Brandywine Books
Octavia Butler
Unique Science-Fiction Author
Octavia Butler died last Friday. She left a strong readership which may grow with time. One of her remarkable books,
Kindred, deals with slavery in a time-travel story. Her last book,
Fledgling, focuses on vampires.
Tag: Octavia Butler
Elephant Walk
I think I heard of Overlook Press' blog,
Elephant Walk, before now, but I didn't pay enough attention to that hearing, if indeed I did hear it. So, today I note that Overlook Press, the distinguished company which is
republishing P.G. Wodehouse wonderful works, has a blog called . . . oh, you've heard about it already?
In recent entries, they note
Ask.com's ousting of Jeeves as their spokesman,
Don Knotts' death (in a positive light), and
a contest to win signed copies of R. Scott Bakker's
Prince of Nothing trilogy. They don't link to Brandywine Books, but I'm sure it's an oversight, if not an expression of their superior taste. (Did I mention I'm reading their collector's edition of
Leave It to Psmith? Recommended reading.) - phil
Brown, Blood, Grail, and a Lawsuit
Author Dan Brown was in a London court today, defending himself against a lawsuit by authors of a 1982 non-fiction book who claim "
The Da Vinci Code had 'lifted the central theme of the book, '" that theme being that Jesus lived past his crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene, and fathered the mighty French royalty (whom I presume ended in ignomy at the guillotine).
If the non-fiction book is legitimate, how can a novel infringe on its copyright? Are researched conclusion intellectual property to the extent that novelists can't run with them?
Of course, maybe the non-fiction is actually fiction. According to the Wikipedia entry on
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, one of the authors has said the book is only speculative, a possible explanation for sketchy details, and he didn't believe it was true. Another web page, apparently by a supporter of the
vast church history conspiracy, describes the same interview, which broadcast on Channel 4 sometime this month: "[Michael Baigent] admission that there was no hard evidence at all to support the notion that the Magdalene bore Jesus's child was not enough. Tony Robinson had a field day, making Michael look foolish indeed."
The Telegraph records the authors singing a different tune in this article from March 2004.
Michael Baigent said: "Whether our hypothesis is right or wrong is irrelevant. The fact is that this is work that we put together and spent years and years building up. . . . We are being lumped in with Dan Brown's work of fiction and that degrades the historical implication of our material. It makes our work far easier to dismiss as a farrago of nonsense."
NEA's David Kipen Interview
The Litblog Co-op has an interesting
interview with David Kipen, the director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts and formerly Book Editor for the
San Francisco Chronicle. From that post, Mark Sarvas asks, "You've gone from being the chief book critic at the
San Francisco Chronicle to the head of a sizeable and probably underfunded federal bureaucracy. How do the imperatives differ? Presumably, you're less free to follow your idiosyncratic nose? How are you adjusting?"
Kipen responds:
First of all, don't overestimate how restrictive my government paymasters are -- or underestimate how restrictive my newspaper paymasters used to be. I have all the freedom I need at the NEA. Besides, the two jobs are fundamentally different. My imperative as a book critic was to find interesting books to write about in interesting ways. My marching orders at the NEA are to dragoon smart people into sitting in judgment on literary grant applications. That, and to get America reading again, so that America's few remaining book critics will still have a public to write for.
1001 Must-Reads and McCall Smith
The UK Guardian reviews a new
book of must-read titles and asks, ". . . in all truth, why would anyone want to read - or read about - no fewer than 11 books by JM Coetzee?" The book with the list is
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, edited by Peter Boxall, a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Sussex. Unless one has affection for Dr. Boxall or want to compete with him in the arena of letters, I don't see the importance of his book. I agree with reviewer Alex Clark's statement toward the end of this article: "Reading, as any hard-pressed book reviewer will tell you, generally ad nauseam, is easily spoiled by overdoing it."
