Skip to content
Collected Miscellany
Avid Readers, Occasional Bloggers
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • About
  • Contributors

Tag: NetGalley

Reviews

The Heebie-Jeebie Girl by Susan Petrone

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

This may be the real gift of this book and its real magic, Susan Petrone’s moving us from indifference to understanding and caring for others and our world, and...

Reviews

Quick Take: One Fatal Mistake by Tom Hunt

Posted on January 23, 2019 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

It turned out to be the fast paced thriller I was looking for but I was left cold by the ending. Everything went barreling toward a climax and then it just ki...

Reviews

Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle #3) by Maggie Stiefvater

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Kevin Holtsberry / 1 Comment

"Stiefvater’s razor-sharp characterizations, drily witty dialogue, and knack for unexpected metaphors and turns of phrase make for sumptuous, thrilling reading ...

Reviews

The Magician's Land (Magicians Series #3) by Lev Grossman

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

A satisfying conclusion to the series but one in which rereading the first two books might be in order. (Unless, you just have a much better memory than I do, i...

Reviews

Kidding Ourselves: The Hidden Power of Self-Deception by Joseph T. Hallinan

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

We tell ourselves lies and alter our memories in ways large and small. Most often we do it to retain a semblance of control, at least in our minds, in a chaotic...

Posts navigation

1 2 … 4 Next »

Last Four

  • Thomas Chatterton Williams and Wrestling with Race and Culture
  • A Creepy, Atmospheric Young Adult Story From Kevin Wignall
  • Jim Geraghty Returns with Another Dangerous Clique Novel
  • Senator Josh Hawley VS Simon & Schuster

Notes & Asides

  • Trump, he loves this. He loves the bile, the wrath, the mockery. It’s a well-done steak to him, with extra ketchup. But Hawley and Cruz? I bet they are befuddled and mystified. How could it possibly have come to this? They are, then, our own Stepan Trofimoviches. It was all a game to them, until it wasn’t. They are, like him, utterly frivolous. If they had any dignity, any moral backbone, they would resign their offices. But the very frivolity that led them, and us, to this pass is the vice that will prevent them from acting honorably. I hope I am wrong, but I expect they will go to their graves thinking How could we have known?

    Frivolity - Alan Jacobs

    - Trump, Hawley, Cruz & Dostoevsky: They are our own Stepan Trofimoviches
  • While the laws that we live under matter a great deal, Christians need to recover the primacy of the personal over the political more than anything else. If we can’t love our neighbors in a personal, politically agnostic, face-to-face way, they’ll turn to synthetic and unreal ideological communities to fill the gap left by the loneliness of their daily lives.

    The road back to sanity, solidarity, and social trust on both sides of the political spectrum will involve turning away from this ideological cul-de-sac and back toward personal communities once more. If Christian churches won’t do this, they risk being exploited as political playthings of the powers that be. -- Christianity as Ideology: The Cautionary Tale of the Jericho March

    - Christianity & the Jericho March
  • You’ll notice we are not having a national debate about paying off poor people’s mortgages. We could do that just as easily if the self-declared champions of the poor had any interest in anything other than their own status and their own appetites.

    They don’t.

    The College-Debt Debate Is a Culture-War Battle

    - Kevin Williamson on the college debt debate
  • Wharton’s novel was little appreciated in its time, and it hasn’t benefited from the same revival of interest that eventually rescued F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, another Jazz Age novel. Maybe it’s because our culture is created and largely controlled by latter-day Pauline (and Paul) Manfords. Gatsby’s novel is held to reject the American dream itself as a falsity, obscene wealth as corrupting, and the WASP ruling class as a permanent source of oppression, despite its evident decline. Compared with Wharton’s novel, which cuts deeper and is more personal, Gatsby looks like a cheap attempt at scapegoating. For Twilight Sleep is a satire of the modern age, but it targets some of our permanent temptations. If we’re about to embark on a new Roaring Twenties, Wharton’s book will remind us that we’ve been there before.

    Michael Brendan Dougherty

    - Wharton vs Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age Novel
  • Mental Anchors for Information Overload - my review of Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs

    - Me in the University Bookman on Breaking Bread with the Dead

Current Reads

Tags

Amazon Kindle authors Bible blogging blogs Books Children's literature Christianity Christmas conservatism espionage Espionage Fiction faith fantasy Fantasy Fiction featured Fiction Folklore God Goodreads Historical fiction History illustration Jesus Literature memoir military history mystery non-fiction nonfiction Olen Steinhauer podcasts Politics Publishing Reading Religion and Spirituality Speculative fiction thriller thrillers translation Twitter video World War II Young Adult Fantasy young adult fiction

Archives

Categories

Connect

Mail Facebook RSS Tumblr Twitter
© 2021 Collected Miscellany
Powered by WordPress | Theme: Graphy by Themegraphy