Goodreads has announced their winners for the 2012 Choice Awards in twenty categories. See what users have reviewed and scored highest for the past year.
You Bet Your Life, by Stuart M. Kaminsky
“I don’t think so, but I promised a guy I’d turn myself in. I haven’t got much to sell but a body that’s ready for scrap, a brain that doesn’t work half the time, and my word. I can’t count on the body and brain, but my word has held up pretty well.”
That classically hard-boiled line comes from another of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s comic noirs, You Bet Your Life, in which Toby Peters, threadbare private eye to the stars, does a job for Chico Marx and tangles with Al Capone and Frank Nitti. A certain suave Englishman also shows up, but I’ll just leave him for a surprise.
It’s February, 1941, and Toby Peters has traveled to Florida to ask a favor of Al Capone. A Chicago gangster is threatening to kill Chico Marx, whom he claims owes him a big gambling debt. That’s not unbelievable in Chico’s case, but he swears this isn’t one of his. Capone, only intermittently sane, sends him to Chicago with a recommendation that may or may not do him any good, and before Toby even finishes his train ride, a guy is dead.
Fighting a bad cold all the way, Toby runs down leads through a frigid Windy City, dodging machine gun bullets and encountering mobsters, crooked cops, and a pretty girl who takes him in like a stray dog. Eventually the Marx Brothers show up, and act pretty much like you’d expect them to.
It’s all great fun, especially for lovers of movies and detective stories. I’ve never met a Toby Peters book I didn’t like, and this one was a great time.
The usual cautions for language and adult situations apply. Recommended.
The Crimes of Galahad, by H. Albertus Boli, Ll.D.
I’ve told you often that, for me at least, Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine is one of the internet’s great pleasures. What should I expect, I wondered, from a novel by Dr. Boli? The result, not really surprisingly, is… a very odd reading experience. Amusing, enigmatic, possibly profound, and even – sometimes – moving, The Crimes of Galahad is a book like no other you will read this year. I’m pretty sure I can say that without fear of contradiction.
The Crimes of Galahad purports to be the memoirs of Galahad Newman Bousted, “the wickedest man in the world.” This is his own account of the misdeeds which brought him to conspicuous wealth and social prominence without anyone, even his wife or his most intimate friends, suspecting his evil machinations.
Galahad Bousted starts out as the son of a humble stationer in 19th Century Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Frustrated in his desire to motivate his father to agree to his plans for expanding the business, he falls under the influence of a French book (not actually the book itself, but a magazine review of it) which convinces him that the only way to achieve success is to devote himself to ruthless evil. In pursuit of this goal, he works long hours, finds ways to please his customers, and makes himself agreeable, even to people he doesn’t like much.
I’m tempted to describe The Crimes of Galahad as a parody, but it’s a parody of a very subtle kind. If I were to try to explain the joke to you, I’d not only spoil it, I’m not sure I’d truly convey the point (I’m not even sure I really figured it out). In a way, the best comment on this book might be to simply read Luke 16:1-9.
This is a book that will be appreciated by extremely intelligent readers (it will help if they’re smarter than me). That recommendation might be bad for sales, I fear, but nevertheless I recommend The Crimes of Galahad.
Re: Flannery
All Christians agree, of course, that God reveals himself through the world around us. In that broad sense, all Christians have a sacramental vision.
But O’Connor, as a Catholic, was much more comfortable with mystery than most Protestants tend to be. She wrote:
“The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.”
Treven Wax interviews Jonathan Rogers on The Legacy of Flannery O’Connor.
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?
Phil 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
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)
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:
