Previous years can be found here<\/a>. As always, \u201cbest\u201d and \u201cfavorite\u201d are shifting categories; I felt that most keenly this year with The Farewell<\/em>. Post title via Leslie Jamison\u2019s The Recovering<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Best books read for the first time (non-fiction)<\/strong>: This year I read a lot about slavery and related issues of domination and subjugation, which is all leading up to a long-term fiction project. (\u201cYou can say \u2018novel,\u2019 you know. We\u2019re all moderns here.\u201d) You\u2019ll see the marks of this particular obsession in more than one of these best-of lists, and you should feel very free to suggest books I should read, movies, articles, pop-opera song cycles etc etc, given what I say here.<\/p>\n So, the best non-fiction books I read unrelated to this project<\/strong> were: Claudia Rapp, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual<\/em><\/strong>. This is a very good, careful work which makes clear the many differences between this form of kinship and the vowed friendships or \u201cwedded brotherhoods\u201d depicted by Alan Bray<\/a>. Rapp attends to the spiritual power of these relationships as much as to the social conflicts they sometimes managed and sometimes exacerbated. I\u2019m always here for \u201cyou can\u2019t solve your problems, but you can get more-Christian<\/em> problems,\u201d and that\u2019s the world she depicts here.<\/p>\n Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture<\/em><\/a><\/strong>. \u201cI expected this book to be good Lenten reading. I did not expect\u2013though I should have\u2013that it would be so relevant to this specific Lent.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Augustine, Confessions<\/em><\/strong>. Translated by Thomas Williams. This is only at #3 because I\u2019ve read two translations of it before, but in fact this is the one I\u2019d start with if you\u2019re new to the guy<\/a>: \u201cWilliams translates with great love for the barbarians.\u201d (Should I put memoir in the \u201cnon-fiction\u201d section, really?)<\/p>\n Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages<\/em><\/strong>. Cistercians, man. So beautiful.<\/p>\n John D. Fitzgerald, Papa Married a Mormon<\/em><\/strong>. (Should<\/em> I put memoir in the \u201cnon-fiction\u201d section, really?) This book by the author of the Great Brain children\u2019s series was published by an outfit called Western Epics, and boy howdy, does it fit the bill. Shootouts at a silver-mine boom town, rabid dogs and vicious men, gamblers and fancy women, drunken doctors and stouthearted newspaper men\u2013it\u2019s all here. But the book also shows a side of America often excised from portrayals of the Old West: constant, intense and sincere religious conversion. Seems like everybody in this book goes through at least two religions! Mostly they swing around the Catholic-Mormon axis of Fitzgerald\u2019s parents\u2019 marriage (his dad sweeps his mom away in the night and they have to hide in a barrel while angry gun-toting Mormons<\/a> hunt them!) although you also get a lot of sinner -> penitent action, always a pleasure. Fitzgerald himself ended up Catholic iirc, which may explain why the book bends over backwards to protect the reputation of the LDS Church<\/a>. (I seem to recall that the local Mormons were<\/em> practicing polygamy during parts of this narrative, but we never see it on the page.) Caveat lector, at the beginning he repeats an ancestor\u2019s judgments of the dirtiness and low morals of the local Indians, but that\u2019s western epics for you.<\/p>\n Best non-fiction books which are obviously linked by a theme<\/strong>: Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World: AD 275 \u2013 425<\/em><\/strong>. I took a lot of notes here but one thing that stood out was that slavery relied on wealth, secure transportation systems, and good communication across long distances, and the slave society of the Romans receded not with the rise of Christianity but with the failure of these structures of power. It\u2019s easy for rich societies to be bad. ETA: Probably most helpful to say I read this book because of quotations like, \u201cChristians may have been anxious about the practice of tatooing runaway slaves on the face (because it was the image of God, perhaps); that possibility could account for the sudden appearance in late antiquity of the practice of using iron collars\u201d and, \u201cFor Gregory, <\/span><\/span>poverty was an insult to the beauty of man<\/span><\/span>\u2019s rational nature \u2026<\/span><\/span>.\u201d both of which I think I first found here<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity<\/em><\/strong>. In certain respects weaker than his more-academic book (it\u2019s more tendentious, for example) but I loved<\/em> the use of late antique novels to show the shifting views of slavery, free will, and eros. Wild to see how Christians picked up and transformed\u2013though not always enough!\u2013the tropes of pagan fiction.