Category Archives: Reading

Fiction, Reading

An Abel Jones moment

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Here’s another little snippet from an Abel Jones mystery by Owen Parry, Rebels of Babylon. I need to set the scene up a little. Jones, a strict Methodist, made a point in the earlier books of saying that he disapproved of novels, since they were made up entirely of lies, and were a frivolous waste of time. But recently he made the discovery of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and was completely won over—providing the novel was morally upright, of course.

In Rebels of Babylon he makes the acquaintance once again of Barnaby B. Barnaby, an English “gentleman’s gentleman” who had told him in Call Each River Jordan that he was a great reader—but only of one book. He read The Pickwick Papers again and again, comforted by its predictability.

In this scene, Jones tries to persuade Barnaby to try Great Expectations. (Ever try to recommend a book to a friend who wasn’t interested? I’ll bet you never got quite the response Jones gets):

Mr. Barnaby shook his head, slowly but with decision. “I couldn’t do it, sir. Really, I couldn’t. It’s all too awful and ’orrible. I couldn’t bear to undertake the experience of more suffering. And people always suffers in a novel, sir, if it’s worth the ink and paper…. I’ve even ’ad to give up reading Mr. Pickwick, I ’as. I couldn’t bear it no more, knowing as ’ow all ’is ’appiness is bound to be torn from ’is bosom. Not all Sam Weller’s wits can’t save the poor man, sir. ’E goes to ’is sufferings over and over again. Without end, sir, without end! As if that Charlie Dickens ’as trapped ’im forever in the pages, so ’e can’t never escape…. A writer fellow must be ’orrible wicked, sir, to go killing folks with ink and making everyone suffer for ’is pleasure. And for profit, sir! The scribblers takes money to make the innocent suffer in their books. It just ain’t right to do a thing like that.”

That says it about as clearly as it could be said, I think.

This is the last Abel Jones book published to date, and I wish I could get information on the next. I searched the web, and found an interview with Parry (actually Col. Ralph Peters) in which he projects a series of about twelve books. But where each previous volume ended with the note, “The adventures of Abel Jones will continue in _______________,” this one just says, “The adventures of Abel Jones will continue.” And this one came out in 2005. That’s getting to be a three year hiatus, which is too long for a series, as I can tell you with some authority.

I may have given the impression, in my previous review of Honor’s Kingdom, that these are Christian books. They aren’t. They’re books about a Christian (and sometimes the author gets the theology badly wrong), but the Christian is a likeable and admirable one, which is relatively rare in contemporary fiction.

This book goes deeper than previous episodes into an analysis of Jones’ faith, and the author makes it clear that much of Jones’ rigor rises from some deep, repressed fears. It’s possible future books may cross the line for me, and I’ll feel compelled to give up on the series.

But I’m willing to take that chance with the wicked writer fellow, for now.

Reading

An excerpt:

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From Owen Parry’s Call Each River Jordan: Chapter One (a passage describing the Battle of Shiloh):

Set down like this, all reeks of sense and knowledge. But I was not a thinking man that day. In battle, men survive who learn to act. Thinkers perish, or, at best, they fail. They hesitate, and die. No, I had not the selfhood ink pretends, but was a beast trained by a master’s hand. Forever a creature of the regiment I was, though I had long hoped elsewise. I was, again, the boy in the scarlet coat, streaming with the gore of Chillianwala, and grinning at the slaughter and the triumph. That was Britannia’s legacy to me, brought to my new land as a fateful cargo.

I was not myself upon that field, see. Not the Abel Jones I had constructed across the years I wore no uniform. Not the man I prayed that I might be as I approached the age of thirty-four. Not the loving husband and father, the dutiful Methodist clerk. I fell down. And Jones the Killer rose up like a ghost, bloody as the Kashmir Gate at Delhi.

But let that bide.

Reading, Writing

How not to write

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Now and then Phil gets offers from publishers willing to send us books for review. When he thinks they might be of interest to me, he forwards them. I like this. I like anything that provides me free books.

I got one recently, from a publisher in England. As a gesture of gratitude for their trouble and generosity in sending the book, I’m not going to review it.

Because if I did review it, I’d have to give it the lowest grade I’ve ever given a book on this blog. It is amazingly, egregiously awful and amateurish.

Instead I’m going to write, in generalized terms, about some of the author’s failures. They might be helpful to those of you who are writers, or want to write. Continue reading How not to write →

Poetry, Reading

R.I.P., Joan Hunter Dunn

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Finished another Koontz today—Hideaway. I’m not going to review it, because I’ve done so many Koontzes, but I’ll mention that I liked it a lot, yet found it hard to read. I liked the good characters so much that I didn’t want to see anything bad happen to them, so I actually resisted picking it up a few times, not wanting to know what happened next.



Joan Hunter Dunn died last week. She was the subject of the English poet John Betjeman’s most famous poem, “A Subaltern’s Love Song.” Betjeman asked her permission to use her name, and apparently they were only friends, not lovers.

The poem (I’ll confess I’ve never read it) is a wartime elegy to normal life and love in pre-war times.

