Rev. Dr. Jeff Garrison
It looks like we’ll have a baseball season this year. Why are there so many good baseball books? I don’t know of any other sport who produces as many good writers as baseball. In anticipation of the season, I listened to Robert Creamer’s Baseball in ’41, which I’m reviewing below. I’m also attaching a review of another … Read more In Preparation for the Baseball Season: Book reviews
Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (2017), 17 hours and 46 minutes I read reviews of this book when it first came out. It looked intriguing, but I never got around to read it. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I decided I needed to read something to get myself up to speed on what is happening … Read more Red Famine (some background on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia)
I recently read Heretical Fictions, which I am reviewing here. I am also reposting another review that I wrote seven years ago on Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, which looked at the relationship between Twain and his older brother. That review will enlighten us on the first review. I hope to soon find a way to post an article … Read more Two Books about Mark Twain
Our Frightening World We’re living in a scary time with what is going on in Ukraine and Putin’s disregard for the rule of law as he orders Russia to invade a sovereign nation. In 2011, I took the Trans-Mongolian railroad from Beijing to Moscow and then an elegant overnight train on to St. Petersburg. It … Read more Learning more about Russia
Story 1: Like a lot of kids, I don’t look back fondly on my Junior High. But the one exciting thing about those years occurred shortly after sundown, especially in the winter. I would wait with excitement as the sky darkened, turning on my receiver and listening as I prepared my transmitter which was tied … Read more Two stories of mine and two related book reviews
I’m reading a lot in this new year but am way behind on my book reviews (but then I never review all the books I read. Here is one I finished in late December, one I finished in January, and a third finished in February: Makota Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (New Haven, … Read more Book Reviews: Theology, Memoir, & Devotion
As today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day (and a day of digging out of a heavy snow that had a layer of ice on top), I thought I would repost a review from a former blog of mine. This is a good biography of the first nine years of Dr. King’s professional life. Taylor … Read more Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr
Below is a list to books I read in 2021, along with links to books which I reviewed (Often, I reviewed several books in the same post, so you may have to look down to find the book in question). In 2021, I read 54 books. 41 were non-fiction, 8 were fiction, and 5 were … Read more Reading summary for 2021
John Hassell Yeatts, A Long and Winding Road (1989), 120 pages. The long and winding road referred to in the title is the Blue Ridge Parkway which divided the little community of Mayberry in the mid-1930s. This was at the time when the author was becoming a man. He began working at the Dan River dam project … Read more Four Books: Memories, Poetry, and a Novel
Over the past few years, I have been concerned on the lack of civility in our public lives. We see it in politics, in grocery stores, and on the highways. Before COVID, I was activity attempting to foster conversation about civility. It’s needed in our world. Because of my interest, a parishioner in one of … Read more The Death of Politics, A Review