Today the American Spectator published my article on Andrew Klavan’s Weiss-Bishop mystery trilogy.
Klavan himself noted it on Facebook. He said, “Well, I like it when someone is both smart AND flattering…. When you sit down to write three books around the theme of love, you think to yourself, ‘Not that anyone will ever get that.’ It’s gratifying to be read so intelligently – and by someone who likes the books to boot!”
You may mark this down in the court records as a good day.
Now, for something completely different, a feature on six crazy, scary restaurants around the world, like Dinner in the Sky, which hoists its guests 160 feet in the air over Niagara Falls and other places after you sign a $10 million insurance waiver. Closer to the ground, there’s a New York City joint called Dans Le Noir, where diners eat at a long, communal table in total darkness. And in Spain, there’s a place that simulates a 7.8 earthquake every night.
For more frights this weekend, be sure to catch the documentary on Capitol Hill antics called Paranormal Activity. Truly frightening.
If you’re looking for a Christmas entertainment in the same vein as A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life, you could do much worse than picking up a copy of The Santa Shop, by Tim Greaton (if you’ve got a Kindle, it’s a free download as of the time of this posting).
The main character, Skip Ralstat, is a homeless man on the streets of Albany, New York. When he’s invited into a church by a kindly priest on a cold night, he refuses all suggestions as to how he might regain a normal life. He doesn’t want a normal life. He blames himself for the death in a fire of his wife and baby son, and he embraces social ostracism and suffering as his deserved penance.
But when he meets a strange homeless man who wears a dirty Santa wig, he hears of the town of Gray, Vermont, where there’s a bridge called Christmas Leap. Every year one homeless man leaps to his death from that bridge on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is the anniversary of Skip’s family’s deaths. It just seems right to him that he should go up there himself and pay the ultimate price at last.
He doesn’t understand the forces at work around him, though. There’s a conspiracy—a good conspiracy—of caring people who will force him to face the truth of his life and to understand the real value of what he’s lost and what he’s trying to throw away.
I found flaws in The Santa Shop (you guessed I would, didn’t you?). The book seemed to me overwritten in places, and sometimes the diction could be imprecise. But I was nevertheless wholly engaged in it, and I’d be lying if I denied that my eyes were damp when the story closed up (I should note that it’s a novella. A sample of the follow-up book takes up nearly half of the Kindle version file). The story is notable for having the feel of a supernatural story when in fact the only magic is the magic of God-inspired human love and kindness (exaggerated, I would say, but moving).
I think most Brandywine Books readers will enjoy The Santa Shop.
I may have told you once before that I have been writing devotional emails for a small group of CBMC leaders for a few years now. (CBMC stands for Christian Business Men’s Connection.) This year, we opened a new, private discussion and resource community for CBMC members, and I’m posting my past and current devotional writing on a public blog there. I doubt I’m breaking any ground–I mean, I’m not Jared Wilson. But I hope to point readers to Christ and away from our natural tendency to moralism.
A few of my recent post are
John Sandford is a darned good mystery/thriller writer, and more than a one-note performer. While the Lucas Davenport “Prey” novels that made his fortune continue to draw readers, he’s added a second, related series character, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers, who looks like a surfer boy, practices journalism as a sideline, and is pretty successful with the ladies (which explains the obscene nickname his colleagues use on him, which I won’t share here).
The Flowers books have a different flavor from the “Prey” books. They’re mostly set in rural Minnesota, and as you’d expect the crimes are generally more conventional, with less sociopathy and sadism.
I have to commend Sandford particularly for the way he handles politics in these books. If I were a lefty or a greenie, I might consider him a sellout (my spider sense tells me he’s a lefty in real life), but he passes by all kinds of opportunities to treat conservatives as idiots or monsters. In Shock Wave, his characters are well-rounded, credible, and generally sympathetic. Even Willard Pye, founder and CEO of “PyeMart” (obviously a stand in for Walmart), is not a caricature but a believable guy who has his own story.
The first crime is a bombing in the board room of PyeMart’s headquarters in Michigan, but when a second fatal bombing occurs at a building site for a new store in Butternut Falls, Minnesota, Virgil Flowers is called in to coordinate with the ATF and local police. The investigators figure there are two possible motives—environmental radicalism, or fear for their livelihood by local businessmen. Virgil and his allies set to work examining evidence and assembling lists of suspects (at one point by a radically novel method), and before long it looks like they must be getting close, because Virgil himself becomes a target.
