A Midsummer Day's Stream
Catching up on Great Conversations
I try to take the month of July off from the Weekly Speak. It’s the busiest time here in Carlton Landing, and it charges my batteries to bottle up ideas and articles for a few weeks. What hasn’t stopped in the last month is our podcast, and we’ve had some fantastic conversations wrapping up our cities of the Bible series and interviewing guests about their books.
It’s a great joy to read a book and then get to talk to the author about it. Over the course of a month, I go through 10-12 books, sometimes reading all the way through, others for reference, and yes, sometimes getting a few pages in and realizing this isn’t for me. But there is no greater feeling than reading a really good book, firing off an email to the author, and thinking through the questions I’d like to ask. It’s not just seeking out my own curiosity, but instead trying to think about how to bring the best of the book to our listeners, some of whom will read the book and others won’t. Regardless, I hope they all enjoy and learn from the conversations.
For these reasons and others, I don’t invite authors on to argue with them. If I don’t like the book, I can write about it or keep it to myself. The ones who come on have given me a very gracious gift in making time for the conversation, and you can trust that what they’ve written comes with my recommendation.
Looking back, I’m not sure this was intentional, but we’ve had several great interviews about C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings.
Simon Horobin has written a fantastic - and beautiful - book about C.S. Lewis’s Oxford. It highlights his time there, discusses his favorite spots, and makes you feel like you’ve just come in from a drizzly Oxford day to join the Inklings mid-meeting in the Eagle and Child.
In a follow-up to his great book A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War, Joseph Loconte has moved forward into the Second World War, where Lewis, Tolkien, and their band of friends defended the values of the West through their writing, teaching, and fellowship.
In the most recent conversation, I talked with Robert Dobie about his book The Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, which has the intriguing thesis that fanstasy (really all good literature) helps us to see the world better. He calls this recovery and sees it as a central goal of Tolkien’s writing. When you read The Lord of the Rings, it does something helpful to the way we see the world, like cleaning our spectacles.
In the spirit of our 250th birthday as a nation, make sure you catch the interview with Matthew Spalding from Hillsdale. His book The Making of the American Mind is my favorite of the books published on America this year. He is a fount of knowledge and his careful scholarship illuminates the original intentions of the Declaration of Independence and its continuing brilliance in our day.
The greatest pleasure of all is when you get to interview someone who has been a mentor, a teacher, and a role model. Jonathan Pennington has been all three for me. His latest book, Becoming a Disciple of the King, is a little masterpiece on how to read the Bible, specifically the Gospel of Matthew. Essential reading for every Christian.
What have you been enjoying this summer? Leave your recommendations in the comments!