Blogs, Socials, Fiction

The Wheel of Time Calls Roadside Assistance

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Until this week, I knew next to nothing about Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I knew it was very long and that some people loved it. I did not know that Jordan was rewriting The Lord of the Rings and that the first of fourteen novels, The Eye of the World, was meant to be his version of The Fellowship of the Ring.

One Goodreads reviewer writes of the first book, “It is difficult to comprehend how an author could take such a simple, familiar story and stretch it out over so many pages.

The hero is an orphan who looks different, he gets his father’s magic sword, he goes on a quest with an old, wily mentor, gets attacked by evil (dark-skinned) mongoloids from the mysterious East, meets the princess by accident, becomes embroiled in an ancient prophecy, discovers a magic ‘force’ which controls fate (and the plot), &c., &c.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. 

Of the second book, another reviewer praises the overall story but recommends reading with friends to help get through the boring parts. “Jordan’s prose was super wordy and descriptive, there’s no way around it. Two books (570k words in total so far) into the series and when it comes to the actual story progression, not too much have actually progressed.”

A reviewer of eighth book notes he would have included a plot summary, but the book has no plot or development at all.

Because many TV producers want to create the next Game of Thrones, Amazon released last year an eight-episode series based on The Eye of the World, and it appears that they have done a terrible job.

Man Carrying Things reviews it in about an hour, noting some strong weaknesses in the scriptwriting such as frequent deaths that are undone a minute later. Another reviewer appeals to the book lore to say this is supposed to be a very bad move done only by evil magicians, but there’s no indication this show has that in mind. In fact, the show seems to have cliched TV formulas most in mind. It lacks continuity within single episodes. It spends too much time on exposition that doesn’t develop anything.

One major change from the source material is questioning who the chosen one–the Dragon Reborn–is among the main characters. The book tells us upfront, but the show says it could be anyone, and as a result, doesn’t explain what being the Dragon Reborn would mean. It’s apparently an open question whether this is good or bad. Maybe the writers couldn’t pull themselves away from a desire to drive the story toward a character saying, “Maybe the real Dragon Reborn were the friends we made along the way.”

Photo by Hannah Morgan on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘Who’s Killing All My Old Girlfriends?’ by Jon Spoelstra

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Being an old writer, I had the privilege, at the very beginning of my novel-writing career, of getting my manuscript vetted by a genuine, old-school editor/publisher, Jim Baen. When I read books written by today’s crop of self-published novices, I am continually reminded to thank God for that privilege.

Who’s Killing All My Old Girlfriends? by Jon Spoelstra is one of those books that screams for an editor. The author shows signs of talent, but his poorer instincts need restraining.

Charlie North, the hero of WKAMOG?, is, according to his own account, a successful blogger in Portland who makes a decent retirement income off posting once a week (he’s a little vague on what his winning formula is. It certainly isn’t the quality of his prose). He’s a widower whose beloved wife died of cancer not long ago. One day while talking with his ex-cop friend Bert, he comes up with the idea of going to see the three women he dated seriously before getting married. To see if he could have been happy with any of them, or something.

He goes to Los Angeles to see the first. She dumps a bowl of yogurt on his head. Then, shortly after they part, he learns she’s been murdered with a blunt instrument. Charlie is a Person of Interest in the case.

Saddened but undeterred, he goes to Chicago to visit the second. He doesn’t speak to her, but observes her in a restaurant with her husband. They seem prosperous and happy. Soon after, she is killed with a blunt instrument, too.

Finally, he goes to see the third, in Miami. He has a pleasant dinner with her and her husband, but while she’s in the ladies’ room, the husband (who is apparently a mobster) quietly threatens to kill him if he blogs anything further about them.

And shortly after, she is killed with a blunt instrument.

Now Charlie is a Person of Interest for the police in three cities. Fortunately, he has his ex-cop friend, who calls in other ex-cop friends to help, and Charlie concocts a plan to discover the real killer. Or killers. And clear his name.

If all this seems far-fetched, it seemed that way to me, too. The book started out lightly and likeably, but kept getting darker and darker, though the tone never got serious enough to match the body count. And when the final showdown produces a pile of bodies like the last scene of Hamlet, all plausibility flew out the window.

Each chapter opens, for some reason, with stale “old people jokes” – the ones you see posted on Facebook, over and over. The author admits he borrowed them. I have no idea why he thinks they enhance the reader experience.

