I know nothing about the guy who made the video above, but he agrees with me, which conclusively proves him an authority.
Viking reenactments these days are infested with misguided people who use the History Channel Vikings series as a costuming model.
Where, oh where can today’s reenactors find a proper role model for their impressions?
I do this solely as a public service.
Here’s a neat interview with Dean Koontz from about 7 years ago (can it be 7 years already?) when he released the last Odd Thomas book. It’s not long, but he’s got some good things to say about the craft of writing, plus turning personal challenges into art.
She nodded. It was the first time I’d ever had a good chance to look at her face. Big bright black eyes, and just a shade too much in the tooth department, so she had a very faint look of coming out of one of Disney’s woodland dells.
Early (1953) John D. MacDonald. That promises a great story, set back when men were men and women were women. Dead Low Tide does not disappoint in any way.
Andy McClintock lives in a small, cheap Florida cabin in a court originally built for tourists. It’s all he can afford on his current salary. His boss, land developer “Big” John Long, lured him to the state on promises of promotion and good money, but neither has appeared. (Rapacious land development was a continuing theme in MacDonald’s books, and it’s interesting to note his criticisms even at this early date.)
Then John’s wife, the small, intense Mary Eleanor, asks Andy for help. John has been acting strangely, she says, and she’s concerned what’s troubling him. Andy agrees to talk to him. He goes to see John on a building site, and concludes that the man is hiding a problem – likely a health scare. Andy also confronts John about his job, asking for more responsibility and money. To his surprise, John hands him a contract the next day, and the deal involves a partnership.
Then John is found dead, apparently having committed suicide with a speargun that belonged to Andy. He does not identify it for the police. Mary Eleanor asks Andy for another favor – there’s an envelope in John’s desk, she says, that belongs to her. Don’t open it. Just bring it to me. Andy doesn’t agree, but he does search the desk.
The next thing he knows, he’s been arrested for John’s murder. The cops know the speargun was his, and the new contract is motive. But that’s only the beginning of his troubles. Something far, far more valuable than his freedom is about to be taken from him…
Outstanding prose. A tight, gripping plot. Vivid characters who surprise you. A shocking twist toward the end. Dead Low Tide had everything. I highly recommend it.
Minor cautions for mature themes.
We tell superhero stories in a variety of ways. The lone gunslinger fighting rebels and outlaws, hiding his identity to avoid the repercussions. The agent/family man who was targeted but not killed and now brings his particular set of skills back to the field to punish evildoers. The burger maid who delivers warm burgers and fries to your table or car just after you pay for them. Actual heroes walk among us in the stories we tell each other before the boss joins the video conference.
And superhero stories probably have room to play around, find some diversity, and do fun things. Fandom talked to some people in the new show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law about motivations and what’s going to happen. Does this sound like superhero fun to you?
“One of the biggest themes of this first season is about acceptance, because I think it’s very unrealistic to expect a normal average everyday person to suddenly out of the blue get imbued with superpowers that they didn’t ask for [and just embrace it].”
“So much of her identity is based on her career. . . . So the idea of being handed something that changes her life and blows up all her plans is not appealing to her.”
“Suddenly she’s thrust into this whole other identity and people sort of look to her for all the expectations that you put on a superhero. But she really has a full life outside of it.”
People getting superpowers, like, out of the blue, powers they didn’t ask for? You mean, people like Spiderman, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and even the Hulk himself? Many others have come back from the dead or from fatal injury with powers greater than the average bear, so they should qualify as not asking for power. And many villains have been caught in accidents that only amplified their twisted desires and turned them into presidents of home-owners associations. So stories of unsolicited power leading to a few bumps in the road, yeah, we know a few.
This show appears to be a long But Actually to Uncle Ben’s well-known advice.
I’ve become a big fan of James Scott Bell, one of the very few really good Christian mystery writers out there. So I picked up No More Lies, a newly released revision of one of his earlier works. The book shows obvious signs of a writer still in the learning stages, but it also showcases a lot of the virtues that make Bell such a good storyteller.
The location is the small town of Pack Canyon, once the site of Old West movie sets, in the western San Fernando Valley. Arty Towne is out hiking in a wilderness area with his new wife, Liz. Arty has recently become a born-again Christian, and has left a good-paying job on principle. Liz doesn’t get this. Money is everything to Liz. It makes her very angry. Tragedy follows.