Also in the Guardian,
Alexander McCall Smith has recorded himself reading the first chapter of his next book,
Blue Shoes and Happiness, in mp3.
T.S. Eliot on the Bible's Literary Influence
I could fulminate against the men of letters who have gone into ecstasies over "the Bible as literature," the Bible as "the noblest monument of English prose." Those who talk of the Bible as a "monument of English prose" are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity. I must try to avoid the by-paths of my discourse: it is enough to suggest that just as the work of Clarendon, or Gibbon, or Buffon, or Bradley would be of inferior literary value if it were insignificant as history, science, and philosophy respectively, so the Bible has had a literary influence upon English literature not because it has been considered as literature, but because it has been considered as the report of the Word of God. And the fact that men of letters now discuss it as "literature" probably indicates the end of its "literary" influence.
From "Religion and Literature" by T.S. Eliot, 1932,
The Christian Imagination
But Deliver Me from Booksellers
In this
poem by Eugene Field, he asks the Lord to lead him not into the temptation of buying first editions or other interesting books.
I need protecting care to-day,—
My purse is light, my flesh is weak.
But if that is not the Lord's will for him:
Let my temptation be a book,
Which I shall purchase, hold, and keep,
Whereon when other men shall look,
They'll wail to know I got it cheap.
Oh, what trials we have in this life.
Observed: Another Word A Day
I just noticed this book, Anu Garg's second collection of words, called
Another Word A Day. From the book, it "celebrates the English language in all its quirkiness, grandeur, and fun, and features new chapters ranging from 'Words Formed Erroneously' and 'Red-Herring Words' to 'Kangaroo Words,' 'Discover the Theme,' and 'What Does That Company Name Mean?'"
Subscribe to Garg's daily verbage emails at
www.wordsmith.org. Could be a dab hand. (Is that the right word?)
And Now For Something Completely Different
A Red-eyed Tree Frog - Cheers.
Tag: tree frog
Online Fiction Award
storySouth is accepting nominations for the best online fiction published in 2005. The award, called "Million Writers Award for Fiction," is a $300 grand prize and $50 subscriptions to Spoiled Ink for the top ten. Nominations will be taken through March 1. - phil
A comment on Jonathan Strange et al
My sister just finished the fantasy
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell:
"Filled me with the desire to reach for a red pen." would be my one-line review. In the back of the book (a few pages after the disappointing ending), there was a page that said, "Written by Susanna Clarke. This is her first novel," under which I wrote, "obviously." Not that it was all that bad. In fact, much of it was really good. I was able to get into the world she created and many story lines were compelling and interesting. But even the best story can be ruined by a poor ending. Her wrap-ups were not bad, but they just weren't enough after such a long book. If I hadn't been sick and had a solid couple of days to get into it, I don't know that I ever would have been interested enough to finish it. I don't recommend it if you read slowly or don't have much time.
Tags: fantasy, Jonathan Strange, book, fiction
Are Bloggers Part of a Healthy Publicity Campaign?
Dan Wickett of Emerging Writers Network points out an article on publicity in the current
Poets & Writers magazine, which does not mention
blogs as one of the "practical" steps writers can take to tell the world about their books. I guess the magazine hasn't heard of
Mind & Media.
Is it a generation gap to ignore blogging in book publicity or could it be that portions of our society do not use the Internet to the same degree those of us, bloggers and blog readers, do?
Internet Magazine Stand
I just learned of an
online magazine stand which offers samples from 371 magazines for $2.59/each.
MagSampler doesn't offer subscriptions or trials, only samples of current or past issues for the $2.59 flat rate plus $2.00 shipping on each order, no matter the size. As you may guess, a site like this offers far more selection than you can get at news stands or bookstores, and it gives you a magazine's best promotional material, the magazine itself. If you've never heard of
Art & Antiques,
Michigan History for Kids, or
Artful Dodge, then picking up an issue is the best way to see if you like it.
Georgia Backroads?
