Curated literary articles

The Weekly Wrap: September 7-13

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments
woman in white crew neck t shirt in a bookstore wrapping books
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: September 7-13

Reading and Attention

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

These words of Mary Oliver are watchwords for my life. Arlo Guthrie, in the song “Prologue” touched on this same idea when he asked:

“Who’ll be awake when the master returns
Who will be lost in their dreams“

Attention, or attentiveness has increasingly impressed me as one of the most important qualities we need to possess, besides love, to live well. Whether paying attention to what one’s spouse, or another is saying to us, giving proper attention to the details that make for excellence in our work, or staying awake for the master’s return–attentiveness matters.

Reading both requires attention and can make us attentive. Exploring the inner world of a character trains us in empathy, a particular form of attentiveness. Sometimes, a character shines a light on our own moral failures, or inspires us to moral excellence. Then there are those books that open our eyes to a larger vision of the fabric of life and the grand story of which we are a part.

Finally, I think of the books that waken me to the rising temperature of the water in which I swim. Two examples for me are Shoshana’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny (of course, if I had read Hannah Arendt earlier, these books would have been superfluous!).

To be lost in dreams may be pleasant while being awake may mean facing a nightmare. But I’d rather be fully alive and trust that I’ll be given the wherewithal to meet whatever life serves up. And books will be among my companions on that journey

Five Articles Worth Reading

“Inarguably, the platform is the emerging locus of the literary world, and may swallow it completely in the next five years.” Ross Barkan makes this contention about Substack (on Substack) in “The Love Affairs of Prestige.” He argues that Substack newsletter reviews of books often get more attention than print reviews in literary magazines. I subscribe to a number of Substack writers and have posted some here. And it has me thinking about making some kind of move in this direction.

Speaking of Substack, Anne Trubek picks up the thread of discussion on the low rates of reading in “How to Read More.” She offers a number of practical tips including the fact that you can download 10 percent of an e-book for free on Amazon. That’s usually enough to tell you if it’s worth plunking down good money.

Sarah Chihaya review Susan Choi’s new Flashlight in “Illuminations.” Many of you will remember her from her 2019 Trust Exercise. Flashlight has been longlisted for a National Book Award in Fiction for 2025.

Pan by Michael Clune explores in fiction the very real experience of extreme anxiety that comes in the form of panic attacks. Scott Stossel review the book in “Panic Attacks and the Meaning of Life.”

Finally, on the 50th anniversary of Salem’s Lot, Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King, and a horror novelist as well, explains what made the novel so terrifying, and what it was like being Stephen King’s son in the wake of that book. The New York Times article, “So You Think Stephen King Has Scared You? Try Being His Son,” is paywall-free.

Quote of the Week

Novelist D.H. Lawrence, born September 11, 1885, wrote:

“I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”

That’s a personal aspiration I embrace!

Miscellaneous Musings

When I worked in campus ministry, I loved times of open questions from students. It seems the very best of what our universities and our democracy is about, so I was grieved to learn of the murder of Charlie Kirk in the midst of such a dialogue. I grieve for his wife and children. Words, not weapons. Ballots, not bullets. I know its complicated and I have friends whose lives were threatened because of Kirk who find it more difficult to grieve. Amid my grief, and all our complicated feelings, I am more deeply convinced of the importance of free speech and a free press, including book publishing without censorship or reprisals for anyone. It is the speech of freedom.

It is book award season and my newsfeed has been flooded with longlists, shortlists, and award announcements. I’m curious how widely many of these books are read. Here are the longlists announced so far for the National Book Awards. I’d love to know how many readers have heard of and how many they’ve read.

I don’t need a book club to get me to read. But I’m part of an online group that discusses religious books each Thursday. Currently, we are reading The Message of Psalms by Walter Brueggemann. It’s rich, and our discussions are “iron sharpening iron.” I’m grateful for this group that lasted through the pandemic and beyond.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Michelle Van Loon, Downsizing

Tuesday: Dorothy L. Sayers, Hangman’s Holiday

Wednesday: R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

Thursday: J. Daniel Hays, The Ichthus Christogram and Other Early Christian Symbols

Friday: Jeff Crosby, World of Wonders

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for September 7-13.

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

The Weekly Wrap: August 31-September 6

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
person holding brown paper bag
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: August 31-September 6

Reading and Spirituality

I see a lot of memes and quotes from bibliophiles. Sometimes I think that there is a religion of bibliophilia. Libraries are our temples and bookstores our local places of assembly. And books are a way of life. I fear I sometimes proselytize for that faith.