Also, the writing is just bad in a lot of places. Author Spoelstra offers lines like, “bleeding like a sliced carotid artery in the neck” (where else are you likely to find a carotid artery?). Or “The end of my Lost Loves Saga hadn’t played out yet, of which it might never play out.”

I stuck with it to the end, partly because of conservative opinions expressed or implied. But I don’t really recommend this book.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gaudy Night,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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She paused. “I know what you’re thinking—that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don’t see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job.”

I have reached the penultimate installment in Dorothy L. Sayers’ immortal Lord Peter Wimsey series. Gaudy Night is probably not Miss Sayers’ best mystery novel, nor by any means her most popular. But it carries the satisfaction of finally bringing the Harriet Vane cycle to its proper culmination (though she’s in the final book too, and rightly so).

Harriet Vane is a popular mystery novelist who once stood in the dock on trial for her life. Lord Peter Wimsey saved her from the gallows, and ever since he has been courting her in a low-key manner, aware that she has a low opinion of herself and is chary about new relationships.

In this book, Harriet goes back to her college (the fictional Shrewsbury – a sly choice of name – a women’s college at Oxford University) for a Gaudy Night – a school reunion. She’s nervous about her reception, but it goes surprisingly well. The only real blot on her experience is a nasty note someone tucked into the sleeve of her academic gown – but she shrugs that off.

Soon after, she gets a letter from the Dean, inviting her to the opening of the new library. She also wants Harriet’s advice on a problem they’re having. Crude notes like the one she received are showing up more and more frequently, and there’s been minor vandalism. Harriet is a mystery writer – maybe she can ferret out the culprit – discreetly, of course.

Harriet is delighted to go, and plunges into the scholarly life. She even takes up research with an idea to earning her Master’s degree. But the poison pen writer is getting more and more aggressive – even to the point where lives are put in danger. In the end, it will take Lord Peter to come in and, with an objective eye, resolve the mystery.

The theme of the book is Dorothy Sayers’ recurring theme in all her work – vocation. She believed strongly that there was a moral obligation for a person to work at whatever God has best equipped them to do, rather than what society says they should do. (She and C. S. Lewis differed on that subject, and lived the consequences out in their personal lives.)

As one who knows the British university system only second-hand, I found some matters confusing. And I also had trouble keeping the scholarly characters straight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching Harriet’s journey to greater insight. This book is mostly Harriet’s, after all. Lord Peter only comes in at the end.

Recommended, of course.

Non-fiction

A Comic Explains an Important History Principle

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It’s good to see C.S. Lewis’s influence out in the wild.

Karolina Żebrowska is a comic YouTuber who focuses on historic fashion, how some of ye olden times come through in movies, and poking fun at various historic facts. One of her hobby horses is the fact women did wear corsets and it wasn’t an oppression they tolerated because they could handle the pain (she touches on that here). She’s smart and amusing.

I share the video below because she mentions C.S. Lewis’s common-sense notion of chronological snobbery, which she may have gotten off of Wikipedia, but it still counts.

A funny look at wrong history beliefs by Karolina Żebrowska

And just a little more on chronological snobbery from Karl Barth:

But what else can this mean but that it was in the eighteenth century that man began to axiomatically to credit himself with being superior to the past, and assumed a standpoint in relation to it whence he found it possible to set himself up as a judge over past events according to fixed principles, as well as to describe its deeds and to substantiate history’s own report? And the yardstick of these principles, at least as applied by the typical observer of history living at that age, has the inevitable effect of turning that judgment of the past into an extremely radical one. For the yardstick is quite simply the man of the present with his complete trust in his own powers of discernment and judgment, with his feeling for freedom, his desire for intellectual conquest, his urge to form and his supreme moral self-confidence.

Authors, Uncategorized

Wodehouse and other trivia

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Above, for no other reason than that somebody posted it on Facebook, a bit of an interview with P. G. Wodehouse. I’m guessing it’s from the 1960s or so, and he had a long and productive career still ahead of him at that point. An inspiration to us all.

I note that somebody blocked sharing on the video of Norwegian Constitution Day festivities I posted yesterday. Just as well, I suppose. I thought it was from the same day, but I’ve since seen actual 2022 footage, and everybody in the Royal Family looks older. I won’t delete the post – a man might as well stand behind his honest errors and take his lumps.

The May 17 celebration last night went well, and I think my lecture was a success. So I was told, anyway. We had an actual Hardanger fiddle player there, dressed in a bunad (folk costume), which lent plausibility to the proceedings.