<\/p>\n Stephanos Bibas, The Machinery of Criminal Justice<\/em><\/a><\/strong>: \u201cMany of the practices Bibas promotes\u2014restorative justice conferences, sentencing juries, encouraging both victims and defendants to speak in court\u2014can rebuke and change the community as well as individual wrongdoers. Nothing excuses cruelty to others, the dehumanization many robbers and violent criminals project onto their victims. Nothing, also, excuses the community that fails a person starting in childhood and only notices him when he commits a crime. How can the rich man enter Heaven? How can the judge find mercy? Only in embracing the good of punishment\u2014for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study<\/em><\/strong>. Magisterial and intense. One central contention is that slavery is defined not by e.g. being sold (as Harper argues) but by social death and natal alienation\u2013being treated as one civilly dead, and being deprived of any enforceable duty or right to one\u2019s parents and children. Patterson follows this form of culture through five continents and in societies ranging from small tribes to the slave empires of the Roman and Atlantic trades.<\/p>\n James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts<\/em><\/strong>. I sort of reviewed this in my Parasite<\/em><\/a> review.<\/p>\n Andrea Long Chu, Females<\/em><\/strong>. Review forthcoming! Front half is much stronger than the back, and I don\u2019t recommend this for everyone, but I laughed a lot and was delighted by some of Chu\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n And Jon Ronson\u2019s So You\u2019ve Been Publicly Shamed<\/em><\/strong> is uneven and doesn\u2019t ask the questions I would want asked (especially in the chapter on \u201ccreative sentencing\u201d to public humiliation), but if you\u2019re interested in its subject it is very worth reading and includes many voices usually left out of these discussions, very much including the subjects of shaming themselves.<\/p>\n Also notable<\/strong>, in order of when I read them: Sharon Leon, An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics<\/em><\/a>; Brenna Moore, Sacred Dread: Raissa Maritain, The Allure of Suffering, And the French Catholic Revival (1905 \u2013 1944)<\/em><\/a>; Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads<\/em><\/a>; Carrie Frost, Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Best fiction books I read for the first time<\/strong>: Antonia White, Frost in May<\/em><\/a><\/strong>. And I\u2019d put Beyond the Glass<\/strong><\/em> on this list too. \u201cFrost in May<\/em>, Antonia White\u2019s novel drawing on her own convent education in the years leading up to World War I, layers satire, anguish, and tenderness with exceptional delicacy. The school novel is always a novel of the gap between what\u2019s taught and what\u2019s learned. The faith of the Convent of the Five Wounds is sentimental, it\u2019s cruel, it turns truths into propaganda and breaks children\u2019s spirits in the name of humility. And yet it\u2019s also beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n Charles Johnson, Middle Passage<\/em><\/a><\/strong>: \u201cJohnson is a Buddhist<\/a> the way Graham Greene is a Catholic: The world he depicts is a world where Buddhism<\/a> is true<\/em>, and often his characters do profess all or some of this philosophy, but they also live crosswise to Buddhism, seeking out forms of ecstasy which hint at a misfiring longing for what Buddhism offers.\u201d<\/p>\n The Best of Cordwainer Smith<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. \u201cTo oversimplify a baroque tale: \u2018Dead Lady\u2019 is a story about religious love, which is necessarily but not essentially political. D\u2019joan\u2019s tools (the D\u2019 is for dog!) are a saint\u2019s tools, and not actually the weapons of the historical Joan, or at least not her earthly weapons. Her story is powerful on its own but gains from appearing in the same collection as \u2018The Ballad of Lost C\u2019mell,\u2019 about a cat-geisha or cat-escort who leads a political movement for underpeople\u2019s rights; also about, as the title hints, the tragic unromance between the cat-woman and a human lord. The details of C\u2019mell\u2019s job, and her assumptions about the human lord, are so vividly and perfectly imagined, from the subtly revealing clothes she has to wear to the way she\u2019s heard many, many men say they want to help the underpeople, right before they make \u2018a very raw kind of pass indeed.\u2019 It would be easy for this genre to objectify C\u2019mell; instead Smith imagines her, as a woman who\u2019s had to live within her job and has learned some hard lessons from it.