The New York Times recently ran a fascinating multi-author series on criticism, and on why criticism (still) matters:

• Beyond the Critic as Cultural Arbiter by Stephen Burn
• With Clarity and Beauty, the Weight of Authority by Katie Roiphe
• The Intellectual at Play in the Wider World by Pankaj Mishra
• The Will Not to Power, but to Self-Understanding by Adam Kirsch
• Translating the Code Into Everyday Language by Sam Anderson
• From the Critical Impulse, the Growth of Literature by Elif Batuman
• Masters of the Form by Jennifer B. McDonald
• There’s also a wee podcast with Sam Anderson, Adam Kirsch and Katie Roiphe on the art and importance of literary criticism.

An interesting wee piece by Ed Park on The Art of the Very Long Sentence.

Richard Bauckham has a very witty piece on ‘Reconstructing the Pooh Community’ wherein he has a swipe at some of the speculative sociological readings of the NT that some in the guild are want to become obsessed with.

Ben Myers continues to enthral us with his own fiction, this time with ‘a short story’ called The Shakespearean Death.

Benedict Carey tells me why I’m a Sudoku- and crossword-junkie (and more recently a jigsaw-puzzle-junkie) in his article on Tracing the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving.

Michael Jinkins posts some Nominees for Today’s Niebuhr.

The latest edition of the Journal of Reformed Theology is out. It includes articles by David P. Henreckson (‘Possessing Heaven in Our Head: A Reformed Reading of Incarnational Ascent in Kathryn Tanner’, pp. 171–184), Paul Helm (‘Reformed Thought on Freedom’, pp. 185–207) and Meine Veldman (‘Secrets of Moltmann’s Tacit Tradition: Via Covenant Theology to Promise Theology’, pp. 208–239).