Did warriors ever carry their swords on their backs, like we see in the movies? No. So how did they carry them, particularly long swords? I’m told Claymores were fifty-five inches long on average. Could any man strap something of that length on their waist?
To Work at the Strand
You have to complete a literary quiz. New York City’s Strand Book Store wants their employees to know something about books, so they ask job applicants who out of ten names wrote Infinite Jest or The Sound and the Fury.
Fred Bass, who with his daughter, Nancy Bass Wyden, owns the Strand, called the quiz “a very good way to find good employees,” regardless of their duties.
“Without good people,” Mr. Bass said, “you don’t have anything going.”
Road day
I spent the day mostly on the road, to and from a meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society Board in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. James Lileks would have taken Highway 10 and commented on the quaint charms of small towns along the way. I took Highway 94, so I have very little to tell you.
So here’s an article about Viking horses, featuring the Icelandic horses I got acquainted with this spring.
Most likely the first gaited horses appeared in medieval England and were then transported to Iceland by the Vikings. Horses have existed in Iceland since 870 BC. In contrast, no European (Scandinavia included) or Asian horse of the same period carrying the mutation for the alternative gaits was found.
‘Injustice for All,’ by Scott Pratt
I’m powering my way through Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard series of legal thrillers. Book number 3, Injustice for All, is exactly what the title advertises. The world is full of injustices, and Joe, now District Attorney General in his corner of northeastern Tennessee, is doing everything he can to try to protect a few of the innocent.
There’s a man on death row, a former client of Joe’s, who’s scheduled for execution soon. New DNA evidence could free him, but Joe can’t get a judge to look at it.
There’s one of Joe’s oldest friends, a fellow lawyer, who angers a petty and narcissistic judge. Soon he finds himself with his license suspended and headed for jail. And that’s just the beginning of his troubles.
There’s a lovely young woman, liked by everyone, who hides secrets of past victimhood. More victimhood lies in store for her.
It’s a tribute to author Pratt’s skill as a novelist that a story with this much tragedy and unfairness in it isn’t a complete downer. But he manages it. I’m impressed.
Recommended. Cautions for the things you’d expect. It can get pretty intense.
‘In Good Faith,’ by Scott Pratt
This is the second novel in Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard series. In In Good Faith, Tennessee lawyer Joe Dillard, disillusioned with criminal defense law, joins the district attorney’s office. Right out of the chute, he draws a horrific crime – the murder of a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses at a rest stop. Soon after that a retired high school principal and his wife are murdered. All the killings include a signature mark – a shooting or stabbing wound to the right eye.
This book skirts the edges of supernatural horror – the concepts of mental telepathy and telekinesis are part of the story and taken seriously. At the center of the crimes is a beautiful young black witch. And as an ally against her power, Joe discovers a psychically gifted young woman who has a strange link to the witch.
The question of religion is particularly strong in this book. Joe’s troubled sister is living with a “Christian” man, a pillar of the church, who turns out to be a violent addict (hint to all women thinking of getting involved with a “Christian” man. If he wants to shack up, he’s a hypocrite). “Black” and “white” witchcraft are central to the story, which is problematic for the Christian reader. Joe, a lifelong atheist, has a breakthrough of some kind of faith, but it’s not clear exactly what he believes in.
But still, a harder line could have been taken against Christianity if that were the author’s purpose, so I can’t criticize the book much on that score.
In Good Faith was exciting and well written, and I cared about the characters. Recommended, with cautions about the supernatural stuff. Also, language and adult themes.
Shadows in Netflix’s Stranger Things
Netflix has a winner in its new original Stranger Things, an eight-hour sci-fi/horror show with Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, and Millie Bobby Brown. I’d like to list all of actors, because everyone was fantastic. I want to talk about it here, but I can’t avoid spoilers.
For lovers of Stranger Things (no Spoilers) – Credit to u/pyrobob4
Yes, there’s a bit of an E.T. vibe because we have boys on bikes and bad government agents, agents so bad the public affairs guy at the U.S. Dept. of Energy felt compelled to say, “Whoa! I like Stranger Things like all you guys. It’s a great show, but we do not experiment on people and hunt down monsters, okay? That’s NSA, not us. And Dr. Brenner doesn’t work with us anymore.”