Shock Wave is exciting, engaging, well-crafted, and politically even-handed. Setting aside the usual foul language and sexual themes, I recommend it pretty highly.
Gene Veith talks about Thomas Kidd’s analysis of a new class of American evangelicals who don’t hold the water for the GOP because of their evangelical worldview. Kidd writes:
These paleo evangelicals keep the Republican party at arm’s length for three main reasons:
- A deep suspicion of American civil religion
- [Diminished] hope in any political party doing that much good in this world
- Problems with certain Republican positions
But on some of the most compelling issues, the Republican Party still seems like the best option for many paleos.
I think Kidd has hit the dead head on the money nail. I might even call myself a paleo evangelical, but I’ve never keep the GOP at arm’s length, because I believe they are the current best option for reforming our government.
“Arthur eastward in arms purposed
his war to wage on the wild marches,
over seas sailing to Saxon lands,
from the Roman realm ruin defending.”
Thus begins a new epic poem by the beloved author of The Lord of the Rings. What’s that, you ask? How can write a new poem when he’s been dead since 1973? Bah! What is death among friends?
Here’s a nice list by Rebecca Winther-Sørensen over at Listverse—10 Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore.
It intrigued me, aside from its intrinsic interest, because out of the ten creatures listed, fully five are found in my e-novel, Troll Valley. Miss Margit, the fairy godmother, is a huldra. Nisser are referenced in connection with Christmas (though I personalize the Santa Claus-like julenisse more than this list does). There’s a troll in the title, if not in the actual story (and I’ll count it because this is my list). A Nøk (Norwegian spelling) makes an appearance, and Bestefar recalls seeing a draug.
All this is just proof that if you haven’t read it, you must buy it now. If you don’t own an e-reader, buy one of those and then get Troll Valley. If you read the Amazon reviews, you’ll see that one of my many intelligent, good-looking fans recently did just that.
Oh bother. Another scandal among evangelicals (although the principal figure here is actually a Catholic, I believe). It involves Dinesh D’Souza, bestselling author and current president of The King’s College in New York City, which is owned by Campus Crusade for Christ. World Magazine reports:
About 2,000 people gathered on Sept. 28 at First Baptist North in Spartanburg, S.C., to hear high-profile Christians speak on defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview to their lives. Among the speakers: Eric Metaxas, Josh McDowell, and—keynote speaker for the evening—best-selling author, filmmaker, and Christian college president Dinesh D’Souza.
D’Souza’s speech earned him a standing ovation and a long line at the book-signing table immediately afterward. Although D’Souza has been married for 20 years to his wife, Dixie, in South Carolina he was with a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée.
When event organizer Tony Beam confronted D’Souza about sharing a hotel room with Joseph, he learned that D’Souza had filed for divorce (that very day, as it turned out), and that he felt he’d done nothing wrong.
I first read this story at Anthony Sacramone’s Strange Herring blog, where Sacramone asked the reasonable question, “What was he thinking?”
But the question that occurs to me is a different one. It seems to me we see this sort of thing more and more, not only among “Christian celebrities,” but among ordinary Christian leaders in local churches. And I get the impression that, for a lot of younger Christians, it’s just not a big deal anymore. The world’s attitude toward sex seems to be taking over. “Everybody does it. No big deal. As long as we’re in love.” It’s no surprise many Christian youth from good churches have no problem with the issue of gay marriage. They don’t even see the point of waiting until marriage.
I’m old, and I know I’m the more bitter sort of puritan. But still I see this as a sign of spiritual death. In my mind, I’m seeing what Revelation describes as “the lampstand being taken away.”
Glenn Greenwald writes:
In fact, one could reasonably make the case that those whose thinking is shaped by unexamined, unacknowledged assumptions are more biased than those who have consciously examined and knowingly embraced their assumptions, because the refusal or inability to recognize one’s own assumptions creates the self-delusion of unbiased objectivity, placing those assumptions beyond the realm of what can be challenged and thus leading one to lay claim to an unearned authority steeped in nonexistent neutrality.
Greenwald discusses objectivity in light of the vice-presidential debate.