Ben Crowder

The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV volume 1, by Charles Greville (edited by Henry Reeve), published 1874, diary, 619 pages. Hot dang, I loved this. Even though I know very little about nineteenth-century politics in Britain (so far, anyway), these memoirs are what I never knew I wanted. Here are some sample passages, starting with Greville’s grumblings about George IV (who reminds me of a certain orange menace): There never was such a man, o...

A couple months back I moved off Feedly (for reading RSS feeds) and switched to my own handcrafted reader, Digest. It started when I came across Karin Hendrikse’s article on building a static RSS reader (oh how I love static files), and then Terry Godier’s post on RSS and phantom obligations nudged me away from the idea that a feed reader has to be something like Feedly or Google Reader. At some point Feedly started adding more AI features (ugh) and I decided it was time to part ways and do m...

Madame de Treymes, by Edith Wharton, published 1907, fiction, 74 pages. Great writing as always. With these Wharton novellas, I feel slowing down — not my natural instinct given the long list of books I want to read before someday shuffling off this mortal coil — is particularly rewarding and worthwhile. The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335–1410, by Iris Origo, published 1957, biography, 526 pages. Enjoyed this deep dive into the life of a medieval Tuscan merchant. Very deta...

This morning I was reading Matthew 5 and had a little epiphany. Verses 43–48 (and this is from the NIV, never mind the post title being from the KJV): You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what rew...

Excited to see yesterday’s Church Newsroom post about the upcoming changes to the Sunday class meeting schedule. While the new schedule doesn’t give a lot of time for lessons, I think the consistency — same schedule each week — is important, as is the follow-on effect of each organization gathering together every week instead of every other. Less of a preparation burden for teachers on any given day, too, now that lessons/discussions are only half as long. (I say this as one who always worrie...

I’ve been reading through my journals from twenty years ago, remembering old friends and who I used to be and what I worried about when I was young and single. And goodness, I had forgotten just how much I used to blog back then. Perhaps to excess (and by “perhaps” I mean “without a doubt”), but it was fun and I made lots of friends and I find myself missing it. [He says on his blog, where he has posted twenty-three times this year so far.] [He wants to point out, though, that the booknotes a...

Inspired by Jo Walton’s post about reading sixteen books at once, here are my own reading habits, for those who have trouble falling asleep at night. I generally read between four and ten books at a time, though at times it’s gone as low as two and as high as, uh, thirty. (Those were wild days.) For me it’s a balance between finishing books — where fewer at a time helps — and reading across more of my areas of interest in parallel. Each day I try to read at least 100 pages. My loose goal is a...

The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare, published 1596, play, 82 pages. I first read this twenty-five years ago but apparently retained almost none of it. Aside from the antisemitism, I generally liked it. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard, published 2011, history, 368 pages. Loved it! The history — the assassination, the undiagnosed mental illness, the medical malpractice — is tragic and awful, of course, but the b...