December 2010
16 posts
Christian Wiman, "Five Houses Down"
I loved his ten demented chickens and the hell-eyed dog, the mailbox shaped like a huge green gun. I loved the eyesore opulence of his five partial cars, the wonder-cluttered porch with its oilspill plumage, tools cauled in oil, the dark clockwork of disassembled engines christened Sweet Baby and benedicted Old Bitch; and down the steps into the yard the explosion of mismatched parts and black...
“Christians need to find a way to thrive in a society that looks less and less...”
– Ross Douthat
“God’s love is incomprehensible and unchangeable. For it was not after we...”
– St. Augustine, John’s Gospel cx. 6
2010 reading report
When it comes to year-end “best-of” lists, mine are almost always of books read during the previous year, which in this case means I won’t limit my list to what was published in 2010. This year was an exceptionally good year of reading for me. Rather than adding any more boring prologue, here’s what got me excited…
The best book I read was The Trinitarian Theology of...
“Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of...”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via alaina)
“We smoke more and we cough every time. I think about the little dragon that the...”
– from James Franco’s short story “Jack-O’”
“A company composed wholly of men of learning, though greatly to be valued and...”
– Wise words from Lord Chesterfield to his son (via ayjay)
Mary Karr, "For a Dying Tomcat Who's Relinquished...
I remember the long orange carp you once scooped from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond her swung broom, across summer lawns
to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks for that. I’m not one to whom offerings often get made. You let me feel
how Christ might when I kneel, weeping in the dark over the usual maladies: love and its lack.
Only in tears do I speak directly to him and with such...