The Principled Pragmatic Reader
Last week I got an email from reader Karen, who asked if I would be willing to share some book titles that might help her better know and understand my political philosophy of principled...
Tagged: books
The judge as moral philosopher
Reviewing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner’s Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts in the Claremont Review of Books, David Forte exposes Justice Scalia’s famous legal positivism as moral philosophy by another name. “They call false,” Forte writes of Scalia and Garner, “the ‘notion that the quest in statutory interpretation is to do justice,’” and they, like Alexander Hamilton, prefer judges to be “‘bound down by strict rules and precedents.” But judging, Forte pushes back, is […]
Books On Which to Build a Civilization: The Thursday Night Bar Fight Results
As many of you know, this week’s Thursday Night Bar Fight was a Survivor-like game where readers had to hash out which three books should be taken to a deserted island to build the...
Add Me as a Co-signer
In the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri pleads with Barnes & Noble not to marginalize itself, with more effectiveness and less of the accidental elitism of a former Classics major than I could muster. (h/t Rod Dreher)
Beowulf-Grendel book club reminder
Just a quick note to remind everyone we’ll be starting our Beowulf-Grendel book club tomorrow. We’ll be discussing lines 1-1007. (Pages 3-67 in the Heaney translation – only about 30 pages or reading for...
In Praise of the Big Box Bookstore
Sitting in a Barnes and Noble cafe at the start of January, I read: What is astonishing is the quantity of books worth reading at college age and later which cannot be bought except...
Announcing the Beowulf & Grendel Book Club
Starting the week after next, the League will be hosting the Beowulf & Grendel Book Club*. Everyone and anyone is invited (nay, encouraged!) to participate. For those not familiar with either work, Beowulf is...
Reading in the Digital Age
At the end of every term for at least the last half-dozen years, I’ve had to take a week (or two—the task probably isn’t done by the end of a single week) and re-teach...
The Illustrated Man
My dad foisted Dandelion Wine on me when I was young and still homeschooled. It was to be, appropriately enough, the first book in my list of self-imposed summer reading. His copy was old, and...
May’s Embarrassment of Riches – A Books & Reading Open Thread
For the past few months I have been bitching to friends and family that I can’t find anything good to read. So I am really looking forward to the next four weeks. May 2012...
How Not to Discuss Whether We Need Stories
“Do we need stories?” asks Tim Parks. An interesting question. And an important one. But not a matter easily resolved within the confines of a few tweets, a couple Facebook updates, or an entire blog post...
Bible Verse and Commentary
Matthew 25:31-46 – “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and...
Skimming for the Dirty Parts – Book Censorship In Public Schools, The Enders Game Controversy, and The False Allure of Public Decency
While it is true that I stole both Brave New World and Flowers for Algernon from the public library, it should be noted for the record that I did eventually return them. Plus, it...
A Quick “OMG! Update” on Enders Game & South Carolina
Big, big, big hat tip to Erik who sent me an email today about the continuing breaking news surrounding the South Carolina teacher suspension for reading Scott Orson Card’s Enders Game that I discussed...
Yes, Amazon Is Evil, But Probably Not That Evil
A friend pointed me to this op-ed by Richard Russo in the New York Times about Amazon’s latest tactic to establish itself as the sole source for buying… well, everything, to be honest. Basically,...
The wheel of fantasy
Riffing off of my Atlantic piece, fantasy author R. Scott Bakker writes: According to common wisdom, genre fiction is culturally cyclical: It ebbs and flows in popularity as time alternately burns out various tropes...
The League and Amazon Associates
So I’m trying to figure out how to make Amazon Associates work with the League. A number of people have suggested it as another good way to – I don’t want to say monetize,...
The Triumph of Music and the Downfall of Books in the Digital Age
~by RTod Borders has announced that it is closing it’s doors and beginning liquidation; this of course is already old news in this digital world that killed it. If you are in your...
Harry Potter the Jock
I’m going to write a few posts about Harry Potter in anticipation of seeing the latest, and final, film. Amanda Marcotte has a smart observation about Harry Potter and his band of non-misfits: I...
Harry Potter and the Ministry of Magic
I’m going to write a few posts about Harry Potter in anticipation of seeing the latest, and final, film. Alyssa Rosenberg has a good list of the political lessons found in the Harry Potter...
