Well, dear readers, we are six months into 2026. Time to look and see how I’m doing on my reading goals. One happy bit of news is that I found a new binge-able artist. The last years I haven’t done a “20__ in Other Media: Music!” post, mostly because I’ve been listening to artists whom I already knew. There’s nothing wrong with that, but one does like a bit of adventure from time to time, to become obsessed with a new artist. In my case, her name is “Sophie Grey.”. The period is part of her name. Her main genre is “Retro Electro”, and as someone who loves synthwave I’m enjoying the connection. She works in a lot of…telecom/IT audio into her videos. Yes, I’m serious. I stumbled on her randomly when I had youtube set to pop-female (think B*Witched, Britney, Spice Girls, Taylor Swift) and it decided to feature her cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star“. I spent the entire day listening to her! But this is a book blog, not a music blog, so let’s get to it — and more importantly, we are halfway through the year, so I need to assess how I’m doing on my goals.

Science Survey

I read When the Earth Had Two Moons, though I dragged my feet through it and was continually distracted by Nixon and Kennedy so I’ve retained almost nothing. Ten categories remain for the Survey: so far I’ve only claimed the Wildcard and Local Astronomy categories.

Classics Club

I’m steadily working on Angle of Repose; Stegner’s writing is exquisite.

Bible in a Year

As mentioned in January, I decided to read the Bible in a year following Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast. While I have not followed it evenly (there have been periods where I lapsed and then binged), I am on course. To date I have read everything from Genesis through to Kings and Chronicles, plus Job, the Gospel of John, Ecclesiastes, and large portions of the Psalms. I’d also planned to read a book a month about the Bible to aid in my quest, but you know the old saying: Man proposes and Reading Frenzies disposes. It’s been an…interesting journey so far. The Hebrew scriptures are rich with wild, emotionally volatile stories — especially the Tamar/Amnon/Absalom drama — but the amount of census-taking is insane. A lot of times I’d just boot up Stardew Valley and fish while I listened to Fr. Mike read out the Hebrew phone book. I think the second half of the year will be a lot more lively than the first half, because we get the Prophets and the Gospels. (We also get the Epistles: St. Paul’s love of long, complicated sentences is something you really notice when you’re a lector.)

America @ 250

As far as my three-track model goes, I’m doing rather poorly. I’ve read a history of one period-city, Boston and the Revolution; I’ve read almost no general American history save for presidential biographies and histories; and track three on ‘Americans of Note’ has been wholly dominated by presidents, with a couple of exceptions in the form of Thomas Sowell and RFK. I’d wanted Americans of Note to feature musicians, authors, etc. However, the presidential fixation — which has included books about political relationships, not just biographies — has allowed me to absorb a lot of American history on the side, including stuff I know virtually nothing about like the Vietnam war. Do I have intentions of trying to return to my three-track model? You bet. Will I?

New Acquisitions

Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy vs Jimmy Hoffa, James Neff
Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, Chris Matthews
Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, Chris Matthews
The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, David Margolick
Communion, J.D. Vance

Coming up in July….

Um..history. History is a really safe bet.

2026 Goals in the Back 9?

I still want to do some place-oriented reading, celebrating American cities and states, but to be honest I think America @ 250 is just going to focus on finishing my Hail to the Chief reading project. The amount of dead presidents I need books for is under twenty, so it’s COMPLETELY plausible that I could finish that before year’s end. Heck, if I was as fixated on it as I have been on Nixon and Kennedy, I could knock it out in two months. The potential issue is that a lot of the men left are so frustrating and interesting (like Nixon) that I’m not going to be satisfied with one book. I can’t Zachary Taylor men like LBJ: even if I don’t like LBJ (and I don’t, he was a vulgar boor albeit a master politician), I feel like he’ll deserve a serious study.

As far as Science Survey and Classics Club….may the odds be ever in their favor. Neither is by necessity doomed but the America @ 250 fire would really need to dampen down. It’s entirely possible — look at CJ Box taking over February — but not necessarily probable.

Non-Book Commonplace Entries

Architecture always catechises. The Christology of the Stairs, substack.