Film Comment? You get the idea.
Also, I am late to report the
literary journal promotion going on at the Emerging Writers Network. Dan has 34 journals participating in a discount offer to multiple subscribers. If you subscribe to three or more journals, you can get one subscription of equal or lesser cost free, which amounts to three for the price of two or four at three's price and so on.
Bomb Threats Against Bible Society
Please pray for the people and mission of the Palestine Bible Society in Gaza. They have been notified that unidentified
terrorists will destroy their building on February 28. A downpayment on this threat has already destroyed their front doors. - phil
Monday: Videos
Before I saw
Will's link to the cat herding commercial last Friday, I planned to offer a video link for this week's Monday Post. Funny how that works. Viral video seems to be the trend on the Net this year. While the herding commercial is funny, I enjoyed this
IKEA spot on freedom as well. In case the message slips you by, let me explain that the man is leaving work early because he can afford it. Remarkable, isn't it? Is it anti-American to believe that you don't need all the more you can get?
If you want more of the same, watch this older IKEA commercial for
instruction in sympathy with inanimate objects. - phil
Reason as a Result of Nature
In today's
New York Times Book Review,
The New Republic's Literary Editor
Leon Wieseltier rakes author Daniel C. Dennett over the coals for his explanation of religion as the offspring of natural selection in
Breaking the Spell.
[Dennett] thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.
Also, in light of the current fight over defending evolution from criticism, Wieseltier points out the fascinating fact that philosopher David Hume, with whom the atheist Dennett feels a kinship, said that no serious observer of nature can conclude that it stumbled into existence by chance. "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author," Hume wrote in his introduction to
The Natural History of Relgion. Even if Hume believed he could explain world religions in cultural terms, he could not deny the role of God in creation. - phil
Tags: New York Times Book Review, Breaking the Spell, religion, reason, evolution, intelligent design
Got an Open Mind?
“The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” —G. K. Chesterton
Sherry of Semicolon has a good post on
open-mindedness, springing from a post by Anthony Esolen at Touchstone Magazine's
Mere Comments. In the later, Esolen describes his conversation with a student solicitor for Princeton. Let me quote from Esolen the same lines Sherry quotes because they are graceful.
The purpose of an open mind, says Chesterton, is to shut it on something true. And that shutting the mind upon truth opens us up to possibilities, or to further truths, that we had not suspected before. It is in the quest for knowledge as it is in matters of love: just as no one can wholly love another who keeps an escape hatch open, who considers it possible that not-loving might be a better option, so the relativist or the indifferentist keeps all doors open by neglecting to enter any of them. He prides himself on a radical opennness which is really refusal and timidity. But to him who knocks, it shall be opened. Enter that first room of truth, enter it without the constant glance backwards that keeps your feet fixed close to the door, and you will find that this is a mansion that never ends.
Tags:
G.K. Chesterton,
open mind
One World, One Language
Well, not one language yet. A recent study shows 2 billion people speak English, which
decreases the edge for United Kingdom natives. The researchers encourage Britons "to learn Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic, 'languages of the future,' if they want to keep up with international competitors." (see on
theBookseller.com)
REVIEW: Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!
Katharine DeBrecht’s funny modern parable about two boys running a lemonade stand in Liberaland covers the basics for American politics. In
Liberals Under My Bed, her heroes are honest, God-fearing, and hard working. Her villains are tax-raising, religion-stomping, control freaks. But don’t worry. This is a children’s book. At least, it’s written for young readers, but I don’t know what the full-comprehension age should be. My six and four-year-olds didn’t mind listening to me read it to them the other night. The cartoonish illustrations attracted them, and they don’t know anything about Hillary Clinton, so they weren’t repelled by that. They also don't know anything about the politics of the story, so I doubt they understood why the boys were being persecuted for selling lemonade. Someday, one of them will ask me why the tall-hat liberal replaced the picture of Jesus with one of a toe nail. Of course, I'll say he was a Lutheran, and that will explain it all (just kidding--no, put down that tomato--I was just teasing you).
