Quotes

The Weekly Wrap: April 26-May 2

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: April 26-May 2

New Bookstores

“Independent Bookstore Day: Bookshop.org founder on how small retailers are taking on Amazon.” This Fast Company notes that since 2020, the number of members in the American Booksellers Association has grown from1,900 to 3,200.

I think there is something to this. Two nearby communities that have never had bookstores in my memory will have three bookstores by this summer. Escape Into Fiction opened in Powell, Ohio last fall. This summer two bookstores open just down the street from each other in downtown Worthington. Celestielle is scheduled to open May 22 and focuses on fantasy and romance. Then in July, The Whispering Page is scheduled to open, stocking new books of all genres and hosting used book swaps. Their Instagram page also advertises a cafe and bar.

Will they survive? That’s anyone’s guess. But it excites me that there are entrepreneurs who see this a good time to make a go of it. Increasingly, there is a conviction that the big online behemoth is not invincible. Bookshop.org has provided an online alternative to that behemoth that supports Indie stores, and, according to the Fast Company article, have already channeled $47 million to Indie stores.

What delights me about these stores they help to turn the town centers of these communities into more interesting places. And they are filling empty storefronts. They hark back to the time when we’d walk downtown rather than pile into a car to go to the mall. There is a movement of people are going analog and craving interaction with real people.

To me, all this seems a good thing.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Sometimes my “five articles” cluster around a theme. This week, they were just a potpourri of things that caught my attention.

Plough is one of my favorite sources of good writing. This week they posted “When Kierkegaard Got Cancelled.” It’s a fascinating study of how Kierkegaard responded to the attacks and cancelling he encountered.

I was disappointed several years when my one chance to see Bob Seger in concert was lost when he had health issues. He was one of my rock legends, representing the gritty rock of middle America. “The Lost Idealism of Heartland Rock” reviews “Won’t Back Down by Erin Osmon, which traces the progressive strain in artists like Seger, Tom Petty, and John Mellencamp.

Both the change from local businesses to big shopping centers and many of our rock songs assumed the ubiquitous presence of the automobile. “Life After Cars?” reviews a book by the same name that explores what a post-automobile landscape might be like.

His novel Lázár, has been on the German best seller lists for 29 weeks. It’s been compared to Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. And he is 22 years old. “A Very Old-Fashioned Novel Has Made a Star Out of a Very Young Writer” features the life and work of Nelio Biedermann.

Finally, one of the most prolific American diarists of the nineteenth century was George Templeton Strong. For example, he wrote four million words between 1835 and 1875. His diaries capture what life in New York was like during the Civil War. “Inside a Four-Million-Word Diary of 1860s New York” profiles Strong as well as offers resources if you want to read more of him.

Quote of the Week

In recent years I’ve become something of an advocate for poetry, even daring to read some on my Facebook page. Yusef Komunyakaa, who was born on April 29, 1947, captures something of the essence of the work of poets:

“Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.”

You can read more about his life at the Poetry Foundation.

Miscellaneous Musings

After thirteen years, I made a small tweak to the tagline on my web page, which was “Thoughts about books, reading, and life.” It now reads “Thoughts from a human on books, reading, and life.” Because it is increasingly common to get reviews from AI (which I think sometimes uses reviews I write!). I felt it time to affirm that the reviews on this page are 100 percent human written, based on the reading of whole books by a 100 percent human. Whether that’s better than AI, I’ll leave up to you.

I am an Inklings fan. But Leslie Baynes Interpretation and Imagination reveals that Lewis made scholarly mistakes like the rest of us. He trusted his memory too much when citing others and sometimes misread those he was critiquing. It seems that particularly when he engaged biblical criticism, he was prone to errors stemming from his lack of expertise and background in the field.

Reading Louis Markos’ From Aristotle to Christ challenged me that I had never read Aristotle. He recommended a basic edition, which should be arriving in a few days. Just another example of how reading one book leads to others!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars

Tuesday: Steven Garber, Hints of Hope

Wednesday: Betony Coons, The Unwinding Path

Thursday: Louis Markos, From Aristotle to Christ

Friday: Jane Austen, Emma

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for April 26-May 2.

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

The Weekly Wrap: April 19-25

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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.

