Some Short Fiction
Loren points out a short short story contest he entered which asks writers to run with ideas from a photo of a wine glass. I would call Loren’s submission chilling, but somehow that word does not fit. . . .
Tell No One, by Harlan Coben
Notice of personal appearance: I’ll be at the Norway Day celebration in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, with the Vikings on Sunday, from about 11:00 to 4:00 or so. They say the weather will be nice.
I appreciated Gone for Good so much that I immediately launched into reading Tell No One, which Harlan Coben wrote just before it. I suppose it was inevitable that I’d be a little let down. There’s nothing at all wrong with Tell No One. It’s a gripping, fast-paced thriller with engaging characters and plenty of surprises. But for some reason (perhaps just a subjective identification with one main character over another), I didn’t like it quite as much.
There are actually a lot of similarities in the set-ups of both stories. Gone for Good’s hero was a gentle do-gooder, a volunteer who works with the homeless, whose girlfriend disappears and who soon comes under the suspicion of federal investigators. In Tell No One, the hero is Dr. David Beck, a young physician who has voluntarily chosen to work with charity cases in Manhattan. Three years ago, he was gravely injured when his wife, Elizabeth, was abducted and murdered by a serial killer. But now he starts getting e-mail messages that seem to be coming from Elizabeth herself. Meanwhile, the FBI has suddenly decided that he must have murdered Elizabeth, and they’ve got a warrant for his arrest. But David has an appointment to meet with Elizabeth—or whoever’s pretending to be her—this afternoon, and there’s no way he’s going to be sitting in a cell when that happens. So he runs.
Very good story. I’ve got no complaints. The language is not bad for the genre; the violence (some of it quite horrifying) is mostly off camera. There is a lesbian couple with a child who are highly sympathetic characters, so you might (or might not) want to be warned of that.
I liked it, and I’ve got no legitimate complaint.
Where Did All The British Babies Go?
Was P.D. James on to something? There’s a shortage of British sperm and egg donations.
Update 2016: Now a fertility clinic is importing sperm and eggs from Ukraine to make up for what they lack in the UK.
John Calvin at 500
July 10, 2009, is the 500th celebration of the birth of John Calvin (also the second annual Hug a Calvinist Day). Calvin gave the people of God an understand of Scripture they could not get from their church leaders and tore down the idea that life was divided between sacred and secular living. Many of his day held the belief that vulgar living, by which I mean common living like milking cows, raising children, trading in the market, and building your home, is not interesting to God. The Lord of creation is only concerned with his worship, prayer, giving to his church, and service in his name. But this distinction is not a true one, and understanding Scripture in one’s first language helps clarify that.
Of course, Martin Luther helped clarify this too.
But in honor of Calvin’s birthday, you can listen to interviews and browse the blogs for tributes. If you have a post on Calvin on your blog today, give us link in the thread.
Here’s an interesting article from the BBC: “Hard work and frugality, the values espoused by Calvinism, are back in fashion as people reassess their lives because of the economic crisis.” And here’s a video on how Calvin’s teaching has influenced World magazine.
David’s palace uncovered?
In what could be a severe blow to recent critics who have claimed that “Jerusalem is not a Jewish city” and “David never existed,” a Jewish archaeologist has (on the basis of a biblical clue) found what looks very much like David’s palace on a hill overlooking the original Jebusite city site.
But Mazar always suspected that the palace was outside the original city, and cites the Bible to prove it. When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed, they went on the attack to apprehend him. This occurred after he conquered the Fortress of Zion, which was the actual nucleus of the city, and built his palace. The Bible says that David heard about it and “descended to the fortress,” (2-Samuel 5:17), implying that he went down from his palace, which was higher up on the mountain than the citadel/city.
Mazar told Aish.com: “I always asked myself: Down from where? It must have been from his palace on top of the hill, outside the original Jebusite city.”
Mazar says she was confident in her assessment of where the palace would be. What she discovered was a section of massive wall running about 100 feet from west to east along the length of the excavation (underneath what until this summer was the Ir David Visitors Center), and ending with a right-angle corner that turns south and implies a very large building.
Tip: Dr. Gene Edward Veith.
Me, the moocher
Annie Frisbie, the Superfast Reader, sends me information about a scheme called BookMooch, a simple book exchange program. After joining, you list the books you want to give away on the site, send them to someone who asks for them (for which you get points), and then use your points to order books from other people.
Sounds like a conspiracy to take money out of writers’ pockets, say I.
You know, it’s one of the ironies of life. Writers depend on the sale of new books to make a living. We only get paid for that first sale. When I shop at Half Price Books (as I do more than anywhere else), and buy used books, I’m not showing solidarity with my comrades in labor, but profiting only the carrion birds of the bookstore.
However, as a midlist author, I just don’t have a lot of money to spend on new books (which are, I think, generally overpriced). Thus do I cut mine own economic throat.
A friend just told me she found a signed copy of The Year of the Warrior in a used bookstore.
I don’t really seriously imagine that everybody who’s bought a book from me at a Viking event, and got it autographed, fell in love with it and wouldn’t be parted from it.
But it still rankles.
Take physic, pomp!
“The Berserking”
Dale Nelson sends this link, to an article from the London Telegraph about James MacMillan, an “accessible” contemporary composer who is a devout Catholic, and who has written a piano concerto called “The Berserking.”
The Archive of the covenant
Today I was going through some stuff in our Archives. A pastor had donated some material he’d accumulated in researching a book a few years ago, and I’d been letting it sit. Today, I decided, I will start putting it in some kind of order.
Archiving is a very odd occupation, and one for which (I might mention) I have no formal training. Do I catalog a pamphlet as a book, or file it as a document? How do I organize my document files? It appears the previous librarians weren’t sure either, so I can’t even refer to their precedents most of the time.
I decided to catalog the Christmas annuals as books. Our predecessor church body published a Christmas annual, and (God bless ’em) operated with such humility that they didn’t even include publishing information in many of them (no bragging from the editors!). One issue didn’t even contain any mention anywhere of what year it was for. I had to work it out deductively, and I’m not entirely sure I got the right answer. Continue reading The Archive of the covenant
The Meat of Allegory
Frank suggests The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is “a better work of apologetics than Mere Christianity” because it is allegory.