Do you wish you had more time to read good books? Are you trying to find ways to increase your reading intake? Is there a book you’ve been dying to read, but just can’t fit one more thing into your schedule? I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to read more and improve my reading […]
Books & Literature
Seven Reasons to Read the Great Books
If you’ve ever considered reading the classics, or as Mortimer Adler referred to them, the Great Books, I want to suggest seven reasons for starting, immediately. Let’s jump right in. Reason #1 Mark Twain famously noted that a classic is a book everyone talks about, but no one has actually read. Because the publishing of books […]
Homer’s Cauldron of Story
If Helen is the face that launched a thousand ships, Homer will be, undoubtedly, the pen that inspired a thousand poets. Though Homer first penned The Iliad and The Odyssey nearly twenty-eight hundred years ago, the epics had been recited from memory for four hundred years before that. As some of the oldest surviving epics, […]
How to Read a Greek Tragedy
One reason reading literature from the classical period is a pleasure many fail to indulge is simply because accessing it can seem intimidating. While there are many genres of classical literature worth reading, this short piece will serve as an instructional primer on how to read a Greek tragedy using Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos as a […]
Modern Thought and Ethics with Flannery O’Connor
Surprisingly, not all literature lovers share that love for the stories of Flannery O’Connor. They are disturbed by the strangeness of her characters. Those familiar with the works of Flannery O’Connor know the characters of her stories most often embody such a nature as can only be described by grotesque. Some of her characters even […]
Book Review: Science and the Mind of the Maker
Hard as one may try not to, a reader cannot come to a book without a certain expectation. That expectation is generally rooted in the questions the reader hopes the author intends to answer or expects the author will answer based on the title, the cover, or the blurb on the flap. The trouble with […]
The Art of Reading
There are basically three kinds of reading. We can read for entertainment, read for information, or read for understanding. Reading for entertainment is the simplest of all reading. While it’s true we can be entertained when we read for information or understanding, reading strictly for entertainment is its own kind of reward. When we read […]
Book Review: Thoughts on The Double Helix by J.D. Watson
The Double Helix is not a science book; rather, it is a literary book about scientists—a fascinating account of one of the most important discoveries of the 20th-century. Sir Lawrence Bragg advises the reader of this important fact in the Forward when he outlines what he believes are the three salient themes that surface in […]
A Lesson From a Tombstone: Part Six
{If you missed it you can read Part One here, read Part Two here, read Part Three here, read Part Four here, and read Part Five here.} Lastly, the nameless dead man died foolishly. His epitaph will forever be: died eating library paste. What could be more absurd, more ridiculous, than a man eating library paste and […]
A Lesson From a Tombstone: Part Five
{If you missed it you can read Part One here, read Part Two here, read Part Three here, and read Part Four here.} The nameless man was dead. And strangely, it wasn’t his dying that got to me. We will all die one day. As the fellow said, “No one gets off this planet alive.” Dying is […]