You could say Eggos replace Reese’s Pieces, but the Duffer Brothers aren’t trying to remake E.T. They’re telling a good paranormal story. (By the way, E.T. could have been munching M&Ms, but someone at Mars said, “We know for a fact aliens do not like M&Ms, so the premise of this movie is wildly unrealistic. Hot babes like M&Ms. Why don’t you make a movie about them?”)
When asked about the parallels between Stranger Things and other sci-fi movies, like The Goonies and Close Encounters, co-creator Matt Duffer said,
When you get into the writers’ room and you’re working on individual episodes, actually very little time is spent referencing other movies. Mostly you’re just trying to tell the story, letting the characters guide where everything’s going. Otherwise it would just be a jumble and a mess. Someone sent me that Vimeo video that had our images side-by-side with [‘70s and ‘80s movies] and some of it was purposeful and some of it was not, which was really cool. And some of it I haven’t even seen. Continue reading Shadows in Netflix’s Stranger Things
‘Judgment Cometh (And That Right Soon),’ by Scott Pratt
It wasn’t until I’d finished Judgment Cometh (and That Right Soon) by Scott Pratt that I realized I’d read a previous book in this series. That was An Innocent Client, which introduced the continuing character of lawyer Joe Dillard of Tennessee. I clearly remember composing a review, but if it was ever posted, it’s disappeared altogether from the internet.
In this eighth installment, defense lawyer Joe Dillard takes the job of defending a young man accused of the murder of four judges. He was stopped for driving drunk, and a pair of coolers containing the disarticulated and frozen body parts of the latest victim were found in the back of his pickup. Joe believes the man innocent, and gets the case thrown out.
But that’s not enough for Joe. The real killer is out there, and is very bad news, so Joe starts looking for him himself. He uncovers a pair of the most monstrous murderers he’s ever encountered.
This is a compelling story, and Scott Pratt is a good author. He gives us interesting characters, good writing, and sharp dialogue. Joe’s dealings with his wife (who has been battling cancer) are presented with insight and empathy. His attitude toward religion, which comes up more than once, is hard to gauge – which is probably a good approach.
I disliked some elements of the first Joe Dillard mystery, and read no more. But I’ve picked the series up again with Book Number Two, which I’ll review soon. Scott Pratt has earned another chance with me. He’s good at what he does.
Cautions for language and intense cruelty and violence, though it isn’t overly graphic in presentation.
C.S. Lewis Did Not Say That
William O’Flaherty runs the Essential C.S. Lewis website and has a first Saturday monthly feature on words misattributed to the great Jack Lewis. Yesterday he highlighted a quote that is actually from Lewis, but in isolation it reads contrary to its intended meaning in the story.
“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger.”
Seize the day, as it were. Take that hill. Do the thing.
O’Flaherty explains where these words are found in The Magician’s Nephew and what they mean. He has a long list of questionable quotations. See his list of the top five from 2015 here, including two that were spoken by Anthony Hopkins while playing Lewis, which doesn’t make them Lewis quotations.
‘A View to Die For,’ by Richard Houston
I was looking for something a little less intense than the books I’ve been reading recently, and A View to Die For, by Richard Houston, seemed to fit the bill. And it did, more or less. It was an amiable little mystery. A little too amiable, perhaps.
Jacob Martin is a recently divorced Coloradan, who lost his job in computer programming and has been getting with handyman work. When his mother calls and tells him his sister has been arrested for the murder of her husband, he sets out home for Missouri to help out, along with his golden retriever, Fred. His sister is a promising suspect, as her two previous husbands have both died suddenly. She is sure Jacob can help, because he always used to figure out the murderer when they used to watch “Murder, She Wrote”(!).
The story kept me reading to the end, but it seemed a little loose and meandering. The writing was generally OK, though artless, but occasionally words were misused (such as “prolong” for “postpone”).
There are a couple sequels out there, but A View to Die For didn’t grab me enough to persuade me to download them. Your mileage may vary. Cautions for adult themes and language.
Friday Fight: I Drink Your Milkshake
Vikings didn’t wear two-horned helmets, making themselves look like bulls, and they didn’t carry giant battle axes into war. They carried light-weight, fast-moving longaxes that could drink your milkshake from all the way across the room. Hurstwic offers some photos and description of the Viking axe.