Caught up in the ensuing drama is Arty’s sister “Rocky,” an insurance investigator whose life has been blighted by a facial scar she acquired in childhood. And “Mac” MacDonald, an ex-con and new Christian who’s trying to keep straight in spite of numerous pressures, including recurring headaches from wartime injuries.
No More Lies is a tight, convoluted tale with lots of surprises (some of them a little far-fetched). Lots of “Noir” elements – weak-willed people wading into crime and getting caught in the undertow. I liked the characters, and the book contained moments of laughter as well as pathos.
What didn’t work – and it pains me to say it – is the “God talk.” One of the hardest things for a Christian writer trying to write for a secular audience is making the God talk sound natural. And it’s strained here. (No doubt it’s often strained in my own books.)
Also, there’s a weird anticlimax scene that serves no dramatic purpose I can discern.
But other than that, No More Lies is a lot of fun. Excellent entertainment. No cautions for language or themes.
My curiosity got the better of me. I couldn’t resist sampling Vinland Saga, a Japanese anime series about Vikings set at precisely the point in history I’ve been writing about in my Erling books. What follows isn’t exactly a review, because I don’t think I’ll be finishing the series, but it’s certainly interesting enough to tell you about. You may be surprised to learn that I have a lot of positive things to say.
When we think of Vinland and the Norse discovery of America, the name we generally think of is Leif Eriksson. But in many ways the real hero of the saga (at least in one of its two versions) is another man, an Icelander called Thorfinn Karlsefni (the nickname means “quite a guy” or “manly stuff”). Though it’s not plainly stated, I’m pretty sure the Thorfinn portrayed in Vinland Saga is that guy – but during an imagined childhood and youth.
As the series tells it, Thorfinn is the son of Thors, the Troll of Jomsborg, a former Jomsviking (a legendary order of Vikings based in Poland) who grew to hate war and deserted, fleeing to the peace of Icelandic farming. A friend of theirs is Leif (Eriksson, one assumes, portrayed here as a wandering blowhard rather than chieftain of the Greenland colony, as he actually was), who regales Thorfinn with tales of the rich soil and mild climate he encountered when he visited Vinland, years ago.
Then the Jomsvikings show up at their home, extorting through threats of violence Thors’ agreement to join them in enlisting in the army of Svein Forkbeard of Denmark in his conquest of England. Thorfinn stows away on the ship, eager to see war. On the way to England, Thors (who’s all but invulnerable) is murdered by the pirate leader Askeladd (a name borrowed from a figure from Norwegian folklore, something like Jack the Giant Killer). Improbably, Askeladd is amused by Thorfinn’s attempts to avenge his father, and keeps him with his army, promising to kill him in a proper duel when he’s old enough.
The next episodes deal with the Danish conquest of England, as Thorfinnn grows to be a feared warrior. At that point, I kind of lost interest. Not that the story wasn’t interesting, but the whole thing got too weird for me. I think there’s a whole artistic sensibility surrounding anime as an art form that I’m too old to adjust to.
Nevertheless, I have to say that there were elements of surprising authenticity. I’d say Vinland Saga is at least 50% more faithful to history than the History Channel Vikings series. Costumes and props are surprisingly good in a lot of cases. The history follows actual chronology. Real persons show up all the time – though sometimes in bizarre ways. Thorkell the Tall is an actual giant here. King Svein’s son Knut, later to become King Canute the Great, is presented as a guy who looks like a girl (and how they’re going to develop that story line I have no wish to discover).
In short, you can learn some genuine history by watching Vinland Saga. I did not expect to be able to say that. If you appreciate anime as an entertainment form, you just might enjoy it.
“Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart” is a moving prayer that I hope hasn’t been completely forgotten by today’s church members. It was written by Catholic minister George Croly (1780-1860) of Dublin, Ireland.
This recording skips the fourth verse given here, which is the most challenging verse of the five. It asks the Lord for the grace to put ourselves aside and trust Him even though he doesn’t respond as we want Him to.
1 Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art,
and make me love thee as I ought to love.
2 I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
no sudden rending of the veil of clay,
no angel visitant, no op’ning skies;
but take the dimness of my soul away.
3 Hast thou not bid us love thee, God and King?
All, all thine own, soul, heart, and strength and mind.
I see the cross– there teach my heart to cling:
O let me seek thee, and O let me find.
4 Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
to check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.
5 Teach me to love thee as thine angels love,
one holy passion filling all my frame:
the baptism of the heav’n-descended dove,
my heart an altar, and thy love the flame.
