"Opus Pistorum" (porno)

“Opus Pistorum” (porno) by Henry Miller; (July 28, 2009)

 

            I am reading a French translation of “Opus Pistorum” by Henry Miller and I still don’t know what opus pistorum means but the book is plainly porno. The epilogue explains how this book came to be published.  Henry Miller visited Larry Edmunds’ library in Hollywood (California) in 1940. Miller had spent many years in Paris and knew very few people in California. Milton Luboviski was partner in the library and used to offer Miller some money and places to bunk.  By 1941 Luboviski started selling porno manuscripts for clients in the movie industry such as Joseph Mankiewicz, Julian Johnson, Daniele Amfitheatrol, Billy Wilder, Frederick Hollander, and Henry Blanke…

            Henry Miller proposed to write short porno stories that should sell for one dollar per page; Luboviski was to keep the rights of the stories.  After a few months the stories were gathered in a book that Miler titled “Opus Pistorum”.  Luboviski typed 5 copies in 1942 and sold four of them and he saved the original.

            When in need of money and had multiple exotic personal experiences and can write with humor then writing porno manuscripts is a legitimate business. I will offer a few excerpts and will skip the porno details. Miller calls his tail or prick John Thursday (Jean Jeudi).  The opening pages set the tones of the porno short stories.

            “I have been living in Paris for so long that I no longer am surprised of anything.  Paris is not like New York; you don’t need to deliberately seek adventures. Life flushes you out in unbelievable locations and all kinds of incredible surprises track you down. I am visiting a shop and the 13 years old girls is masturbating her dad and then sucking ravenously his tail…”

            “Her asshole agitates; it is alive; it contracts and breathes. You might not discover the secret of the universe through that path but it is far more exciting than observing your own navel.”

            “Alexandra converted into Catholicism and her priest confessor initiated her to worshiping the devil too.  Alexandra got deeply involved in mysticism and exotic cults and confessed to Miller that devils would appear in her dreams pretty alive. All the devils were gorgeous young men; a few had three sexual functioning tails; one would be inserted in the mouth, another in the cunt, and the third would enter the rectum and extends to sniff the tail in the mouth… Miller or (Alf in the stories) participated as witness to one of the devils’ worshiping sessions. The priest entered in his normal ceremonial attire; he was also wearing a red hat with two corns.  A lady undressed and lied on the officiating table; the priests slaughtered a coq and let the blood drip and smear the naked body.  A wood statue of the devil was carried inside with a tail ejecting red wine when activated by sucking. An orgy followed led by the priest.  It was not outrageous or out of the normal since no human sacrifices was offered.”

            “Toots confessed that she was initiated by a Chinaman.  Toots is very articulate and precise in her language: I figured out that the man was an old tiny Chinese who owns a Laundromat, leg bowed, chest curved inside…I even pissed in her asshole”

            “You cannot take a walk with Arthur without incredible events happening.  Arthur usually tones down his stories to sound credible but the realities are far more hallucinating.  I am trolling with Arthur and he picks up a woman wallet off the street. It contains no money but a picture of a beautiful blonde lady called Charlotte.  We decided to knock at her door nearby: we needed a free drink and whatever other sexual freebies that might come along.  A kid’s voice answered.  We are facing a midget woman. She works in circus and is taking a well deserved rest.  Charlotte brings us whiskey and we serve from the bottle as we need.  Charlotte is beautiful; her thighs are pawable; her behind and bosoms are normal with respect to her stature; I look at Arthur and I realize that he is having the same thoughts… One day Charlotte visited Arthur; he was not home and she left him a note.  Arthur joined me very agitated. He is curious how midget woman are but he is apprehensive of going solo.  We visited Charlotte; a monster German shepherd, big as a house attacked them; Charlotte attached the molosse in another room.  Arthur wants to know all the particularities of midgets and how different they are from normal people. It turned out that they are as different among themselves as normal people are among normal people; the hardest problem is finding tiny shoes.  The tails of the giant men were as big as the baseball bat that Charlotte uses. They had sex with Charlotte with exaggerated fever; Alf kept apprehensive that his tail might do serious damages but Charlotte was pretty flexible and accommodating.  The monster dog got too excited and released from his prison and chains; he raped Charlotte as a piston sliding at 100 miles an hour. The two men watched for a couple of minutes and then they figured out that the dog will be very famished after the exercise and they left in a hurry”.

