I don’t have much for you tonight. I’ve been feeling sub-par since last Friday. I have a bad sore throat (moderated by Ibuprofen), and I feel run down. Flu? There’s no temperature (Seems like I never do run a temperature, no matter how bad I feel. I’m beginning to wonder if I have a defective thermometer). I’m proud to say, however, that I got the majority of my Christmas shopping done on Saturday, in spite of this handicap. (It’s true. I am a genius. Or else I’m past caring. One of those.) Sunday I spent on the couch with a couple books.

One was Forever Odd, the middle book of the three Dean Koontz’ Odd Thomas adventures published so far. Very good, moving and gripping, like the others. I noted a theological problem with the afterlife as Koontz describes it, though. Odd tells us that damned souls generally depart for Hell immediately after death. The ghosts whom he encounters and tries to help on their way are, for the most part, “good” people who have unfinished business, or are too attached to their loved ones, or are afraid of their reception in Heaven. Odd’s message to them seems to be that they’ll be welcomed by God because they’re good.

This is lousy theology. The Cross is nowhere to be seen.

I suppose that if Koontz (who is, I believe, a Catholic) had employed better theology, he’d have ended up writing “Christian fiction” which would have reached only a limited audience, though. I think there’s an element of allegory in the Odd Thomas books, instead of straight doctrine.

Still, it bothered me a little. Liked the book anyway.

I also read A Time to Hunt, another book in Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger series. Like all of them it’s fascinating, richly researched, vivid in its action and characterizations, and satisfying all around.

The books don’t bear much thinking about all at once, though. Bob Lee and his father Earl, also hero of several of Hunter’s books, seem to be falling victim to the terrible doom of the heroes of action TV series—they have more death-defying adventures than can be comfortably believed in, in the aggregate. Earl, for instance, was murdered at a fairly young age, but Hunter has given him so many big adventures that it appears he must have had about one a month all through his short adulthood.

Bob Lee has lived longer than his dad, but he’s around 60 now, and pretty shot up. I hope he can handle all the blood and thunder his author’s still got planned for him.

Another amusing thing about the Swagger Saga is that the stories aren’t consistent with each other. Hunter cheerfully contradicts things he said in other books, and doesn’t apologize for it.

Just like a newspaper man.

They sure are good books, though.

And now, the couch beckons me.

But I’ve got to get started on the Christmas cards.

Harrison Scott Key points out an article on how teachers can distance themselves from those who have not read, say Keats and Donne, repeatedly with analysis, forgetting what it was like to read their poetry for the first time.