I can’t say this is my type of book, but it is a good, amusing story of working hard to accomplish your goal. The liberals depicted--the taxing mayor, the religious freedom monitor, the government’s mother superior--ring true to their real life counterparts. And most importantly, the two boys live happily at the end of the book.
I look forward to reading DeBrecht’s next "Help! Mom!" Book,
Hollywood’s in My Hamper, and any kook-nut liberal response to these books, like
Conservatives in My Closet, which will probably focus on lying, personal stupidity, and being goody two shoes (
origin of "goody two shoes"). The two boys in such a story would probably be loafing around, and after being accousted by evil-though-dumb conservatives would plot their humiliation, if not destruction ala Planned Parenthood-style superheros. All in good fun, of course.
Too Many Book Reviews
Damian Horner writes at theBookseller.com that there's
too much book praise out there, and publishers are suffering for it. Too much praise of everything makes anything appear mediocre. The rave review becomes mere hype. Thus, word of mouth and trustworthy relationships sell books better than anything else. That's a news flash, isn't it.
I agree that there seem to be too many reviews, but there's too much of almost all types of information. It's our current culture. We are media-saturated. But sound reviews stand or fall by their own merit, whereas blurbs probably ride the merit of the name attached.
Do you think blogs like Brandywine Books compound or alleviate this problem? Do you think blogs build trust and can become word-of-mouth book promoters? I do. Not every blog can recommend a book effectively, but some can for some readers. And that's the blogosphere.
Linkage: Jaws, Darwin, and Kiddy Lit
Author, Journalist, and Conservationist
Peter Benchley died this weekend at age 65. His novel,
Jaws, is probably a pillar in the museum of pop culture along with John Williams theme.
Benchley’s wife, Wendy, told the press, "Peter kept telling people the book was fiction, it was a novel, and that he no more took responsibility for the fear of sharks than Mario Puzo took responsibility for the Mafia."
I remember hearing long ago that Benchley’s attitude toward sharks had changed over the years, even to the point of believing sharks to be on the shy side, playful maybe to point of biting you if you look like a seal, but
shy enough to run away after they realized their mistake.
Yesterday was the
Right Reverend Charles Darwin’s birthday. He was born February 12, 1809, in
Shropshire, England.
When I’m in a good mood, I think it’s hilarious that secularists, be they scientists or plebs, have raised such a ruckus over anyone including God in theories on our origins. To suggest God created the universe is filthy religion, they say; but to explain the universe under an assumption that God doesn’t exist is proper science. No more details than these are needed. It isn’t a question of who God is or how he may have created things, either directly or indirectly. It’s only an objection to the Governor of the Universe being named in a scientific statement. Abject silliness.
How can the simple question of whether order can rise from disorder be rejected by educated leaders and commentators who seem to have put all of their trust in those who believe all order can be deconstructed to a predetermined belief of its origin?
I think it's interesting that Darwin says in his
autobiography that he tended to believe in God as our First Cause when he wrote
Origin of the Species.
Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.
But even this belief whithered over the years. Still, if Darwin entertained the idea, why should it be banned from public schools as the stuff of fools?
In more pleasant news, Melissa Wiley has launched the first
Children’s Literature Blog Carnival on his blog, Here in the Bonny Glen. Looks like good material, Melissa.
Monday: Dave Berry
A while back, Gene E. Veith asked readers who or what were
always good for a laugh. P.G. Wodehouse and Hugh Laurie's depiction of Bertram Wooster toped the list, but one of the men I've always thought was very funny didn't get much support.
I think Dave Berry is down-right, flat, altogether hilarious, but apparently that is only my opinion. A good example is his unscripted interview with Ed Champion, the roving correspondent for
the Bat Segundo podcast. Ed corners Dave in a San Francisco cafe and records his pleas for assistance which are heard by an old school reporter. The interview goes downhill from there.
