Books

From the Notebooks Notes about Fiction As I studied the work of Flannery O'Connor–possibly the ultimate craftsman of the novel, who wrote so slowly and deliberately that every word has a purpose–it seemed her philosophy is explicit. Consider, for instance, Rayber, the cold rationalist who was

Rapt For months, I've been meaning to blog about this excellent book: Rapt, Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher. It's full of common-sensical insight, which means, "Observations that most of us probably knew about, but needed someone to point out." Best

Need the Book Roadmap? You know what's kinda hard? Starting a non-fiction book when you don't know what it's about. I recently tried it for the first time, inadvertently. I read an off-hand positive remark on a site I enjoy about The

Kinds of Reading I'm increasingly struck by the different types of reading. With the advent of the ubiquitous Web, lots of people are thinking about it, but Web reading v. book reading seems pretty obvious to me. The former is naturally inclined to browsing, the other inclined to

From Subversives to Belloc Dusted off the shelf: Subversive Orthodoxy by Robert Inchausti. Sub-title: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise. It's a collection of 3,000-4,000 word essays about orthodox Christians who took unconventional positions. William Blake, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, Kerouac, Wendell Berry, McLuhan, Ivan

Some new, some old. Some in progress, some finished. Some repeats, some originals. Freaks in History The poor and freaks. They'll both always be with us. Barabbas was apparently a freak, as was Caligula. What Origen did to himself was kinda freaky, too, but out of respect, I

Some new, some old. Some in progress, some finished. Some repeats, some originals. Age of Aquarius Squirming Absolute classic. I read this book about twelve years ago, and I loved every second of it. I learned the meaning of "pneumatic antinomianism," and I've been casually dropping

Some new, some old. Some in progress, some finished. Some repeats, some originals. It's a Random World I bought this book after hearing Taleb interviewed on EconTalk [http://www.econtalk.org/]. The host (Russ Roberts) asked Taleb about the economic meltdown (rough quote), "So, you were right