 

One night, I got up at 1 a.m. and could not go back to sleep because of a bout of sneezing. I read “opus pistorum” for three hours. I did not finish the book that morning but for 24 hours I lived with a hard on and could not sleep though I felt weak and needed to get some sleep. Miller would have described my walk a limping gait throughout the day.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Divine Teaching

In my quest for good introductory material, my attention turns to Mark McIntosh’s Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology. For this post, I am particularly interested in his first chapter, “How God Makes Theologians.” To add some further fodder to his provocative title, McIntosh states:

Most of us contemporary theologians, soberly trained in the best scholarly methods, try our hardest to analyze the divine realities by dutifully herding them into the approved pens of dialectical arguments and critical studies. Yet when we open our mouths to discourse of deity, out come skirling parables, hopelessly impossible histories, and such reckless extravagances as the idea of a God who refuses to stay exclusively divine, and a savior who’s such a miserable failure he cannot even save himself” (3).

What immediately impresses me with this text is where he begins. Instead of jumping head first into distinctions concerning the various disciplines dubbed “divinity,” he moves right into the reality of studying a subject who is wholly free, other and beyond. His starting point, in other words, is something like a spirituality of theology. Second, and almost more curious for an introduction to theology (as sad as this statement may seem), McIntosh immediately moves into brief commentary on several passages in Romans. After doing so, he moves into an account of belief in relation to the study of theology, stating,

One needs, in other words, to entertain the idea (which Christians believe) that Christian theology is an expression of an ongoing transformation of the world in encounter with God; otherwise one will not be studying Christian theology at all but only a boringly lifeless taxidermy of it in which nothing unexpected, gloriously unnecessary, or unbelievable can ever happen or be considered. And it is, Christians believe, precisely these sorts of wonder and astonishment that characterize the authentic impact of God on the world, and so on theology” (13).

In the following chapter McIntosh develops the calling of the theologian. Pulling together the strange bedfollows of Augustine and Simone Weil he states, “Theology takes place when the theologian, lured by ungraspable truth, ceases to devour everything and is herself or himself ‘devoured,’ transformed by a reality too real to be, in Augustine’s terms, dragged back into the mind’s manipulations” (17). Commandeering McCabe, McIntosh develops the anological use of language through imagery of piracy. In McCabe’s words, “The theologian uses a word by stretching it to breaking point, and it is precisely as it breaks that the communication, if any, is achieved.” Further on in his section on the calling of a theologian, McIntosh suggests,

theologians themselves have to share in the mystical life, the life in which the hidden presence of God – as the voice speaking all things into existence – can be sensed and acknowledged in all things…theology wants to consider all these things, indeed everything, precisely in terms of each thing’s mystical identity as a character in the play of the universe, or, to use standard theological language, as a creature that is ceaselessly spoken by the Creator” (24-25).

What do we think about starting an intro book this way?  If you remember, McIntosh is one of the theologians I looked at in our spirituality and theology series. What are your thoughts about his attempt to merge these so centrally together from the outset?

In the Mail: Upcoming Reviews

I’ve got some catching up to do on reviews.  Several new volumes have arrived on my doorstep:

Walter Brueggemann. An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009.

Mark Sheridan (ed). Genesis 12-50. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament II. Downers Grove: IVP, 2002.

Hugh C. White. Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis. New York: Cambridge, 2008 (original: 1991).

Bill T. Arnold. Genesis. The New Cambridge Bible Commentary. New York: Cambridge: 2009.

R.W.L. Moberly. Old Testament Theology: The Theology of the Book of Genesis. New York: Cambridge, 2009.

I hope to post a few reviews of other books in the next week or two so I can get on to these beauties! 

Any suggestions on which you would like to see first?

Book Review: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Summary: The story is told in the viewpoint of the story’s hero, Newland Archer, and is set in the upper class New York society of the late 1800s. He is set to marry the beautiful May Welland, but things started to change when the Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin, comes back to New York after allegedly running away from her husband with her husband’s secretary. Ellen was somehow shunned by society for her scandalous past, but with the help of her family and Newland, society started accepting her. Throughout the process, she unknowingly influenced Newland’s beliefs when it came to happiness, society, and morals, leading him to fall in love with her–a love that is doomed from the very start due to Newland’s engagement to May and Ellen still being a married woman.

