Tag Archives: marriage and family

Crunchy Cons: The Reread

Posted on July 17, 2025 by smellincoffee

Eleven years ago I stumbled onto a book called Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher. I’d begun moving towards ‘localism’ in my later progressive period (circa 2009 – 2011), and had found unexpected insight in online magazines with some localist-oriented writing … Continue reading →

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Anxious People

Posted on March 19, 2024 by smellincoffee

The scene: an apartment showing, the day before New Year’s. The apartment is filled with people, and then enters one more: a masked individual wielding a gun, panicked. They’ve just tried to rob a bank, only the bank is a … Continue reading →

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Troubled

Posted on March 4, 2024 by smellincoffee

Selected Quotations Imagine that your first memory is that of being three years old and seeing your mother, a drug addict who ties you to chairs to get high without interruption, being arrested. Imagine being bounced around ten different foster … Continue reading →

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How To Stay Married

Posted on February 28, 2024 by smellincoffee

On an ordinary day, a book called How to Stay Married would have never broached my radar, given the dismal marriage prospects of eccentric librarians, but as it happened one of my favorite authors mentioned Harrison Scott Key last week … Continue reading →

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Selections from “How to Stay Married”

Posted on February 27, 2024 by smellincoffee

Harrison Scott Key’s How to Stay Married will, presumably, make the year’s top ten list for me, despite the fact that the closest I’ve come to being married is being confused with someone’s fiance. It’s the story of a marriage, … Continue reading →

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The Dirty Life

Posted on June 13, 2023 by smellincoffee

The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love© 2011 Kristin Kimball287 pages When Kristin Kimball left her cozy confines in the big city to interview a passionate young farmer in the sticks, she had no idea her life … Continue reading →

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The World-Ending Fire

Posted on January 3, 2023 by smellincoffee

The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry© 2018 Wendell Berry and Paul Kingsnorth360 pages What a way to finish 2022, in reading this superb collection of Wendell Berry’s essays.  Berry has published no small amount of essay collections himself, and … Continue reading →

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Irreversible Damage

Posted on March 25, 2022 by smellincoffee

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters© 2020 Abigail Shrier276 pages To the degree that gender dysphoria existed prior to 2015, it was almost wholly the domain of young boys.  In the last ten years, however, claims of dysphoria … Continue reading →

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The Vanishing American Adult

Posted on September 15, 2020 by smellincoffee

The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming of Age Crisis , and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance© 2017 Ben Sasse320 pages Why are teenagers and young adults floundering into maturity? Ben Sasse believes that much of the problem is … Continue reading →

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Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination Of Your Child

Posted on August 18, 2017 by smellincoffee

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination Of Your Child © 2010 Anthony Esolen 256 pages In the spirit of The Screwtape Letters comes this, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination Of Your Child.  Anthony Esolen opens by observing that the … Continue reading →

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