I should warn you that Ed and Dave digress into vulgar subjects for the part of the podcast before the reporter appears, not too vulgar for me to avoid posting a link, but vulgar enough to caution you as well as the fact that my warning relates to a discussion of warning in the interview, to wit, Dave says that he wrote what he wanted to write in his first book and heard from readers who thought his language was atrocious, which inspired him to place a warning in his second book, but to no avail because readers complained that although they read the warning, they remained offended at his language.
Which leads me to my second point in this post: long sentences are funny. Sometimes.
Chantico Chocolate Drink Dropped
Starbucks customers didn't want 6 oz. of rich chocolate as is. They wanted to ruin it with caramel, whipped cream, low fat milk, or whatever they happen to be in the mood for. As a result,
Starbucks is dropped the Chantico from their menu after only year of service. Other customizable chocolate drinks may come.
How did people get this way, I'd like to know. Why, when I was growing up, we would have been grateful of a chocolate drink to warm us up. But we didn't have fancy-dancy stuff like that. We had to stir dirt in reheated, leftover coffee and pretend it was chocolate. But we were grateful and we liked it!
Calvin: Man as God
Today's
Calvin and Hobbes on uComics.com demonstrates one of the follies of
man appointing himself to the Office of God.
(Link will be broken after a few weeks.)
Solzhenitsyn's Face on a Billboard
The great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is getting something of his due in Russian notoriety, where he has been a returned exile and an ignored figure from the past. Now,
The First Circle has been adapted for a 10-part television series. The NY Times reports, "The show . . . is part of an industry here catering to what seems to be a growing interest in
adaptations of the great works of Russian literature, some of them books that were banned in Soviet times."
A publisher who will be publishing a collection of Solzhenitsyn's complete works says Russians are still absorbing the forbidden literature from the doomed Soviet past. - phil
Isn't There a 60's Song About This?
Jack Lewis notes that the
Danish secularists and Muslim rioters are cut from the same cloth:
Ironically it's the secularist who treat their concept of "freedom" as much like a religion as any other zealot, while the extremist Moslems ignore much of the religion they claim to follow while dragging its name through the mud. No one defames Islam more than extremist Moslems and no one is a greater threat to freedom of speech than profane secularists. Each have become the greatest enemy of the very things they claim they hold higher than anything else.
Isn't there a 60's song about enemies being the same person and why, oh why, can't they just get along?
For Prayer: Alabama Churches
Nine churches in Alabama have been torched recently. Alabama Governor Bob Riley has said they appear to be related, but investigators have found no evidence for a conspiracy against religion, Baptists, or even skin color. Five of the nine churches had black congregations, the others were white.
Authorities have ruled arson in five Baptist church fires Friday in rural Bibb County just south of Birmingham. Four more fires at Baptist churches on Tuesday in rural west Alabama had similar patterns — doors kicked in, fires set near the altar — as those in Bibb County. -- AP Reporter Jay Reeves
Pastor Bob Little of Galilee Baptist in Panola, AL, told
Newsday, "Something like this always puts terror in a community. If you can't feel safe in a church, where can you feel safe? If someone won't respect the house of the Lord, how can they have respect for anything?"
Our prayers are with you, Pastor Little. Do not be afraid.
Frogs Jump--What Can I Say?
Tennessee Senator
Bill Frist is quoted in the Washington Post, saying, "My job is to herd these Republicans. And if I have too many frogs jumping out of the wheelbarrow as I'm moving down the field, it means I've gotta be putting people back in."
These people, were they put in the hopper to begin with? Is that why they are frogs now?
(by way of Opinion Journal's "Best of the Web")
Resentment and Fear
Mark Bertrand remarks on a confession by Lucy Ellman in her review of
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis: "I should declare immediately that I resent and fear Christianity, not only for its sexism and incitement of violence but for its deadening effect on the imagination." Bertrand wonders if the same thing could be said about any other worldview or religion without readers suspecting the reviewer is a fruit basket.
