It’s been a good year for reading!
reading
What’s wrong with reading during the day?
Stephanie Shapiro, a retired writer and former journalist from Baltimore, feels guilty reading during the day. I’ve often felt the same way (and I am paid to read). I chalk it up to my working class background. As a kid […]
Where have all the grownups gone? Reflections on Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead is a reminder that kids can’t just raise themselves.
Reads of the year for living in modernity
What is the place of human beings–and especially religiously-convicted human beings–in “modernity”? Here is my list of reads of the year to answer this question.
A library for joy, sorrow, and reflection: 2023 with Current book reviews
A summary of the year with Current book reviews. Find our top 23 reviews for ’23, and more.
Reads of the year for the HIP (Harried Intellectual Parent): 2023
Here are my top reads of 2023, an eclectic, personal, and incomplete list that shows just how much I no longer care about people judging me for my wide-ranging tastes.
Children’s classics find a new life in Classical languages
Latin and Greek translations of beloved children’s classics are a trend worth celebrating.
What I am reading: reminders from literary introverts
Literary introverts remind us of cosmic truths
What did Richard Nixon write in the margins of his books?
Today The Atlantic is running a fascinating piece by Andrew Ferguson on researching Nixon’s marginalia. Here is a taste: Call it coincidence, serendipity, an aligning of the planets—whatever the term, the moment was creepy and amusing all at once. I […]
What I am reading: Jacob Hiserman on Gerard O’Shea’s Educating in Christ and takeaways for college classroom pedagogy
Oftentimes, we pick up books for one reason and discover more reasons why we’re reading them as we go along. That recently happened to me. I’m reading Australian teacher Gerard O’Shea’s Educating in Christ: A Practical Handbook for Developing the Catholic Faith […]
What I am reading: Brian Scoles
Summer is the season for reading, whether re-reading old favorites or finding new ones—on your porch, in a cabin in the woods (bears optional), or at the playground or the beach. Because there have been so many wonderful essays on […]
What I Am Reading: Colleen Vasconcellos
Summer is the season for reading, whether re-reading old favorites or finding new ones—on your porch, in a cabin in the woods (bears optional), or at the playground or the beach. Because there have been so many wonderful essays on […]
What I am reading: John Ferling
Summer is the season for reading, whether re-reading old favorites or finding new ones—on your porch, in a cabin in the woods (bears optional), or at the playground or the beach. Because there have been so many wonderful essays on […]
What are you reading?
Summer is the season for reading, whether re-reading old favorites or finding new ones—on your porch, in a cabin in the woods (bears optional), or at the playground or the beach. Because there have been so many wonderful essays on […]
The best road trip novel you’ve never read (probably)
A young man, bored with his life and searching for excitement, takes a road trip. He gets much more excitement, however, than he had bargained for, when his new girlfriend accidentally turns him into a donkey by smearing the wrong […]
Another reminder to be a generous reader
In the course of teaching college classes, I encounter all kinds of readers among my students. Some don’t like to read, some love to read. Some are overly accepting of everything in print. Some are the opposite. Occasionally, a student […]
What I am reading: Faith, hope, and love in Eugene Vodolazkin’s Brisbane
Over the course of these first four months of Anno Domini 2023, I have read through all of the novels of the Russian writer Eugene Vodolazkin. This was not planned, but this is the sort of thing that is bound […]
Ideas in progress: Jon D. Schaff on liberal arts education, favorite recent reads, and the intellectual life
What is the focus of your current writing? What are the big questions that you are investigating and the main stories that you hope to tell in your projects right now? I am working on two different projects. I just […]
Your reading and writing life is better with (copy)editors in it
When we read books or shorter essays, such as those published at Current, we generally take certain things for granted. We expect that the book or essay will be free of factual and typographical errors, sentences should read smoothly, the […]
Current contributing editor Christina Bieber Lake reviews Cormac McCarthy’s latest novels
Current Contributing Editor Christina Bieber Lake has reviewed Cormac McCarthy’s latest two novels for Comment. Bieber Lake describes McCarthy’s work as a whole as “Tales that make you ache for goodness and beauty… Tales written in prose that begs you […]