Back for a reprise: A ghost from my Christmas past. This guy is the late Roger Awsumb. In the ’60s he used to play Casey Jones on the “Lunch With Casey” program on a Twin Cities TV station. This is probably the most popular thing he ever did.
All posts by Lars Walker
Update: Still alive
I’m half way through.
I’ve finished the fall semester in my graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. I’ve completed 18 of the 36 credits I’ll need for graduation, and should have them all this time next year, the Lord willing. It’s all as time-consuming as I expected (no, more – I didn’t anticipate how intensive the work would be), but if I want to qualify for World Domination, sacrifices must be made.
I’ll try to post more often in the free time I’m about to have – the rest of December and most of January. But there are a lot of projects I’ve been putting off, and I find them clamoring for my evening time.
Anyway, thanks for your faithful readership.
Personally, I’m making physical progress. My new, android hip is working fine. The Original Manufacturer Equipment hip (the left one) still gives me some pain, but I’ve joined a health club and exercise it on a stationary bike three times a week. The improvement has been palpable, so I hope that with time I’ll be all better again.
And now, in keeping with the season, a Swedish Christmas song by Sissel:
‘Manual of Mockery,’ by Ori Pomerantz
Our friend Ori Pomerantz has published another little e-book (I got mine free, for the record). This one is called Manual of Mockery, and its ostensible purpose is to instruct people in how to create good Internet memes.
In fact, it’s an accessible short course in basic logical argument.
Recommended.
“You’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep”
Chicken coop, Coupeville, Island County, WA. Photo by Anne E. Kidd. Library of Congress
Today I was reminded of a man I wrote about here some years back. He’s gone now, and one of his relatives came to the library today to donate several cartons of books from his personal collection.
I think it’s all right to give his full name now. It was Marvin Rodvik, and he lived in Franklin, Minnesota. I met him a couple times in my life. The last time he gave us another gift of books. He also told me a story, which I passed along in this blog. I’ll tell it again now, because it is, in my opinion, one of the best stories I ever heard for the Christmas season.
Marvin was a pastor’s kid. The story happened when he was a teenager, probably (by my calculations) around the time of World War II.
An entertainment event of some kind (he didn’t say what) was planned in their small town. Marvin announced at supper that he was going.
“You’re not going,” said his father. They belonged to a strict church, a congregation of the forerunner to my own church body.
“Yes I am,” said Marvin. “You can’t stop me.”
His father paused a moment. Then he said, “You’re right. I can’t stop you. But know this. If you go to that event, you’ll be locked out of this house when you come home tonight. You’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.”
Continue reading “You’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep”
Minder, by Duncan MacMaster
A while back, I reviewed Joe Average, a satiric superhero story written by Duncan MacMaster, of the Furious D Show blog. I liked the book quite a bit.
I liked his recent novella, Minder, even better.
This is a dark and gritty story, suitable for a movie starring Liam Neeson. A crime boss in an unnamed city learns that a contract has been put out on a local woman cop. He doesn’t want a cop killing in his town. It’s bad for business. So he hires “Fitz,” a professional killer and IRA veteran, to protect her.
The story is well-written, the characters believable, the dialogue excellent. It’s simply a workmanlike hard-boiled story, entirely satisfying to the fan of the genre. The sort of thing Jack Higgins would have written before he ran out of steam. I wished it longer.
Recommended.
‘Joy Cometh with the Mourning,’ by Dave Freer
Dave Freer is best known as a science fiction writer. I don’t know him personally, but we have several mutual friends. One of those friends sent me a free copy of Joy Cometh with the Mourning for review.
Reviewing this book is problematical for me, because of fundamental presuppositions. The main character is a female pastor, and most of you know I consider that unscriptural. Still, I read the book and found it appealing on its own terms.