I’ve recently picked up Jeff Crosby’s new World of Wonders, subtitled “a spirituality of reading.” He reminds me that there is a difference between reading as one’s spirituality and how reading might be part of a more encompassing spirituality.

It’s interesting that sacred texts ground many of our major religions. We not only experience the spiritual but understood it through the reading of texts. My own faith, Christianity considers words quite important. God speaks the cosmos into existence. And One who was the Incarnate Word accomplishes our salvation.

Therefore, it is not much of a leap to see reading as something that discloses a “world of wonders.” Reading helps me make sense of the world as well as imagine what could be. Reading has helped me to probe the ineffable and challenged me with the practical implications of loving God and neighborhood. Through biographies, I’ve been mentored by people I’ve never met.

Although I could go on, I’ll just say reading is one of the practices that shapes my spiritual life. However it is not my spiritual life. Rather, reading provides signposts and trail blazes for the journey. And reading captures and holds my imagination in hope amid the world’s bleakness.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Agnes Callard has led a revival of sorts in interest in Socratic philosophy. Mary Townsend reviews Open Socrates, Callard’s latest book in “Agnes Callard’s Insistent Answers to Life’s Deepest Questions.”

But is there a hubris in our flights of philosophy, particularly when we act with abusive superiority over other creatures? William Egginton reviews Christine Webb’s The Arrogant Ape in “Think You’re at the Top of the Food Chain? Think Again.” He also pushes back on her critique of “human exceptionalism.”

Lauren Grodstein is a novelist whose fiction includes a novel set in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. In “What I Learned From the Georgia Protests” she reflects on how Georgians defense of democracy challenged her.

‘Dark academia” is a thing, I’m learning. “Dark Academia Grows Up” uses R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis to explore these questions; “What is the magic that scholars find in the academy?… What are the wrongs they’re asked to quietly endure—the things that make academia, so to speak, dark? And is the magic worth the darkness?”

Finally, Nick Burns contends “AI Isn’t Biased Enough.” While AI has biased based on the material used to train it, AI has no intellectual commitments, no personal biases. It responds sympathetically, even agreeably to whoever engages it–fascist or social progressive. Humans don’t do that, which Burns argues is a good thing.

Quote of the Week

Novelist Frank Yerby, born September 5, 1916, observed:

“Maturity is reached the day we don’t need to be lied to about anything.”

If he’s right, the quote suggests to me that some may never reach maturity!

Miscellaneous Musings

I haven’t read any Dorothy L. Sayers for several years. But recently I picked up a collection of short stories by her featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Montague Egg. As a result, the stories remind me of both what an exquisite writer Sayers is, and how delightful Wimsey and Egg are as characters!

My son picked up the first of Martha Wells Murderbot series, and all of a sudden I am hearing how good this series is. This piques my interest!

Finally, Buckeye dropped this week and everyone seems astir about this novel set in small town Ohio. So, I picked up a copy to see how true to life it is for this native Buckeye!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: John H. Walton with J. Harvey Walton, New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis

Tuesday: Clemency Burton-Hill, Year of Wonder

Wednesday: Janet Kellogg Ray, The God of Monkey Science

Thursday: Miroslav Volf, The Cost of Ambition

Friday: Andrew J. Bauman, Safe Church

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 31-September 6

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

The Weekly Wrap: August 24-30

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
person holding brown paper bag
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: August 24-30

Old Reviews

Earlier this month I marked twelve years of blogging. Consequently, I’ve written a lot, and its all still here! This is my 3,846th post. Over the 12 years my posts have been viewed over two million times.

I don’t often think about what I was writing about in 2015. But I’ve been going back through my old posts, aware that there are a number of broken links. And I’ve been staggered by how many of those links I am finding.

The saddest experience is discovering bookstores that I wrote about that have closed (on the other hand, I wrote about Barnes & Noble when it looked like it was in trouble). The second saddest thing is to discover books that I reviewed, some newly published at the time, now out of print.

It makes me wonder about the value of reviewing. Why bother when a number of these books will go out of print within ten years?

Part of the answer is that reviews matter most close to the time of publication, when authors and publishers are launching the book. Yet a number of books have caught on over time by word of mouth. When I review backlist books, I’m part of that chain.

Another part of the answer is that past reviews serve as a reference point in the discussion of works that continue to have a readership. I consult other reviews of backlist books when I write mine and try to add to the discussion.

In the end, I can live with reviews being ephemeral. The book is the thing. I love pointing people to books I thought worth reviewing and encouraging a reading culture. In the end, it really doesn’t matter where they heard about the book if they profited from it.

