Read the TLS!

Okay, last post for the day (it's too hot for the pool, and the Yankees-Mets aren't on til 8:20, so I blog). In my last post I quoted extensively from a review In the (London) Times Literary Supplement. I don't know how many of our readers read it regularly, but I've beem subscribing for several years and find it terrific. I'm not particularly an Anglophile, but it is  a change of pace that is definitely worth its pricey subscription rate. Of most interest to MOJ is its regular and very sophisticated reviews of new books on religion and theology -- much better than anything I've seen in similar pubs in the US. They review more books and different books in those fields, and they are often reviewed by people within religious traditions, rather than by people who don't quite know what to make of this slightly distasteful religious stuff. For example, they published a review several months ago of a very interesting book fr Univ of Notre Dame Press by Christopher Insole, "The Politics of Frailty: a Theological Defense of Political Liberalism," which has not yet received any attention in the US non-specialty pubs (though I'm working on a review for Commonweal). The TLS also just published (6.10.05) a devastating critique of the DaVinci Code -- not a new topic, but done with an extraordinary thoroughness by the Professor (Emeritus) of Crusading History at the Univ. of Nottingham (now that's an academic title !). Surprisingly, the TLS is both more academic and more fun to read than my other favorites, the NYRB and the New Republic, and light years beyond the increasingly puffy and lower-middlebrow NYTimes Book Review. It also has two odd, but very interesting regular essayists, Hugo Williams and Michael Greenberg, and the reviewing style also has a kind of polite savagery that is far more entertaining than the painfully earnest critiques found in American reviews. The Letters also have an edge and wit that make the snarkiness of the American blogosphere look like the sophomoric heavy-breathing that it usually is. So, the TLS is my pick of the month (plus, you can read it at the beach or the pool!)

--Mark