On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books by karen swallow prior brazos, 272 pages, $19.99 In On Reading Well, Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior sets forth a thoughtful, nuanced vision of the relationship between morality and literature. This vision . . . . Continue Reading »
The village idiot of the shtetl of Frampol was offered the job of waiting at the village gates to greet the arrival of the Messiah. “The pay isn’t great,” he was told, “but the work is steady.” The same might be said about the conditions of the bookish life: low pay but steady . . . . Continue Reading »
Theodore Dreiser is ranked among our great authors; he was a syllabus mainstay for as polished a master as Saul Bellow. Yet he is neither among the great English-language prose stylists nor a writer of nuanced or profound moral vision. His idea of human life was crudely mechanical and deterministic. . . . . Continue Reading »
With our Shakespeare-in-a-year plan, you can make 2018 the year you finally get around to reading more of the Bard. Continue Reading »
Recent evidence suggests print reading is on the rise, while e-book sales are dropping. Continue Reading »
I’ve been tracking youth reading habits and test scores for a long time, but I’ve never asked this question: What becomes of a faith that places a book at the center of worship if the rising generation doesn’t read? I don’t mean illiteracy. The problem is what reading researchers . . . . Continue Reading »
In honor of classic Catholic education, some summer reading possibilities. Continue Reading »
The ancient monks’ most glorious libraries contained less information than the average smartphone. But their habits of receptivity and assimilation can empower us to lift our gaze from our screens ennobled rather than enslaved. Continue Reading »
I thought it would be little more than a pleasure read, a short break before I got into the serious stuff, but soon I found that my expectations, and my reading habits, were being re-written. Continue Reading »
Last year I posted in this space a reading plan of my own devising for working through all of Shakespeare's works. I made some work for myself when I created this plan, because I settled on reading plays Monday through Friday, and sonnets and other poems on weekends. Thus it needs annual . . . . Continue Reading »
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