wallace Stegner, Remembering Laughter

Tuesday: Quentin J. Schultze, Communicating for Life

Wednesday: Frances M. Young, Scripture in Doctrinal Dispute

Thursday: J.R.R. Tolkien, Beren and Luthien

Friday: Kevin J. Mitchell, Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for March 9-15, 2025!

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

The Weekly Wrap: March 2-8

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American Writers

American jingoism has never been well received around the world, and certainly not in this particular moment. Thus it might be a foolhardy exercise to write about American authors in this time. But I will out of the belief that every nation produces writers of quality who are voices in their time for their country. I love reading authors from around the world as well as the U.S. But I am grateful for the writers from my own country, from Mark Twain to Percival Everett, from Emily Dickinson to Dana Gioia, and Harriet Beecher Stowe to James Baldwin. One of my all-time favorite novels is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

I’m thinking of this because I’ve just begun reading Wallace Stegner’s Remembering Laughter. It reminds me in a way of a Willa Cather story. It was his first published work, from 1937, one I had not been previously aware of. I think Stegner is under-appreciated, although he won the Pulitzer in 1972 for Angle of Repose and the National Book Award in 1977 for The Painted Bird. Crossing to Safety is a personal favorite for its exploration of friendship over decades, ended only in death.

Stegner also wrote non-fiction about the American West, ranging from John Wesley Powell to the Mormons. His book on Powell made me think about the arid climate of the American West, and what it means to live in those conditions.

Finally, after teaching stints at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard, he went to Stanford to found the creative writing program. Among his students were Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Ken Kesey, Ernest Gaines, and Larry McMurtry. Sandra Day O’Connor also studied for a time under him. That’s quite a literary progeny!

For me, he is one of many American writers who has explored the human condition, and how this place we call home has shaped us.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton is the latest in “animal encounter” books. In this one, Dalton comes across a brown hare or leveret she found one cold morning during the pandemic. She cares for it without turning it into a pet. “The Tiny Brown Hare Who Taught One Woman to Slow Down” convinced me to give this one a look.

I’ve been seeing all sorts of articles about Chimamanda Adichie’s new novel. “Chimamanda Adichie’s Fiction Has Shed Its Optimism” offers an extended review, exploring its theme of the fraught relations between men and women.

Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank discusses what Frank sees as the decline of the literary novel during the twentieth century. Joseph Epstein reviews the book in “Done in by Time.”

I had not been aware of the work of Jeffrey Kripal, a religion scholar whose most recent book is How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else. “Has Jeffrey Kripal Gone Mad, or Normal?” explores his ideas, which seem to me to reflect the epistemic crisis of our time.

University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter elaborates the idea of the eclipse of adulthood in our culture in a Hedgehog Review article from 2009 titled “Wither Adulthood?“

Quote of the Week

I’ve written quite a bit about goodness, truth, and beauty on this blog. Novelist Frank Norris, born March 5, 1870, made a statement I loved:

“Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I’ve just begun reading Simone Weil’s Waiting for God. Weil went through a powerful conversion to faith but was never baptized. She saw herself speaking as a Christian but outside the church. As I read about this, I wonder if we may see some in our own time who write and speak from a similar position.

I’ve had the privilege to personally be acquainted with both Dr. Francis Collins, the recently retired Director of the National Institutes of Health, and David French, an op-ed columnist with The New York Times. Both are people of deep Christian faith and great personal integrity. They have been the objects of vitriol and slander in our highly politicized moment. I’ve watched both invest their lives in pursuit of the common good. I believe someday they will be vindicated. But I grieve a culture that attacks good men and celebrates felons.

I found an old copy of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It was one of her books I haven’t read. I love her writing and look forward to this one!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Sherene Nicholas Khouri, Triune Relationality

Tuesday: Joseph W. Handley, Jr. et al, Leading Well in Times of Disruption

Wednesday: Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Thursday: Carola Binder, Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy

Friday: Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for March 2-8, 2025!

