Eric Scheske

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Books

Tuesday

Letters to Children Fiction is not a waste of time and it's not an escape from reality. Good fiction serves many useful purposes, such as instilling a sense of how to tell a story and how to write. But I am mostly interested in good fiction because it

Saturday

Best Vocalist While drinking and enjoying some old tunes late yesterday afternoon, I pondered this question: Who's the greatest pop/rock male vocalist of the 20th century? Jim Reeves? Marty Robbins? Johnny Mathis? Sam Cooke? Roy Orbison? I'm talking about pure singing talent, not most popular,

Wednesday

Seneca and Well-Tried Authors Nassim Taleb's new book apparently has a section about Seneca. From the Econtalk podcast that I wrote about on Monday [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/01/taleb_on_antifr.html]: > [W]hen I read the best expository of Stoicism, the best two

Monday

Like Waiting for Godot? If there is any literary merit to The Adventures of Beer Man, it came from my close study of Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. It's a great book for the fiction writer. I would lend you my copy,

Thursday

Modern Library Rankings My son, Jack, is trying to read the greatest works of modern fiction. I got him started with Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, The Sound and the Fury, Wise Blood, etc. Those were obvious. In order to find more options, I googled "

Making Its Way Around the Catholic Blogosphere

Flannery on Ayn: > I hope you don't have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest

Friday

The Gift So I'm standing at my office window yesterday, talking with an acquaintance about some pro bono project (not my favorite thing--I'm still a few halos short of sainthood). The mailman walks in and hands me a package. My interlocutor must've thought I

Thursday

Reader Comments Reader comments are beginning to come in. The most common theme: The book isn't what you'd expect. It's not a book about getting drunk and "barfin' all over your girlfriend's shoes" (The Eagles, "The Greeks Don&

Thursday

It's the 35th Annual Scheske Open today. I golf only once a year, and today's the day. I'm a little wiped out right now, due to the Open Eve festivities, so just an abbreviated TDE today. First, the Kindle for PC is easy to

Wednesday

The Beat Enigma When he saw a statue of the Virgin Mary turn its head in his hometown church's basement in the early 1950s, Jack Kerouac said it dawned on him that the word "Beat" is a religious word with a relation to the beatific vision.