The Weekly Wrap: March 9-15

March 15, 2025March 14, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

woman in white crew neck t shirt in a bookstore wrapping books — Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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 Sha k espeare?” 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

Books I Read Too Soon

March 25, 2015March 23, 2015 / rtrube54 / 14 Comments

Book Riot recently posted an article titled Books We Read Too Soon. This reminded me of something I’ve often contended, that some of the books we read in high school were books for which we just did not have enough life experience. Four books came to mind as I reflected on what I would include in such a list.

The first was one mentioned by the Book Riot folks. The Great Gatsby just didn’t connect with its portrayal of rich decadence. As a working class kid, I just didn’t get what the problem was with these folks who had so much money. After the decadence of the Nineties, it might have made sense.

The second was A Tale of Two Cities. At the time, reading it was “the worst of times”. It seemed to go on forever, through all the turmoil of the French Revolution, the rivalry of Darnay and Carton, and various labyrinthine maneuverings. By the end, I don’t think I really cared who got guillotined.

The third book was Anna Karenina. I knew it was about her illicit love affairs but I was probably as occupied as anything with keeping all the names straight. And it was even longer than A Tale of Two Cities! It did awaken me to the double standard between men and women at a time women of my generation were talking of women’s liberation.

The last book was The Scarlet Letter. Again, there is a plot that explores the double standard of sexual dalliances. Hester Prynne bears her punishment in noble silence while Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale bears quite a different burden. I probably wondered at times in high school about all these books with messed up affections. Then I grew up and saw it in real life, and sadly saw numerous clergy scandals, and realized that Hawthorne knew what he was talking about.

Obviously I gained something from each of these books, yet I suspect far less than my English teachers were hoping for. What occurred to me as I considered this short list was that I’ve not re-read a single one of these books! I’ve read most of Dickens other works as well as much of Tolstoy. All of these I read after college, and most recently Tolstoy’s Resurrection. No one seems to write about sin and redemption like Tolstoy, and Dickens portrayals of the foibles and pretensions of human beings are a delight to explore.

I find myself wondering if I should go back and give my “books read too soon” a second chance. I suspect that it is those high school memories that cause me to hold back, and maybe all those comments of my peers who went through the same thing. The works like these that I discovered on my own did not let me down. Perhaps these won’t either.

Can you think of books you’ve read too soon? Have you gone back to them, and if so, what was your experience of re-reading?

[Note: These were the covers of the editions I read!]

Review: Barnaby Rudge

August 16, 2013May 22, 2021 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

If you are new to Charles Dickens, this is not the book to start with! I found this to be the ‘darkest’ Dickens I’ve read. I also wasn’t always sure that this novel was ‘working’. Dickens mixes a mystery (who killed Emma Haredale’s father and the gardener Rudge, Barnaby’s father?) and an exploration of the dangers of the mob in the Lord George Gordon riots of 1780 (these really occurred and Dickens account follows the actual course of events quite closely). The title character, who is mentally impaired, gets caught up in these riots despite his mother’s efforts, and is imprisoned and sentenced to the gibbet.

The account of the riots, instigated as a result of newly granted rights for Catholics in England, chronicle what can happen when rhetoric gets out of hand and fuels the discontents of a mob. Not only were many homes and chapels burned, but many of the rioters themselves died, not only at the hands of soldiers but even from fire and alcoholic poisoning. The novel is a warning of the dangers of incendiary rhetoric.

Of course, we have the delightful mix of Dickens characters and secondary plots around quarrels, romances and the like. We have salt-of-the-earth Gabriel Varden, his shrewish wife and maid, their spoiled daughter Dolly, the slow and steady innkeeper John Willet and his son Joe who shakes off the father’s control to go to be a soldier. There is the abandoned figure of Hugh, the threatening centaur, who like Samson lives by his appetites. There is the stalwart Haredale and his rival in love Chester. And there is the ridiculous Simon Tappertit, Varden’s apprentice and self-styled revolutionary.

So I would conclude, Dickens fans will enjoy this book but this is not the book that will result in one becoming a fan of Dickens. I would encourage beginning instead with Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, or Nicholas Nickleby.