Roberto Estreitinho writes about reading. “If by page 30 of a book I’m not hooked, I stop reading,” he says, and if it’s a long book he begins to have doubts about, he skips to the end. “If it’s worthy of understanding how the author got there, read it all. If not, congratulations. You just avoided wasting time.” (via 99u)
On that note, The Unofficial #TGC13 Discount E-Book Store is open with many discounted eBooks from the authors at The Gospel Coalition Conference in Orlando this week.
I have slightly regretted posting a link to the episode map for Game of Thrones a few weeks ago. I must have forgotten what little I knew about the stories at the time. Since then, I have seen some plot synopsizes and other talk of it. I can’t say I want to see it or read Martin’s series.
Patheos has a brief review of both the shows and the novels, asking the writers to talk about how sex is handled. They say they saw a glorification of rape, no love anywhere, and a curiously distant feminism. Alan Noble writes, “In that a major theme of the series is human depravity, cruelty, and brokenness, it is appropriate that one of the most sacred and beautiful experiences in life should be depraved, cruel, and broken.”
I don’t have time for that.
Tim Keller remembers what Elizabeth Elliot told him about art.
Hunter Baker has blessed Christians on the Internet by posting this letter, “An Astonishing Message from a Gay Sister in Christ” and his personal response. I feel provoked to share my reflections also.
“She sees herself as a sinner and reaches for the bracing, redemptive, and cleansing blood of Christ rather than the lukewarm saliva of evolving culture.” She is like I am, though the labels differ.
Let me come out of the closet. I am an idolater.
I believe I have an idolatrous orientation. At one time in my life, I would have said one cannot be a true follower of Christ and an idolater, but I see that I am one. I was born this way. I have followed Christ since age seven, but as I became an adult, I realized I made and loved idols regularly. I worshiped (never in church–wait, I don’t think I can say that) myself, my dreams, the attention of others, my books, my relative grades, and other things over the Lord God who made me and rules heaven and earth. I have confessed of this sin, felt free of it, and returned to it within the course of a week.
Many people like me have tried to change the church to accommodate them and succeeded. Some have changed entire denominations. But I don’t want accommodation. I want redemption.
On this day, when we remember the death of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, I want to take shelter in His bloody side. I can’t change myself.
Radix Magazine, “Where Christian Faith Meets Contemporary Culture,” did an interview a while back with the director of Monsters, Inc., Pete Docter. Pete has since directed Pixar’s Up and written Wall-E and Monsters University. (via Jeffrey Overstreet)
Radix: How would you say that being a Christian affects how you do your work?
Docter: Years ago when I first spoke at church, I was kind of nervous about talking about Christianity and my work. It didn’t really connect. But more and more it seems to be connecting for me. I ask for God’s help, and it’s definitely affected what I’m doing. It’s helped me to calm down and focus. There were times when I got too stressed out with what I was doing, and now I just step back and say, “God, help me through this.” It really helps you keep a perspective on things, not only in work, but in relationships.
At first you hire people based purely on their talent, but what it ends up is that people who really go far are good people. They’re good people to work with, and I think God really helps in those relationships.
Radix: I know you do a lot of praying, and that’s a big part of the artistic part of what you guys do.
Docter: Yes. You could probably work on a live-action movie that takes maybe six months hating everybody else and you’d still have a film. But these animation projects take three or four years, and it’s really difficult to do without having a good relationship with the people you’re working with.
Pete goes on to describe how spelling out the moral of a story, if you have one in mind, undermines your message. “To me art is about expressing something that can’t be said in literal terms. You can say it in words, but it’s always just beyond the reach of actual words.”
The first quarter or so of the dialogue is dominated by the ideas of originality and copies. What makes an original work of art uniquely superior to an excellently made replica? What is genuine? What is false? Is there a purpose in a composition or statue that the original fulfills but the copy does not? The two look briefly at a painting that was thought to be original, but discovered to be a recent copy of much older work. She is fascinated by it and hopes he will be too, because it fits the subject of his book, which is also called Certified Copy, but he isn’t. He tries to keep his distance from art, he says. It can be dangerous. I have to wonder if he keeps this distance because he is uncomfortable with that which is truly genuine, beautiful or hopeful.
The Englishman, James Miller, brings up another idea early on, that humanity’s purpose is pleasure. People should be free to do their own thing. The woman counters by saying people have responsibilities, such as family, that need tending, and she tends her own family with a bit of irritation. At one point, he continues talking about this need for living one’s own life while she is on the phone with her son, who can’t find something. She calls her son an idiot for not looking where she is telling him to look. He’ll find it if he’ll listen to her. Though they are not talking to each other, she and James are talking about the same thing. He is looking for self-fulfillment; she is telling him she knows where to find it.
She seems to tell him again indirectly in a scene in which she disappears into a church for a few minutes. He looks in at the door and believes he sees her praying. When he asks her about it, she shrugs it off saying she was doing something else, but the church setting must be significant. She is a figure of hope, a call for self-sacrifice, and she draws him to the church (which seems to either interest or trouble him; it’s hard to tell). In the same space, an elderly couple, probably married for 50 years or more, inches across the courtyard from the church door to an inn door. They are a picture of the love and faithfulness James wants know but believes does not exist.
Now, having thought this far, I think I’ll have to turn on the spoiler alert. Sorry. Continue reading Certified Copy
And now for something completely different:
Readmill is an eReader app for iPads and iPhone which connects readers and authors in a community with the books. It appears to be Goodreads.com with eBooks. You can share quotes and get recommendations from your friends. They recently added a page of recommended stores for buying iPad/iPhone formated books easily. You can see what’s going in a post like this one featuring highlights from the past week.
In related news, I’ve started to use The Old Reader, an RSS feed aggregator. It’s good. I like it so far.
Do you use either of these sites/apps?
This is an absolute ripping yarn, as ripping a yarn as you are likely to find, and unlike some TV series, it’s steeped in solid historical detail. Do want a fun sense of how Vikings lived in 1000 A.D.? Read Lars’ Erling novels.
This one is the fourth, but the first two are combined into one book, The Year of the Warrior. Next comes West Oversea, which you can learn about by searching this blog. And here, Hailstone Mountain (The Erling Skjalgsson Saga) brings us the courageous, noble Erling Skjalgsson stepping into the battle of his life.
First, he appears to be wasting away without reason. Father Ailill discerns he has been poisoned by magic and must find the magician to break the spell. Erling isn’t willing to risk everyone’s life on a quest to save his own, so his family and friends fear he will die, but when Lemming’s daughter disappears, they suspect she has been kidnapped by the minions of old magical people who kill select people in order to live forever. Whereas he would not fight for his life, Erling will fight against this abomination. That is what kicks everything off, and Lars doesn’t spend a chapter here and there describing the life cycle of trees. Each adventure builds to the next.
(Quick aside: View this photographic creation called “Cave Dwellers” by Folk Photography)
Lars’ heroes are epic sized, but they are also realistically drawn. They deal with honor, slavery, and bigotry just as their historic counterparts did. One of the moving threads in this book has German priests refusing to work with a pagan magician who has joined their team. They could not condone the work of the devil in this man (a fair idea), and yet their motives were also of the devil. Sometimes, Ailill is no better. I wonder if he had a greater concept of God’s magnificent grace and less of his own worthlessness, would he have spoken an apt word to these men, like he does to the pagan in the beginning, and temper their distain? But bigotry runs deep, especially when its partially dug by religious convictions. It’s slow to correct course.
Continue reading Hailstone Mountain by Lars WalkerDavid Masciotra says you can find faith in modern literature by reading crime novels. “The case for faith in fiction is to be made by those who deal with cracking cases for a living—the fictional detectives, private investigators, and troubled protagonists who inhabit the scandalous, seductive, and serpentine setting of noir.” Take Hit Me by Lawrence Block
Mascoitra praises James Lee Burke
