The BBC reports that a historian has announced that she has located an English recipe for haggis that dates to 1616. The earliest reference to the delicacy (which I’ve described in this space as “liverwurst-flavored oatmeal”) in Scotland comes from 1747. Thus, haggis was probably borrowed by the Scots from the English, she argues.
Read for yourself.
The question now is–is this good news or bad news for Scotland?
Tip: Cronaca.
Today is my birthday, and I’ll be driving down to a point in southern Minnesota after work, to have dinner with my brother. So probably no posting tonight.
You already know that I keep novelist Stephen Hunter’s picture in a locket, close to my heart. He proves (once again) his worthiness of such adoration in this marvelous piece in Commentary about Bonnie and Clyde–both the movie and the actual persons.
I always held pretty much this opinion. I just didn’t know enough to say it so well.
Tip: Threedonia.
I picked up a couple of Steven Saylor’s Rome Sub Rosa novels because James Lileks praises them highly, and I have a high opinion of James’ taste. Unfortunately, I find I can’t share his enthusiasm.
Not to say the two I’ve read have been bad books. Catilina’s Riddle, which I just finished, and The Venus Throw, which I reviewed a while ago, are well-researched and well-written mysteries centered on the political conflicts that convulsed the Roman republic during the ascendancy of Cicero and the rise of Julius Caesar.
This story starts in 63 B.C. Gordianus the Finder, the detective hero of the series, has settled down on a farm in Etruria, some distance north of Rome, which he inherited from a friend. His new farm is entirely surrounded by the properties of his late friend’s siblings, and they (with one exception) do not welcome him. But Gordianus has had his belly full of Rome and its intrigues. The simple life of a gentleman farmer looks very good to him.
Neverthless, his past—in the person of an agent of his old patron, Cicero—intrudes. Cicero has an odd request. He wants Gordianus to play host to (and to spy on) Cicero’s own greatest political enemy, the charismatic young politician Catilina. Gordianus is sick of Cicero, and initially refuses. But he changes his mind after a headless body shows up in one of his barns. He interprets this as a threat, and begins to realize that you can flee Rome, but Rome will always follow you. Thus he gets more and more enmeshed in the plots and counter-plots of Cicero and Catilina. As in The Venus Throw, the actual murder mystery—the question of the headless body, along with two more that follow—turns out to be a footnote to the great events that overtake them all by the end of the story. Continue reading Catalina’s Riddle, by Steven Saylor
One of my co-workers came to see me in my office today. He said he was interested in writing. He was particularly curious, he said, as to how a writer develops a style.
Here’s the answer I gave him. It’s probably not the last word on the matter, but this is how I understand it, based on my own experience.
First, you find an author you’d like to be like. And you try to write like him (or her). This isn’t actually part of the process as such. It’s just where most of us start. You’ve got to start somewhere, so most of us start as imitators. When I was a kid, I tried to write like Poe, I recall.
This derivative writing is the raw material from which you begin to build your identity as a writer. It’s Square One, nothing more, really.
Continue reading Stylin’
(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?
If you don’t think spelling matters, you’d still better watch it when you’re programming your GPS. This couple in Italy misspelled “Capri” and ended up driving 400 miles in the wrong direction.
Alisa Harris, at the World Magazine blog, writes about the ethical question of pastors cribbing sermon outlines—sometimes whole homilies—from online sermon caches.
As an aside, she links to an article from bnet, about the use of ghostwriters in Christian publishing.
Such things are common in the industry. When my first novel, Erling’s Word (fair warning—you don’t need to buy that book if you have The Year of the Warrior. TYOTW incorporates it entirely in a double volume) was published by Baen, it came out the same month as the “first novel” by an actor who’d worked in a very famous science fiction TV series. Everybody knew, I think, that this actor hadn’t really written the book. Probably hadn’t even contributed much. A fledgeling author was listed as co-author, but it was understood that she’d done the real work, while the actor had contributed the considerable market value of his name. Continue reading Are there ghost-writers in the sky?
At Collected Miscellany, Kevin Holtsberry gives West Oversea a nice review.
Thanks for the nice–nay, flattering–review, Phil. It was so encouraging that I celebrated by making myself a turkey sandwich with two (2) slices of turkey on it for supper.
In the house where I grew up, that qualified as extravagance.
S. T. Karnick, over at his The American Culture blog, reviews the movie “Public Enemies,” and finds it wanting. I think I’ll give that one a pass. (And I don’t care what anybody says. There’s no resemblance whatever between Johnny Depp and John Dillinger.)
Dr. Gene Edward Veith, at Cranach, links to a post by Matthew Kratz at Sola Fide, in which he shares some information from Mark Noll’s book, The New Shape of World Christianity. Dr. Veith himself notes:
In my own tradition, there are lots more Lutherans in Africa (12 million) than there are in America (9 million). The Lutheran church in Madagascar (3.5 million) is bigger than the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (2.5 million).
Madagascar was a chief traditional field of Norwegian Lutherans. Not only Norwegians from the homeland, but young Norwegian-American pioneer churches, spent years and tears and blood in that country. I know several people who grew up in missionary homes there.