Death on a Longship, by Marsali Taylor

I read a book about the Shetland Islands quite a few years back, in the ‘80s. I’m interested in the old, remote Viking outposts, and Shetland seemed like the kind of end-of-the world place where a loner like me would be right at home. To judge by Death on a Longship, things have changed since then, mostly because of North Sea oil. The islands are rich now, their inhabitants snug in new houses, with satellite TV and the internet.

The appeal of a story about a murder on a replica Viking ship, against a Shetland backdrop, was irresistible to me, in spite of my old prejudices against women writers (their male characters are often pretty weak), and the fact that this is a story about a woman in a traditional male job – in this case skipper of the Viking ship.

But I was pleasantly surprised. Death On a Longship was a very engaging mystery story, not top drawer but extremely good.

Cass Lynch is the main character and narrator. A native of Shetland, she defied the wishes of her businessman father and (French) opera singer mother to become a sailor. The death of her lover in an accident at sea some years back left her traumatized, but she’s now landed the great opportunity of her life. An American film company wants to make a movie about Gudrid the Far-traveled, an Icelandic saga heroine, in Shetland, and she’s landed the job of captaining the ship. It’s the first time she’s been back in Shetland since she ran away to sea, and there’s some awkwardness in reacquainting herself with old friends, and with her father, who is seeing a young American woman from the film company (her mother returned to France years ago). Continue reading Death on a Longship, by Marsali Taylor

Can Anyone Return from Heaven?

Very Steep Cliffs in Heaven's Gate MountainsPhil Johnson has an article on the recent rash of supposedly eyewitness accounts of heaven. He says it’s nothing new:

Various survivors of near-death experiences have been publishing gnostic insights about the afterlife for at least two decades. Betty Eadie’s Embraced by the Light was number one on the New York Times Bestseller List exactly 20 years ago. The success of that book unleashed an onslaught of similar tales, nearly all of them with strong New Age and occult overtones. So psychics and new-agers have been making hay with stories like these for at least two decades.

Johnson points to an upcoming book by John MacArthur on heaven and these books. He argues that the Bible forbids the possibility that anyone can return from beyond the grave. “All the accounts of heaven in Scripture are visions, not journeys taken by dead people,” MacArthur writes. “And even visions of heaven are very, very rare in Scripture. You can count them all on one hand.” Moreover, the biblical accounts focus on God’s overwhelming glory, not all the fun junk we might do in heaven.

In his excellent book Gospel Deeps: Reveling in the Excellencies of Jesus, Jared Wilson touches on this in a paragraph near the end.

Can I tell you one of the problems with books like Heaven Is for Real? Aside from the obvious honesty issues, they very often demote Jesus to a Character in heaven like one of the costumed players at Disney World. He is Santa Claus, an attraction of some kind. Continue reading Can Anyone Return from Heaven?

Bible Recommendations

J. Mark Bertrand is a remarkable man. He probably hunts elk on weekends and subs occasionally at Chez Dakota for his sous chef friends. He’s also an author and reader, has been an editor, if he isn’t still, and blogs about Bible design at his blog called… Bible Design Blog.

He doesn’t always drink beer, naturally, but when he does–you get the idea.

All to say he has a fascinating article on which Bible to buy for yourself or your dear, dear friend on First Things. The article has many recommendations, but I’d like to highlight one to which a reader points: The Four Holy Gospels, ESV Bible (Slipcase), illuminated by the wonderful painter Makoto Fujimura. It’s not a bible you take to church really, but I’m sure it’s one that will inspire your meditation.

Welcome to my world



Nasty, brutish, and short.

A Norwegian friend, now a missionary in Brazil, sent me a link today that set my heart a-dancing. And believe me, my heart could use the exercise.

According to this article from a Norwegian web site (don’t worry, it’s in English), a University of Oslo professor, Jan Terje Faarlund, has published a radical thesis. English, he claims, is a Scandinavian language.

No, really.

Faarlund and his colleague Joseph Emmonds, visiting professor from Palacký University in the Czech Republic, now believe they can prove that English is in reality a Scandinavian language, in other words it belongs to the Northern Germanic language group, just like Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese. This is totally new and breaks with what other language researchers and the rest of the world believe, namely that English descends directly from Old English. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is a West Germanic language, which the Angles and Saxons brought with them from Northern Germany and Southern Jylland when they settled in the British Isles in the fifth century.

It goes like this. Traditionally we’ve been told that our English language, as we speak it now, is the product of a cultural collision between Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons (who were nasty, brutish and short, the guys King Arthur fought against), and Norman French (the language of the guys who conquered the Anglo-Saxons). It’s also generally acknowledged that there was some influence from the Old Norse language of the handsome, sophisticated, and nice-smelling Danish settlers of northern England.

But Faarlund notes that the English dialect that finally ended up becoming modern English comes from the East Midlands, which was part of the Danish settlement. Also, English grammar is closer to that of Scandinavian languages than to West German languages (like Dutch and Flemish).

So if you’re an English speaker, you’re a Scandinavian, and you never knew it.

Doesn’t that make your day better?