\u201d<\/p>\n Dorothy West, The Living Is Easy<\/em><\/a><\/strong>: \u201cThe things that Cleo never had to be taught were how to hold her head high, how to scorn sin with men, and how to keep her left hand from knowing what her right hand was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Jay McInerney, Story of My Life<\/em><\/a><\/strong>: \u201c[A]t a certain point I realized that [Alison Poole]\u2019s one of those luckless, careening disasters who has a code<\/em>, a personal code of honor, and it\u2019s an absurd code but so poignant in its blatant inadequacy. Alison\u2019s code is honesty, which is hilarious since she surrounds herself constantly with liars and users. She expresses her sincere love for these creeps with all the self-awareness of a literal cocker spaniel. Alison loves everybody, even men!\u2013after all, they\u2019re \u2018the only other sex we\u2019ve got.\u2019 So I adored her and saw in her hints of that humility which is impossible to distinguish from damaged self-loathing.\u201d<\/p>\n The most recent Love & Rockets collection, Is That How You See Me?<\/em><\/strong>, was an extraordinarily satisfying (possible) conclusion<\/a> to the greatest comic-book love story of our time<\/strong>, Maggie Chascarillo & Esperanza Glass.<\/p>\n Also in the books section I\u2019ll say that this year, after nine years studying Russian<\/strong>, I read something totally on my own for the first time. It was Pushkin\u2019s \u0420\u0443\u0441\u043b\u0430\u043d \u0438 \u041b\u044e\u0434\u043c\u0438\u043b\u0430<\/em><\/strong>. I can\u2019t tell you whether I \u201cliked\u201d it because I\u2019m not good enough at the language yet to have that kind of emotional reaction most of the time, but it was a pleasure to read, in the way that people tell me exercise is sometimes pleasurable.<\/p>\n And last\u2013best book published by me<\/strong> was Punishment: A Love<\/strong> Story<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n When Des Schulman returns to Washington, DC under \u2018conditional release,\u2019 she wants three things: to repair her relationships, to practice humility, and to stay out of prison. So she reconnects with her local sadomasochists\u2019 group, and pursues an elusive ex. She takes a state-mandated job cleaning (and judging) other people\u2019s houses, flings a few prayers at whatever Higher Power might be listening, and spends her group therapy trying to justify her happy childhood to the women of her halfway house.<\/p>\n But Des\u2019s downwardly-mobile skid through the gentrifying city is more dangerous than she realizes\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Available wherever<\/a> unwise books<\/a> are sold! (such as Kindle<\/a>!)<\/p>\n Best movies watched for the first time<\/strong>: This was not a year of standout movies for me. Us<\/em> was the best thing I saw, and Us<\/em> is fantastic\u2013I\u2019d love to see it again and explore its meanings and images\u2013but I think it would fall at about number nine or ten on last year\u2019s list<\/a>, just above The Favourite<\/em>. (Which I really should have switched with Sorry to Bother You<\/em> anyway.) So no shade to any of these movies, not everything can be Salo<\/em> (thank God), I just don\u2019t want to oversell them to you.<\/p>\n Us<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Cruising<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Mad Max: Fury Road<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Four Lions<\/em><\/p>\n The Last Black Man in San Francisco<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Also notable<\/strong>, in order of when I saw them: Can You Ever Forgive Me?<\/a>, Shoplifting, The Jewish Cardinal<\/a>, Il Generale della Rovere<\/a>, Steel Magnolias, Crooklyn, School Daze<\/a>, The Devil\u2019s Doorway<\/a>, Bachelor Mother, Citizens Band, To Sleep with Anger<\/a>, LA Story<\/a>, Seklusyon<\/a>, Rafiki, White Nights<\/a>, Friday<\/a>, Thief<\/a>, The Trouble with Angels, The Farewell<\/a>, Desperately Seeking Susan<\/a>, Pumpkinhead, Of Unknown Origin<\/a> (KILLER RATS!!!!), The Interrupters<\/a>, Parasite<\/a>, Beauty and the Beast (1978), The Legend of Cool \u201cDisco\u201d Dan<\/a>, Corpus Christi<\/a>, The Last Exorcism (review forthcoming).<\/p>\n Best articles by other people<\/strong>: As always, I read at random, so this is far from a comprehensive survey.<\/p>\n BD McClay, \u201cThe Ills that Flesh Is Heir To<\/a>.\u201d Or, a theology of having mono.<\/p>\n Jennifer Percy, \u201cThe Priest of Abu Ghraib<\/a>\u201c: \u201cTwo weeks before he got his assignment letter from the Army, he was accepted to seminary school. He chose Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n Ron Belgau, \u201cAgapao and Phileo by the Sea of Tiberias<\/a>\u201c: \u201cI will argue that when Peter says, \u2018I love [phil\u00e9o<\/i>] You,\u2019 he is declaring a more intimate form of love than if he responded \u2018I love [agap\u00e1o<\/i>] You.\u2019 I will also argue that by switching from agap\u00e1o<\/i> to phil\u00e9o<\/i>, Jesus is helping to confirm Peter\u2019s restoration to friendship with Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n Lizzie Presser, \u201cWhen Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested<\/a>.