My review of Yuval Levin’s excellent and thought-provoking book, Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy , is up now at First Principles. Yuval’s closing exhortation to conservatives, to write more clearly, probingly, and persuasively about human dignity, is problematic, . . . . Continue Reading »
Nashville, Tennessee: home to the Southern Baptist Publishing House, the United Methodist Upper Room devotional guides, and many enormous churches. And what religious landmark do tourists want to visit? The Parthenon. Several years ago, by the way, the children and I read an historical novel on . . . . Continue Reading »
As I was regaling you all with our booklists the other week, it occurred to me to ask some of my homeschooling friends for theirs, and then to go looking for more. While I don’t think there’s any such thing as “homeschooling culture,” as a unified entity, what I observe among . . . . Continue Reading »
Yes, it’s a bit quiet around here — that’s the sound of the school year beginning anew. You’ll notice that we’ve added, at bottom right, some choice selections for your own personal reading list. Have a nice long Labor Day weekend. We’ll see you in a few. . . . . Continue Reading »
We start Monday, and not a moment too soon, in my view. I’ve spent the last two days scheduling everyone’s reading and other work from now till Christmas, using the lesson-plan feature at Homeschool Reporting, the record-keeping service to which we’ve subscribed since the . . . . Continue Reading »
Joe asks whether I’m having the teenager read any of Richard Wilbur’s poetry as part of her American-literature course. Wilbur, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, is an elder statesman of American letters and may well represent, though I don’t know anything about his actual politics, one . . . . Continue Reading »
Forgot one item on the teenager’s reading list for this year: How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren. When I handed her the book, she took one look at the title, laughed, and said, “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” . . . . Continue Reading »
At Light on Dark Water, conversation about a luminous novel: Pilgrim’s Inn, by the mid-20th-century English writer Elizabeth Goudge. . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at the main blog, Joe Carter asks : In all seriousness, though, what books would you recommend the President read during his vacation? Assuming you had to stick to the same 3:1:1 ratio (3 novels, 1 biography, 1 policy-oriented nonfiction) what books would you slip into his travel bag? . . . . Continue Reading »
Over the summer, as you may remember, I posted lists of my household’s reading here and here. Well, now the last sun of summer has set over the gables here at the House of Curiosities. In actual point of fact, the sun set, as it does every day, over the Aspen Street viaduct to the west of us, . . . . Continue Reading »