Review proper: I love the way that Wharton characterized the beauty and follies of New York society at that time. I think the book is actually Wharton’s commentary on what she thinks of her society. Likewise, the characters of the story were very well-drawn that you cannot help sympathizing with them. I, for one, identified well with Newland’s feelings of being trapped in the dictums of society and of his frustrations with May’s passive acceptance of the conventions that they are supposed to follow, regardless of their happiness.

Ellen, on the other hand, is a character that is pretty difficult to sketch. She has evolved from a naïve, carefree woman who did not care about what society dictates her to do into someone who values her family’s happiness more than her own. It is pretty unfortunate that fate always seemed to conspire against Newland and Ellen, for just when they have realized their love for each other, or they have formulated a plan to run away, something happens that throws all their efforts to the wind. And always, it is because of May.

In my opinion, May’s state is more pitiable than the fate of the star-crossed lovers, mainly because she is really the one trapped in the constraints of society. At first, I had the same opinion of her as that of Newland – a simple, naïve society woman. But as the story progressed, I could see that she is no simpleton; she is aware of the changes happening around her; it’s just that she chooses to ignore them and simply decides to just go on with her life and fulfil her duties as a wife to Newland. Beneath the delicate exterior, she also has a bit of a cunning side, but you can never blame her for that for what else can she do to keep her from losing her husband? Although she only has a supporting role in the story, May’s character is more appealing and complex to me than Ellen’s.

Favorite quotes and scenes: As much as I have enjoyed several well-written and emotional scenes in the book, my favourite scene would have to be the ending scene, in which Newland, finally free to love Ellen in the open because of May’s demise and Count Olenska’s death, decided not to pursue her anymore and simply walk away:

“It’s more real to me here than if I went up,” he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other… Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.

I cannot imagine a better ending on this novel. I cannot fully explain the ending here, but it is certainly not what the reader expects. It is a tragic ending, plain and simple. The star-crossed lovers never reunited, even if they had all the means to do so. Newland somehow realized that not only distance and time kept them apart, but the changes that must have come to them as well. They were not the same people that they used to be. Just as society changes, so do people and one’s regard for another. Why not stick to the Ellen of his imagination, lest it be ruined by the reality of meeting her again after all those years?

On my experience in reading the book: I was never the classic type. I finish reading classic books just for the sake of finishing what I started, all the while writhing in agonizing pain, for I never really enjoyed the writing style and the humor of classic authors. I won’t say that The Age of Innocence is any different, for I started reading it with excruciating slowness and forgot about it for several straight weeks before going back to what I was reading. But as I progressed, the story piqued my interest, and somehow I was able to devote more and more time to reading the book.

Book Review: Fresh Food from Small Spaces

Cover of Fresh Foods from Small Spaces

For a novice like myself, this is a great book. It reinforced a lot of what I’d read elsewhere, inspired me to take on a sheet mulching project, and gave me tons and tons of good ideas about what kinds of edibles can be grown in low light. I plan to purchase it just for its recognition of and emphasis on the fact that foods can be grown in partial shade, which is most of our lot. His ideas about varieties for shade are awesome. I find this is a great follow-up book to The Urban Homestead – it’s got similar kinds of information but fewer illustrations. Admittedly, I only skimmed the chapters on fermentation, sprouting, and mushrooms. My interest mostly lies in the gardening-in-the-dirt types of activities right now.

<i>Remembrance</i> (Theresa Breslin)

1915. World War I. Charlotte Armstrong-Barnes takes a nursing certificate in her efforts to contribute towards the war effort while her beau John Malcolm Dundas joins up. John Malcolm’s sister Maggie takes a job at the munitions factory and his younger brother Alex is just raring to grow up and fight in the army himself. Frances, Charlotte’s older brother, is the opposite and tries to avoid joining up for as long as possible.

Through the lives of these five youths, Theresa Breslin showcases the huge and irrevocable changes that the War wrought upon the Western world. In remarkably few words — this is a book for young adults, after all — we are exposed to life at home in a Scottish village, working in hospitals in Scotland and in France, and the fighting on the Western Front.

