Thank Samuel Johnson for the Jane Austen Revival
Without his “Dictionary,” you probably wouldn't be able to make sense of “Sense and Sensibility”
The Dorothy Parker and Florence King Reincarnate
But she's going on maternity leave
Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813): Left-Hemispheric
McGilchrist writes about the left hemisphere's love for abstraction. Because it is the hemisphere of action ("it's tasked with tasks," is my (oh-so-clever) way of putting it), it prefers abstract ideas that give it guideposts for action. It keeps things simple, which makes things
Read on the Run
For years, I've wanted to start the "On-the-Run Reader." It would be a Reader's Digest-type publication, but weightier and lighter. The subject matter would be more serious than RD, but the length of the "articles" (more like blurbs, quotes, summaries, and essays)
Twenty 20th-Century Books for Young Autodidacts
(Actually, there are 33, if you count the honorable mentions)
Joseph Epstein is arguably the best essayist alive. He’s urbane, funny, self-deprecating. He’s a fine stylist, and he’s remarkably well-read.
I remember William F. Buckley marveling at Epstein’s erudition and wondering how Epstein could have so
The Beatniks Were a Bunch of Consumerists
Well, kinda
William Burroughs liked opium, a lot. He liked its derivatives, morphine, and heroin. He liked other types of dope. He liked women. He liked men and boys. He wrote recklessly. He lived recklessly. He loved his common-law wife. He shot her dead in a drunken game of William
George MacDonald: Grandfather of Middle Earth?
Fantasy literature wasn't even "a thing" until George MacDonald came along. Timothy Larsen flushes it out.
One of my favorite "browsing books" is C.S. Lewis' Anthology: 365 Readings of George MacDonald writings.
I've also long believed that the fiction of
Something Tells Me I’d Really Enjoy the Private Letters of Two Men I Didn’t Even Know Existed
It helps to be aware of one’s ignorance.
That’s one reason I like to read Joseph Epstein, who wrote a delightful essay for the current issue of the new Catholic journal, The Lamp that brought my level of awareness to the brim.
The topic?
The letters of George
"Introducing a Person Who Needs No Introduction . . ."
My inadvertent love affair with book introductions. Plus a dozen introduction recommendations.
The Joy of Seed Catalogs
Teresa Mull at The Spectator