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The Senator’s Wife
I picked up The Senator’s Wife because of Ruth’s review. She said, “All the characters are vividly drawn, and all are deeply flawed. Even though I knew something dreadful was ahead, I couldn’t…
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The Abolition of Man: Contemplating Skepticism
Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be…
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Great Possessions
I’ve had Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal on my shelf for years. I kept passing it over for more “compelling” fare. Fortunately I didn’t pass it over this time. The book has…
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Lafcadio
Question: Is it a success or a failure when my five-year-old bursts into tears at the end of a book? I should add that they weren’t tears of disappointment that the story was…
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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a book this much. This novel is an unusual animal: a Victorian novel published in 2004. It has the scope, cast of characters, and wit of Dickens,…
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
In the eighties, a movie came out called The Gods Must Be Crazy. A pilot flying over the Kalahari desert in South Africa tosses his empty Coke bottle out the window, and it…
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Random thoughts on the Little House books
My mother read us the Little House books when my family drove across the country. We drove from New York to California, tent-camping all the way, the summer before I entered 7th grade,…
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Mudhouse Sabbath
Yesterday in Sunday school, my friend Polly extracted some excerpts from the chapter in this book about mourning. A young mother known to many people at church had died earlier in the week…
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Technopoly
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology has been on my shelf for 12 years. At the Asbury College faculty retreat in the fall of 1997, the Provost gave us all a copy…
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The Wizard of Oz
My daughters and I finished reading The Wizard of Oz. I read the book years ago, but I’d forgotten a lot of it. I remembered the movie better, which had made such an…