Goofing, Music

Springsteen Releases Sci-Fi Concept Album of Martian Miners

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“These are songs about growing up on a tough planet,” said Springsteen, telling reporters that when the idea of humans and aliens working side by side in an extraterrestrial labor colony first occurred to him, he immediately knew he “had to tell their story.” “The Martians aren’t trying to run away from their lives or make excuses. They’re proud of what they do and where they’re from, even if the high-impact ion-compression carbonate mining industry isn’t what it used to be,” the Onion New Network reports.

Hits you deep. Hmm.

Fiction, Reviews

Pattern of Wounds, by J. Mark Bertrand

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One of the keys to a long career in law enforcement is learning how to tell police psychologists what they need to hear without sounding deceptive. The only alternative is good mental health, which to me has always seemed too unrealistic a goal.

That’s Houston Police Detective Roland March, hero of J. Mark Bertrand’s crime novel Pattern of Wounds, a sequel to Back On Murder. I liked the first book very much, and I think I liked this one even more. Bertrand is doing almost exactly the thing I’ve tried to do (with far less success) in my own fantasy novels—to portray the real world through eyes of faith, giving both believers and unbelievers a fair chance to make their cases.
Roland March is a Houston cop, at once admired and disliked in his department because of his erratic career history. Successful enough as a crime solver to have been the subject of two true crime novels, he went through a slump period (following the death of his daughter in a car accident with a drunk driver) during which he seemed to be on the way out. In this book he tells us something we didn’t know before about that period—he was cutting corners because he didn’t trust the justice system. Always staying within the limits of strict legality (or so he believed), he nevertheless bent the law in order to insure “true justice” as he saw it. Continue reading Pattern of Wounds, by J. Mark Bertrand →

Non-fiction

The Essential Nature of Prayer

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Tim Challies reviews what looks to be a stirring e-book on the life of Leonard Ravenhill: In Light of Eternity.

“He especially deplored the weakness of the praying of most local churches. He felt the strongest meeting of the church should be the church prayer meeting, but said that it was generally the weakest, if it even existed at all.” In his lifetime Ravenhill saw the daily or weekly prayer meeting disappearing from most local churches. This grieved him because he “directly connected the effectiveness of true ministry with the prayer life of the church.”

Non-fiction

How Can You Be So Sure?

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Prof. Brendan Riley (you know, the guy teaching the zombies in popular culture course) reviews Dr. Robert A. Burton’s book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. According to Burton, emotions determine our confidence more that rationale. Riley writes that Burton “makes a strong case for the biological weirdness of that feeling, and its disconnection from actual knowledge.”

Goofing

A modest educational proposal

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I’ve noticed an odd phenomenon over the years. The very people who, you would think, would be able to give the best advice on raising children seem to be oddly reticent to offer a list of rules. And the more children they have, the more reticent they are.

Fortunately, there is an ever-growing demographic of people who have no such shyness about sharing their views on child-rearing. These, of course, are the people who (like me) have no children of their own.

I saw this article today (hat tip Strange Herring) on a recent study that concluded that children who watched “Sponge Bob Square Pants” showed decreased attention spans, as compared to children who watched “Caillou,” and a control group who (I assume) used a magnifying glass to fry ants. Continue reading A modest educational proposal →

Publishing, Writing

The Right Editor Helps

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Editor Nick Harrison has a post on how a writer should attempt to find the right editor or agent for his material, not just the first available. One editor may reject a manuscript or cover letter on a technicality; another may give it a chance.

The first commenter on this post, Tim Riter, offers this illustration from his experience. “For two of my books, I sent in a proposal to an editor, who promptly rejected it with the nicest form rejection letter. Within a year, at writers conferences I met another editor from each of those houses with whom she, I, and the book clicked, and the houses bought it.”

Fiction, Publishing

Not a review: The Love You Crave, by John Locke

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I’m not going to post the cover of John Locke’s The Love You Crave, because it’s kind of racy for our standards in these parts. And I’m not even going to link to the e-book, because you can find it if you want to. I do not in any way endorse Locke’s Donovan Creed novels, of which The Love You Crave is the first I’ve read (and, I’m relatively certain, the last). But there are things to be said about the series as a phenomenon, and not just “Tsk, tsk.”

The Donovan Creed novels are a series of “humorous” thrillers about a government agent and assassin. He’s a little like James Bond on cocaine. The books (judging from this one) are full of violence and sex, and attempts at humor which (according to reviews) work for some people, though I’m not one of them.

The book suffers from a severe lack of likeable characters. The hero (not himself very likeable) tries at one point to figure out one of his friends whom he can trust with his life. He realizes that most of his friends have tried to kill him at least once. Continue reading Not a review: The Love You Crave, by John Locke →

Poetry

Lost: Of Man's First Disobedience

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wastelandOf Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,

In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth

Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d

Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread

Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss

And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark

Illumin, what is low raise and support;

That to the highth of this great Argument

I may assert Eternal Providence,

And justifie the wayes of God to men.

The opening of Milton’s Paradise Lost