Great Reads, Hot Links! – UPDATED

Like Flannery O’ Connor and loathe Jack Chick? Or vice-versa? You’ll be surprised (or perhaps you won’t) to find that Max Lindenman sees them as cousins under the ink!:

Jack Chick, founder of Chick Publications, is a shadowy figure, practically the Keyser Söze of evangelists.

It is not known whether he raises peacocks or suffers from lupus. Personally, I hope he doesn’t, but not because I’m afraid that chronic illness or an absorbing hobby will stop him turning out more masterpieces like “This Was Your Life.” I just pray that something, anything, distinguishes him from Flannery O’Connor before the two merge, in the general imagination, like Chesterton and Belloc. The Chickonnor? God save us.

You’ll have to read it.

Love being surrounded by screens in every store and restaurant and room of the house? Loathe it? You’ll be surprised to learn who loves those ubiquitous screens and why:

The screen is everywhere my dear worms. Simply everywhere! The potential for our ‘seeing is believing’ manifesto is now almost limitless. The chimps with souls now spend huge amounts of their time staring at a screen. Television screens, movie screens, iPads, smart phones, animated billboards, smart boards in schools . . . the list goes on. They play games on the screen, talk with each other on the screen, watch movies on the screen, do homework on the screen, do office work on the screen, watch news on the screen. Screen. Screen! Screen! It is all so delicious and delightful my dear worms. Too wonderful for words!

Yeah, he’s insufferable, isn’t he?

Love the big city and loathe being alone? Or vice versa? Heather King knows how to find the small green places and make them her Kyoto

Love Lenten Reading and don’t know where to start? Start here. Fiction list to come!

What do you love more? German Theologians or the word Chutzpah?

How Catholics commit political suicide

Kathryn Jean Lopez: 16 and pregnant, but with a GPS for a new direction

Ross Douthat: Why Monogamy Matters

Is “starving America” a good energy policy?

Kaus having fun

Some very bad American Habits

Coming to a country near you

Warned, not to appeal

Shacking up: A look at how it often ends

The Values and Limits of language

1000! and counting!

Why are Catholics so nasty?

If you missed: “UP” in the 1960’s

UPDATE:
Praying for Michelle Malkin’s cousin

UPDATE II:
As promised, Julie’s recommended Lenten Fiction!