Photo credit: Newscom.

I've seen the artifact pictured above, in an exhibition. It's one of the main reasons we believe the Vikings wore “nasal” helmets like the one I wear, even though none of that sort from the period has ever been found in Scandinavia.

I'd seen it pictured in books many times before I saw the real thing. Its size surprised me. It's only about as big as a man's thumb, an object somebody probably carved for fun out of a piece of antler, for no reason other than to pass the time.

A friend who reads this blog recently complimented me, in a personal note, on my "erudition" in Viking studies. I suppose I know a fair bit, when graded on the curve (I describe myself as a knowledgeable amateur), but I keep getting surprised by things.

Grim of Grim's Hall has been moderating a reading of Njal's Saga this summer, over at his blog. I drop in my two cents now and then, but I'm constrained slightly by the fact that a lot of things that confuse ordinary readers actually confuse me just as much. Especially when it comes to Norse law. Read the rest of this entry . . .

The Iowa Review has a print interview (meaning it isn't entirely online) with the host of radio's Bookworm on training himself to read quick and thoroughly.

Alastair Harper writes about literary novels being so difficult.

We read books that were clearly quite brilliant, if only we could understand them. They might, as we never admitted to each other, baffle us now, but hopefully we'd come out the other side stronger, better people for the experience. Maybe one day we'd even impress some girls.

He closes the article asking for recommendations and warnings on difficult book. Which ones are worthwhile; which ones are worthless?

Laura Miller of Salon.com says if the predictions of a wonderful world of self-publishing materialize, average readers will have a very large pile of poor writing to weed through. She describes reading The Slush Pile, that growing mound of unsolicited manuscripts that some publishers assign to an editorial peon.

Miller writes that we on the outside of publishing should fear what we don't know: "Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven't seen the vast majority of what didn't get published . . ."

In a world where any manuscript can be published and placed with online retailers, readers will suffer. Reading bad writing can hurt. "[I]nstead of picking up every new manuscript with an open mind and a tiny nibbling hope, you learn to expect the worst. Because almost every time, the worst is exactly what you'll get."

Bill Bryson said, "Ages are generally pretty incompetent at judging their own worth." This is why we need to read old books and translated books, says this Dane who lives in New York.

Denise Spencer, wife of Michael Spencer who recently died, has a fiercely beautiful post on life and dying: Sometimes It's Just Plain Hard.

“Jesse” was another man who had been unconscious as his wife watched his condition deteriorate. She at last whispered to him that she didn’t want him to suffer any more, and she told him to “run to Jesus.” He opened one eye and smiled before dying shortly thereafter. . . .

These are beautiful stories, one and all. Tales of hope in the midst of tragedy. Memories that bring consolation to the bereaved. And I’m getting tired of hearing them. Can I say that out loud? “Why?!” you no doubt gasp in horror. ‘Cause Michael and me, we got nuthin’.

What readers want in a book. And from the same blogger comes brief advice on writing: Avoid the broken, bitter, and cold.

Rachel Motte leads a list of summer reading recommendations at The Evangelical Outpost. She's going to dip into the Qur'an. That's a bit thick for me at the moment.

I plan to read several Flannery O'Connor stories this summer and The Book of the Dun Cow Other books too, of course, and I'll let you know as I read them.

Writer's Digest "polled 40 literary agents to see which journals they read with an eye for new talent. Then, [they] rounded up 12 of their picks and contacted the publications’ editors for an inside glimpse at each one—and exclusive tips on how you can break in."

You've seen the lists before saying the BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed. Here's the list you haven't seen.

1 Conceit and Chauvinism - Jane Austoon
2 The Dane of the Drinks - PBJ Tokien
3 Jan Eyrie - Charlot Blont
4 Harry, the Boy Who Grows Up to Become a Wizard and Whip an Evil Sorcerer’s Butt series - JK Rowlin
5 To Catch a Mockingbird – Larper Hee
6 The Bible: The Book That Changed the World – Many anonymous authors
7 Withering Snipes - Emily Blont
8 Nineteen Ninety Nine – The Artist Formerly Known as Georgey O.
9 His Dark Materials – Canni Getalight
10 Profound Potential – Charlie B. Dickens
11 Wee Women - Louisa McAlcott
12 Tess: A Sad Novel You Won’t Want to Read - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 33: Prequel to Hyperbole- Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Francis Bacon (The Brain Behind Shakespeare)
15 Daphne Du Maurier - Rebecca Read the rest of this entry . . .

