Non-fiction

A New Book on Fasting

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On Discerning Reader, Trevin Wax recommends a new book by Scot McKnight called, Fasting.

The greatest strength of the book is McKnight’s picture of fasting as a response, never an instrumental practice in which we try to receive something. We go without food because of what has taken place in our hearts.

The book lays out the different ways that fasting serves a response. It can be an expression of repentance, a response to a moment in which we feel we must earnestly seek God, a response to grief (McKnight sees grief as the thread that connects all the various fasting practices). Fasting can sometimes be a response to our need for spiritual discipline, a response to our corporate life together, even a response to poverty and injustice.

Non-fiction

In Praise of Being Unfashionable

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Glenn Lucke recommends a new book by Tullian Tchividjian, the new pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, called Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the world by being different. He says it’s a very useful tool for standing out for Christ in appropriate ways.

From the forward, Tim Keller, a great pastor and author, states, “Here you will learn how we must contextualize, how we Christians should be as active in Hollywood, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, and Harvard Square (if not more) than the halls of Washington, DC. And yet, there are ringing calls to form a distinct, ‘thick’ Christian counter-culture as perhaps the ultimate witness to the presence of the future, the coming of the Kingdom.”

Fiction, Publishing

Art is long and life is fleeting

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Andrew Klavan, hereinafter to be known as The Hated Competition (THC), because he has treacherously and spitefully arranged for his new book to come out at about the same time as my new book (called, in case you’ve forgotten, West Oversea), nevertheless has some things to say worth reading in the second half of his interview with John Nolte over at Big Hollywood. In response to a question about how much easier leftists have it in the entertainment world, he replies:

Yes, it is easier for them that way. But it’s harder for them too because they’re talking absolute nonsense and we’re telling the simple truth: that liberty is a great good and worth defending, that right is right and wrong is wrong and moral relativity is merely a form of cowardice, that the individual is more important than the state, that our rights come from our Creator. See, they can attack us, try to silence us, maybe crush us-but they can’t beat us because we’re right and they’re wrong. The truth is not so coincidentally a lot like Jesus, dude. You mock it, you torture it, you kill it-and yet there it stands. I try not to worry about what they “allow,” or what they say is permissable. I try to hitch my wagon to the truth and hold on.

But enough of THC. You want to know the latest news about my book (called, in case you’ve forgotten, West Oversea).

I got a .pdf of what is apparently the final cover tonight. It looks to me as if, after all the sturm und drang, the artist pretty much got everything he wanted. Which is a lesson to us all, I guess.

The book is called, in case you’ve forgotten, West Oversea. I’ll post the art as soon as I’m cleared to do so.

Religion

Answering Before Listening

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Mark Upton has an interesting post to a heart-breaking story on PRI’s This American Life. The whole show is interesting, but Mark’s focus is the story of man witnessing to woman over the phone. The dialogue we hear on the radio show sounds like the man was answering without fully listening. There’s a bit of conversation in the comments.

Fiction, Publishing

Your dilemma, should you choose to accept it…

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Andrew Klavan’s new Young Adult novel, The Last Thing I Remember, will be released by Thomas Nelson on April 28, according to this interview (Part 1) over at Big Hollywood.

This naturally raises an interesting dilemma for you, the discerning but budget-savvy consumer.

Because my novel, West Oversea, is scheduled for release this month, too. (Or in May anyway. June at the latest.)

So where do you spend your hard-earned book-buying dollar?

I’ll make it easy for you. Buy my book. For the following comprehensive, compelling reasons.

1) Andrew Klavan is already famous. I’m still behind Thorstein Veblen in the list of famous people who grew up in Kenyon, Minnesota. And I’m getting old.

2) Klavan is bald. I have a handsome, thick head of healthy gray hair. The implications should be obvious.

3) Klavan’s book will come out in paperback eventually. Mine will be paperback from the git-go.

I rest my case.

Authors, Writing

A Good Reason to Write

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Andrew Peterson links to an essay by N.D. Wilson for good reasons to write fiction. “For many children, the only nobility, the only joy, the only strength and sacrifice that they see firsthand comes in fiction,” Wilson claims.

Goofing

The service economy, unpacked

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I’m bubbling with ideas today. It’s kind of scary.

I’ve figured out why service is always lousy in this country.

When the economy is good, you can’t get good service because the best people are all working in higher-paying jobs.

When the economy is bad, you can’t get service because the employer has cut to back staff.

Goofing

The crime of self-defence

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“Why,” you may ask, “has Pres. Obama (peace be upon him) opened the door to the prosecution of former Bush administration legal advisors, those who gave opinions that techniques like waterboarding could be legally employed on captured terrorists? Isn’t that ex post facto law? Won’t it have a chilling effect on speech, warning people that they can be called into court merely for expressing an opinion? And won’t it be dangerous for our national security?”

Ah, but you miss the genius of the strategy. I’ve got it figured out, I think.

For conservatives, the ideal condition for our country is to be free, strong and respected in the world.

But for liberals, the ideal condition is to be a victim. Liberals love victims. Victims get all the love and sympathy, as well as lots of presents.

For liberals, the greatest moment in recent history was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01, when the president of France said, “Today, we are all Americans.”

Liberals desperately want to recapture that glorious moment.

And of course the simplest way to accomplish that is to be attacked again. For liberals, it’s a tragedy that our interrogators learned about plans for another terrorist bombing in Los Angeles through using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

For the Left–the hard Left, anyway–that’s an opportunity lost. If we could have just had another smoking tower and thousands dead in Los Angeles, the world would have loved us again!

A few thousand dead is a small price to pay for satisfaction like that. The hard Left figures we have way too many people around anyway.

Creative Writing

Up from slush

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I’ve made a careful survey, and I think I can say authoritatively that I’m now the only blogger in the world who’s never mentioned Susan Boyle.

Oops. Scratch that.

Over at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, there’s this amusing article about the (vain and counterproductive) lengths some writers go to, to get a magazine editor’s attention. It’s a fun read, and there’s much wisdom there. (Tip: Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall.)

I enjoyed reading this article in particular because there are a number of quotes there from George Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer, who used to be my agents. Before they were my agents, they were my editors at Amazing Stories, which gives me a rare opportunity to feel smug, since I managed to please these discerning connoisseurs of slush, once upon a time.

I’ll tell you how I made my first sale to them, too, at no extra charge. Continue reading Up from slush →

Book Reviews, Creative Culture