Betjeman was a pupil of C. S. Lewis’ at Oxford. He never took his degree, and always blamed Lewis for not supporting him when he got into academic trouble. They were reconciled in later years, but never became friends.

Blogs, Socials, Reading

Folks Still Read

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Writers on Britannica’s blog are still talking about newspapers, and Colette Bancroft says Internet readers aren’t as shallow as some make them out to be.

People use the Net for a lot of silly things, but they also make serious use of it (here you are reading an encyclopedia’s blog). Remember all the dire warnings back in the ‘90s that the Net meant the death of reading? So, what do people do online? Many things, but mostly, they read. And they write. Boy, do they write. In blogs and forums and chat rooms, they pour out the words.

She goes on to mention rising interest in books and declining book coverage in newspapers.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

From the Corner of His Eye, by Dean Koontz

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Be easy in your ceaseless care for me. I got my walk in tonight. It looks to be the only one I’ll get this week, but it’s something. The temperature was tolerable, if I bundled up, and enough sun filtered through the light clouds to give me a diaphanous shadow.

Tomorrow night it’s supposed to rain. In any case, I’ll be running to the airport to pick up Moloch and his wife, back from China.

Which means that it’s just possible, if I hear that traffic’s bad, that I’ll skip posting altogether.

Steel yourselves. I know you can survive it.

I promise I’m not going to review every Dean Koontz novel I read, as I go through them alphabetically.

But I’m going to review the really outstanding ones. And From the Corner of His Eye definitely qualifies.

I suppose it’s possible that Koontz could produce a better novel than this. I haven’t read them all yet. But at this point I can’t imagine a better one.

This is a big, sprawling book that covers a long period of time, kind of like those Victorian novels I’ve never read, by Thackeray and Trollope.

And it’s populated by a remarkable cast of quirky, fascinating characters worthy of Charles Dickens.

And it’s built on a Sci Fi/Supernatural premise, like… well, like a Dean Koontz book.

The blurb on the inside page of the paperback is misleading. It makes it sound as if this is the story of Bartholomew Lampion. Bartholomew is certainly a central character, but he’s a baby for half the book. The story is actually about a whole network of people, all bound together by the strange effects of a radio sermon called, “This Momentous Day.”

The story begins in January, 1965. First of all (though not first in the narrative), in Oregon, a narcissistic sociopath named Enoch Cain murders his beautiful, loving wife. The next day, in two places in California, two babies are born—a boy and a girl—in circumstances of extreme family tragedy. Nevertheless each child finds a loving home and shows early signs of being a prodigy.

But Enoch Cain is out there, and he has become aware that there’s a child who he believes is a danger to him. He grows obsessed with finding that child and killing him.

Cain is an interesting character. He’s evil and does horrible things that cause great pain to people the reader has come to care for. Nevertheless, Koontz treats him to a large degree as a comic figure (he explains his rationale for this through one of his characters in the course of the book). Cain thinks he’s a genius, a connoisseur, and God’s gift to women, but in fact he’s not particularly bright, likes only the things critics tell him to like, and most people who meet him find him rather creepy. He’s blissfully unaware of this. Also his suppressed conscience expresses itself forcefully in some painful and embarrassing physical reaction, every time he commits a murder.

As the plot works itself out, and all the characters come to know one another, we observe the working out of Koontz’ premise, that just as quantum physics and string theory tell us that every point in the universe is connected, so all people are connected, and all our actions have infinite consequences—and not only in our own universe.

I loved every page of this book. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel this long (over 700 pages) before and wanted it to be longer. As the saying goes, I laughed; I cried.

There are strong Christian elements (along with some speculation which could serve as fodder for late night discussions).

From the Corner of His Eye gets my highest recommendation.

Update: Scratch tomorrow’s rain. We’re going to get snow.

If Nature is our Mother, our family is dysfunctional.

Reading

Some Books Take Too Long to Read

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Guest blogger Fiona Maazel says she’s in the middle of about 400 novels at the moment. “Currently, I am still going at War and Peace, the Bible, Grant’s memoirs, Watership Down, Infinite Jest, American Gothic, Auto-da-Fe. I keep meaning to go back and finish these books, but I get sidetracked. Or I was getting sidetracked until one of my book shelves collapsed a few months ago.”

Reading, Religion

So What Does This Mean to You?

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Michael Patton says, “What does it mean to you? This, I believe, is the most destructive question that one can ask of the Scriptures. The implication is that the Scriptures can mean something to one person that it does not to another.”

He has a good point, but I don’t think starting with this question or the subjective angle is bad for some groups. Starting with what a passage means to each of us gets us involved and thinking more than we were before. If you leave it at that, you won’t teach any truth, but starting there just puts ideas on the table.

Starting with this kind of question also respects the words of the Bible and intelligence of the readers. If someone suggests a ridiculous meaning for a verse, the group should naturally see it as ridiculous. The leader may need to help that understanding, but it can be done naturally without directly contradicting the one who suggested it. This is the idea behind a John study or a group discussion of the Gospel of John. The group gathers to discuss what Bible says about Jesus.

(via Kingdom People)