... All quiet on the God front . Armstrong is not presenting a case for God in the sense most people in our idolatrous world would think of...

Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be - like the reality of yest...

... with Richard Holmes . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... via Hedgie: 3rd Annual Purdyfest Schedule (Press Release) . Amanda Earl on Catherine Owen . 12 or 20 questions: with Forrest Gander .

... Anazon's Best Books of the Year... So Far .

Frank talks with Dale Schellenger, a recently retired child psychologist from Denver, about his first visit to the WCU Poetry Conference and...

... reviewed by Martin Amis: The master's voice . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Journalistic narcissism . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) ... why do we need anyone to tell us what’s important? We decide that. What’s important ...

... Now read this! J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit .

... Theodore Dalrymple on the Ugliness of Andrew Murray - or why we should all become more self-controlled . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) One summe...

... Kaiser’s spymaster ‘in Goldfinger plot’ against Bank of England . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

... Local Area Events . In particular: Friday, July 10th CHESTNUT HILL BOOK FAIR . Chestnut Hill is proud to announce its first annual Book...

... Acres of Rhinestones: Temple Betrays Its Heritage . (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)

... via Dave Lull (who is as sensible as they come).

... Liberated by War . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... via Rus Bowden: Making Meshi by Philip Metres . Seasonal Rain by Georgia Ann Banks-Martin . There's Just No Telling by Jennifer L. K...

Really to sin you have to be serious about it. - Henrik Ibsen

... What to Read Now. And Why. (Hat tip, Jeff McDonald.) An interesting mix. I like Trollope.

Baroque grandeur reviewed ...

... Rumsfeldian Stem Cells . I link to this because both Nicholas Wade and his commenters seem to think that this business ok and unkno...

... Magic Flute: Primal Find Sings of Music's Mystery . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Researchers announced last week in Nature that they had u...

... Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail by Richard Bentall and Scotland: Wild west heroes on the Isle of Harris . The first...

Recent highlights from the Ideas blog . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Scroll down to the final item. But whatever you do, don't text and drive.

... for details . Just joking.

... Out of the past .

... In defense of his own theology . (I can't help thinking that if Weakland were a more traditional prelate there would be less sympa...

Reality is not always probable, or likely. - Jorge Luis Borges

New titles from the New York Review of Books...

... Dennett on the Deformation of the God Concept . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) For Dennett to "give up the question-begging and the straw-m...

... Steady As She Goes . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... for the Fourth.

... Louditude, Bingism, and Silentists (oh, my) . It must be something in the air these days. I've had similar thoughts myself lately (...

... Neuromancer at 25: What It Got Right, What It Got Wrong . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Gorgeous prose - and way too much of it .

Calculation never made a hero. - John Henry Newman

... will it be OK to say that they were full of shit? '40 a day could die by end of summer in London'...

... Dillinger in the police station . The world does not know how grateful it should be that elberry and I are separated generationally and ...

... while looking for something else: starlings .

... if you were on the blogroll and have been dropped because of the facelift, please let me know, so I can make amends.

... Leading Man Traveled From Broadway to 'Fargo' . His performance on the Ormandy recording of Carmina Burana is the best I'v...

... Mencken's Paean to Ink-Stained Wretches . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.) Mencken wouldnt have given the time of day to the graduates of the...

... of TLS Letters : Céline on the run, Schoenberg’s politics, Alexandria,and more. Regarding the letter about Schoenberg's politics, I...

The newest volume of Rain Taxi Review is out. I've got a piece in it on Graham Swift's wonderful collection of essays, Making an El...

... for Catholics and the lovers a great prose: Pope Benedict XVI clears way for Cardinal Newman to become a saint .

... with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie .

... The Reluctant Poet Laureate . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... How McDonald's Conquered France .

Books, Inq. is in the process of getting a facelift. So if you have any problems that will be the reason. Normal broadcasting will resume ev...

... of political incorrectness: PWSBKTW .

... and wonderful for a Friday morning.

... Lost In Wales .

"Truth," said Balthazar to me once, blowing his nose in an old tennis sock, "Truth is what most contradicts itself in time....

... Due Dillinger: A Look Back at America’s Classic Bankrobber, Part I .

... Erica Dawson .

... The library that never closes . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Intelligence Without Design . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.) I haven't had time to examine to read this really carefully, but here are some ...

... seems Mr. Darwin kept an open mind on the matter: Darwin and God . (Hat tip, Dave Lull .) “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may...

... Wed Him Before You Bed Him by Sabrina Jeffries">Romancing history: Wed Him Before You Bed Him by Sabrina Jeffries .

... jambandbootleg by Paul Siegell .

... July 14th- 2nd Tuesdays Poetry Open Mic and Quatroche and Gager in Fox Chase July 25th .

... Ed Champion boldly gets to the heart of the Alain de Botton story by ... getting in touch with Alain de Botton: Alain de Botton Clarifie...

... the IBPC winners (and commentary). ... the judge's page . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

... God's Truth Is Life . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) There is too much in this piece to allow for any quick commentary, but the following did...

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose pr...

... from a great decade: 1957 Chevrolets .

... who I recall was taken aback when Gov. Perry raised the issue of state sovereignty, something apparently unknown - and irrelevant - in E...

of e·ratio .

... Saving Texts From Oblivion: Oxford U. Press on the Google Book Settlement . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I've just finished The First Word - and I must say, for a book about language, Christine Kenneally is oddly verbose. This is an intere...

... `The Man from Scotland' . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Talk about lacunae. I had forgotten about Cunningham's interest in haecceity (an...

... The Godfather of American Liberalism .

... In One Room, Many Advantages . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace...

Especially Leonard Cohen ...

... The Taleb-GQ emails . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) If you send a guy the piece and he sends you a correction, use it.

... for independent bookstores . I agree. God knows, when I was a review editor I had to put up with all sorts of people importuning me on b...

... The End of the Drudge Era? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) But why confine this reasoning to "t he horribly skewed bullshit lens of Drudge,...

... Is this the future bookstore? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... I was wrong. There is another Michael Jackson story worth reading: A Tragedy of Our Times . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.) Anna Karenina is better than War and Peace . No Dickens. Including...

... on Between Fire and Sleep, essays by Jaroslaw Anders . ... on Been and Gone, poems by Julian Kornhauser, translated by Piotr Florczyk .

... I had to skip my WFTC column this week because of another project that has swallowed mosy of my time. For the same reason, blogging toda...

... Clive James declares: Give Us Poetic Justice . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, ...

... After the Barbarians: From Gibbon to Auden . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is pro...

I have posted this picture before. It is a watercolor Debbie did of a red Bartlett pear. Debbie is out somewhere painting right now. I said ...

... between great talent ... and pure genius ... Bear in mind, I like Jack Jones. But he was young when he recorded that song. For Brel it i...

... For the record: "అనుక్షణికం" ఆపేసాను .

... THE MYSTERY OF FASCISM (cont. 2) .

... Marx's challenge . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) However, those acts of self-realisation are increasingly thwarted in organised society. Whe...

... The gospel according to Paglia . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Now read this! What’s your favorite novel?

... Katie used to write about in her DigitaLit column, which the geniuses now running the Inquirer didn't see the point of: Writer uses ...

... Karen Armstrong and the case of the unknown God . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Authentic religion, then, is characterised by being kenotic – th...

... you need to read: My trip to Neverland, and the call from Michael Jackson I'll never forget, by Paul Theroux . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)...

... Art museum names Rub new director . And the view from Cleveland: Director Timothy Rub leaving Cleveland Museum of Art to head Philadelph...

... Peter Leonard joins father in the family business . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it w...