Breslin treats her subject with profound compassion and understanding; although she makes clear the devastating loss and deprivation soldiers had to endure, we also see the camaraderie and excitement that characters like John Malcolm feel when setting off to war and making sure the enemy does not get an inch of “our” soil, the courage and commitment that soldiers put into fighting for the homes and families and friends they love. Even Frances, the most anti-war of them all, admits the genuine, “swelling, overwhelming pride of handing over your position intact, of being able to say that you had held the line in your sector”. As terrible as the war was, there was an acknowledged nobility in defending one’s home, a nobility that tinges the edges of war with shades of grey.

Because of the war, there were also immense advancements made in women’s rights and in medicine. In Maggie and Charlotte we see young women working in positions that were never open to them — working, instead of waiting to be married off in Charlotte’s case. Medicine was pushed to expand itself in order to cope with the overwhelming number of injuries sustained by soldiers. Without the war, these changes could not have occurred as rapidly as they did.

Without the war, of course, people also would not have died in the droves that they did.

No matter how often I reread this book, the initial conversations always feel a little jarring to me; the characters’ speaking style seems too constructed and artificial, as if the author is trying (too) hard to recreate speech in the 1910s. (”Err” doesn’t seem to fit in with someone who usually says, “was not”, “I am not”, “does not”, and so on.) The loss felt by the characters when death comes knocking is real, however — and death comes knocking so often.

“How can we bear it?” she wailed. “What are we going to do?”
[She] felt her own tears begin. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.” And she sat down in the road and began to cry.

But we, like they, keep going. We — as humans — are very good at managing, if only because “we have to”.

It’s seeing people continue to give their best to their lives after losing someone they love dearly that leaves me in tears. This book has never failed to move me in the times I’ve read and reread it, and last weekend was no exception — when I was done, I was left bawling for a while.

Sometimes I wonder what the world will be like when my children’s generation come into being: that generation who knows nothing about the World Wars. For the people of my generation, we still have grandparents we care about who tell us about the things that happened then; at least we comprehend the human impact that war has on an individual level. Who will our children have to tell these stories to them? No one they know personally who has been through a World War. If these wars no longer live in human memory, does that mean we will forget and fight each other on a world-scale again? As if we don’t already fight enough.

Or will we look at literature like this and remember? Can stories like these stretch our imaginative and empathic abilities and remind us why we must not engage in war like this again?

I hope so.

Remembrance is an honest, moving novel that lives up to its name, a tribute to the people who fought (not just the Allies), and to the people left behind. It is an answer to the challenge that Siegfried Sassoon poses in his poem ‘Aftermath’, quoted at the very end:

Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

Favorite Authors: Iain M. Banks

Iain Banks is two writers in the same man. One is a moderately scarifying horror writer, who, without his middle initial, writes novels like The Wasp Factory. He’s good, but not one of my favorite writers. It’s when he uses his middle initial, and writes science fiction, and in particular his stories of The Culture, that he really shines.

The Culture is a highly advanced, utopian, technologically powerful galactic civilization. It is post-economic; food, energy and everything a citizen could conceivably want are instantly available. And there are two kinds of citizens: some mostly human, protoplasm based, and a bewildering array of machine intelligences, A.I.s, many of them living as spaceships, orbital constructs and more exotic ideas.

The Culture isn’t the only civilization; simply the most advanced. And where it interacts with those other civilizations, Contact, a branch of the loose government of The Culture, handles matters. Where those other civilizations are . . . difficult . . . then a rarely mentioned branch of Contact gets involved, Special Circumstances. Like many names in The Culture, it’s a euphemism. While Contact doesn’t generally interfere in other civilizations, sometimes there are Special Circumstances. Many of Banks’ novels involve, at some level, Special Circumstances. Because, as Banks’ has noted, utopias are boring to write about.

The novels are sly, ironic, amusing and tightly plotted. Banks’ does a terrific job in novels like Excession helping understand the thought processes of Minds, advanced A.I.s that think millions of times faster than meat-based creatures like ourselves. Ship names – and these are ships the size of mid-sized asteroids controlled by A.I.s that are to us as we are to a snail – are bad puns, oblique references to their real purposes or euphemisms. Alien names are likewise oblique: a seriously sadistic group calls itself the Affront.

The Culture books are

Consider Phlebas (1987)
The first Culture novel. Its protagonist is working for the religious Idiran Empire against the Culture. A rich, although basically linear story about kidnapping one of the artificial sentiences of the Culture, it takes place against the backdrop of the galaxy-spanning Idiran War. The protagonist is an utterly amoral criminal.

