Mrs. Yates’ 3rd Grade Class Receives A New Message From Space, a funny monologue from Christian Lynch.
Category Archives: Fiction
Those Cute Little Twilight Readers
Sarah Clarkson has a good take on the attitude some have taken when reviewing Twilight. She says, “Thing is, I know, and rather adore, quite a few teenage girls. I remember being one (and have moments when I feel like one still). And I can guarantee you that most aren’t harboring a dark desire to be worshiped by a man. What they do want very much is to be loved. Are the lot of them boy crazy? Pretty much. And I’m sorry, but isn’t that part of how God made us?”
Relentless, by Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz is a bold writer when it comes to experimenting with genres. In Relentless he gives us a comic horror science fiction thriller. It’s a very enjoyable and compelling book, but I’m not entirely sure all its parts work together.
I’ve said in other reviews that I admire Koontz’s general avoidance of the common (lazy) writer’s trick of telling stories about writers. But Relentless is about a writer (and his family). It could hardly have been otherwise, given the premise.
If horror means basing plots on our greatest fears, there can be no greater horror premise for a writer than a sociopathic critic. Negative critics are the enemies against whom there is no defense. Fighting a critic is a loser’s game. But how much worse if that critic wants you (and your family) dead? Continue reading Relentless, by Dean Koontz
Wicked Prey, by John Sandford
Minnesota author John Sandford (real name John Camp) has established a nice little franchise with his Lucas Davenport Prey novels. Davenport is a Minnesota state cop who also happens to be a millionaire. He enjoys driving his Porsche fast with the siren on. As skillful as the character’s handling of his car has been the author’s own steering of the series, keeping out of both the left and the right ditches on a pretty winding road.
The early Davenport books portrayed a cop who was also a designer of computer games. He used the same skills he employed in game design to out-think the most devious and insane of criminals, and more than once he applied a little private justice in cases where he was confident the courts would let a dangerous killer back on the streets. In that period, Davenport seemed to be gradually losing his own grip on sanity, torn between duty to the job and his personal commitment to protecting the public.
Sandford deftly saved Davenport’s sanity by having him meet and marry a female surgeon. As Davenport acquired not only a wife, but a foster daughter and a baby son, he grew happier and more stable. Unfortunately, he ran the risk of getting a little dull. The old edge seemed to be going.
With Wicked Prey, Sandford has found a solution to that problem too, bringing in another legal corner-cutter, close enough to Davenport to make his world perhaps even more dangerous and morally ambiguous than before. Continue reading Wicked Prey, by John Sandford
Daggers on the Table
“The shortlist for the International Dagger award of the Crime Writers’ Association was announced at Crime Fest.” (via Books, Inq.)
DeLillo in The Secret History of Science Fiction
Ed Parks writes about a sci-fi anthology with a short story by Don DeLillo in it. Parks states, “Despite the advanced state of my DeLillo worship, I haven’t pursued his short fiction. There isn’t much of it, it’s uncollected, and despite DeLillo’s capacity for inhuman linguistic precision, his most indelible works are generally the ones that sprawl.”
He was ecstatic to find a short story he’d never read by this favorite author and manages to talk about the anthology a little too. (via Conv. Reading)
The Brontes Are Returning to Hollywood
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights will be adapted for film again.
“Austen’s characters achieve their greatness through a kind of sideways movement toward happiness, (while) the Brontës hurtle themselves headlong into the maelstrom of emotions and situations,” says James Schamus, head of Focus Features.
Nancy Drew at 80
The young detective who can handle her own against many criminal minds has been doing it for 80 years.
This just in
At Evangelical Outpost, Rachel Motte reviews West Overesea.
Sigrid Undset
It was some time ago that Bill Bennett, on his morning talk show, asked, “Who is Sigrid Undset?” I tried to call in and help him out, but there wasn’t time.
The fact that Bennett, an extremely erudite Roman Catholic, knew nothing of Sigrid Undset, saddened me. (I’m not a Catholic myself, but no man is an island, and all that).
Gone are the days when a popular writer like Ogden Nash could say, in the midst of a light poem:
“Or you stand with her on a hilltop and gaze on a winter sunset,
And everything is as starkly beautiful as a page from Sigrid Undset….”
…and everybody would know what you were talking about.
That’s a tragedy. Not just for Catholics (like Bennett) or Norwegian buffs (like me), but for all lovers of great Christian prose. Continue reading Sigrid Undset