And now, more of the imaginary or forgotten in the literary. Here's something from The Believer Magazine, "Short Takes on Books That Don't Exist: Eleven Essential, Imaginary Beach Reads for Summer" by Steve Hely

From the Guardian a few years ago, here's a list of books you may not have seen before.

Here an Englishman talks about distraction. Alain de Botton writes, "The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible."

He is the author of many books, including The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

Mark Bertrand has an essay on the printed word.

When Ken Myers interviewed me for Mars Hill Audio Volume 90, for example, he kept asking about the decline of literacy, only to have me scoff at the pessimism. Little did I know that the flipside of Volume 90 would feature an extended chat with Dana Gioia about the NEA's depressing literacy study. Fortunately that part of my interview was excised from the final version, sparing me the indignity of appearing unsuitably optimistic and glib. Ever since, I've kept what little optimism I possess to myself.

(via S.D. Smith)

Just when I was wondering what to blog about, Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall uses... that word!

He links to an interesting book review by Newsweek's Jennie Yabroff, dealing with the thorny subject of... subtext!

The title in question is Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed, a novel about a lawyer struggling with an undiagnosed compulsion to endlessly walk until he keels over. An odd and evocative premise, one that Yabroff wrestles with mightily. She initially wonders if the affliction may be a metaphor for environmental destruction or the search for the divine or the nature of addiction, but concludes that it doesn't really matter. "What if the book is about nothing more than a man who takes really long walks?" she muses before launching into a discussion about the dangers of overanalyzing....

This leaves me no choice but to quote one of the best movies of the 1990s, Whit Stillman's brilliant Barcelona, the story of two American cousins grappling with cultural differences, sexual mores, love, and anti-Americanism in 1980s Spain. This movie contributed one of the greatest bits of dialogue ever placed in two actors' mouths:

FRED: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and--

TED: Really?

FRED: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs--they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?

TED: The text.

FRED: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

Note to self: Must get the DVD.

Abebooks has ten reasons for not getting around to certain books. About #4, I've been listening to Les Miserables for months in order to get through it. Some of the digressions from the storyline are maddening.

Loren Eaton, at I Saw Lightning Fall, writes today about the Via Negativa. That's the technique of telling a moral story through depicting vice, and revealing its destructive effects.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, if I understand the concept correctly, was largely (not wholly) a Via Negativa story, in that it denounced slavery by examining slavery (it was also a Via Positiva story, in that it showcased the exemplary life of the main character).

When I was a boy, a teetotal relative gave me a copy of the book, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. This was an 1854 novel, written by T. S. Arthur, in the form of a series of reminiscences by a man who stayed (at infrequent intervals) at a particular inn where liquor was served. By showing the gradual deterioration of the inn, the family that ran it, and the community it influenced, he argued for the prohibition of alcohol. It was a very influential book in its time, and a pure example of Via Negativa.

I often think of a particular scene my own The Year of the Warrior—if you've read it, you'll probably recall the Great Summer Sacrifice scene. I used it to try to express all the horror which (I firmly believe) lurks behind true heathenism (as opposed to the pasteurized, humanist version generally promoted in the West today). No one has ever complained to me about the scene that I recall, but frankly it bothers me. I think I went a little too far, and if I had it to write over, I'd probably do it slightly differently.

I recall a particular novel published in the Christian market (and no, I won't tell you which one it was), in which the author tried to do something similar, and I felt he'd crossed a line. Maybe I was wrong (the book certainly sold more copies than any of mine, and to a Christian audience). But I know there's a danger here.

Loren's article speaks of one danger of the Via Negativa—that the audience will miss the message, and root for the wrong side. I think there's further danger—that the author will look into the abyss, and find the abyss looking back into him.

In my estimation (and maybe I misunderstand entirely) I thought novelist Thomas Harris succumbed to this temptation to some extent in dealing with his charismatic villain, Hannibal Lector. When Lector first appeared in Red Dragon, and when he reappeared in The Silence of the Lambs, Harris was able to keep his balance, getting deep into the psyche of the villain, but never taking his side. But in the follow-up novel, Hannibal, it seemed to me he lost his bearings, and began to delight, to some extent, in Lector's atrocities. I never even looked at Hannibal Rising.

