Book of the Week: The Art of Fiction
Title: The Art of Fiction – Notes on Craft For Young Writers Author: John Gardner Publisher: Random House Buy a copy Quick Thoughts: St. Teresa of Avila has said that ”words lead to deeds…they prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.” And contemporary novelist and essayist William Kittredge, when advising [...]
Book of the Week: Eliot and His Age
Title: Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century Author: Russell Kirk Publisher: ISI Books Quicks Thoughts: “The past half-century has been Eliot’s Age…as once there was an Age of Dryden or an Age of Johnson,” Russell Kirk asserts in this now-classic literary biography. While critics agree that Eliot’s prominence [...]
Waiting For Superman: A Review for Christian Educators
This guest post is by Dr. Christopher A Perrin, founder of Classical Academic Press and director of The Classical School Roundtable * * * * It is hard to watch Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman without leaning into the screen with anticipation and hope, only to droop with disappointment, yes even despair. It is [...]
Book of the Week: Doomed Bourgeois In Love
Title: Doomed Bourgeois In Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stilman Author: Mark C. Henrie (editor) Publisher: ISI Books Our Thoughts: I have heard it said that Whit Stillman is the WASP Woody Allen. I take that to mean that he tells fast-talking, dialogue driven morality films about manners, class, and the fear of [...]
Book of the Week: Bringing It To the Table
Title: Bringing It To the Table: On Farming & Food Author: Wendell Berry (edited by Michael Pollan) Published by: Counterpoint (2009) Our Thoughts: Long-time friends of the CiRCE Institute already know of our affection and admiration for the great Wendell Berry, a man whose canon of work includes some of the best novels of [...]
Book of the Week: Beauty Will Save the World
Title: Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human In An Ideological Age Author: Gregory Wolfe Published by: ISI Books Summary: We live in a politicized time. Culture wars and increasingly partisan conflicts have reduced public discourse to shouting matches between ideologues. But rather than merely bemoaning the vulgarity and sloganeering of this era, says [...]
Book of the Week: Ironies of Faith
Title: Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature Author: Dr. Anthony Esolen Summary: In Ironies of Faith, celebrated Dante scholar and translator Anthony Esolen provides a profound meditation upon the use and place of irony in Christian art and in the Christian life. Beginning with an extended analysis of irony as [...]
Book of the Week: The Writer’s Workshop
Title: The Writer’s Workshop: Imitating Your Way To Better Writing Author: Gregory L. Roper Published by: ISI Books My Thoughts: I have always been moved by the idea that God gave us the gift of words, the very tool by which he created the universe. Is there anything more divine about humanity than the [...]
Book Review: The Jungle Books
Cover via Amazon A friend once commented that the Classics are the books everyone knows but no one has read. This seems especially the case with classic stories that become part of popular culture through cinematic adaptation. “Disneyfication” can describe many things, but applied to literature, it is a metamorphosis from pedagogy to sentimental entertainment. [...]
“Abscence of Mind”
Pulitzer Prize-winning literary matron Marilynne Robinson has earned our respect and attention as the author of such superb fiction as Gilead and Housekeeping, and of sharp-yet-compassionate criticism as in The Death of Adam. Her latest offering, The Absence of Mind, issues a challenge to ‘new atheists,’ to politicians, to psychologists, to all who campaign against [...]
