James K.A. Smith sets up the next issue of Comment by asking, “What if secularism is loudest precisely because it is a final cry before it is unveiled as implausible and unsustainable? Doesn’t the emperor shout loudest about the beauty of his raiment precisely when he least believes it himself?”
I am given to understand that the Minnesota Vikings pre-season game tonight will feature a new attraction: Viking reenactors in authentic costumes doing… something or other between plays.
These reenactors will in fact be members of my own group, the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway. We’ve been discussing this deal for some time, but I didn’t want to announce it before I had definite confirmation.
However hard you look, however, you won’t see me. My mobility problems, plus my looming study schedule in the future, make it imprudent.
Still, just so you know, these are my friends. Maybe when they’re rich and famous they’ll remember me.
Yale now offers a digital edition of the works of Samuel Johnson, which include this prayer recorded in 1752:
“BEFORE ANY NEW STUDY.
“NOVEMBER. Almighty God, in whose hands are all the powers of man; who givest understanding, and takest it away; who, as it seemeth good unto Thee, enlightenest the thoughts of the simple, and darkenest the meditations of the wise, be present with me in my studies and enquiries.
“Grant, O Lord, that I may not lavish away the life which Thou hast given me on useless trifles, nor waste it in vain searches after things which thou hast hidden from me.
“Enable me, by thy Holy Spirit, so to shun sloth and negligence, that every day may discharge part of the task which Thou hast allotted me; and so further with thy help that labour which, without thy help, must be ineffectual, that I may obtain, in all my undertakings, such success as will most promote thy glory, and the salvation of my own soul, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.” (via Thomas Kidd)
I’ve been keeping a secret from you. We plan, God willing, to release a new novel of mine within the near future. This is a draft of the cover, with a lovely painting by our friend Jeremiah Humphries, and cover design by our own Phil Wade.
How is this possible, you ask, when I keep complaining of having no writing time because of graduate school? Well, this is a book that’s been pretty much finished for some time, except for a couple plot problems. I took my brief study hiatus this summer to work on those holes, and now I think she’s ready for launch.
The novel, entitled (obviously) Death’s Doors, is sort of a sequel to Wolf Time, but not what you’d call a close sequel. The location is the same, the town of Epsom, Minnesota, but a few years later, and with only a couple of the same characters showing up. In the world of Death’s Doors, assisted suicide has become a constitutional right. The main character, Tom Galloway, is trying to keep his depressed daughter from exercising that right, with no help from the authorities. On top of that pressure, a stranger drops into his life — the Viking nobleman Jarl Haakon (whom you may remember from The Year of the Warrior), who has passed through a door in time.
What we’re asking of you, at this point, is just your opinion on the cover above. Phil isn’t sure he’s satisfied, and would appreciate your input.
Thank you for your support.
Nick Pirog’s Thomas Prescott novels are worth reading just to watch a writer learning his craft. The first book in the series, Unforeseen, is even admitted by the author, in his introduction, to be a freshman effort. Still (I’m not sure why) he offers the Kindle edition without alteration. And yet… in spite of its faults I liked it enough to read the sequels, which show considerable progress and offer many rewards.
At the start of Unforeseen, Thomas Prescott, former cop, former FBI consultant, and current criminology professor and millionaire, is living in Maine with his sister Lacy, an artist with Multiple Sclerosis, and their narcoleptic pet pug, Baxter. Thomas is recovering, physically and emotionally, from a struggle with a serial killer which ended in a fall off a cliff into the ocean. Everyone thinks the killer is dead except for Thomas. Sure enough, soon identical murders begin to occur, and all the victims are women with whom Thomas has been, or is now, associated.
The story is lively, though there are improbable elements, but the big problems are Pirog’s occasional bad diction (“The building was large, gray, and projected a cadence of death”), and a problem with the main character. Pirog’s trying to write a thriller with comic relief here, but he seems to think the formula for such a work is equal parts dramatic tension and jokes. Too many jokes, especially when innocent people are suffering, just comes off as callousness.
Still, I was intrigued enough to move on to the next book, Gray Matter. Continue reading The Thomas Prescott novels, by Nick Pirog
Yvonne Zipp says Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land reminds her of Lewis’ The Last Battle while remaining original.
