Chris Yokel talks about visiting an art museum. “I was in the Art of the Americas wing, looking at some of my favorite paintings by the early Americans, Gilbert Stuart and John Singleton Copley. Leaning in close, I could see the brushstrokes, still visible after several hundred years. I noticed the cracks seaming the canvas, sometimes even enhancing it.”
His creative spirit is wonderfully refreshed.
The Guardian has these photos of bookstores described by that fun, book culture author, Jen Campbell, in her book, Books Are My Bag. From that collection: “Fjaerland is one of Norway’s Book Towns near Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in mainland Europe. Old sheds, houses and even a hotel have been converted into bookshops. “During the winter, the bookshop owners have to transport the books from place to place, over the snow, on kick-sleds,” says Campbell.”
They also share a photo of this remarkable pile of rare and otherwise books in Detroit. It’s Michigan’s largest used bookstore.
I’ve got a review of Saint Odd, the final Odd Thomas book, over at Liberty 21’s The American Culture blog today.
If you’ve read the novels (and for heaven’s sake, if you haven’t read them, don’t start with this one. Start with Odd Thomas, and read them in order), you know what I mean. We all knew it was coming. There is no surprise in it.
But be comforted. All is well. All will be well.
Many bookplates from a collection formed by the late Brian and Stephanie Schofield are up for bid through the Bookplate Society of England. See the plates and how to participate on their website. The auction dates have yet to be set.
Over Christmas someone suggested I read Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, first installment in the Kingkiller Chronicles, saying that all the young fantasy fans are talking about it these days.
They could be talking of worse things.
The Name of the Wind is a fantasy, of a refreshingly original sort. It’s similar to the Harry Potter books, but more mature in orientation.
The hero is Kvothe, literally a legend in his own time. World famous as a musician, a warrior, and a magician, he has retired from the world when we meet him in this book, keeping an inn in a remote town. When the character called the Chronicler encounters him, he doesn’t recognize him at first. But when he does, he manages to persuade Kvothe to tell him his life’s story so that he can write it down. Three days are reserved for the project, and each day’s narrative forms the text of one book in the series.
Kvothe tells us of his childhood as a traveling player, the tragedy that takes his family away, his years as a beggar, and at last his acceptance at the University, the greatest learning institution in a world where magic and technology are just poles on a single continuum.
There he makes friends and enemies, reconnects with the love of his life, breaks many rules, and begins to acquire the reputation that will make him the greatest figure of his time.
Fascinating, well written, and well-charactered, The Name of the Wind is very good reading. The author may take the story in ways I don’t like in the future, but for now I liked what I read.
Generally suitable for teens and up.
“Many struggle to find a good route into being a good reader,” Kathleen Nielson observes in a new roundtable video with Rosaria Butterfield and Gloria Furman. How does ones move past an understanding of the importance of reading to an enjoyment of it? (via ISI)
In a spectacular essay titled “The Paradox of Intellectual Promiscuity,” found in his altogether indispensable final essay collection I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History
, Gould uses Nabokov’s case to make a beautiful and urgently necessary broader case against our culture’s chronic tendency to pit art and science against one another — “We have been befogged by a set of stereotypes about conflict and difference between these two great domains of human understanding,” he laments — and to assume that if a person has talent and passion for both areas, he or she can achieve greatness in only one and is necessarily a mere hobbyist in the other.
(via Books, Inq.)
As [Dr. J. Kameron] Carter explains it, white churches that sprang up throughout American history did so in the pattern of the great European cathedrals and denominations from which they were transplanted. Black church, while it is related to those European frameworks, “is in excess of them,” says Carter, meaning they “were already doing work beyond what those traditional denominations were doing.”
“In the face of a modern condition that told Blacks they were only worthy of their labor power, black churches came along and affirmed that there was a mode of life far beyond the woundings that came along with black existence in America.”
This is the tradition that produced King. And it’s the same tradition that produced other civil rights leaders, like Rosa Parks and Ella Baker.
Brandon Ambrosino has written a lengthy interview with three scholars on Dr. King and the black experience in America.
Dr. Anthony Bradley describes a problem Christians of any tradition should grapple with, that even great theologians and Christian leaders don’t apply their theology uniformly well. They have blind spots, sometimes embarrassing ones.
This video is on Westminster Theological’s post for Martin Luther King Day, which has a few books and stories from seminary alumni. Rev. C. Herbert Oliver graduated in 1953 has an interesting story to tell. You can read it on their site. Here, I’ll quote his answer to the question on what changes he has seen in our country over 60 years:
Theologically, I would say that I’ve seen what I would call the disturbing trend in the PCUSA, moving in the direction of ordaining open gay and lesbian ministers. I’ve been a member of the New York City presbytery for 45 years, and I saw how that change took place. I opposed it at the beginning, but they had a way of shunning you to the side and not hearing you. So I decided I would become an observer and watch this and see how it has worked out. It has worked out to me unfavorably, and against the Bible, so they now have an openly gay executive presbyter of the presbytery.
I’ve also not seen any basic racial changes for the better in the church. I’m sorry to say that, but I ran into the same racism in the PCUSA church as I found in the OPC. When I graduated from seminary, there was no place for me to serve. There were plenty of churches that were vacant, but none of them would call me. It was understood by the higher-ups in the church that there was no future for me being called to a white church. That’s when the call came to me to serve in Maine, and I accepted that and went there and served. But the racial divide in America is still as strong as it was in the 40’s and 50’s. Just more polite, but it is no less real, no less firm, and no less impregnable.
A few days back I posted a review of a book on the Viking Age which had disappointed me. Author Ruth A. Johnston, who happens to be a Facebook friend, then mentioned her own book on Beowulf, which I’d already read. I hadn’t noticed that it came from the same publisher.
Ruth’s book, A Companion to Beowulf, is much, much better.
A Companion to Beowulf is, as you would expect, an introduction to the poem, useful for students or history buffs or Tolkien fans. It’s well written and comprehensive, and includes a list of modern adaptations, a glossary of names, a list of works cited, and even a chapter on Tolkien.
For some reason, she fails to note my theory, mentioned on this blog, that Beowulf is “refugee literature.” I’ve also been inclined to give credence to theories that Beowulf’s “Geatish” tribe may have been someone other than the Gotlanders. Johnston states flatly that they were Goths. But that may be because she knows more about the subject than I do, hard as that may be to believe.
I did catch what I think are couple small errors. She says the spear was the symbol of a free man — I’m pretty sure it was the seax. A spear is what a slave would be most likely to carry. She also speaks of Vikings wielding “two-headed fighting axes.” That should be “two-handed fighting axes.” They never fought with double-bitted axes.
But those are the sort of small mistakes you’ll find in any book — even mine. All things considered, this is an excellent introduction to a wonderfully alien work of literature. I recommend it.