The Player of Games (1988)
A brilliant though bored games player from the Culture is entrapped and blackmailed to work as a Special Circumstances agent in the brutal stellar Empire of Azad. Their system of society and government is entirely based on an elaborate strategy game.

Use of Weapons (1990)
A non-linear story about a Culture mercenary called Zakalwe. Chapters describing his adventures for Special Circumstances are intercut with stories from his past, where the reader slowly discovers why this man is so troubled.

The State of the Art (1991)
A collection of short stories (some Culture, some not) and a Culture novella. The (eponymous) novella deals with a Culture mission to Earth in the 1970s.

Excession (1996)
Culture Minds discover an Outside Context Problem: something so strange it could shake the foundations of their civilization.

Inversions (1998)
Seemingly a Special Circumstances mission or missions seen from the other side – on a planet whose development is roughly equivalent to 13th Century Europe. This novel is not labelled as “A Culture Novel”, but is widely regarded as being set in the same milieu.

Look to Windward (2000)
The Culture interfered in the development of the Chel with disastrous consequences. Now, in the light of a star that was destroyed 800 years previously during the Idiran War, plans for revenge are being hatched.

Matter (2008)
Djan Seriy Anaplian, a Special Circumstances agent, returns to her war-torn feudal world. The Culture has to decide whether or not to involve itself in this world’s problems.

Banks’ plotting is superb. In Use of Weapons, two unrelated plots wind around each other, faster and faster, until they collide at the end. In Inversions, which sees The Culture from the point of view of the civilization being manipulated, the two plot lines are inversions of each other.

The other characteristic of Banks’ works is that the stories are morally ambivalent. It can be very hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys; Banks’ point is that the question itself is meaningless.

Wildly imaginative, brilliantly written; I only wish there were more of them.

Spotlight Write It Up! Book Review

By Cassie F. – Grade 6

I am reviewing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling. It was a good book. I would rate it a 4 out of 5 stars. This book is about a Chamber of Secrets that a student in Hogwarts has opened. Harry tries to figure out who it is. This is a magical story that is very exciting. If you like funny, interesting and exciting stories – this is a great book for you! Harry and his two friends go on a wonderous adventure to try to find out who opened the Chamber of Secrets and what animal is lurking around and hurting students. If you are interested in this book – I recommend you read the Sorcerors Stone first. Please try this book – thank you! Bye!

Naruto: Introduction and Land of Waves Review

OK, so I’ve gotten off my KHR obsession for a moment so I can tell you about an extremely popular shonen manga I really don’t need to recommend to anyone (since you’ve probably heard about it anyway): Naruto! Since the anime annoyed the mess out of me (English. Dub. Does. Not. WORK.) I’m reverting back to good old manga, because this is one of the occasions where I believe the manga did work better than the anime. I’m reviewing arcs one and two of the manga, the Introduction and the Land of Waves arcs.

So let’s get started with a summary of the Introduction:

So the story starts out with Naruto, and to say the least he seems like a bratty kid who doesn’t work enough and just goofs off all the time. But he has a dream that seems to exceed what he can achieve…by far. He wants to be the next Hokage, the leader of the village. But the villagers hate him, the kids laugh at him, and he ends up failing his test to become a shinobi…for the third time in a row. Then one of the test instructors goad him into stealing a very valuable (and dangerous!) scroll, and reveals a secret it seems everyone but Naruto and the kids know. As it turns out…Naruto has the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox sealed inside him, a beast that destroyed the village, killed many people, and murdered the 4th Hokage. After a vicious fight between Iruka and Mizuki, Naruto appears and completes a majorly high level jutsu- a feat no one thought he could accomplish.

^______^ That made me smile.