That doesn't make the Via Negativa too dangerous to try. It just means we need to take care.

And choose wise readers to give us feedback.

The editor, writer, and I'm sure very delightful Jennifer Schuessler writes how book reviewers don't label books boring very often.

Boring people can, paradoxically, prove interesting. As they prattle on, you step back mentally and start to catalog the irritating timbre of the offending voice, the reliance on cliché, the almost comic repetitiousness — in short, you begin constructing a story. But a boring book, especially a boring novel, is just boring. A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth.

Scott Lamb has started up conversation on the NY Times list of best book from 2009.

Also, in case you missed it, the winner of the Best of the National Book Award winners for fiction is The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, as it should be.

The men I am most indebted to philosophically are: C.S. Lewis, Cornelius Van Til, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Calvin, Richard Weaver, the early Rushdoony, Augustine, John Knox, Gary North, J.I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, G.K. Chesterton, Paul Johnson, John Stott, Christopher Dawson, H.L. Mencken, William Buckley, David Wells, R.L. Dabney, E. Michael Jones, P.G. Wodehouse, Greg Bahnsen, and Peter Leithart. And after a diet of such books for twenty-six years, I have to say that reading an emergent book by Brian McLaren is like watching a six-year-old do card tricks.

-- Douglas Wilson, "Philosophy and Me"

I'd meant to review Dean Koontz' Your Heart Belongs to Me tonight, but it's Veterans Day, and instead I'll share a short excerpt from Grossman and Frankowski's The Two-Space War, which I reviewed not long ago.

Across the countless centuries warriors have taken their cues from the “Old Sarge.” There was always an Old Sarge. He was the veteran of twenty battles, and he was calm. Weeping and becoming emotional at the memory of combat was not acceptable because, across the centuries, warriors found that the way to continue performing the desperate, wretched, debasing, dirty job of combat was by controlling your emotions, dividing your pain, and making friends with the memories. Every night, around the campfire, or over hot food with their messmates, this age-old process continued.

In these sessions the men also sorted out what had actually happened. In Alexis Artwohl's twenty-first century law enforcement research, almost a quarter of the combat veterans she interviewed had memory distortions. They actually “remembered,” sometimes with vivid intensity, something that did not happen. And half of these veterans had experienced memory loss, with significant gaps in the memory of what happened. Left to their own devices, there was a tendency to “fill in the gaps” with guilt-laden acceptance of responsibility, sometimes even with a greatly exaggerated sense of guilt. “It's all my fault.” “I let my buddies down.” “I was a failure.” These were the kinds of responses felt by many men after combat. Only their mates, the ones who shared the event with them, could help them fill in the holes accurately. And only their friends, their comrades who had shared the searing experience of combat, only they could give understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness of the events that had occurred.

Every day, day after day, this is what occurred. This is what warriors did.

The buyers of "Baby Einstein" videos were told their children would get a leg up on brain development by watching the DVDs, but no one has seen the benefits yet. Disney is now offering a refund spanning the last five years. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against allowing two year olds watch TV, and research has shown that reading with your child helps the child develop language skills quite a bit. Texting with your baby is even better!

Ok, I made the last part up. But I'm sure listening to Mozart in the drivethru at McDonald's or while going to sleep builds the brain. I mean, if it worked for Mozart . . .

Also on that post from the School Library Journal is a link to a list of ten good kid-lit bloggers.

I did a webcast radio interview on Saturday, with an operation called The Author's Show. (You go to this site and then click on The Christian Author's Show on the tool bar.) Supposedly my segment has been posted now, and you should be able to select it from the menu. But I can't make it work. Maybe you can. Maybe it's just my computer.

Dr. Ted Baehr (with whom I apparently have some distant connection, through my publisher) loves the new animated A Christmas Carol, with Jim Carey. I guess I'll have to see it. If I love it too, it'll mean I'll have four different versions to keep on DVD and watch each Christmas. I'm not sure I can carry (or Carey) all those Carols.

Noodling around the internet, I discovered the shocking news that Stuart M. Kaminsky died, just about a month ago. I'm bereaved.

Kaminsky was one of the best, inadequately appreciated, mystery writers in America. He won awards and all, but he never really broke out as I would have wished for him. Instead of writing creepy thrillers full of gore and psychopaths and cannibalism, he wrote old-fashioned whodunnits, frequently brightened by his wit and always lightened by his human compassion.

