Mitch Thomas

@psychopike @paul_jkrause I can see your point there. It resonated with me to the extent that it shows how hard it is to win civilization and how easy it is to lose.

@ThomasiiiR @paul_jkrause I really liked it when I first read it...in 1974. I read it again about 3 years ago and found it didn't resonate with me like it did in the middle of the cold war.

What is the best sci-fi novel you've read? There are many good ones. Great ones. Not just because he recently passed away, but Hyperion by Dan Simmons has to be up there for everyone who has read it...

@GregAlexander8 @paul_jkrause Haven’t read those, but might look into them.

@ThomasiiiR @paul_jkrause a rare case of a singular novel where, nonetheless, the follow-up 'Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman' is as good (imo)

“For the Christian, there is no such thing as a ‘stranger.’ There is only the neighbor—the person who happens to be next to us, the person most in need of our help.” —St. Edith Stein, qtd. in Sylvie Courtine-Denamy, Three Women in Dark Times

@Girardism "For those who believe, everything is a sign!" - Blessed Benedetta Bianchi Porro

“I am convinced that God sends human beings a lot of signs that have no objective existence whatsoever for the wise and the learned. The ones those signs don't concern regard them as imaginary, but those for whom they are intended can't be mistaken, because they are living the experience from within.” — René Girard

@paul_jkrause It’s between “Mary” and “The Lamb”. Different themes but equally beautiful.

What is your favorite poem by William Blake?

@paul_jkrause Wendell Berry’s Marce Catlett.

What book in your TBR pile are you most excited to start?

@Athens_Stranger Unfortunately, most collegiate introductions are mere surveys courses. The classes become the equivalent of a drive through zoo exhibit.

The so-called “history” of philosophy has done seemingly irreparable damage to the serious study of philosophy Privileging history over the slow and patient reading of the texts of the philosophers, it reduces their thought to tropes No longer philosophy, we have mere biography

@BMcGrewvy She, in my opinion, is a superlative writer. “Wiseblood” is a great novel. However, O’Connor devotees can go over the top. The same dynamic happens with Chesterton.

I recently got into a spat with some literary Catholics about Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." So I decided to re-read it. It was even worse than I remembered and I intend to diss it even harder from this point forward.

@paul_jkrause Of Mice and Men, left a distinct impression on me.

What was your favorite book you read in high school?

@zenahitz @alexpriou Professors, rightly so, lament the condition of the students who enter their classes from high school. There is a reason these students are the way they are. Good teachers who are intellectually solid and know the art of teaching are essential.

The "doom" of teaching high school is not necessary. Dismantle Common Core, the ed schools, and the outrageously stupid certification programs. Give smart and caring people control over their classrooms and schools. These will become the best jobs left.

“Non-Christians imagine that to be converted, they must renounce an autonomy that all people possess naturally, a freedom and independence that Jesus would like to take away from them. In reality, once we imitate Jesus, we discover that our aspiration to autonomy has always made us bow down before individuals who may not be worse than we are but who are nonetheless bad models because we cannot imitate them without falling with them into the trap of rivalries in which are ensnarled more and more.” — René Girard

@paul_jkrause Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

Best book you've read in the last month? For me, it might be cheating because I was teaching it: The Brothers Karamazov.

@paul_jkrause “Connoisseur Of Chaos” by Wallace Stevens

What is the most recent poem you’ve read? Mine is Sylvia Plath’s “Blackberrying.”

@paul_jkrause Shiloh, by Shelby Foote would have to be up there.

What is the best war novel by an American novel?

“Advertising doesn't try to demonstrate to you that the object it is selling is the best from an objective point of view. They're always trying to prove to you that this object is desired and possessed by the people you would like to be. Therefore, Coca-Cola is drunk on [the use of] a very beautiful beach, in the marvelous sun, with a bunch of suntanned people who are always between the ages of 16 and 22, who are everything you would like to be, who obviously wear very few clothes, but very expensive ones, because they have the most shapely bodies. Everything you might envy. There is something sacramental about this. Religion is always [implicit] in these things. If you consume Coca-Cola, maybe if you consume a lot of it, you will become a little bit like these people you would like to be. It's a kind of Eucharist that will turn you into the person you really admire.” — René Girard

“The most humiliated persons, the most crushed, behave in the same fashion as the princes of this world. The more one is crucified, the more one burns to participate in the crucifixion of someone more crucified than oneself.” — René Girard

@paul_jkrause Not really a book for essays but as far as love for the “crooked timber of humanity” being displayed see Vasily Grossman’s “An Armenian Sketchbook.”

The art of the essay should be to communicate love to the reader. Love for whatever subject is being discussed in the essay.