Gradually I am completing my preparations for my Great Adventure in Norway. Today I finally succeeded in alerting my credit card company to the fact that I’ll be traveling to unaccustomed spaces. They have a button for that purpose on their member’s page online, but pushing that button produces no results at all, like those “Close Door” buttons in elevators. So today I called them, worked my way through the phone tree, and got the notification done. I looked about me for the praise of the multitude, but alas, I was by myself. So I tell you now.

Next challenge, activating the European sim card I bought for my cell phone.

I think I’m making progress on my Norwegian language comprehension. I decided yesterday that I was understanding just a little more of the news broadcasts on Norwegian state radio. Not enough to be of much practical use yet, but something. A little. Maybe. I hope.

Uncategorized

Syttende Mai, 2022

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lo9lo_z6qDw

Above is a video of the Syttende Mai (17 of May, Constitution Day) festivities in Oslo. I think it was recorded today. The big celebrations were cancelled for the last couple years; I’m told this year’s had record crowds everywhere.

We see the Royal Family greeting the people, as is traditional for the holiday, from the balcony of the royal palace (surely the least beautiful royal palace in the world). The old king you see there is the same Harald you saw as a little boy in “Atlantic Crossing.”

Norwegians celebrate Constitution Day as their great national holiday for peculiar historical reasons. They adopted a constitution in a rash bid for independence in 1814. Sweden, which had just been awarded Norway as spoils of the Napoleonic wars, quickly stepped in to quash that notion. But they allowed the Norwegians to keep the constitution, with some alterations.

Thus the constitution became the center of independence-minded sentiment over several generations. Through the 90 years of union with Sweden, the celebration of May 17 was a quiet act of protest. Once independence was achieved in 1905, Syttende Mai possessed a traditional, sentimental value that could not be dislodged, even if anyone had wished such a thing.

I’m posting early today because I’ll be lecturing on Syttende Mai for a celebration banquet tonight. I hope I get it right.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Final Alibi,’ by Simon King

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Fairly often, when I don’t like a book, I just drop it. But sometimes I feel it necessary to write a bad review as a warning to the unwary. That is the case with Simon King’s The Final Alibi.

Jim Lawson is a psychiatrist in Australia in the early 1950s. But once he was a cop, and he participated in the arrest of “the Devil,” a monster who kidnapped young women and ate them alive (there is no lack of graphic description). The experience shook him so much that he left the police and went into psychiatry. He also wrote a couple bestselling true crime books about the case.

Now he gets a request to come back to the town of Cider Hill, where it all happened. Somebody has taken up where “the Devil” left off – the murders occurring now are identical. And the convicted killer is still locked up in prison. Could they have been wrong about him all this time? Is there some way he could be getting out to kill again?

Jim joins forces with an attractive young female police officer to try to figure things out – which will lead them to more encounters with mangled bodies. Also, Jim takes up again with the girl he rescued from the Devil back in the day, with whom he had an affair before he left town. But it turns out she has secrets, and she’s not the only one covering things up.

There’s a point where the thriller genre crosses over into plain horror, and (as I’ve often stated) I don’t like horror. This book portrayed far too much plain suffering and awfulness, far too explicitly, for my taste. (I think the intention is to tap the Silence of the Lambs vein). Also, the writing was sometimes weak, the author making bad word choices. And the central psychological diagnosis is one which, I believe, is no longer considered valid.

On top of all that, we’re left with a cliff-hanger, which always annoys me.

If you have a stronger stomach than I do, you may enjoy The Final Alibi. It was certainly a fast-paced, high-tension story. But they couldn’t pay me to tackle the next two books in this trilogy.

Music

Sunday Singing: O Be Joyful in the Lord

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This song differs from the usual congregational singing I share on Sundays. It’s a gorgeous arrangement of Psalm 100 with a few benedictory words at the end.

Here is the lyric as rendered in a 1982 Episcopal hymnal. I’ve always found the last verse to be marvelously triumphant music that should fill the earth.

O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands;
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song. [Ant.]

2. Be ye sure that the Lord he is God;
it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves;
we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. [Ant.]

3. O go your way into his gates with thanksgiving
and into his courts with praise;
be thankful unto him and speak good of his Name. [Ant.]

4. For the Lord is gracious;
his mercy is everlasting;
and his truth endureth from generation to generation. [Ant.]

5. Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and
will be for ever. Amen. 

