Monthly Archives: August 2009

Religion, The Press

It’s probably nothing, but boy, that sure looks like four horsemen…

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One of the classic scenes of the Icelandic sagas comes from Njal’s Saga, in its description of the deliberations of the Icelandic Althing (national assembly) over the issue of converting to Christianity, about the year 1000 A.D.

As the debate raged, news came that a volcano had erupted, and the lava was threatening one of the leaders’ farms. The heathens in the assembly immediately pounced on this as evidence that the old gods were angry.

At that point Snorri the Chieftain (who happens to be a character in my novel West Oversea) stepped up and asked, “Then who were the gods angry at when this lava around us flowed?” He was referring to the rugged Icelandic landscape, which is all formed of cooled lava. The argument was dropped, and eventually the Icelanders agreed to be baptized (thus becoming, I’m told, the only nation in history to adopt Christianity through legislative action).

I tend to agree with Snorri (though he’s hardly my favorite saga character). I won’t go so far as to say that signs never come in our day, but I’m leery of them. Whenever I’ve thought I’ve seen a sign in my own life, it’s turned out to be an embarrassment. My church body believes that, in our time, those who have the Scriptures don’t need any further input on divine matters.

And yet, sometimes… Continue reading It’s probably nothing, but boy, that sure looks like four horsemen… →

Non-fiction

Pardon Me, Your Pants Are on Fire

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Robert Feldman from the University of Massachusetts talks about his research into our patterns of bearing false witness. In short, we lie a lot.

“We are not very good at detecting deception in other people,” Feldman says. “When we are trying to detect honesty, we look at the wrong kinds of nonverbal behaviors, and we misinterpret them.”

On this topic, some researchers think lying is mentally harder than telling the truth, so asking suspect to do something specific while recounting their story could help separate the liars from the honest. Of course, some people can’t handle the truth and make themselves look bad.

In related news from our How Things Have Changed Department, Time magazine has an old article on the lies presidents have told us.

In 1960, when the Russians shot down Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane, it was the Secretary of State, not President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who claimed a weather-research plane had gone off course. “So intense was the desire to not have the President lie,” says presidential historian Michael Beschloss, “to not break the bond of trust with the American people, it was left to others. Eisenhower never spoke an untruth.” Of course, Ike was never the focus of an investigation by a grand jury, either.

Blogs, Socials, The Press

“Better is One Day in Your Courts”

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Mike Adams over at Townhall.com (sorry for the pop-up rich environment) posts what seems to me a splendid piece today. It’s in the form of an address to his students at UNC-Wilmington, which he plans to give at the start of the school year. In it he throws down a gauntlet, declaring that he plans to violate the school’s speech code, and see how the administration defends the suppression of ideas in an academic setting.

By the time these three speakers are finished, at least one of you will have filed a formal complaint claiming I have created a “hostile environment.” You’ll be relying, of course, on one of our university’s illegal speech codes.

I will respond by doing something that may surprise you: I will use the same illegal speech code to claim that the speech in your complaint is hate speech, which creates a “hostile environment” for people of faith.

Bookselling

Book-ordering day, 2009, fall edition

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Today was one of the great, dreaded days of my year as a bookstore manager. I finally had in hand the book orders from all (and by all I mean most) of the instructors, for texts they want their students to have this fall. So I sat down at the phone and started placing orders, relying on my efficient and elegant Microsoft Xcel-based system.

And it went pretty well. I finished all the orders, I think (got to double-check tomorrow), except for the one publisher who put me in a call queue this morning until I gave up, and then put me in a call queue this afternoon when I tried again. I left my number on voice mail.

The most harrowing order is always Zondervan (last in sequence because it starts with “Z”). They have a fully automated ordering system which depends entirely on pressing the buttons on the phone dial. I ought to love it, as it involves no actual human interaction, but I think I fear numbers even more than I fear people.

It’s an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed in the last few years, that I never seem to experience particular satisfaction anymore when I finish a major task. Even when I complete a whole novel, I’m left with the feeling Flashman had at the end of Flashman at the Charge, when he’d finally made his way over the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, having fought, lied and skulked his way through fire, blizzard and carnage, to reach a British post at last, and all the official had to say to him was, “Very good. This is a customs post, among other things. Have you anything to declare?”

The reason for the dysphoria, of course, is that I don’t try enough new things.

Oh well. I can live without particular satisfaction.

Uncategorized

Because the Truth Doesn’t Cut It

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The Arctic sea will not be free of ice by 2030, as Greenpeace has said.

Big Hollywood writes: “Although [the retiring head of Greenpeace] admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of ’emotionalizing issues’ in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.”

Speaking of emotionalizing issues, what comes to mind when you think of the year 2012? Your son will be out of college? The next presidential election? The end of the world? Maybe I’m stretching, but I won’t be surprised if someone behind this film is arguing that if the next presidential election goes the wrong way, we’re doomed.

Blogs, Socials

Award Nomination and Your Feedback

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Brandywine Books has been nominated for an award during Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Our category is “Best Spiritual/Inspirational or Religious Book Review Blog.”

The friendly people behind this award have asked us to give them for their consideration five posts which we believe put our best feet forward. What do you think we should recommend? Since it’s a book review category, I’d prefer book reviews or book-related posts, but Lars post on villains may be a good choice or perhaps his post on Klavan’s crime trilogy a while back. Maybe we should stick to the spiritual-inspirational-religious topics though.

Please let us know what you think, and thank you for nominating us for this award.

Fiction, Reviews

The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly

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The Brass Verdict is Michael Connelly’s second novel about his new character, lawyer Mickey Haller. I wasn’t too sure whether I liked Mickey much when I read the first one, The Lincoln Lawyer, but this book definitely warmed me to him.

Mickey Haller is a defense attorney. He’s just coming off a one-year hiatus when he gets the news that an old friend, another defense lawyer named Jerry Vincent, has been murdered, and has left his stable of clients to him. One of them is a “franchise case,” a big-paycheck, high-profile case involving Walter Elliott, a Hollywood movie mogul.

There are problems with defense lawyers as heroes of stories. We all know that in the real world they’re not Perry Mason. They defend the worst people in the world, and if they’re good they get very rich off it. What makes Mickey Haller sympathetic is that he feels that moral tension, on a deep level. It probably had a lot to do with the cocaine-and-alcohol habit that destroyed his marriage, alienated his daughter, and nearly cost him his life.

On moving into Jerry’s office, Mickey finds two policeman going through the case files—illegally. He kicks them out, but oddly finds himself drawn to one of them, who turns out to be Harry Bosch, the hero of the majority of Michael Connelly’s novels. This is an excellent strategy on the author’s part, and helped me settle into the story.

Harry asks questions—who had Jerry Vincent bribed? How was the FBI involved? Mickey doesn’t know the answers. Harry doesn’t believe him. But they will still be drawn together into the double mystery of Jerry’s murder and the Elliott trial, which turn out to be linked. And the killing isn’t over.

A good story by a master storyteller. Connelly did telegraph one surprise though, at least in my case. He generally keeps politics out of his books (for which I’m eternally grateful), but here he did mention one character’s conservative affiliations. I immediately thought, “I’ll bet this character turns out to be a villain.” And behold, it was so.

Maybe Connelly’s done the same thing with liberal characters in the past, but I never noticed it. (Then again, I probably wouldn’t.)

But storytellers, be warned—we know your poker tells.