The danger of speaking badly about others or exposing their secrets on social media lies in our inability to repair the damage once we later recognize our sin. When I gossip or slander someone privately, I may apologize and mend the situation once I realize the evil I have done. But on social media, countless people who read what I wrote will never know of my repentance, while the harm done to the other person remains. – Metropolitan Saba Isper

Whoever has not been formed by the Gospel will not be corrected merely by manners. – ibid

“The devil does not destroy a man with one blow, but whispers ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow.’ And so, the heart is lulled to sleep, and the soul forgets eternity. But the wise man says, ‘Today is the day of salvation,’ and he rises to repent while there is still time.” – St. Moses the Black, quoted by Michael Warren Davis

You are not coming to Orthodoxy to optimize your personal spiritual metrics. You are being woven into a body. – Martin Myers, “On Orthodox Formation and Convert Burnout“.

Fr. John Behr recently said in an interview with the guys at Worse for the Facts that you can really only get to know a handful of thinkers in your life. Bear in mind, Fr. John probably fits that description of person we’re not found two paragraphs above better than most. So, if one of the greatest living scholars of patristics says that he can only know a few thinkers in his life, well, shoot, I’d love to even know one then. – “How Should We Think about the Church Fathers?”, Austin Suggs

“However successful the darkness may be, for however long a time, and however it may increase, yet the Light is imperishable. All lies die. Truth alone remains.” – Dr Peter Kreeft, “Ten Lies of Contemporary Culture”.

The Desert Fathers did not leave us a religion of comfort, affirmation, and therapeutic self-discovery. They left us a faith of repentance, sacrifice, discipline, and holiness. – Frank Bruno, comment

“If man were born only to be happy, he would not also be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on Earth must evidently be more spiritual. Not to gorge on everyday life, not to search for the best ways of obtaining material goods and eagerly consuming them, but to bear perpetual, earnest, duty — so that one’s entire life journey may become, above all, an experience of moral assent, To leave life a better human being than one started it.” – Ignat Solzhenitsyn, quoting (I think) his father Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at ARC 2026.

“Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion was, a totalitarian state isn’t a dictator oppressing the freedom-loving masses. That’s a fool’s vision of the world. It’s the universal grip of The Lie on every soul, every single one. Not a single man, in a totalitarian state, is willing to stand up and say what he knows to be true.” Jordan Peterson, “Does God Speak to You?”, a reflection on Job.

“Perhaps the greatest difference between those years from my childhood and the current era was not that life was slower back then, but that our attention was directed somewhere other than ourselves. We were occupied with neighbors, friends, family, and whatever adventure the day happened to bring. Today’s world, by contrast, constantly invites us to become students of ourselves. We are encouraged to analyze our feelings, cultivate our self-esteem, curate our identity, and endlessly examine our own story. It is precisely here that the wisdom of the Orthodox Church becomes important, for the saints consistently teach that the more preoccupied we become with ourselves, the less free we become to love God and our neighbor.” – “Orthodox Christianity Doesn’t Want You Living in the Past“, Kenneth B

The longer I live, the more I realize that that cheesy coffee mug saying, “Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle” — really is true. I don’t live by that admonition as much as I should. – Rod Dreher, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Mall“.

So, in a real sense, just as every individual monastery is a place where a group of people have committed to live together in order to be perfected in Christ, so every individual marriage and family is a “domestic monastery”. They are BOTH communities of imperfect people who come to it with different issues, sins, inclinations, failures, and dispositions chosen, forced, habitual, and genetic. The community is joined and established by free will and within that community we learn to be like Christ. It is also a place to learn how to give up your self will and sacrifice your desires for the sake of love for others. It is where we learn to man our post in spite of…. It is the place we ultimately learn the humility of the Trinity: the laying down of my individuality for the sake of my fulfilling my created personhood. It is the cross on which our self dies and our humanity is raised transfigured. – “The Domestic Monastery“, Steve Robinson.

I think that last one is particularly….chewy, because Christianity occupies this odd space where the individual is important as a Person — Christ always dealt with people one on one — but not important merely in themselves, as an individual. The modern ‘liberal’ world prioritizes the individual to a large degree — declaring that people have their own truths, that feelings dictate reality, and so on — even as it damns those like Ayn Rand who take individualism to its logical conclusion.

In conclusion, June was a heck of a month, and it’s been a fun reading year so far. If you made it this far, good for you! Here’s your reward.