Raskolnikov is back, and this time he’s not wasting his time philosophizing! In the long awaited sequel to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, terror strikes the heart of a sleepy Russian town . . . okay, I’m making that up, but there is a sequel to this novel, reviewed today in the Philly Inquirer.

This is curious. Swedish mysteries are popular in English apparently, and now children’s detective books are building momentum.

I think I can see it, but if the book jacket told me I was holding a compelling drama on the garbage in our lives, I’d probably put it down.

Frank Wilson links to Ed Pettit’s review of Tolkien’s new book, and Ed clarifies in the comments that he loved the book. He blogs at The Bibliothecary.

“Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history” is what’s in store within the new translation of an old Welsh book from the Middle Ages, The Mabinogion. No, I haven’t heard of it either, but it’s bound to have some great material even if it’s a bit hard to read.

Terry Teachout praises Donald Westlake’s comic novels, calling the latest one, What’s So Funny? a stinking funny book. Well, he doesn’t exactly say that it’s stinking funny. He says all of his Dortmunder series books are “incredibly, pulverizingly funny, and the only thing wrong with them is that there aren’t twice as many.”

Terry Teachout praises Donald Westlake’s comic novels, calling the latest one, What’s So Funny? a stinking funny book. Well, he doesn’t exactly say that it’s stinking funny. He says all of his Dortmunder series books are “incredibly, pulverizingly funny, and the only thing wrong with them is that there aren’t twice as many.”

Author Orson Scott Card calls a thriller he read “evil.”

At the beginning of the book, we are shown a Palestinian during the 1948 war over the creation of the state of Israel. . . . [Steve] Berry sets this scene against a background in which Israelis are systematically driving all the Palestinians out of Israel; the Israelis are heavily armed by the British while the Palestinians have no weapons to counter them; and the Israelis have rounded up whole villages of Palestinians and slaughtered them, men and women alike. . . .

This is the kind of thing that readers — especially ones who don’t know anything about history — are likely to assume the writer has researched, so that it can be trusted. . . . So when a novel like Berry’s The Alexandria Link treats such events as background, as if everybody knew that this is how Israelis act, what it is really doing is furthering the propaganda of one side in a desperate war.

Back on July 24, 2003, Dr. George Grant blogged on John Bunyan and Pilgrim’s Progress. He briefly described the circumstances in which Bunyan wrote, and generalized on the book’s theme and styles.

For nearly a decade, Bunyan had served as an unordained itinerant preacher and had frequently taken part in highly visible theological controversies. It was natural that the new governmental restrictions would focus on him. Thus, he was arrested for preaching to “unlawful assemblies and conventicles.

The judges who were assigned to his case were all ex-royalists, most of whom had suffered fines, sequestrations, and even imprisonments during the Interregnum. They threatened and cajoled Bunyan, but he was unshakable. Finally, in frustration, they told him they would not release him from custody until he was willing to foreswear his illegal preaching. And so, he was sent to the county gaol where he spent twelve long years–recalcitrant to the end.

My favorite part of this book is in the Interpreter’s House. I don’t remember which picture impressed me most at the time I read it, but this one is a good one and illustrates the Interpreter’s House section.

Then I saw in my dream that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter.

Then said Christian, What means this?

The Interpreter answered, This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the Devil; but in that thou seest the fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.

Then said Christian, What means this?

The Interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart: by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, that is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul.

The full text can be found at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Back on July 24, 2003, Dr. George Grant blogged on John Bunyan and Pilgrim’s Progress. He briefly described the circumstances in which Bunyan wrote, and generalized on the book’s theme and styles.

For nearly a decade, Bunyan had served as an unordained itinerant preacher and had frequently taken part in highly visible theological controversies. It was natural that the new governmental restrictions would focus on him. Thus, he was arrested for preaching to “unlawful assemblies and conventicles.

The judges who were assigned to his case were all ex-royalists, most of whom had suffered fines, sequestrations, and even imprisonments during the Interregnum. They threatened and cajoled Bunyan, but he was unshakable. Finally, in frustration, they told him they would not release him from custody until he was willing to foreswear his illegal preaching. And so, he was sent to the county gaol where he spent twelve long years–recalcitrant to the end.

My favorite part of this book is in the Interpreter’s House. I don’t remember which picture impressed me most at the time I read it, but this one is a good one and illustrates the Interpreter’s House section.

Then I saw in my dream that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter.

Then said Christian, What means this?

The Interpreter answered, This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the Devil; but in that thou seest the fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.

Then said Christian, What means this?

The Interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart: by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, that is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul.

The full text can be found at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.