Ellman's confession is ironic in light of current news. After all the attacks and perceived attacks on Christianity from the ACLU and like-minded friends of freedom over the years, did Christians riot or loot and burn offices? Now, a Muslim paper wants to see how tolerant we are when they print anti-Semitic cartoons, since we and the world have complained about some thugs burning embassies over anti-Islamic cartoons which were
published several months ago. Of course, the world has already responded, saying, "You mean, like the stuff you've published in the past?"
But seriously, do you want The Christian Response to junk like this? Prayer and worship.
Update: JunkYardBlog notes that "
the evidence is pointing at Syrian and Iranian involvement" more than religious outrage for the riots. Some commentators disagree. Heh, heh--I guess that goes without saying.
Blindmen in the Dark
"You see," a character named Nathaniel says, "if history has anything to teach us, it's that — despite all our efforts, despite our best (or worst) intentions, despite our touchingly indestructible faith in our own foresight — we poor humans cannot actually think ahead; there are just too many variables. And so, when it comes down to it, it always turns out that no one is in charge of the things that really matter." In fact, Nathaniel thinks, it's a miracle when nothing catastrophic happens at all.
From a NY Times review of
Deborah Eisenberg's story collection,
Twilight of the Superheros. It could be an interesting book. I wonder if Nathaniel really thinks it's a miracle from God or just remarkable fortune. - phil
Unfashionable Ideas
"The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date." from a NY Times editorial regarding a horrible story of abuse, relayed by
Shrode on Thinklings.
The stuff of fiction
Since I've been blogging on fiction and non-fiction lately, let me point out this interesting story which is the stuff of science fiction. New species of birds, frogs and other animals have been discovered in a remote island of Indonesia.
Look at the beautiful photos from the Associated Press. From the report:
The scientists also took the first known photographs of Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise, a bird described by hunters in New Guinea in the 19th century and named for the wires that extend from its head in place of a crest.
The scientists said they watched in amazement as, just one day after arriving, a male bird performed a courtship dance for an attending female in their camp, shaking the long feathers on its head.
Speaking of fiction, watch this Quicktime video of computer generated
water with massive shark from Flowline. The video is completely CG and very realistic. WOW.
Monday: Science Fiction
Oppressed citizens in a handful human metropolises (or is it metropoli?) are asking themselves, "
Where is Lepos?"
Sightings of the 3-foot, black and white alien (and some of his enemies) have occurred on the streets of Toronto, Stockholm, Los Angeles, Prague, and New York.
In other news, some British cell phone users will be able to
hear Dr. Who #4 read their text messages. Chosen for his recognizable voice,
actor Tom Baker will read messages for
BT users over a 3-month period.
Sorry about the outages
Blogspot has had trouble lately, and I apologize for the outages you may have witnessed. Blogger techs will be taking things down this evening too, so Brandywine Books and other excellent, must-read blogs may be unavailable. Makes me think about paying for server space somewhere, even switching blogging software. Word Press looks good. Maybe Moveable Type. - phil
For You and Your Blog
"O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love." - from The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
How Truthful Should a Novel Be?
The scandal over James Frey's exaggerated personal history has forced many to ask how factual must a non-fiction story be.
Kenneth Harvey reverses that question in this weekend's Times Online, asking how many facts should we allow in a work of fiction.
(edited 2/7 12:38 p.m.)After reading John Banville's Man Booker prize-winning The Sea, a slim volume trumpeted as fiction, I was startled to discover, upon perusing my hefty atlas, that this supposedly fantastical place named Ireland was an actual island. While reading, I thought it sounded familiar, yet I let it slide, not wanting niggling particulars to ruin the experience. . . . But as a page-by-page analysis of The Sea turned up a plethora of verifiable facts, I believe a comprehensive investigation is in order. If the sanctioned percentage of fact (to be determined by James Frey) exceeds the appropriate percentage of fiction, I suggest that it would be prudent for the Booker committee to strip Banville of his award.
