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Merry Christmas! Tomorrow is the last day of 2025. It’s been a busy year and a good one. I hope you’ve had a happy Christmastide so far. Remember to celebrate the proper feast on Thursday. I held off on a final newsletter until the cusp of 2026. Thanks for reading and listening this year. Many more good things in store in the months to come. Read below for all the links that are fit to print. News Crickets right now, but various bits of news are imminent. Books, grants, lectures, essays … information is forthcoming, I promise! Books For any readers who’ve not yet picked up one of my books, you can nab them for a cheap price on Amazon; and if you’ve already got yourself a copy, buy one for a friend, a child, a pastor, a parent, or a student in your life! That’s four books for less than seventy bucks total—not bad. Appearances No travel, no appearances, no nothing—not in the last six weeks, that is. Just some relief, at last, from a busy fall schedule, and resting with family over the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. I did appear on a few podcast episodes. More are recorded and set to come out in January or February. That’s when the travel will pick back up, too. For now here are the links: Writing Three new pieces: Blog After nine months of no activity and empty promises of a return to blogging, I stormed back with a flurry of regular posts, starting the week of Thanksgiving. Feast your eyes: Plus, a five-part recap of my work in 2025: Links Here’s what I’ve been reading (cribbed from the micro blog), in no particular order: The reviews section of The Hedgehog Review is always good, but it’s especially good in the latest issue. Read Freddie on editors, good and bad. Co-sign Sonny Bunch on the third Avatar. Adam Roberts' review is brutally funny and full of real insights—especially the literal fasces!—but unfair, I think, and indulgent of some over-reading and ungenerous ad hominem swipes. Read Christopher Caldwell on the Boomers. I enjoyed reading about these developments in biblical archeology. Read Rosa Lyster in Harper’s on the felling of a sycamore tree. Always be reading Robin Sloan, always be subscribing to his newsletter, but especially the latest edition, in which he links to my review of del Toro’s Frankenstein. Never was a link such an honor! Read MZS on Jim Jarmusch. Also on Bradley Cooper and Spongebob. And on Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair too. Mike Sacasas is back! Let’s go! It goes without saying that I loved Trevin Wax’s FT essay “We Were Jesus Freaks." I also have thoughts I’m hoping to share, either on the blog or on the pod, or both. But read it first and be transported back to another world … the evangelical pop-culture nineties. This piece on Eyes Wide Shut was informative enough to warrant reading but annoying throughout in voice and approach. Must every response to “conspiracy theories” be this self-serious in its solemn bounden duty to debunk? Have a little fun! Interpret some art! At least he admits it by the end. Please read Alan’s tribute to Dan Treier. A wonderful Christian, scholar, and mentor from afar. Years ago Dan befriended me when he didn’t have to, and we were able to meet in person last year. We weren’t close. But I caught a glimpse of what Alan so movingly writes here. I can’t believe he’s gone. Only last month he reached out to let me know he couldn’t be on a panel I’d organized at SBL. I had no idea how fast the end would come. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
Forthcoming The Kingsnorth review above is in the January print issue of Commonweal, so be on the lookout for that if you’re a subscriber. I’ve also got a column in Christianity Today set to be published on January 8; the topic is evangelicals and biomedical technology. Besides those, I should have my first review published in The Bulwark sometime in February. My main focus at present is finalizing a book proposal for my agent to shop with publishers this spring, so that is going to have my full attention until it’s out the door. My hope is to have word on that sooner rather than later. As ever, thanks for reading. Peace, Brad
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