More insight is given, and then WHABAM! Team assignments are given, since Naruto has now passed the test for saving Iruka and completing Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. He’s paired with a dark cloud with a boy attached, and a pink-haired, violent girl who happens to hate Naruto. Oh, and a ninja genius for a teacher who never shows his face. >>; He likes Sakura, hates Sasuke, and doesn’t know what to think about Kakashi. Sasuke turns out to be extremely ‘cool’ and wants to kill someone, and Sakura’s obsessed with Sasuke. Great, great…But then they go into a challenge of getting bells from Kakashi, a little story that made me lulz out loud and taught a great lesson. “Those who break the rules in the ninja world are trash…but whose who abandon their teammates are worse than trash.” That was the best line ever. And in the end…there’s Team 7! : D

And then you get to the Land of Waves arc, something that really takes way too long to complete (20+ chapters! NOOOOO!) but does serve to flesh out the characters very well. Naruto complains their missions are too easy, so they get assigned a C-rank that turns out to be more dangerous than anticipated…in fact, it turns out to be a B-rank. Kakashi reveals he’s uber powerful, Sasuke gains a bloodline limit, Naruto gains what he thinks is the closest bond possible to a friend. Oh, and the Nine-Tailed Fox comes out. Crap. But in the end, they complete their mission and come back stronger and more wise than before.

I personally have no problem with blood, or violence, so you can find me reading this and going “OMG YES STAB HIM! YEAHHHH!” while some other people might be going “…so…so violent…T______T”. So this is a warning: Naruto has swearing. Naruto has lots…and lots…and lots…of blood. And lots of nice sharp, pointy objects to draw it with. (Kunai and shruiken! Total awesome in a small deadly form.) This is like the epitome of shonen, and Naruto’s one of the poster boys of anime/manga. New Naruto chapters come out weekly in Shonen Jump and are featured prominently, to say the least.

And I’ll put it here: I think people underestimate Naruto. When they hear about it, they’re like “Oh whee, it’s ninjas. How cliche.” It may be cliche in some ways, but Kishimoto-sama did a brilliant job creating a very complex, interesting world and it should definitely not be taken lightly. When I got into it, it was because my friends were playing a game on the Wii or XBox, something similar, and it looked interesting. I picked up a manga, flipped through it, and it didn’t look bad. Then I saw the anime and turned away for a while (”Believe it!” Do not get me started on that catchphrase. Just don’t.) until my friend convinced me to take a good stroll through the first two books. They’re amazing.

The art is good, the action is very much there, and the comedy factor has been worked in very nicely. Seeing Sasuke and Naruto grow stronger together is a very heartwarming story, and often makes me smile happily because the emotion is there. Of course, Sakura kinda doesn’t do anything. What is it with shonen and under-working the girl characters? But eh, I digress…And the characters do tend to be stereotypical. The love-struck girls, the quiet ambitious boy, the loudmouth, the lazy genius, and etc….but I do love the character designs and how all of them are super unique. The detail is very nice to see.

I hold a little soft spot in my heart for Naruto and the manga, and anyone who likes shonen should really pick it up. Naruto is a great, fast-paced manga that has been strongly advocated by too many people to count, and I’m one of them. Head off to your library and pick one up- or reserve it here.

Check back soon, I’ll be reviewing the Chuunin Exam arc and KHR Season 4 soon. Haha, Chuunin exams…it’s been a long time. (And dude, that’s a really really really long arc…>.<;;;)

Cheers,
Vanessa

Team 7. ……ISN’T IT COOL!? *fangirl flail*

Dictionary:
Jutsu – A skill powered by chakra. More in depth explanation here.
Shinobi – A male ninja
Kunoichi – A female ninja
Kage Bunshin no Jutsu – Shadow Clone Jutsu. Produces clones that actually have weight and mass…unlike normal illusionary clones. Major high level skill.
Kunai – Throwing knives
Shruiken – Those spinny disc thingies. The sharp ones. Ouch.

Through The Fire by Shawn Grady -- A Review

I have been waiting for Shawn Grady’s novel Through The Fire.  Once I read the description I was hooked!  I am a fan of novels dealing with the everyday heroes such as firefighters and the like.  When I found out from Shawn’s biography that he himself had been a firefighter thisbook became a must read.

I was immediately drawn into the story of Aidan O’Neill.  I think that part of what drew me into the story was that Aidan was flawed and hurting like so many of us.  Even at his most downtrodden the character of Aidan is likeable and, you, the reader feel drawn to him.  The other characters are just as likable and personable.

To be honest I had a hard time believing that this was a debut novel.  Shawn Grady’s writing is witty and descriptive.  There are some scenes I could see so clearly in my mind because he paints the picture so well with his words.

Through the Fire is a fantastic novel that leaves you with a tangible feeling that there is hope.

If you love suspense and you are looking for a great summer read then look no further than Through The Fire.

To read more about the book go HERE.

