Two Cities: The Public and the Private

Two Cities: The Public and the Private

by | Oct 15, 2023

A reflection on Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities By Igor Damous. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every...
Reading as a Spiritual Practice

Reading as a Spiritual Practice

by | Sep 10, 2023

Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice By Jessica Hooten Wilson. Brazos Press, 2023. Hardcover, 208 pages, $24.99. Reviewed by James E. Hartley. “Until very recent years, civilized folk took it for granted that literature exists to form the...
Every Mann

Every Mann

by | Jul 9, 2023

Thomas Mann: New and Selected Stories By Thomas Mann. Translated by Damion Searls. Liveright, 2023. Hardcover, 256 pages, $40.00. Reviewed by Joshua Hren. Thomas Mann towers intimidatingly over the twentieth century’s literary landscape, not least because “the icy...
Lofty Prose in a New Translation of Beowulf

Lofty Prose in a New Translation of Beowulf

by | Jul 2, 2023

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation Translated by Ben J. Reinhard.  Cluny Media, 2022. Paperback, 278 pages, $18.95. Reviewed by Jonathan B. Himes. To describe Ben Reinhard’s approach to his new verse translation of Beowulf, the back cover offers the following keywords:...
Oh Yeah Baby Eat It

Oh Yeah Baby Eat It

by | Jun 25, 2023

Spending the Winter  By Joseph Bottum. St. Augustine’s Press, 2022. Paperback, 80 pages, $13. Reviewed by Robert Grant Price. “Do I really want to read this?” “Is this a good way to spend my time?” These are fair questions to ask yourself whenever thinking about...