Could it be the world has been reading the mostly factual masked as the completely fictitious for centuries without pause? When will the madness end?
In related news (and this is true), James Frey's editor
Sean McDonald says he was duped just like everyone else. The NY Times reports that a few months ago, he said he knew Frey's would-be memoir was true "because he had personally checked it out." Apparently, checking it out means did not include validating key records.
While we're on the subject of memoirs, news came last week that
Martha Sherrill had intended to write a memoir on her father, Peter Sherrill, but during her research, "a massive skeleton popped right out of the closet," coloring everything her father did. Nothing bad, she says. In fact, it puts a positive spin on him; but the publicity it would have brought was more than she wanted to deal with. So she has held on to the secret and published the book as a novel, not disclosing how much is true and how much is fictitious.
The Best of Lit-Blogs Winners
The results from the recent Best of Blogs contest are finally in. For the
Book/Literary category:
50 Books ~ Winner
Mental Multivitamin ~Runner Up
Bookworm ~ Co-Third Place
Miss Snark ~ Co-Third Place
Congratulations! May your readership double this year.
Flung to the Heedless Winds
A hymn by Martin Luther, translated by John A. Messenger in 1843:
1. Flung to the heedless winds
Or on the waters cast,
The martyrs' ashes, watched,
Shall gathered be at last.
And from that scattered dust,
Around us and abroad,
Shall spring a plenteous seed
Of witnesses for God.
2. The Father hath received
Their latest living breath,
And vain is Satan's boast
Of victory in their death.
Still, still, though dead, they speak,
And, trumpet-tongued, proclaim
To many a wakening land
The one availing Name.
The Narnia Rap
What in the world? A couple Saturday Night Live guys have done a rap on the day they watched
The Chronicles of Narnia on the big screen. It's funny, crazy, and don't click around the YouTube.com site afterwards unless you want to risk finding some pretty ugly stuff.
Alcorn's Heaven
In his periodic book column,
Marvin Olasky mentions Randy Alcorn's Heaven, which I've heard highly praised by several acquaintances.
That diversity is one of the secondary things that will make heaven enjoyable, and no one makes it more fun than Randy Alcorn in Heaven (Tyndale, 2005). A book jacket for once accurately summarizes contents: "If you've always thought of Heaven as a realm of disembodied spirits, clouds, and eternal harp strumming, you're in for a wonderful surprise. This is a book about real people with real bodies enjoying close relationships with God and each other, eating, drinking, working, playing, traveling, worshiping, and discovering on a New Earth."
Alcorn has a study guide for this book on his website and
offers Heaven at 50% off. (The book called "Heaven"--that's what's discounted, not heaven itself. There are no discounts on the real thing, and if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. On the other hand, I hear you buy hell cheap.)
Avoid the Chatter, Delight in Wisdom
Blest with sons has been blogging at length on television's place in the Christian life. Does network and cable programming wean us away from better things the Lord has put in our lives? Does the tube massage our minds into numbness, making us trivial thinkers?
BWS has some good thoughts, even thought many of us may disagree on some of the details; but I think her most recent post is one to give the heralds so they can run with it through the kingdom. If you pursue wisdom with passion, "then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you . . ." (Proverbs 2:9-11).
She writes:
The children gone to bed, my husband and I would look at each other and do the whole “Whadya wanna do?” thing. More often than not, the answer would be a light sigh and “Oh, let’s watch something” and on would go our favorite DVD’s. (I’ve listed them before, don’t need to do it again) I could be sick, and tired, and feeling sorry for myself. Solution? Pull out a Jane Austen movie and be comforted. Time for a happy moment? We want to “have some fun”? Best answer… Rent a movie and get some junk food!