\u201d This is a reporter with a novelist\u2019s eye for detail and incident. Also this article is what made me decide that I\u2019ll donate<\/a> to ProPublica in the new year. And I\u2019ll add an Atlantic<\/em> piece from Will Evans, \u201cRuthless Quotas Are Maiming Workers at Amazon<\/a>,\u201d because his perseverance in reporting makes this a work of FOIA noir.<\/p>\n Matthew Walther, \u201cThe Immorality of Layoffs<\/a>.\u201d Does what it says on the tin.<\/p>\n A lot of Melinda Selmys\u2019s writing on the breakup of her marriage, her experience of spousal rape, and the impact of these experiences on her faith has been powerful and necessary<\/a>; I\u2019d highlight \u201cWhy I Am Still Writing for Patheos Catholic<\/a>.\u201d I expect Melinda\u2019s beliefs and position have shifted since then but this post is an articulation, with both honesty and humility, of something many, many people have experienced.<\/p>\n And in a very different genre, Amy Richlin\u2019s 2014 article, \u201cTalking to Slaves in the Plautine Audience<\/a>.\u201d What do we know about the people who watched these comedy slave characters, and what aspects of slave experience are depicted, caricatured, or dreamed of here?<\/p>\n Best articles by me<\/strong>: \u201cThe value of public penance in the age of clerical abuse, mass incarceration, and #metoo<\/a>.\u201d Public penance is back baby. It\u2019s good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl).<\/p>\n Against Storytelling, or, my tribute to Salo<\/a>: And a postscript<\/a> which is if anything more theological and heartfelt.<\/p>\n Dentistry as a corporal work of mercy<\/a>: \u201cOur teeth are our biographers.\u201d<\/p>\n I review a biography of Edward Gorey<\/a>. Camp is the thing with feathers\/that perches in the soul.<\/p>\n \u201cHow the \u2018Celibacy Recession\u2019 Is Affecting Young Catholics.<\/a>\u201d I\u2019m mainly listing this here because it\u2019s a decent example of how viewing current events solely through the lens of one\u2019s own obsessions can sometimes reveal what others don\u2019t see. \u201cAn economic and cultural landscape in which large numbers of young people can\u2019t enter either marriage or religious life \u2013 the two most obvious and intelligible forms of self-gift for Catholics \u2013 is a landscape in which adulthood is defined not by sacrificial love but by anchorless, humiliated drifting. It is this anchorlessness more than anything which defines the \u2018celibacy recession\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Best blog posts by me<\/strong>: \u201cSilence as Humility vs. Silence = Death<\/a>,\u201d though honestly the best stuff in that is taken pretty directly from Renee Higgins at Revoice.<\/p>\n \u201cNotes from a \u2018Pilgrimage to Hostage Relics<\/a>.'\u201d Service journalism for those looking to do some guerrilla reverence in their own towns; and that slavery novel is also a novel about relics, about bones and their adornment and what it means to keep a body around after death. So here are some notes about that. Also, obviously, the \u201cSt. Moses\u201d incident has especial resonance in a time of rising attacks on New York\u2019s Jews.<\/p>\n \u201cWe Don\u2019t Need No Water<\/a>\u201c: This is sort of about whether Paul inadvertently supports gay marriage, but mostly about gay people\u2019s relationship to Scripture.<\/p>\n \u201cWere You There When the Stone Was Rolled Away?<\/a>\u201c: Holy Week in the capital of gentrification.<\/p>\n \u201cA Child\u2019s Garden of Anarchy<\/a>\u201c: \u201cSince I\u2019ve been re-reading the books I loved at various ages I\u2019ve been struck by the division between two kinds of children\u2019s or YA lit about rebellious, underworld communities: one kind about anarchy, and one kind about anarchism.\u201d<\/p>\n Piece by me that I\u2019m least satisfied with<\/strong>: Honestly, probably my short review of Four Lions<\/em><\/a>, which deserved better from me.<\/p>\n Music I discovered in 2019<\/strong>: This traditional song about Dives and Lazarus<\/a>; Kesha, \u201cPraying<\/a>,\u201d aka one of the greatest Christian songs of our time. Video is also both wiggy and heartbreaking.<\/p>\n Best new holiday<\/strong>: Weird Catholic Book Day<\/a>. YOU\u2019RE WELCOME.<\/p>\n Best gay Christian conference<\/strong>: Yo\u2019 winnah, and still champeen\u2013Revoice<\/a>! A successful title defense in this category. See you in St Louis 2k20.<\/p>\n Best presentation I gave<\/strong>: No coincidence, it\u2019s the Ecstasy in Celibacy<\/a> thing from Revoice, even though I was scatterbrained as always and went way under time. Here\u2019s a coda<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most unexpected conservative emergence<\/strong>: 2019, the year go-go became a conservative movement. Go-go, the sound of the city, the music with which hometown DC has ever distinguished herself from dateline Washington, became a rallying cry<\/a> and a self-conscious aesthetic resistance to community-disrupting woke capitalism. I\u2019m here for Burkean go-go even though I\u2019m sorry to see it emerge, since conservatism, the defense of home, emerges only once home has been replaced. Anyway, God bless go-go, sic transit Lisa of the World.<\/p>\n