What if saving the planet goes beyond recycling, shouting slogans and waving placards? What if saving the planet means dying so that others might live? That is the premise of Project Hail Mary, the best movie I've seen in years. Middle scho…
My reading was limited, but rich, this month. I finished Volume 8 of John Wesley's Works (mostly correspondence), which I enjoyed. One of my goals this year is to read the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. So I listened to Elizabeth Vandiv…
I've been in a reading slump. This is partly due to my heavy schedule that hasn't allowed for the mental leisure to "get lost in a book." But it is also due to the non-fiction books I'm reading for some personal projects. They are feeding m…
One especially poignant and influential character in Elizabeth Goudge's novel The White Witch is Parson Hawthyn. He lives in extreme poverty in a drafty hut beside the church. In one scene, he painfully rises after kneeling a long time in p…
In my last post, I shared details of reading The Iliad, and of being pleasantly surprised with its accessibility. In this post I want to add a footnote about an unusually compelling theme that was referenced in the afterword of my Rouse tra…
I was challenged by Don Beck in his Substack to tackle some of the classics I’ve been putting off for years. So, I took a deep breath and plunged into the Iliad. Fortunately, I’d listened to Elizabeth Vandivers’ “Great Courses” lectures las…
John Buchan (1875-1940) was a politician and author who is most widely remembered for his Richard Hannay series of novels. In his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, he takes a dim view of the future.Writing in 1940, in the midst of WWII,
I've dipped into Kindle Unlimited whenever I could get a good deal, and have had mixed feelings as you can tell from this post, and this post.Since I'd learned the trick of making a KU curated list, I had much better luck this time going st…
According to Alan Jacobs, as our society becomes more and more immersed in digital realities, we are losing our personal density. He wrote this book to encourage his audience to learn to think more deeply by reading more widely. He begins b…
In a recent post I talked about the “100 Books with Dante” method of tackling daunting classics by reading short chunks each day with a knowledgeable tutor to guide you through. There is nothing wrong with using training wheels to get throu…
I thought I had all the Audible titles I could possibly want, but once again, they drew me in with the promise of "3 months for 99 cents". I had been wanting to get my hands on Jan Karon's latest Mitford novel, My Beloved, so I jumped at th…
Books have to be heavy because the world's inside them. - Cornelia Funke Your email address:Powered by FeedBlitz “hopeinbrazil” is a a participant in the Amazon.com affiliate program. When an item is purchased through a link on this site, a…