Five Articles Worth Reading

One of the big book launches of the week is R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, in which two graduates go to Hell to retrieve the soul of their Ph.D. advisor. “In ‘Katabasis,’ R.F. Kuang Takes Readers to Hell“, is Kiersten White’s take for The New York Times

This is hardly the first time a descent into Hell has been the subject of a literary work. Perhaps the most famous is Dante’s Divine Comedy. In “Digesting Dante” Richard Hughes Gibson traces the history of the work’s reception and shows that its success was not always a given.

Another aspect of Katabasis is that the students are studying “Magick.” Richard Cytowic, in “When Your Father Is a Magician, What Do You Believe?” describes the influence growing up with a real-life magician had on him.

For some of us, reading Moby Dick was a kind of descent into Hell, particularly if we had to read it in high school. Caleb Crain describes what fresh insight came when he read the book when he was Ahab’s age in “Another cruise.”

Finally, on a lighter note, many of us have read Shakespeare’s plays or seen them performed in other venues. Through “Take a Virtual Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London” you can get a 360 view of the theatre and see a clip from Julius Caesar, staged in the theatre.

Quote of the Week

Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. made this observation that I hope to fulfill in serving as a guest preacher in my church;

“Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Katabasis raises an interesting question. For what would you forfeit thirty years of your life? That is the price of admission for entering Hell.

I had one of my rare experiences weekly of walking out of a bookstore bookless. I went to Barnes & Noble to check off their 50% off hardcovers sale. A few near misses but nothing that said “buy me.” I was probably aware of the queue of books in my TBR pile.

For the theologically oriented, Michael J. Gorman’s I Corinthians is one of the best recent commentaries I’ve read. His concluding reflections and questions in each section of the commentary combined with his clear exegesis make this a great commentary that brings knowledge and devotion together. I’ll be reviewing it next Friday. Speaking of which…

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: The Month in Reviews: August 2025

Tuesday: Malcolm Foley, The Anti-Greed Gospel

Wednesday: Christopher Sadowitz & Jim Harries eds., Paul Planted, Apollos Watered, but God

Thursday: John W. Miller, The Last Manager

Friday: Michael J. Gorman, 1 Corinthians

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 24-30!

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

The Weekly Wrap: August 17-23

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments
person holding brown paper bag
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: August 17-23

An Alarming Decline

The American Time Use Study came out and it contributes to the evidence of a decline in reading. Between 2003 and 2023, the study indicated that the number of adults who read for leisure dropped from nearly 40 percent to 16 percent. Only 2 percent of adults read to children. The only encouraging statistics was that the time for those who do read for leisure was up from an hour and 23 minutes to an hour and 37 minutes. And those increased book sales during COVID? It turns out, this was not because of more readers but readers buying more books.

So who reads? The highest percentage of readers are found among women who identify as white, are older, more educated, have greater family wealth, live in cities and do not have a disability that would hinder reader. That maps well with the demographics I see at Bob on Books.

So what does this mean for our society? What do we lose when less of us read longer form stories and arguments? Will we become more gullible to the emotional, simplistic appeal? And is that a cultural good?

Finally, I wonder how we change such a culture. I don’t think we can shame people into reading more books. I wonder if other media could offer book tie-ins as a way to pursue something that interested a viewer or listener. But for children, I think there is no substitute for read-alouds, especially in family settings. I’m saddened that many parents are missing the delicious experience of reading together with their children. Also, children like to imitate parents, and so they will tend to read when they see mom and dad reading. Why not do that at least one night a week instead of screen time?

Five Articles Worth Reading

Beverly Gage reminds us that concerns about anti-intellectualism, especially with regard to higher education is not new in “The American University Is in Crisis. Not for the First Time.“

However, our libraries are one bulwark against intellectual decline. “How Libraries Stand the Test of Time” traces the history and continuing evolution of libraries in our digital age.

Having worked in college ministry at Ohio State, I learned of “Origins” an e-zine of historical studies. “James Baldwin and the Atlanta Child Murders” chronicles in text and images Baldwin’s conclusions of the underlying causes behind the murder that constituted his las book, The Evidence of Things not Seen.

Brian Phillips offers a spirited defense of the em dash–that punctuation mark I just used–in “Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes—Please.” He argues that people have been attributing the em dash to AI-produced work when it has been a time honored punctuation mark used by writers. And he argues that it likely appears in AI works trained on the output of those writers.