As it happens, I just found several of his Toby Peters mysteries at the bookstore, and am almost finished with them. I was planning to write an appreciation when I finished the last one—maybe tomorrow.

I haven't made up my mind entirely whether I prefer his Toby Peters stories (Hollywood in the Thirties and Forties, with our shabby detective pulling a succession of big movie stars out of the soup) or his Lou Fonesca stories (about a sad sack Sarasota process server who mostly gets around on a bike). I've read one of his Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov novels, set in Soviet Moscow, but it struck me as kind of claustrophobic and depressing. His Abe Lieberman books were good, but not as good (in my opinion) as the Peters and Fonesca stories.

We've lost a true professional, and someone I suspect I would have liked if I'd met him. Rest in peace, Stuart M. Kaminsky.

eReader apps for the iPhone are surging in popularity, according to a marketing research firm. The firm suggests Amazon's Kindle may become a remainder to Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, which has 57,000,000 users.

Carrie Frye talks about how the Internet has made her a terrible reader and worse, "an overly inflated sense of my own ability to learn and appreciate new things."

Chesterton on the Benefit of Fairy Tales for Children. The world is not nice, and the monsters must meet their just ends.

According to a study by The Canadian Council on Learning, "Literacy rate levels for adult Canadians are at a national rate of 48 per cent. Montreal and Toronto have 50 per cent literacy levels and the best results come from the west in Victoria and Regina."

I'm not sure this report should be taken at face value, but maybe other reports giving Canada a higher literacy rate are weaker than this one. I can't tell at this distance. But I have to ask the question in my headline. How illiterate can a people be before they are considered uncivilized, or does literacy have much to do with being civilized?

Thomas Jodziewicz writes about Frederick Douglas' education into freedom. "Our popular culture promotes the injurious fiction," he says, "that the world is all about me, myself, and my ephemeral needs, a temptation that American culture has confronted for a long time. But a true liberal arts education can provide an escape from such alienation and loneliness—and boredom. A true liberal education is a way to discover that you are not alone."

Sherry writes about secret places in stories. I enjoy these places too. I've always loved the idea of a secret room in a large house. Of course, I'd want to go into it often--the kids would too--so the secret or secluded part of being in the room would wear out soon. But true stories like this one of a man finding a hidden room while renovating a 120-year-old house are so cool--unless you balance them with stories about hidden rooms with notes ("I owned this house for a short while, and it was discovered to have a serious mold problem.").

I hesitate to call Dennis Ingolfsland, of The Recliner Commentaries, a "fellow librarian," since he's the real thing and I'm an on-the-job-trained poseur. But I know enough to recommend this piece about the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week."

The fact is that there are no banned books in America. Maybe I missed it but I don't recall seeing any articles in the Library Journal or American Libraries protesting that other religion and those other countries which really do ban books.

(Picture credit: Jupiter Images)

(This is a meme from Facebook. I figured I'd cross-post it.)

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. The Bible. Obvious, but also true.
2. The Screwtape Letters. The first book that told me that reason was of God, and that God approves of pleasure. Seemed too good to be true at the time.
3. That Hideous Strength. A difficult book that's worth wrestling with. The inspiration for Wolf Time.
4. The Lord of the Rings. I'll never forget my first reading of the Mines of Moria scenes, and the charge of the Riders of Rohan.
5. Heimskringla. The essential text for all my novels.
6. Mere Christianity. It all seems so elementary today, but on my first reading I struggled with every page.
7. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. Almost a perfect book.
8. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. A friend mentioned my name to him personally, recently! I made squealing noises like a teenage girl.
9. Prince Ombra, by Roderick MacLeish. An obscure, but extremely fine, adult fantasy that was very inspirational to me before I got published.
10. The God Who is There, by Francis Schaeffer. Actually, any number of his early works could be mentioned here.
11. Moby Dick. I waited until I was an adult to read it, and so had the privilege of actually enjoying it.
12. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. The first Shakespeare play I read.
13. Conan the Adventurer, by Robert E. Howard. First gave me the idea that I could write heroic fantasy myself.
14. The Bishop/Weiss trilogy by Andrew Klavan. A hard-boiled detective story on an entirely higher plane.
15. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Who can forget his first Sherlock Holmes?