*****A GIVEAWAY*****

Shawn has graciously offered a copy of Through the Fire for a giveaway.  Just leave a comment on this post and on July 28th I will use random.org to chose a winner.  (US and Canada only)

Edited Clean Version

I remember October 23, 2006. I subbed at a local middle school, and at the end of the day I jumped in my car to go buy the new My Chemical Romance album, “The Black Parade.” I drove across town to Target to pick up the CD, even though I passed 2 Wal-Mart stores on the way there. Why?

Because I knew that Wal-Mart either would not carry it, or, if they did, it would be the “edited clean version” – meaning that if there was any profanity or other bad langauge, it would be censored somehow. If the edited version costs the same as the unedited version, why would anyone buy the edited version – especially since now people can make their own edited versions using Audacity or other audio editing program.

This is the premise of Raiford Guins’ book, “Edited Clean Version: Technology and the Culture of Control.”

In an age of V-chips, Internet filters, edited films and music, we have fallen into a trap where we pay to have less of a product.

Mr. Guins’ book is a scholarly look at the culture of editing works of art flowing through six chapters where he talks about a separate type of editing in depth. He goes from controlling content, to blocking it, filtering it, sanitizing it, cleaning it, and finally patching the content.

The first chapter, Control, mentions Wal-Mart’s stance on “family values” and how they won’t sell unedited music.

Blocking opens with the “most Tivo’d moment” – yes, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction and the FCC backlash that prompted. As an aside, I don’t think the malfunction helped her popularity at all. When I walked into a Circuit City on the last day of its going out of business sale, there were 15 CDs comprising the entirety of the CD department. Thirteen of those were Janet Jackson’s newest album. They stayed there until the store closed forever. I have no idea what happened to them. No one bought them, even at $2.50 each.

The chapter on filtering talks about ways to filter content such as by using Internet filtering devices. While these devices are created to “protect” children, I don’t use any kind of filtering device on my own personal computers, why should I?

The sanitizing chapter is related to the chapter on filtering, except in this regard Mr. Guins is talking about filtering content in DVDs. An example is how MovieMask made a digital corset for Kate Winslet in a certain scene in the film Titanic when they made their edited version of the 1997 film.

The chapter on cleaning shows how sometimes instead of just cutting something out, it gets changed. As an example in the unedited version of My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” the singer (Gerard Way) screams/yells/sings the line “I’m not o-fucking-kay” while in the radio version of the song he says “I’m really not okay” – close listening shows that he tries to match the length of the unedited line so as not to throw the song’s pacing off.

The final chapter, the chapter on Patching, opens with a recount of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ Hot Coffee mod, which was content removed from the game before it was released, that found its way back in via a bit of code from a Dutch programmer. This section, the shortest of the book’s chapters, talks about the ESRB’s attempts to monitor and filter videogame content via its system of categorizing different content pieces.

In all, this is a great read. I recommend it to anyone who tries to read, listen, watch, or play in this modern era.

Official webpage

'Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners' -- 'Pride and Prejudice' and Etiquette

[This is a re-post of a review that appeared on Nov. 27, 2006, while I'm on a brief semi-vacation.]

A charmingly illustrated explanation of the Regency etiquette rules followed by the novelist’s characters

Jane Austen’s Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders. By Josephine Ross. Illustrated by Henrietta Webb. Boomsbury, 133 pp., $14.95.

By Janice Harayda

A while back, I wrote a novel about a bride-to-be who believed that Jane Austen could have solved all her romantic problems. One reason for her view, I hoped, was clear: Austen’s novels are full of rules for social conduct.

The catch – for my heroine as for others – is that Austen’s characters typically follow rules that are implicit, not explicit. And because Austen was a satirist, her precepts can’t always be taken at face value even when they are spelled out. Perhaps the best case in point is the much-misunderstood first line of Pride and Prejudice, which is often taken literally though meant ironically: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Josephine Ross has decoded some of the social conventions of the Regency era in Jane Austen’s Guide to Good Manners. And as befits an ironist like Austen, this book is less a “guide to good manners” than a literary companion disguised as Regency self-help manual.