Lastly, I’ve noticed the chorus of cicadas on my evening walks in recent weeks. Little did I know that those choruses inspired ancient poets to write odes to this most unusual creature. Natalie Zarrelli offers an account of this in “‘O, Shrill-Voiced Insect’: The Cicada Poems of Ancient Greece.”

Quote of the Week

While thinking about the decline of reading, I came across this quote from Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, born August 22, 1920.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

I’ll leave it you to decide if you think Bradbury was right.

Miscellaneous Musings

There seems to be a lot of buzz about R.F. Kuang’s book, Katabasis, just about to drop next week. I’m intrigued by a story set in a graduate program, given that I worked with graduate students for many years. Just got a note that my pre-ordered copy is shipping.

After reviewing Ron Chernow’s 1000+ page Mark Twain, I indulged in an enjoyable change of pace in reviewing a delightful 32 page illustrated children’s book, Charlie Can’t Sleep!, a wonderful book for anyone afraid to fall asleep.

Jeff Crosby’s World of Wonders, a book I’ve long-awaited arrived this week. Jeff writes about reading for spiritual growth, a passion of mine. There is more to spiritual life than reading, but the most insightful writers I’ve read on the spiritual life all have one thing in common. They read.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Kevin Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics

Tuesday: Ali Smith, Gliff

Wednesday: Wafik W. Wahba, Global Christianity and Islam

Thursday: J.R.R. Toilkien (translator), Christopher Tolkien (editor), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo

Friday: Tracey Gee, The Magic of Knowing What You Want

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 17-23!

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

The Weekly Wrap: August 10-16

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
person holding brown paper bag
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: August 10-16

Reading Like Terry Gross

I’m a very different reader than Terry Gross, who has interviewed hundreds of authors on her Fresh Air program. She recently dropped a video on Facebook describing her process. Our biggest difference is that she destroys her books and I don’t. The video shows a shelf of her books with probably a third of the pages dog-eared. She dog-ears a page with quotes or ideas she wants to remember, which she circles. Gross dog-ears the bottom of pages she wants to use in her introduction. She notes key themes of the book on the frontispiece. I sell many books after she reviews them. She obviously doesn’t.

We do have some things in common. We both read the books we are reviewing or discussing in interviews. I don’t have the luxury of a staff to do this for me, but Gross reads the books herself. I read any book I review beginning to end. And I also pay attention to acknowledgements and prologues. They often set out what the author is trying to do. I’m always thinking as I read–“are they succeeding in their aim?”.

Where we differ is that I may bookmark or use a post-it note for quotes. I keep up a mental dialogue with the plot or argument. Because I re-sell many books, I don’t mark them up. And because I do daily blog posts rather than longer interviews, I try to keep my reviews between 500 and 1000 words. I’d be tempted, I think, to go much longer with Gross’s method.

However, Gross is a master at the craft and it never hurts to learn from a master!

Five Articles Worth Reading

Most of us think of MIT as a center of technology. However, this week’s Atlantic includes an article from a professor, Joshua Bennett, on “Why So Many MIT Students Are Writing Poetry.” And it’s not even for a class!

C.S. Lewis was no fan of existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whose writing he described as  “walking in sawdust.” Nevertheless, James Como argues that there is a congruency between the two of them in “On His Existential Way.” 

Most of us have lived our whole lives under the shadow of the atom bomb. For example, I was born on the somber anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Thus, on the recent eightieth anniversary of that bombing, Peter Hitchens article, “The Empire of the Atom” seems appropriate.

When you think of road trip books, does Jack Kerouac’s On the Road come to mind? I’ll be honest and say I’m not a fan. Thankfully, there are some other road trip books that are better. Here are “18 Great Road Trip Books That Aren’t ‘On the Road’“.

We bibliophiles are lovers of words. The only thing that could be better is a list of words about bibliophiles. And that’s what we have in “22 Perfect Words About Books and Reading.”

Quote of the Week

I loved this “pungent” insight from poet Robert Southey, born August 12, 1774.

“If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams – the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

Miscellaneous Musings

This week, I reviewed a theological memoir by Gerhard Lohfink, a book he completed shortly before his death in 2024. In short, I loved his testimony about his belief in God and how he sought to live his scholarship. As a result, I ordered a couple more of his books, something I reserve for authors I really love.

Terry Gross also mentioned she prefers books under 300 pages, which she thinks is enough for any author to say his or her piece. She notes, interviewers have to sleep too! I laughed, because I had just finished Ron Chernow’s 1000+ page account of Mark Twain. I know he writes really long books, but I think this could have been shorter.