We live with high media saturation, and some of us complain that life feels too hectic, that we can't calm down or get away from it all though we can't list what all we want to get away from. Part of the answer is to watch ourselves make the easy choices throughout the day, trying to escape from the most recent stress by turning up the volume or medicating it. It may not be what we would do if we felt up to making the best decision. It's just what we will do to get by for now.
Isn't life too short to spend our days getting by? Do we live in the past or the perceived future and just get by for now?
The other part of the answer is to seek wisdom from its pure fountain. Are we willing to push a bit to gain wisdom? Are we willing to avoid the chatter of 24-hour news, poorly produced sitcoms, vapid music, empty conversations, and the constant noise of junk media? Are we willing to dwell on the Word of God long enough to delight in it, and possibly rediscover the joy of our salvation?
Why Did Dante Awake in a Forest?
John Mark Reynolds has an interesting post on
supervillans and why Dante begins
Inferno in the woods:
I realized that the great poet had become the sort of person who could only be saved by torment. Unlike the simple Florentine girl Beatrice who was able to go directly to Paradise, Dante was so lost that he had to go to hell to be saved. He had to received the extended dialog of the damned Virgil in order to have time to chance, turn to Christ, and so be transformed into a soul fit for Paradise.
Over the Top
Do you remember talking last year about book titles which used variations
of the phrase, "changed the world"? Perhaps, a NY Times header writer has the bug, as shown in the headline: "
How Curry, Stirred in India, Became a World Conqueror." Curry is a common spice, you know, and Lizzie Collingham has written about it in
Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, published by Oxford University.
Moving, wouldn't you say?
Also over the top, Harrison Scott Key comments on
a speechless protestor who was thrown out of the state of the union address the other day. If only she had a voice, he says. Heh, heh.
Speaking of hyperbole, I see that "
Punxsutawney Phil was named after King Phillip. Prior to being called Phil, he was called Br'er Groundhog." Why do we persist in the silliness of Groundhog Day? Or is asking the question as pointless as the folklore itself?
Peretti and Dekker
Frank Peretti's novel about a supernaturally empowered anti-Christ (not The Anti-Christ
TM, just a false messiah) has been adapted for film.
The Visitation has gone to DVD with the help of Brian Godawa, the great film writer behind
To End All Wars.
Coming the April, Peretti has teamed up with Ted Dekker to write a ghost story called
House. Fleeing from a killer through a forest, two couples take refuge in a house only to discover the murderer manipulated their flight to end there. He offers them release, if they will kill one of themselves. They have 12 hours to work out the details, and escape may mean going further into the house to mean possibly worse threats.
February is Martin Luther Month
Since Lars has challenged me to convert to the Lutheran tradition (and made a substantial donation to the Phil Wade Personal Enrichment and Citizen Library Fund), I declare February to be the month of Martin Luther. That means I will quote Luther in this post and at least one other this month--maybe two other if I can squeeze it in. (I confess my time is tight this month with work projects and my wife's plan to join NetFlix for a free preview in order to watch at least one movie every night for two weeks, provided I don't shoot myself.)
But today, for your enjoyment, I offer this quote from Luther's "Confession Concerning Christ's Supper," in which he defends his position on taking positions:
Because I see that the mobs are always growing, the number of errors are always increasing and Satan's rage and ruin have no end, I wish to confess with this work my faith before God and the whole world, point by point. I am doing this, lest certain people cite me or my writings, while I am alive or after I am dead, to support their errors, as those fanatics, the Sacramentarians and the Anabaptists, have begun to do. . . .
So that no one will say after my death, "If Luther was alive, he would teach and believe this article differently, because he did not think it through sufficiently," I state the following, once and for all: I, by God's grace, I have diligently examined these articles in the light of passages throughout the Scriptures.
Frankly, I don't believe Luther would have said this, if he were alive today. - phil