“I bet it’s because of heresy like that that the world is ending. Your earthy, irreverent sense of humor has doomed us all,” King Josh tells Queen Janet. (If Peter was “The Magnificent,” and Edmund was “The Just,” in Narnia, Janet of Fillory should just be known as “The Awesome.”)
If that’s not enough of a selling point, The Magician’s Land also features a motto that should be emblazoned on T-shirts, embroidered on pillows, and hung on walls in dorm rooms everywhere: “Give a nerd enough time and a door he can close and he can figure out pretty much anything.”
“When Truman Capote called In Cold Blood a ‘nonfiction novel,’ he meant something very specific: that the book used the techniques of fiction but was completely factual,” explains Ben Yagoda, but today many people appear willing to talk of fiction or nonfiction “novels” as if that word means a bound work of any form. In high school, this usage is everywhere, and it’s prevalent in college too. Have you ever done it or seen it done? (via Mark Bertrand)
I took the past week off from work, and spent it at home, “pottering,” as they say, though no pots were in fact potted. I expected to blog more than I did (sorry about that), but relaxation is a demanding discipline. I spent a lot of time watching English and Irish mystery series on Amazon Prime and Netflix. Descriptions follow.
I had intended to watch the modern cop series Whitechapel, which had been recommended to me, but after one episode I realized I’d started with the second season instead of the first, and the end of the first season had been spoiled. I decide to leave it for a while, until my memory of it fades, which my memories are wont to do.
So I turned, without high expectations, to a series set in the same neighborhood but a different age – Ripper Street, a BBC series about policemen working in the wake of the Jack the Ripper scare. Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew McFadyen) is an inspector recently returned to work after a steam ship accident in which his daughter was lost. Her body was never found, and he’s convinced she’s still alive, though he can’t find a clue as to her whereabouts. He’s assisted by Sgt. Bennett Drake (Jerome Flynn) a sort of Little John character, not especially bright but strong and brave, and soft at heart. Also an American doctor, Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), formerly of the Pinkertons, who serves as Inspector Reid’s forensic expert.
There’s a lot more action than you usually expect in a British mystery series – in fact you might call it an English western. There’s a lot of talk about the poverty of Whitechapel, and so some leftist themes come in, but they didn’t drive me away. I found it a lot of fun. Cautions for language, themes, and brief nudity. Continue reading Viewing report: ‘Ripper Street,’ ‘Single-Handed,’ and ‘Jack Taylor’
Amazon owes 2/3 of the eBook market in part because they have followed their dreams to reach the unreachable star. Now we all may get burned.
Fantasy author Brent Weeks says the reality for many readers is that if they don’t see a book on Amazon, they assume it isn’t available. With eBooks, they may not know where to else to go to buy them. Amazon is also attracting authors as a publisher, not just a distributor. with promises of high royalty percentages. This and other factors are hurting big and small publishers alike.
“We’re at the point now where the publishing houses are being undercut by the river of indie publishing, and at some point in time the front porch is going to drop in the river. At that point maybe they’ll have to acknowledge it, but right now they just don’t want to,” attorney David Vandagriff said.
Earlier this morning, I read some a piece on how smart phones and similar tech have banished boredom from our lives and caused the very same problem for us. We don’t know how to be bored, or better said, we don’t know how to go without entertainment. Some say it comes from having small minds, but more than that, it trains us in small instant pleasures that will not build us up.
Have you ever asked yourselves why no one notice something wrong, perhaps something horrible, happening right under our noses? Whatever the reasons may be, we are polishing up our blind spots so that we will miss even more of those problems with our mobile tech and other distractions.
We don’t have to check email while waiting on the cashier. We don’t have to give our kids movies while we do errands around the city. It isn’t that children shouldn’t play when they are essentially waiting on us. It’s how we are training them to play–what we’re telling them is important.
Patrick Kurp wrote about this last year. He said, “T.S. Eliot claimed most of the trouble in the world was caused by people who want to be important. I would add a corollary: Most of the people in the world who want to be important have convinced themselves they are bored and that life is boring.”
These self-important people do not see the value in small things or quietness. They want the exotic orchid, not the difficult research and travel to obtain it. But then, am I any better?