Stopping to Think

  "There is no such thing as love or worship that is merely private." Anthony Esolen, Life Under Compulsion, pg 212

  "The society that promotes chastity promotes true wedded love. The land of marriage, despite all the troubles that sinful human beings bring upon themselves, is a paradise by comparison with the land of easy fornication and childlessness by choice." Anthony Esolen, Life Under Compulsion, pg 123

  "These days we have no true childhood, only a diseased precocity, introducing children to things that any decent man of Whittier's day, or of Armstrong's, would have considered unutterably vile. Therefore we have no true adulthood either, only a prolonged infantility, a curdled adolescence followed by old age and death." Anthony Esolen, Life Under Compulsion, pg 70  

If you've followed my blog at all over the years, you know I like to put forward some sort of book list to start the year. Here are five books which I read in 2016 that I think would be well worth the investment of your time: Father Hunger , Douglas Wilson I'm a little bit of a Wilson fanboy, but I think this is clearly his best book (at least of what I've read). Are you a father, a son, or do you have fathers and sons in your life? Then read this book. Life Under Compulsion , Anthony Esolen Esolen essentially attacks and reveals as stupid much of the modern compulsion and drive toward busyness, arguing instead that we, especially those of us raising children, ought to spend more time being human . Crunchy Cons , Rod Dreher Sick of the fact that you don't fit into the typical Liberal/Conservative paradigms and stereotypes? Does it frustrate you that simply because you identify as conservative people automatically think you are a pro-Big Business, anti-earth, uncar...