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

The Weekly Wrap: February 23-March 1

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To Tell the Truth

“But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken” (Matthew 12:36, NIV)

I consider writing a dangerous occupation. The saying of Jesus quoted above is a kind of guiding mental watchword. I write as one who believes he will give an account for his words. And over the twelve years of blogging, I’ve written millions of words. And this doesn’t count what I post on social media. I’ve a lot to account for.

Jesus mentions “empty” words. The image it calls to mind is a grain of wheat. Full words include the kernel. They nourish. And enrich. They are what they appear to be. They are true. Empty words are the husk without the grain. They deceive, leading us to believe they offer substance when there is nothing. They are trivial and mean. Trite. They lie.

What saddens me about so much of our discourse is the tolerance of known lies. I see “good Christian” people doing this as if political gamesmanship is more important than truth. I’ve contended that when we do this, we jeopardize the truth claims of the Christian message. Why would people believe I am telling the truth when I say Jesus rose from the dead if I tell them baldface lies to their face?

This is one of the reasons I love good literature, fiction or non-fiction. There is a “ring of truth” in good literature, an effort to be true to character, true to life, and in non-fiction, true to facts, insofar as it is in the writer’s capacity to do so. It protects me from becoming inured to lies. And it renews in me the hope that goodness, truth, and beauty will prevail in the end. It is what I hope to do with my own words. I write coram Deo, before God, and want to give a good account when the day comes.

Five Articles Worth Reading

For an example of one careful with words, consider Robert Caro. Over his typewriter (!) are the words “The only thing that matters is on this page” “Rifling Through the Archives With Legendary Historian Robert Caro” recounts the work of this fine writer, who is racing against his own mortality to complete the final volume of his work on Lyndon Johnson. I’m rooting for him, since I’ve reveled in the others.

Bibliophiles love to learn about upcoming books, especially from their favorite authors or on timely topics. The Millions has become know as the “go to” preview. “How THE MILLIONS’ Seasonal Previews Get Made with Sophia Stewart” offers an inside look at the process behind the preview.

The New Yorker is one hundred years old. “The New Yorker and the American Voice” offers an appraisal of the magazine’s contribution to American letters and tries to describe its distinctive voice.

You’ve seen the pictures of libraries with shelves extending beyond the reach of the tallest, accessed by a special ladder. Maybe some of us have dreamed of having such a library in our homes. “The Ascendance of the Book Ladder” gives us a history of this piece of hardware about which many of us have fantasized.

Every year I read a baseball book. I think I’ve found one for this year from this review of a biography of “The Banty, Blustering Genius of Earl Weaver.” I only wish he had managed in Cleveland!

Quote of the Week

Educator and author Mary Ellen Chase was born February 24, 1887. She made this statement to which I would personally attest:

“There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I just began reading Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club and love the premise of four sharp seniors in a retirement community who get together every Thursday to sift through the evidence of unsolved murders. Looks like there is great fun ahead, not only in this volume but those to follow (according to my daughter-in-law).

I hate throwing out old books (except in the case of mildew). I even find someone to give ARCs to. But I met my match when I discovered old software manuals from the 1990’s in the back of a cupboard. I couldn’t even foist them on my son who loves old computer operating systems and games. Alas, to the recycling bin they went!

Editing is behind the scenes work. Good editors take a “diamond in the rough” and polish it so that the writer shines through. I did a bit of that in my last job. I have a friend who does this work at a publishing house from which I often review books. I see his name in the acknowledgements of a number of worthwhile books. I hope we never outsource this work to AI. I can see his personal touch over and over in the authors he’s worked with. And from other books, I gather this is so with many editors.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: The Month in Reviews: February 2025

Tuesday: Paul Barnett, The Trials of Jesus

Wednesday: R. F. Kuang, Yellowface

Thursday: Michael A. Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology

Friday: William Kent Krueger, Heaven’s Keep

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for February 23-March 1, 2025!

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

The Weekly Wrap: February 16-22

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A Non-Partisan Space

If you are on social media, you will notice what a partisan space it has become. I’ve chosen not to go that way with my blog. Let me share with you a bit of why that is. First of all, the name of this blog is “Bob on Books.” My focus is on the good, the true, and the beautiful about books, reading, and life. My primary focus is reviewing books–a lot on theological subjects and a wide smattering of other genres and subjects. And while some have tried to turn books into a matter for partisan politics, I refuse to go there.