Amazon’s Middle Earth series, The Rings of Power, will begin September 1 and run into October. I don’t know much about it, but I hope to enjoy it if we still have a Prime membership (which seems to come and go regularly of late).
Because of the series, I intend to read The Silmarillion soon. I know I read about half of it before, but I don’t remember where I stopped. One of the chapters, perhaps thirteen, dragged on about geography about as warmly as a fifth-grade social studies text. I aim to push past those parts and enjoy the stories beyond them.
I don’t know if I will attempt to blog about the series if I’m able to watch it near the release days. I probably wouldn’t have enough thoughts to share.
Crime or Punishment? A Dostoevsky enthusiast categorizes all of the famous author’s novels and novellas into must-reads, read-afters, and only for other enthusiasts.
Notes from Underground, Poor Folk, and The Brothers Karamazov are among the must-reads. The Double and The Gambler are on the list for reading after the must-reads. Uncle’s Dream and The Permanent Husband are only for the most dedicated readers.
“I won’t be exaggerating,” she says, “when I say [The Brothers Karamazov] brought me back from abyss. It might not work the same way [for you as] it did for me, but there is an obvious need for more people to read and understand the beautiful intricacies of life and its fallacies, to love life in its entirety.”
Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
“Notes from Underground,” Fyodor Dostoevsky
On Death: R.L. Stevenson wrote, “[A]fter a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.”
Social Media: “How teens use social media often drives how everyone uses social media.” YouTube is the most-used social media platform and the second most-used search engine.
Online Fiction: “China is producing and consuming the largest amount of web fiction in the world, with an estimated 20 million full-time, part-time, and dabbling writers. The grind is hard, and the conditions can be exploitative, but those who do it are on the vanguard of a reading revolution.” (via Literary Saloon)
For Love of a Hero: Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero), performed by The Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin.
Photo: March Mobil Gas, Mount Clemens, Michigan. 1986. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Max Strong works as a baker in a diner in the small town of Essex (which I learned, about half way through the story, is in Minnesota). That’s not his real name, though. He’s in the federal witness protection program. He has a history in organized crime that’s not clearly explicated. But he’s trying to make a fresh start, to keep his nose clean. He likes the place and the people. That’s the setup for the thriller, Shaking the Tree.
One of the people Max likes is his roommate Stevie, an inveterate runner who is nearly beheaded by a briefcase falling from the sky, one morning out in a country road. When he gets the case open, he finds it contains millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, a man’s body is found impaled on an apple tree in a farmer’s orchard.
Suddenly a shady DEA agent and a Russian hit team show up in town. The local sheriff, who’s involved in cooking meth, is trying to figure a way to keep the heat off his operation while locating the missing money for himself. He will lie, bully, torture or kill to make his pile and get out of this town.
Innocent people are going to die. And that will make Max Strong mad.
There was a lot about Shaking the Tree that intrigued me. The story was complex, and the shifting points of view through which it was told were well-realized.
But I found the book hard to like. It was grim, grim, grim. Noir-ish in the sense that sin is punished brutally. It reminded me of No Country for Old Men. I didn’t like Max Strong well enough to care about reading the next book.
There are odd, obscure references to the Bible through the story, but I’m not sure what we’re supposed to make of them.
Cautions for language, violence, and mature themes.
I finally got around to watching Chris Pratt’s critically panned but commercially popular miniseries, The Terminal List, on Amazon Prime. In case you’re even slower on the uptake than I am, I’ll review it here.
James Reece (Pratt) is a Navy Seal lieutenant whose platoon is cornered and nearly wiped out in a botched operation. Returning home, he learns that the other survivor has been killed, and an attempt is made on his own life. At the same time, he starts noticing problems with his memory – blank spots and certain recollections of things that apparently never happened.
As he grows increasingly frightened of threats to his family, he starts to believe he’s the object of a conspiracy – but can he even trust his own thinking?
The Terminal List is violent and loud and full of dramatic tension and pathos. Critics have panned it, but the audience loved it, and I agree with the audience. I strongly suspect the critics reacted to Chris Pratt’s politics rather than to the story itself. Government conspiracy stories have been common since the 70s, after all, and many have come from filmmakers on the left. What the production lacks, I think, is the obligatory sermons about Woke doctrines that are expected in today’s productions.
I was expecting the final surprise, I must admit, simply based on the process of elimination.
Recommended, for adults with high tolerances for violent scenes and language you’d expect from the military.