Rev. Joy Norton, the protagonist, is a young pastor newly installed in a remote parish in Australia. She’s insecure about the call, as she’s never served in a rural church before, or on her own. The situation is complicated by the fact that her much-loved predecessor’s cause of death is unknown. What makes it worse is that she begins to suspect that there were improprieties in his conduct, which might have given one of her parishioners a motive to murder him.
Unlike the mysteries I usually review, Joy Cometh with the Mourning is a “cozy” mystery. Instead of turning over spiritual rocks and discovering evil, Rev. Joy looks into human hearts and finds goodness there. Even that particularly maligned species of humanity, the Church Lady, is treated with respect and affection in this story.
I enjoyed reading Joy Cometh with the Mourning. If you’re more tolerant than I am of egalitarianism in the church, you’ll probably enjoy it very much.
The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson
It’s a rare treat to discover an author and a series of books I enjoy very much, and which I can recommend to our readers almost without reservation. But that’s the case with Christopher Greyson and his Jack Stratton novels.
Jack Stratton, the hero of the series, is a cop in a South Carolina town. He’s a good man, but wound tight. As a boy he was abandoned by his prostitute mother, but found refuge in a loving mixed race foster home before being adopted by a good family. As a young man he served in Iraq beside one of his foster brothers, Chandler. He saw Chandler die, and because of survivor’s guilt he hasn’t contacted his foster family since.
That’s until Replacement invades his life. “Replacement” is the nickname of a young woman who grew up in his old foster home, though after his time there. She shows up in his apartment and tells him Michelle, a foster sister to whom he was always close, has disappeared. She’d been studying in a local college, but supposedly transferred to a California school. Only she hasn’t gotten in touch with her family, and she wouldn’t do that.
With Replacement as his uninvited assistant, he starts looking into Michelle’s life, and discovers troubling things. Continue reading The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson
‘One Bright Star to Guide Them,’ by John C. Wright
“Innocence and faith are the weapons children bring to bear against open evils; wisdom is required to deal with evils better disguised.”
You might be tempted, on the basis of its description, to think John C. Wright’s novella, One Bright Star to Guide Them, is simple Narnia fanfic. A story of four adults, who were once children who entered a magical land peopled by magicians and talking animals.
But it’s more than that. This story is a transposition of Narnia. Author Wright moves the whole concept onto a different level. It’s a meditation on the most terrible line in all the Narnia books – “Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.” Thomas, the protagonist, is summoned to take up a new fight against a revived evil. But when he contacts his childhood companions, he finds that – for one reason or another – they are not willing to join him. So he has to test his faith alone, except for the help of their old guide, a mystical kitten called Tybalt.
One Bright Star to Guide Them is a quick read, but entirely worthy of the material that inspired it. Beautiful in places. Highly recommended.
Starr endorsement
Author Rachel Starr Thompson takes up valuable space in an interview to say nice things about my work.
I could never do the grit Lars Walker does, but I kind of wish I had written The Year of the Warrior. Wolf Time is amazing too. Actually, I love all of Lars’s books. – See more here
The Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mysteries, by Michael Lister
For a little while, while I was reading the first Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mystery, I thought I’d found something wonderful to recommend to you. Alas, the execution did not live up to the promise.
Jimmy Riley’s nickname is “Soldier,” which embarrasses him a little. World War II is raging, but he never actually served in it. He’s missing his right arm, but he lost that in a gun fight in his capacity as a cop. Now he’s a private detective in Panama City, Florida.
But his mind isn’t on his work these days. He’s desperately in love – with the wife of a rich banker. He thought she felt the same way about him, but she broke their affair off one day, without explanation. Now he’s mooning around the office, and his partner is worried about him.
But one day Lauren, the Woman He Loves, comes to his office to ask if he’s been following her (he hasn’t). She refuses to hire him to investigate, but he starts looking on his own initiatve.
That’s the promising set-up of The Big Goodbye, the first book in a trilogy. Unfortunately, the following books, The Big Beyond and The Big Hello, don’t live up to expectations. Continue reading The Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mysteries, by Michael Lister