The Weekly Wrap: April 12-18

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The Weekly Wrap: April 12-18

AI Fatigue

I came up with this phrase in writing this article, but it turns out that it is a real “thing.” Google’s “AI Overview (!) defines it as “the mental, emotional, and operational exhaustion resulting from the rapid, relentless influx of AI tools, news, and pressure to adopt artificial intelligence in the workplace.” My search turned up pages of articles on the phenomenon.

Within this definition, I think I’m able to locate my own fatigue. For me, it is the relentless news and discussion of AI in the world of books. I receive numerous newsletters, and instead of writing about books and the world of reading, they are writing about AI–reviews written by AI, books written by AI, the fear that writers will be replaced by AI, and the difficulty of detecting AI usage unless human developers and publishers are transparent. And the big element is the theft of intellectual property underneath all this. The work of humans. It needs to be talked about.

We also need to come to some solutions. Rules, tracking, and appropriate compensation of intellectual property. Transparency about AI content and blacklisting and withholding of payments for deception. I’d like to see an emblem used indicating a book or other written content is 100% human.

So why do I press for this? Frankly, I’m tired of all the AI stories (even though I’m posting one this week). I’m eager for us to get back to talking about books. Many of us read to engage with another human. And we often talk with other humans about what we read. We like to hear authors read their works. The world of books and reading is actually a highly social world. I also think it would be helpful to make it an AI-free world. Wouldn’t it be great if the world of books and reading could serve as a retreat for the AI fatigued?

Five Articles Worth Reading

John Cheever is back in the news. His daughter Susan has published a new book exploring the relationship between Cheever’s fiction and his own life. Rands Richards Cooper reviews it in “The Father Behind the Fiction.”

Another name in the news is Lena Dunham. Actually, I knew nothing of her until I learned she is a leading voice of young adulthood in these times. I learned much more about her in Sophie Gilbert’s “What Does Lena Dunham Want to Tell Us?,” a review of Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick.

Speaking of names, Andrew Lawler asks “Who Is Blake Whiting?” “Blake Whiting,” for whom no biography or CV exists published thirteen books on complex historical subjects in one week. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing publishes his work, yet they missed the lack of biography, and the fact that “Blake Whiting” exceeded their ten book a week limit. Of course, there is no Blake Whiting, but only Amazon knows who is behind this.

Another name I keep coming across is Iris Murdoch, novelist and philosopher. We often speak of “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” In “Iris Murdoch and the Metaphysics of the Good,” Matthew B. Crawford explores Murdoch’s thinking about “the good.”

Finally, many of us like to escape into fantasy to gain perspective on the world in which we live. “4 Great New Fantasy Books to Transport You to Bold New Worlds” introduced me to some fantasy writers I’ve not heard of before.

Quote of the Week

Thornton Wilder, born on April 17, 1897, offers a watchword for all of us:

“Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.”

Miscellaneous Musings

We are grieving the passing of my wife’s lifelong friend. They met when my wife was three–sixty nine years ago. She was a dedicated educator and reading advocate, working in our state’s Reading Recovery program for many years and teaching the children of children she’d had in classes. She fed my son’s love of reading and writing. And she typified the very best of public school education.

I’ve come to the end of Deb Gregory’s Spiritual Wayfinding. I had the delightful experience of finding my son’s name in the acknowledgements for a lesson on fractals, one of his loves. Deb used to live in our home town, but I am really curious how they crossed paths. A bit of a wayfinding project in itself. By the way, if you like to walk and care about spiritual life, the book creatively combines the two!

Lastly, I bit the bullet and ordered a new Kindle after Amazon’s email (and had it sitting at my door 6:30 the next morning). I’ll still use my old one to read the many books already loaded on it as long as it works. But I decided to go that route to avoid juggling multiple e-book accounts and different platforms, and to be ready when my old Kindle finally bricks. I really like reading on e-readers versus phones or tablets–easier on the old eyes.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: W. David Buschart & Ryan Tafilowski, Worth Doing

Tuesday: David J. Claassen, The Divine Profile

Wednesday: Deborah Gregory, Spiritual Wayfinding

Thursday: Richard Osman, The Bullet That Missed

Friday: Tom Holland, Dominion

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for April 12-18.

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

The Weekly Wrap: April 5-11

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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 15-21

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
woman in white crew neck t shirt sitting on chair
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

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.