John Barach

"John Barach is a superb theological copy editor. He is a clear thinker and a good writer, with an excellent command of English grammar and a meticulous attention to detail." 1/2

Nope. The Odyssey is better because it tells an interesting story. Too much of the Iliad is "And then So-and-so smote What's-his-name who came from Such-and-Such and here's some of his backstory but black death sealed his eyes," over and over again.

Better than textbooks (generally not written, I suspect, by good writers because if they were good, they'd be writing their own books) and better than just primary sources are living books by historians who are gripped by their subject and write with literary style.

From what I've heard, the dividing line runs through Texas. Dallas is the South, but Fort Worth is the West. Texans, is that true?

I have almost never seen a Bible story book that doesn't change the story in some way. I've also never felt the need for a Bible story book. Why not just read the Bible?

What's my favorite children's Bible story book? The Bible itself, in a good English translation. "We are apt to believe that children cannot be interested in the Bible unless its pages be watered down--turned into the slipshod English we prefer to offer them" (Charlotte Mason).

"It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world." -- G. K. Chesterton.

I won't repost it, but I saw someone talking just now about how our good deeds are sins. Can't even wrap my mind around that one. Right now, I just took a sip of coffee. Not even a good deed. But also not a sin. Right?

Even apart from literary theories or social agendas, teachers often get in the way between the work and the student, which gives the impression that literature is not something the student can understand or enjoy himself but that it's a subject that has to be taught to him.

The primary goal of a literature teacher should be that students enjoy the works they're reading for class so much that they'll go on to keep reading those authors after they graduate and that your instruction will fire them up and equip them to find and read other great writers.

This puzzles me. Why turn a literature class into a virtues / ethics class? If it's a literature class, it would make sense to cover the works (which should be chosen for literary reasons, not because they can fit into virtue categories) in chronological order instead.