It is not that I don’t have political opinions. If you read me closely, you can probably figure that out. You will see there are subjects I care about, values I hold, and this is probably reflected at least to some extent in the books I review. Some are part of our partisan squabbling. But I tend to think that much of what I write about concern things that transcend party–or national boundaries.

And that’s another thing. While I live in the United States, I am amazed by the global character of my audience. The world of books is an international world. My pandemic experience was immeasurably richer because of Canadian Louise Penny. I’ve loved the mysteries of the “Queens of Crime” (Sayers, Christie, Allingham, and Marsh), three of whom are from the UK and one from New Zealand. Theology written by Latino, African, and Asian scholars have broadened my understanding of my faith beyond its Euro-American base. Focusing on American political squabbles just seems like bad manners.

Finally, there are so many already clamoring for this lane. I don’t think I have much to add. And the contentiousness of this lane would distract me from reading and writing about what I’ve read. Rather, I like Emily Dickinson’s aphorism: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” I hope the books I review, the things I write about, the ways I curate my own social media spaces do that. I write not so much to confront or argue as to explore the goods of life for which we were made and the better world for which we long. Thanks for joining me in that journey.

Five Articles Worth Reading

On a related note, Alan Jacobs would like us to hit “pause” on what he calls “relevance mongering.” In “All the Distant Mirrors” he suggests our instinct to find contemporary relevance in past works is bad manners. We fail to listen to what people are saying about their own time.

If you’ve ever talked to an indie bookseller, you know both how much they love that work and how they live on a financial precipice. “Can a Nonprofit Model Work for Bookstores?” explores ways to help booksellers with their mission while alleviating some of the financial pressures.

“Are you conscious? A conversation between Dawkins and ChatGPT” reproduces a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Chat GPT about whether it is conscious and has real feelings. The dialogue may make you think so even while Chat GPT denies this is the case.

Then there is something new for Jane Austen fans! ‘The Forgotten Writers Who Influenced Jane Austen” is a review of a new book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney. Romney, a rare book collector, tracked down and read all she could of the writers Jane Austen read.

Finally, James Parker, in a review of a new book on Robert Frost, writes about “When Robert Frost Was Bad.” It’s a fascinating article on Frost’s development as a poet and his character as a human being.

Quote of the Week

British-American poet W. H. Auden was born February 21, 1907. This statement by him has me pondering:

“Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.“

I think this recognizes that we can all understand the draw of evil, but when one is given over to evil, that person only expects evil of others and can’t comprehend goodness. What do you think?

Miscellaneous Musings

Plagiarism is the blackest of sins for writers and scholars. Yet it happens. I’ve just begun reading R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface. In what I’ve read so far, the narrator takes the unpublished work of a college friend and represents it as her own, justifying it by her editing and revisions of the work. I suspect she is going to come to great grief over this (don’t tell me, you who’ve read it) but I’m intrigued by the process of rationalization behind her plagiarism.

Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology by Michael A. Wilkinson is a theological monograph most will never pick up. I’ve been reveling in it for the careful and clear way he develops his argument. This may seem a stretch to some, but I find the same delight in this I did years ago reading John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Both take complex ideas and unpack them step by step, but not in a dry, dusty fashion, but rather in a spirit infused with love for the God of whom they write.

I’ve occasionally purchased used vinyl recordings from online sellers. I’ve found that they provide good and accurate information about the recording I’m considering. After I wrote an online review on my initial experience with Thriftbooks, several people reported problems they’ve had. One even thought I was Thriftbooks! I generally have been happy with purchases but occasionally have had problems with wrong items, different editions than I expected, condition of books, and one item that never shipped. They’ve been good when I’ve contacted them. But I would like to see them up their game where you know specifically what book, what edition, and what condition you are buying–and then you get what you thought you were ordering.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Various authors, Anchor of My Soul

Tuesday: Margery Allingham, Cargo of Eagles

Wednesday: Miranda Zapor Cruz, Faithful Politics

Thursday, Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light

Friday: David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for February 16-22, 2025!

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