It’s complicated.
reading
Current winter books week is here!
All books, all week.
Christians Reading Classics is coming this fall–and a brief Arena break this week
How might Christians read Greco-Roman literature as Christians?
Reads of the year for the HIP (Harried Intellectual Parent): 2024
What are HIPs (Harried Intellectual Parents) reading this year?
How to read one hundred pages every day
Matthew Walter, the editor of The Lamp, calls it the “One Hundred Pages Strategy.” Here is how he does it: Almost nothing I have written in the last few years has given rise to more correspondence than a throwaway column […]
Post-election reading list: books to encourage and discourage
A short, idiosyncratic, and utterly eclectic post-election reading list of books that might encourage or discourage.
The hospitality of great books and why we need Fall Books Week
There is something wondrous about books that people have known since the earliest days of writing. Books can heal weary souls.
Shakespeare is “mid:” and other arguments in favor of education
Skepticism about books or culture is hardly new or different or exciting. Anti-intellectualism is a grand American tradition.
Interview: Lanta Davis on Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation
We are what we read–and what we behold.
Penguin Little Black Classics no. 6: Voices from the past, ideas for the present
Penguin Little Black Classics No.6 features two essays by John Ruskin.
“Students would stop, perhaps look over at a bookshelf, or just say, point-blank, that they didn’t read.”Â
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Beth McMurtrie writes: Students seem increasingly cynical about the value of college, transactional in their approach to learning, and frustrated by their coursework. On college tours and in admissions literature, they are promised […]
Reading through the Penguin Little Black Classics: numbers 3-5
This post continues the series begun with this essay on Penguin Little Black Classics, number 1-2. The Penguin Little Black Classics are an excellent read. Each short book is entertaining and, at mid-50 pages, just long enough to give you […]
Current’s 100 Books of the 21st Century
In response to NYT’s list of 100 books of the 21st century, we at Current have compiled our own list.
An alternative source for book reviews
Additional book review resources to help you find the next good read.
Work in progress: Current’s 100 books of the 21st century (so far)
Current’s list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century is in progress!
On classifying books
With books, as with other good things in life, sometimes you are just in the mood for something different.
The Penguin Little Black Classics: In the beginning
The Penguin Little Black Classics–a treasure you might not have known you needed!
Stacks and stacks of books
Down with the book-stack shelfies!
The Harlem Renaissance librarians
We don’t normally think about librarians when we talk about the revival of African-American culture in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s. But as Jennifer Schuessler notes in a recent piece at The New York Times, scholars are starting to […]
Is real learning possible in universities?
Cultural critic William Deresiewicz thinks it is getting harder and harder for people to find humanities-based learning in the modern academy. He offers some alternatives.–places were one can read deeply and engage ideas in such a way that might nourish […]