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Goofing, Poetry

When ‘Brunch’ Was New, the Limits of Science, and Worthless Commercials

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Something inspired me to look up a distinct definition for the word brunch the other day, and I happened upon this piece from Punch magazine in 1896. Merriam-Webster says the earliest brunch is believed to have appeared in print in 1894, and this aligns with that claim.

“According to the Lady, to be fashionable nowadays, we must “brunch.” Truly an excellent portmanteau word, introduced, by the way, by Mr. Guy Beringer, in the now defunct Hunter’s Weekly, and, indicating a combined breakfast and lunch. At Oxford, however, two years ago, an important distinction was drawn. The combination-meal, when nearer the usual breakfast hour, is “brunch,” and, when nearer luncheon, is “blunch.” Please don’t forget this. 

Tis the voice of the bruncher., I heard him complain,  
“You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again!  
When the clock says it’s 12, then perhaps I’ll revive,  
Meanwhile, into bed, yet once more let me dive! 

“The last meal I had was 3:00 AM.;  
I’m a writer, so please don’t such habits condemn!  
This cross between supper and breakfast I’ll name,  
If you’ll let me, a ‘suckfast’ –and ‘brupper’ ‘s the same!”

It goes on to lesser effect. What else do we have?

Lewis on Science: C.S. Lewis understood the limitations of science better than many scientists. Michael Ward writes:

What is frost to someone who has never encountered it? What is a degree of frost? Ordinary language would be more helpful in explaining the situation: “Your ears will ache … you’ll lose the feeling in your fingers” etc. The word numb will convey more than any number.

However, what Keats tries to convey in his poem can’t be rendered as a thermometer reading. It is not univocal or universal; we can’t translate his poem into, say, Japanese without loss or at least alteration. And yet if we want to know just what it feels like to go outside and breathe the bitterly chill January night air, Keats paints for us a very vivid and sensible picture. He communicates knowledge to us that the ordinary and scientific ways of speaking leave out.

In other words, poetry is a kind of knowledge, and since knowledge is a synonym for science we could quite legitimately say – if we wanted to – that poetry is a branch of science. 

“Numb and Numb-er,” by Michael Ward, Plough.com

Lewis on Science-Fiction: Lewis wrote about science-fiction a good bit and broke it down into several genre categories.

Poetry: How Fame Fed on Edna St. Vincent Millay

And this video by Rachel Oates, “Atticus Is Everything Wrong With Modern Poetry,” is an amusing criticism of a published writer who appears to have turned his Instagram posts into a paper-published thing.

Commercials: “If I were endowed with wealth, I should start a great advertising campaign in all the principal newspapers. The advertisements would consist of one short sentence, printed in huge block letters — a sentence that I once heard spoken by a husband to a wife: ‘My dear, nothing in this world is worth buying.’ But of course I should alter ‘my dear’ to ‘my dears.’”

Photo: The Big Shoe, Bakersfield, California. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bubble Screen,’ by David Chill

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I’ve been reading and reviewing David Chill’s Burnside detective novels for a few weeks now. Bubble Screen is third in the series.

Burnside is, as you may recall, a former pro football player, a former LA cop, and now a private investigator. Sometimes his football credentials, from USC and (briefly) the pros help him get work. In Bubble Screen he’s hired by Miles Larson, the owner of a cable installation company, who’s a rabid USC supporter and large donor. Cable boxes have been disappearing from his warehouses, and he wants to know who’s pilfering. He suspects the union rep.

The problem turns out to be bigger than some inventory shrinkage. Larson’s grown kids are a dysfunctional bunch, and there’s also been trouble at a warehouse in Las Vegas. And Las Vegas suggests a lot of sinister associations.

Meanwhile, Burnside is also trying to figure out what to do about his girlfriend Gail, who has finished law school now and is considering relocating to San Francisco to take a good job offer.

As I’ve mentioned before in these reviews, I’ve enjoyed the characterization in these books. The plots are okay. The writing is fairly bush league; Author Chill is prone to solecisms. This book includes such treats as: “moving behind the largess of his impressive desk,” and “I… knew the area intricately.”

Lines like that are good for a chuckle, but this time out the author seemed to take a couple of pokes at Christians too. So I figure I’ll break off with this series. I’m not all that invested in it.

Your mileage may vary. It was entertaining, and had a couple heartwarming moments.