We're now well into September, the unofficial start of Autumn here in North America. It seems like a great time to look back and think about the "Song of the Summer." But first, the roundup. Roundup Music After a notoriously slow first half of the year, the new music calendar has continued to pick up … Continue reading Culture Roundup (September 6, 2025): Booker Longlist Redux and the Song of the Summer
I was away last week on vacation, and you'll be hearing a lot more about that starting next week. But here's my pop-culture roundup for the past couple weeks, plus some thoughts on the wily and elusive 'pop boy'. Roundup Music While the announcement of the new Taylor Swift album has understandably taken up a … Continue reading Culture Roundup (August 23, 2025): Whither the ‘Pop Boy’?
I mentioned the other week that I was feeling the weekly 'What's Lighting Me Up' post had run its course, but I still wanted to engage with pop culture in an intentional way. So today I'm introducing a new format to do a quick roundup of what I've been listening to, reading, and watching lately … Continue reading Culture Roundup (August 9, 2025): Initial Thoughts on the Booker Long List
An annual ‘best of’ my reading year post has become a tradition here since 2017. Where 2023 was an absolute banner year for my reading life — by the second week of January, I’d already read two books I knew were not just going to be best-of-the-year picks, but new all-time favourites — 2024 was … Continue reading Top 15 Reads of 2024
As I mentioned last week, a surprising number of the books I’ve read in the past year or so that deal with spiritual themes do so while also exploring themes of gender and sexuality. In that post, I explored that trend through the idea of the arena, at how these issues that are so controversial … Continue reading Wisdom IN Literature: All the World Beside on Flexibility and Faith
Matthew Root 