Ron Charles

It’s hard out there for a Washington Post book reviewer. Hey, you try balancing your exquisite wokeness (or the appearance thereof -- it strains credulity that anybody really believes all this bilge) with a supposed love of literature. 

 

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles made a confession the other day. “I banned a book,” he wrote. “Or at least I helped get it banned, which makes Banned Books Week a little awkward for me this year. Like celebrating Arbor Day by cutting down a tree.”

Dan Brown, the author of The DaVinci Code, is back with another blockbuster anti-religion novel, and CBS Sunday Morning rolled out the red carpet on October 1 to honor him and his massive commercial success. The segment began with what he called his “fortress of gratitude” – his house loaded floor to ceiling, over several stories, with bookshelves....stuffed with copies of Dan Brown’s own books…

On Wednesday, Washington Post book editor Ron Charles raved over a French novel called The Age of Reinvention. The headline on the front of the Style section was “A French tale of Islamophobia and deception that feels eerily timely.” Charles explained “it has taken more than two years for Karine Tuil’s sensational tale of Islamophobia to drift across the Atlantic. Now, though, in a horrific…

The Washington Post has assigned reporter Jenna Portnoy to follow Republican nominee David Brat's campaign for the U.S. House seat for the 7th District of Virginia. In Portnoy's latest story, published in Friday's paper on page B4, the staff writer slammed Brat for having "largely ducked media exposure since his [primary] win," noting that after a brief press statement on Thursday which lasted…

The Washington Post is promoting Amazon.com today – a new series of “trim biographies” called “Icons.” The list of subjects includes Stalin and Hemingway, Poe and Van Gogh. The Post is also bashing Fox News again today. The first “Icon” biography is about Jesus Christ. Post book reviewer Ron Charles surely caused a few coffee spews by suggesting that Christians typically threaten the lives…

A Christian can be crushed gazing at the picture of Mary standing at the foot of the cross, watching her beloved son suffocate, and die. But in that vision she stands there for hours, patiently enduring her suffering. For two millennia, she has been a role model for Christians, a woman who practiced obedience in the most difficult of human circumstances, with fervent hope for what this…

"To passerby" the Occupy D.C. protest at McPherson Square "is a jumble of tents and blue tarps," but to the Washington Post's Philip Kennicott, the Occupiers "have 'activated' the urban core," with "a living exercise in do-it-yourself (or DIY) urbanism, a trendy movement that strives to engage ordinary people in a hands-on approach to shaping and claiming public space." And that's just the…

"[F]or all its satanic fanfare and heretical rejiggering, 'The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ' is -- God forbid -- kind of inspiring," Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles proclaimed in today's review of the latest novel by avowed atheist Philip Pullman.Charles began by suggesting that Pullman's publication was a veritable act of courage -- "if you fiddle with Jesus, people begin…