(As for the image that accompanies the article, he’s saying, “I promise never to do that again.” And she’s saying, “We’ve discussed this before.”)

‘Homophobia’ Dropped from AP Stylebook

In the upcoming update to The Associated Press’ online stylebook, the suffix “-phobia” “should not be used ‘in political or social contexts,’ including ‘homophobia’ and ‘Islamophobia.’

AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn explains the move:

Homophobia especially — it’s just off the mark. It’s ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don’t have. It seems inaccurate. Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case.”

“We want to be precise and accurate and neutral in our phrasing,” he said.

If current argumentative trends apply here, this move will be described as homophobic.

More cover crowdsourcing

As promised earlier, we have a few more possible book covers for you to look at. Here’s a sentimental favorite (with me at least): Another version including all my buddies, utilizing the central space for a blurb from Hal Colebatch:

Continue reading More cover crowdsourcing

Bye Bye, Bertie, by Rick Dewhurst

It’s always embarrassing to admit that I just don’t get a book. But honesty requires me to say that Bye Bye Bertie by Rick Dewhurst pretty much mystifies me. It’s a parody on hard-boiled detective novels, but also a parody on evangelical Christian culture, by a Christian writer. For me, it raised more discomfort than laughter. Maybe I don’t get it because I’m too close to the subject.

Joe LaFlam, the hero and narrator, is a Seattle private eye. A Christian private eye, who lives with his mother and makes his living as a cab driver. Except that his real name is John Doe, and he actually lives in Vancouver, BC, which he insists is Seattle. One day a beautiful (Christian) dame named Brittany Morgan walks into his office, to ask him to find her sister Alberta (Bertie), who has been kidnapped by Druids. He takes the job largely in the hope of winning Brittany as a Christian wife. The hunt leads him on an improbable, slapstick search through Seattle’s (Vancouver’s) back streets, where he encounters a hit man working for a world government conspiracy, who keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to kill him. As well as several other guys who may have been his father (before they were Christians).

It’s all very strange. Lots of jokes are made about popular American Christian culture, which certainly has earned a lot of ribbing.

But I didn’t know how to take the story as a whole. Joe is a sympathetic character, but he’s clueless and heavily delusional. He doesn’t even know what country he’s in. I’m kind of uncomfortable with seeing him set up – it would seem – as some kind of representative evangelical. Maybe we deserve that. But it seemed excessive.

But maybe I just don’t get it.

Suitable for most readers. I can’t either recommend it or dis-recommend Bye Bye Bertie.

The Butterfly Forest, by Tom Lowe

This is the third Sean O’Brien novel by Tom Lowe that I’ve read, which tells me that I must like the books. Yet I see all kinds of flaws in them. So I guess the takeaway must be that, for me, Lowe is a natural storyteller with a genuine talent. But he could use some seasoning.

The Butterfly Forest opens, after some preliminaries, with hero Sean O’Brien, a former Miami detective with some kind of mysterious military background, observing a man stalking two women in a mall parking lot. He intervenes to save them from kidnapping, but the assailant gets away. Both women, mother and daughter, are quite attractive, and Sean (a widower) becomes their friend, even pondering asking the mother out. But the predator from the parking lot was not just a crime-of-opportunity pervert. He has the daughter, a student entomologist, in his sights because she saw something she doesn’t even know she saw.

Sean O’Brien is an interesting and engaging character – low-key and laid back, but capable of very efficient violence when it’s needed. Author Lowe has endowed him with a very appealing habitat, dividing his time between an old cabin on the edge of Ocala National Forest and the marina where he keeps his fishing boat, and where good and faithful friends live. He also keeps a pet dachshund, Max, whom he cares for with appealing devotion.

The weaknesses are in the writing. I thought the plotting was better this time than in at least one of the previous books, but I was troubled by repeated infelicities in the prose. People say things like “as you know” in conversation, which real people almost never say. And the exposition is sometimes just awful, as in “His physical periphery subtly spoke of a body language that was rough but understood.”

I blame our times, in a way. In the old days, a good storyteller like Lowe would have paid his dues in the pulp magazines, getting ruthlessly red-penciled by carnivorous editors at 3 cents a word. Then he’d have worked with an equally pitiless editor at a publishing house. But nowadays, publishing his own work, he’s missed professional boot camp, and has no one to tell him when he’s right and when he’s wrong.

And yet I’ve read all three novels. That’s got to mean something.

Another strange thing about the Sean O’Brien series is that the author openly appeals to the spiritual and supernatural. Sean himself says that he’s learned to value his gut feelings above the evidence, which seems strange by the standards of traditional mysteries. He sees visions too, from time to time. I’m not sure if I like this or not.

Moderately recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

The man and his music

Would you like to hear J. R. R. Tolkien singing one of the songs from The Hobbit?

Of course you would. If you wouldn’t, don’t tell me about it, because I’m not sure we want people like you around here.

Enjoy.

(Thanks to Dale Nelson)

Today Only: Klavan Novels 80% off

One of our favorite authors, Andrew Klavan, has eight of his old novels (e-books) on sale for $1.99 or less. I’m getting this one: The Scarred Man

Lars has reviewed most of these, maybe only half of them. Search the blog archives.