So, there was this violinist, a violin player, in the metro lobby this morning. He was good. Played classical stuff. I didn’t have anything on me, so I didn’t chip in. I was in a hurry too.
Read what happens when a great violinist, Joshua Bell, starts playing for the crowds in Washington D.C. The music director of the National Symphony Orchestra thought a crowd would form to listen, “75 to 100 . . . if he’s really good.” (via World)
Guess what we’re supposed to get tonight in Minnesota? It’s white and it’s cold, and it rhymes with that word Don Imus is in trouble for saying.
As my late father used to say, “Why in blazes would anybody live in this country?”
In order to balance my negative review of Bernard Cornwell’s Enemy of God yesterday, I’d like to share a passage from the next book, Excalibur, which pleased me.
Guinevere is talking to a bard (poet) who disparages the old-fashioned style of loud, bellicose songs. He says the younger bards are concentrating more on style and harmony nowadays.
‘Any man can make a noise, Lady,’ Pyrlig defended his craft….
‘And soon the only people who can understand the intricacies of the harmony,’ Guinevere argued, ‘are other skilled craftsmen, and so you become ever more clever in an effort to impress your fellow poets, but you forget that no one outside the craft has the first notion of what you’re doing. Bard chants to bard while the rest of us wonder what all the noise is about. Your task, Pyrlig, is to keep the people’s stories alive, and to do that you cannot be rarefied.’
‘You would not have us be vulgar, Lady!’ Pyrlig said and, in his protest, struck the horsehair strings of his harp.
‘I would have you be vulgar with the vulgar, and clever with the clever,’ Guinevere said, ‘and both, mark you, at the same time, but if you can only be clever then you deny the people their stories, and if you can only be vulgar then no lord or lady will toss you gold.’
Stefanie of So Many Books has photos of her latest purchases, including a Jane Austen action figure. This is crazy. Action figures? I wonder how many there are or if an author can commission his own figure. I can think of possibilities:
No one would buy them, of course.
Nextbook.org is hosting a festival of ideas on the greatest man in world history, Jesus Christ. “What’s He Doing Here? Jesus in Jewish Culture” is the theme for this New York festival of writers, critics, and scholars to be held at the end of April at The Center for Jewish History.
Some of the lectures and discussions are described as “Was [Marc] Chagall a Jew for Jesus? Yes and no” and “Why have the Jews never accepted a messiah? Why is the history of messianism in Judaism a history of false messianism? Some unorthodox views of the Jewish idea of redemption.”
Karen Kingsbury tops the list of the twenty bestselling novels in the most recent figures from The Association of Christian Retail. Her book, Forever, also tops the list of 50 bestsellers of all books sold in the Christian stores. Lori Wick manages to squeeze between Kingsbury’s books for second place on the fiction list with White Chocolate Moments.
No, I don’t think these books having vikings in them, but feel free to find out for yourself.
Karen Kingsbury tops the list of the twenty bestselling novels in the most recent figures from The Association of Christian Retail. Her book, Forever, also tops the list of 50 bestsellers of all books sold in the Christian stores. Lori Wick manages to squeeze between Kingsbury’s books for second place on the fiction list with White Chocolate Moments.
No, I don’t think these books having vikings in them, but feel free to find out for yourself.
It’s probably in bad taste to criticize these things, but I’ll venture forward nonetheless. I learned today the Christian ghetto has what I assume to be a “safe” source for online video, GodTube. If you can’t get enough of alternatives to popular ideas or songs, look no further than this little site. (via World) *Those Mac vs. PC parodies depress me.*
The Bible on DVD–don’t want to read to your family yourself? Have this DVD read the Bible to the whole family with just a bit of ambient nature sounds and some dialog voices. Take a look at the demonstration stream. It’s so . . . multimedia. Whatever happened to reading aloud for yourself?
It’s probably in bad taste to criticize these things, but I’ll venture forward nonetheless. I learned today the Christian ghetto has what I assume to be a “safe” source for online video, GodTube. If you can’t get enough of alternatives to popular ideas or songs, look no further than this little site. (via World) *Those Mac vs. PC parodies depress me.*
The Bible on DVD–don’t want to read to your family yourself? Have this DVD read the Bible to the whole family with just a bit of ambient nature sounds and some dialog voices. Take a look at the demonstration stream. It’s so . . . multimedia. Whatever happened to reading aloud for yourself?
Enemy of God is the book I feared I’d encounter when I originally hesitated to read Bernard Cornwell’s “Warlord Chronicles” series about King Arthur. As I mentioned in my review of the previous book, The Winter King, there is evidence in the (scanty) historical record that the original Arthur made enemies in the British church. I feared that Christianity would be made to look bad.
And that’s what happened in this volume.
Oh, Cornwell covers himself. He has a couple positively presented Christian characters, notably the warrior Galahad, but that reads to me like the standard “Some of my best friends are Jewish” denial of anti-Semitism. In this book, the Christians are the bad guys. Even worse guys than the Saxon conquerors Arthur is fighting. Arthur is tolerant of religion but doesn’t believe in much of anything himself, except his honor, and Cornwell seems to see this as the best way to live.
Arthur (not a king but a warlord, and protector of the not-yet-grown king, Mordred) made himself the most powerful man in Britain at the end of The Winter King. He wants to solidify the peace through a marriage between Princess Ceinwyn, Princess of the kingdom of Powys, and Lancelot, whom he has made king of another British kingdom. But the narrator, Derfel, spoils this plan by running off with the princess. Later Derfel gets involved in helping the druid Merlin search for the cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn, obviously meant as the inspiration for the quest of the Holy Grail. The story of Tristan and Iseult is also incorporated (in the most horrifying version you’ll ever read).
But the real struggle in this story is with Christianity. The Christians of Britain, whipped up by the oily Bishop Sansum and his missionaries, are working themselves into a passion to convert all Britain by force before the magical year of 500 A.D., when they expect Christ to return. They are being cynically manipulated by King Lancelot, whom they adopt as their leader despite the fact that his faith is questionable. This mob enthusiasm threatens Arthur’s peace and the very existence of what remains of unconquered Britain.
Except for the exceptions referred to above, all the Christians in the book are either stupid or evil, and virtually all the priests are assumed to be either sexual predators or pederasts. Derfel and Arthur look at the Christians as an alien group that has settled in Britain, grown in numbers insidiously, and now threatens to impose its laws on everyone. Perhaps Cornwell has the Muslim presence in today’s Britain in the back of his mind.
It bothered me, but I finished it. I’ve started the third book now, and that one is less offensive.
For the rest, good story, interesting characters, exciting action. A Cornwell novel.
OK, I’ll bite.
Yes, I certainly have Andrew Klavan books. In fact I think I have everything in his oeuvre, (including the Keith Peterson books) except for Hunting Down Amanda, which I’ve got to find one of these days.
Roy, do you have any books by Walter Wangerin?