Finally, I’ve been delighting in J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If you ever wanted a crash course in chivalry, it’s all here. He even resists seduction by his host’s wife three times without turning her into “the woman scorned.”

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Tuesday: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Wednesday: Regin V. Cates, The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have

Thursday: Ron Chernow, Mark Twain

Friday: Rachel Joy Welcher, Charlie Can’t Sleep!

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 10-16!

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

The Weekly Wrap: August 3-9

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
person holding brown paper bag
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: August 3-9

Readers

What do Italo Calvino and Kevin Vanhoozer have in common? One was an Italian novelist. The other is a theologian who focuses on hermeneutics, the discipline of biblical interpretation. I am reading both right now and one of their shared concerns is readers.

I’m reading Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler, a novel about a reader who reads the first chapter of ten novels while developing a relationship with a woman, Ludmilla. However, the narrator directly addresses the reader between the stories, discussing how we read and the ‘you” he addresses becomes a part of the story.

Vanhoozer’s concern is different. He considers various reading strategies with which we approach reading the Bible. Behind all this, Vanhoozer explores what it means to believe that through scripture, God addresses us, and what this means for reading.

What strikes me is that most of the time, readers, I think, feel like bit players in the scheme of books, authors, publishers, the book trade, and libraries. Yet the reality is that none of this would exist apart from the reader.

We read for many reasons from necessity at school or work to diversion to illumination. But one thing all have in common is attention. Readers are people who fend off distraction to open their minds to another. At our best, we lay aside our preconceptions as best we can to understand what they author is trying to give us in his or her words. Then we ponder that, comparing it to and fitting into our experience and understanding.

If nothing else, it strikes me that we engage in quite a wonderful thing every time we pick up a book and read. We honor the writer, and all those who labored to bring us the book, by giving these words, and the meaning they convey, access to our inner lives. And that is no small thing.

Five Articles Worth Reading

In “The Kafka Challenge,” Paul Reitter considers the challenges of translating Franz Kafka’s works. Indeed, he invokes George Steiner’s idea of untranslatability. Some things cannot be fully conveyed from one language to another.

Yet translating Kafka may be important for understanding our present time in the U.S. So contends Sasha Abramsky in “We’ve Officially Entered Kafka’s America” as he considers the apprehension of a Libyan refugee who legally entered the country fifteen years ago. What is chilling is how difficult, if impossible, it is to gain the release of detainees even when it is shown they were wrongfully detained, due to quotas that must be met.

The year 2012 was the peak year globally for live births, with rates falling in many countries. And in many countries, less than two children for each two adults are being born. “After the Spike: What Slow and Steady Depopulation Means For the World” considers the implication of these population trends.

I’ll admit it. I’m partial to Ohio authors. Zane Grey wrote a series of Western novels, the most famous of which was Riders of the Purple Sage. His real first name was Pearl. In addition to harking back to his home town of Zanesville, Zane just seems a better name for a writer of Westerns. What I didn’t know is that a fishing expedition off the coast of Australia lat in life endeared him to Australians and may have inspired Ernest Hemingway. Read about it in “Why is a cowboy writer from Ohio venerated in a small Aussie beach town? The incredible story of Zane Grey.”

Finally, imagine cleaning out a home library and finding a rare first edition of The Hobbit. “A Rare Copy of ‘The Hobbit’ Is Found on an Unassuming Shelf” recounts how that happened in a home in Bristol, England, and how much this find may end up being worth.

Quote of the Week

Poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and I share a birthday, August 6. He made this trenchant observation, so relevant in our “post truth” era:

“A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.”

I wonder if we still believe that.

Miscellaneous Musings

If romance fiction is among your loves, today is Bookstore Romance Day at your nearest independent bookstore. Now you have that excuse to go to the bookstore (as if you needed one).

One of the nicest birthday greetings I received on my Facebook profile came from a publicist at one of the publishers for which I regularly review books. She wrote, “Happy birthday to one of my favorite book lovers! Hope you have a great day!” I did, and I would add, she is one of my favorite publicists.

A former colleague, Tracy Gee, recently published The Magic of Knowing What You Want. She asks a question we rarely ask ourselves “What do you want?” I found that an important question in my own vocational journey and I’m enjoying how she unpacks figuring that out.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: John D. Wilsey, Religious Freedom

Tuesday: Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

Wednesday: Meryl Herr, When Work Hurts

Thursday: Michael Innes, What Happened at Hazelwood

Friday: Gerhard Lohfink, Why I Believe in God

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 3-9!

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