Early in college, I went through a phase where I just had to sleep with a favorite book under my pillow. For months it was my very battered and highlighter-ridden copy of Tacitus’s Annals. At another point it was Tacitus’s Histories. (Do you sense a theme?) For another stretch of time, it was Vergil’s Aeneid. And yet another, Ammianus Marcellinus’s history of the late Roman Empire. (My social life was great. Why do you ask?) Fast-forward over two decades, and now I have kids who of their own devising sleep surrounded by books in their beds—literally. Nature or nurture? Either way, we’re raising book-loving nerds here.
A love for books has been a part of my life since I remember and continues to be a part of my family’s life. Now, though, I no longer put a favorite book under my pillow. Instead, I just keep stacking more and more books on my bedside table and everywhere else around the house. I’m married to a fellow book hoarder, and we’re raising tiny book hoarders. It’s fine. Everything is fine. We’re just running out of bookshelf space yet again though, and I need to figure out where else in this house we could fit another bookcase or ten.
The thing is, there are just so many really good books out there. In the space of our very short human lives, we will never be able to read everything we wish we could. It doesn’t mean that we’re not trying. In any case, good books are worth talking about and writing about in any age. Some of these books are very old—cue Tacitus or Vergil, yet again. And others are brand new, recently appeared.
In this Winter Books Week, our coverage mostly skews towards the latter—because such is the responsibility of reviewing books in a journal of opinion. In an environment where over one million new books are published each year, our reviews and book-related interviews aim to bring to the attention of our readers a broad range of new books that we consider particularly important.
In addition, it is a special privilege this week to begin serializing Marvin Olasky’s recent spiritual memoir, Pivot Points (with many thanks to the publisher, P&R Publishing, for its kind permission). You can expect to read one chapter every Thursday over the next twenty-two weeks.
But while we want to draw your attention to important new books, we will deliberately end this Books Week with Tim Larsen’s thought-provoking essay about a somewhat older book—G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, which turns one hundred this year. Why? Because books like this one have stood the test of time. The Everlasting Man is just as relevant and resonant today as it was in 1925.
So, grab another cup of coffee if you need it (I always do), and enjoy a week dedicated to one of the most incredible and revolutionary technologies to serve the good of humanity—books.
I am a book hoarder & book lover- especially American history(especially the19th century), anything on Lincoln, Christian history & theology, Luther -and yes I have books stacked all around our bed . My beloved wife reads Amish fiction to me- she attended an Amish school for a time in Pennsylvania.