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#10 – 24 Hours in Charlottesville by Nora Neus – Best Reads of 2023
Charlottesville is still a mostly progressive city that sometimes fancies itself a small piece of the Northeast Corridor. But every so often we get painful reminders that this is still the South and there is much to do. This is the searing record of one of the most painful. →
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Mr. Zahnd’s Wild Ride to the Cross
Zahnd, a longtime Missouri pastor of Word of Life Church, drinks deeply from the culture around him as well as from the resources of the Christian tradition. And he finds God everywhere. →
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Love in a Small Cell: Claire Gilbert Gives Voice to Julian of Norwich
Julian’s faith is rich and deep, never skirting past the graveyards of this world, but opening up the nature of a loving God. →
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Reviewing the World in 5 Stars or Fewer
The internet does love it some ratings, even if I can’t quite get used to the pressure of maintaining my 5-star AirBnB guest rating. Is my mom keeping track of my visits like this? →
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The Headlong Poetry of Laura Martin
“I know then that everything is fragile/and that everything does not have to last/to be eternal.” — Laura Martin →
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#1 & a Recap – How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith – 2022 Best Reads
Poets can make excellent prose artists, as Clint Smith proved once again in my favorite read from 2022: How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Smith takes a journey to sites associated with slavery from Monticello to Angola Prison to the Door of No Return at Goree Island,… →
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#2 – Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen – 2022 Best Reads
Audacity. That’s the word that came to mind as I gawked my way through Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Crossroads. The man has no compunctions about burrowing straight to the heart of characters like a Navajo man wary of visiting do-gooders to the reservation and a mid-life woman trying to put together her previous life and… →
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#3 – The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – 2022 Best Reads
Maggie O’Farrell’s breakthrough novel, Hamnet, which was named a New York Times ten best in 2020, didn’t do it for me. I appreciated the gorgeous details of life in Shakespeare’s England, but the connection to Shakespeare himself seemed tenuous at best. However, The Marriage Portrait, O’Farrell’s follow-up novel, hit the sweet spot, even though she… →
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#4 – Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby – 2022 Best Reads
This is the first crime thriller I’ve ever put in the Top Ten, but I got hooked on S.A. Cosby this year. His books are crackling page-turners filled with similes and energy. And, o yes, violence. There’s a lot of that, too. Cosby attracted my attention because he’s a Virginia native and aspires to the… →
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Heartlands 