Library of America

The Weekly Wrap: April 19-25

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The Weekly Wrap: April 19-25

Something Different

Dropped by the local Barnes & Noble yesterday. On one of the front tables featuring fiction, I noticed Leif Enger‘s I Cheerfully Refuse. First it was the artful cover and then this description on the back cover that caught my attention:

“Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea.”

I bought the book. But I don’t usually buy books this way. Often I buy something I’ve heard of, seen reviewed, or has been recommended. Or I buy books by an author I like or a topic I find interesting. However, this book checked none of those boxes.

So what’s going on? The cover did stand out as something of a departure from other contemporary fiction, so I noticed it. Also, I love quests. And I’ve had good luck with Minnesota authors. William Kent Krueger is a favorite. Enger is also a former journalist, a plus in my book as someone who may know how to write with economy.

I like the serendipity of shopping in a bookstore. You never know what you’ll find. And now, I’ll probably hear of Leif Enger wherever I turn! Look for my review to see if I like him!

Five Articles Worth Reading

This week’s articles all deal in some way with the upcoming 250th birthday of the United States. Three focus on the yet-to-be healed wounds of slavery and race that are an important part of our history.

Firstly, “Mother Emanuel’s Long Struggle” reviews a book on one of the oldest Black congregations, in Charleston, SC, the site of Dylann Roof’s ruthless gunning down of nine Bible study participants, and the forgiveness that followed. However the book traces a far more complex history of this congregation over 200 years.

Thomas S. Kidd, a historian, invites us to take a hard look at American slave trade in “Three History Books on the US Slave Trade.” One of these is even available for free.

Sometimes, historical fiction offers a unique lens for historical insight. In “The Barbarism of Yesteryear,” Jonathan Russell Clark reviews Max Watman’s Tomorrow, the War, an account of the antebellum slave experience in the lead up to the Civil War.


Beverly Gage recently published This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History. In “13 Books on American History That Mapped Out Beverly Gage’s Travelogue,” Gage recommends thirteen books, one for each chapter of her book, taking the reader on a journey from George Washington to Walt Disney.

Finally, part of our history is the unique canon of American literature from the past 250 years and more. The Library of America set out a number of years ago to publish quality editions of some of the best that Americans have thought and written. In “How Library of America Helped Shape the Modern American Literary Canon,” Max Rudin, current president and publisher of the Library of America discusses its mission. I’m proud to say I have a bookcase full of these editions!

Quote of the Week

Philosopher Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724. He formulated an ethical maxim simple and yet profound in its implications, often referred to as “The Categorical Imperative”:

“Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.”

Miscellaneous Musings

There has been a lot of concern about the literacy of our youth, particularly at the fourth grade level. “Another Way to Boost Fourth Grade Reading Scores? Preschool” argues for the effectiveness of Pre-K education to boost these score. Currently, however, we are shifting the burden of funding these programs in the U.S. to the states. It remains to be seen how this will work out across the country. It seems, though, that citizen involvement at the local level could make a huge difference.

Reading Jane Austen’s Emma, I wonder if Emma will have an epiphany of how condescending she is. It is a good study in how we fail to see ourselves as we are seen by others, in this case, Austen’s readers.

A City on Mars portrays the challenges of life on other planets. Mars is the only realistic possibility, with our Moon as a training ground. But the challenges are substantial to keep them from quickly or more slowly killing us. Let’s put it simply: for the next few centuries, except for very few, there is no Planet B. So, we better take care of this one.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Andrew T. LePeau, She Teaches Me Still

Tuesday: Laura Baghdassarian Murray, Becoming A Person of Welcome

Wednesday: Dallas Willard, The Renovation of the Heart

Thursday: Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass eds., Practicing Theology

Friday: The Month in Review: April 2026

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for April 19-25.

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

Figuring Out How to Prune a Library

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The libraries of booklovers are like the forsythia around my home. They grow like crazy and require regular and sometimes drastic prunings or they become a total mess and take over the house! That’s something I’m realizing as I look at the stacks of books in different rooms of the house and the fact that every bookshelf we have is crammed full. I’ve started pruning and in the next years probably need to set out in earnest if I don’t want to leave a huge job to my son.  He has enough books of his own–thanks in no small measure to our rampant bibliophilia!

So how does one figure out what books to “prune”? Here are some of the thoughts that are beginning to form for me and I would love to hear from others who have gone through the same process:

1. If I haven’t touched, or even thought of it in the last five years, it is a likely candidate for pruning.

2. If the information in it is out of date, or the discussion (if a book of non-fiction) is clearly no longer relevant, then it goes on the discard pile. I think I still have a few textbooks that would readily qualify.

3. If I say, “reading that once” was more than enough–if I know that this is not a book I’d read again or reference, why am I keeping it? A recent book I read on the European Union fits this category and is on the pile to go to Half Price Books.

4. If it is a book that I think could be of help to a friend (and they welcome this!), then it is far better that it not collect dust in my house!

5. In some cases, there are books that hold special memories, and these I would want to go to those who might share those memories–best to make those decisions when we can!

A friend of mine is going through this process and suggested starting with the idea of deciding what books to keep. I admit, there is more than a little of the hoarder in me that would be tempted to say, “I don’t want to lose any of my friends–I want them all around me!” But if I had to use that criterion, here are some of the things that would (and likely will) guide me:

1. Is it a book that I have, or am likely to re-read because there are still undiscovered depths to explore? Obviously for me, the Bible (although not all the copies I have in my home) would qualify as would almost anything written by Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien (the father), Augustine, Shakespeare, J I Packer, Calvin, or more contemporary writers including Steinbeck, Paton, Wendell Berry, Wallace Stegner. That’s not an exhaustive list but suggestive. Oh, and I would add anything by or about Winston Churchill! And there are a few historians I might re-read, like Manchester, Tuchman, and McCullough.

2. I would keep reference books I actually use–commentaries and dictionaries in particular. Even here, a number of these works have been digitized and it may make sense to donate print copies to theological students or others who might benefit. I need to think about that.

3. For this time at least, I would keep our Library of America volumes, which include a number of classic American historians and writers, and probably the set of Balzac novels I inherited from my mother who loved these as a child. And these I would want to find a good home some day.

Pruning a library really reminds me of my limits and mortality. There is so much more I would love to explore than I have life to explore it! The t-shirt my son gave me many years ago is true: “So many books, so little time!” One of the things I like about the idea of eternity in the new creation is the thought that this truly affords adequate time to explore not only the infinite wonders of God but all the things of God’s cosmos and perhaps many of the personages I’ve known only through their writing. Perhaps this is what the writer of Ecclesiastes was getting at in writing, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (NIV)

I’d love to hear how others have thought about library pruning. And if you believe in something beyond this life, do you think there will be books, libraries, or something better?