Ross does not try to extrapolate from the behavior of Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse and others to modern life. Instead she describes the rules of the Regency era as she sees them and shows how Austen’s characters observe or break them. The rule “Do not be presumptuous in offering introductions” leads to a brief discussion of the proper ways of introducing people in the early 1800s. Then Ross writes: “When Lady Catherine de Bourgh, in high dudgeon, calls on the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice to dissuade Elizabeth from marrying her nephew Darcy, she does not ask Lizzy to introduce her mother, and sits for some time in the presence of awed Mrs. Bennet, who has therefore not been granted permission to converse with her Ladyship in her own house. This, of course, is not ‘good manners.’”

Some of the conventions that Ross describes went out with the chamber pot: “After dinner the ladies must withdraw.” Others continue in a modified form: “When in doubt, talk of the weather.” Either way, Ross writes so gracefully that her book is a delight, enhanced by charming watercolors by Henrietta Webb. How nice that she and her collaborator knew enough not to take literally the words of Northanger Abby: “A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”

Best line: “Only by understanding Society’s strict rules is anyone – man or woman – in a position to break them.”

Worst line: Why doesn’t the comma in “Compliments, Charades,” which appears on the cover, show up also on the title page?

Published: October 2006

Janice Harayda wrote The Accidental Bride (St. Martin’s, 1999), a comedy of a manners about a bride who tries to find solace in Jane Austen as her over-the-top wedding approaches.

© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.janiceharayda.com and www.twitter.com/janiceharayda

Finally...

…it is starting to feel like summer. Towards the end of the week last week, we had sunny weather and the triple H threat – hazy, hot and humid. In the early morning, when I was dropping Nate off at daycare, the humidity was palpable. I could feel the condensation on my arms and the dampness in my hair.  Quite frankly, it’s not the heat that bothers me during summer. I honestly don’t mind the heat. It’s the humidity that kills me and makes me not feel like moving.

We set up Nate’s toddler bed earlier this week, after we caught Nate climbing out of the crib.  And he loves it. I think that he thinks that it’s another toy that just happens to be big enough that he can just lie down and sleep in it when he gets tired. The first morning that he woke up in it, he was able to get himself out of bed and came into our bed after I called out to him – he’d been padding around in his room. I think he likes being independent and able to get out of his bed whenever he wants to get out of it.  He’s got a good number of toys and books in his room so, here’s hoping that maybe mommy and daddy get a little bit of extra time to sleep on weekend mornings.

I have a new review up of Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russel Rich. You can find it here.

Favorite Authors: Steven Brust

Before Robin Hobb’s “Farseer” series and before HBO’s “The Sopranos,” there was Steven Brust and his protagonist, Vlad Taltos. Vlad is a mob member and an assassin, as well as a member of a racial minority, in a complex and deeply dysfunctional society.

Dragaera is a world where very long-lived elves wielding powerful sorcery, short-lived humans, a host of other intelligent species and even gods exist in a uneasy, unhappy state of intermittent war and uneasy peace. Vlad lives in a part of the world where the elves rule, and his people, for the most part, live in squalid slums. He takes his hatred for his oppressors and turns it into a career, and assassinates elves at the behest of other elves. He becomes a minor mob boss in the Jhereg, the criminal underground operated by the elves. All of this is accepted behavior in Brust

A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket

This is the story of three children who are orphaned at a young age. They are then ‘looked after’ by a cousin.
I started this book with immense interest as I do like to see what the majority is reading. I was not excited by it. We are told at several points that this is not a nice book and nice things do not happen to the children. I felt the tone of the whole book was very patronising. I did, however, like the way concepts, phrases and even words were explained. A lot of books talk about things and expect the reader to know, but I’ve found that a number of children don’t bother to ask and it helps to have them explained within the book. In my eyes it was the only redeeming feature. You can find it for sale here.

Mere Christianity by CS. Lewis

My favorite author of all time is CS Lewis.  I love his way with words and ideas.  He explains them in such a way that you just get it. Over vacation I read his Mere Christianity in preparation for the fall and also for the simple fact I wanted to.  Lewis sought to explain the basics of Christianity; the common beliefs and truths that all Christians must proclaim to be “in Christ.”  On one hand this pursuit seems reductionistic- reducing Christianity to the lowest common denominator of theological beliefs.  But that was not Lewis’ intention, as he simply explained the faith to a largely unbelieving population of Great Britain.  (During WW2 the UK understood itself to be post Christian, just where the US is today.  During which time the BBC invited Lewis to do a series of radio broadcasts explaining the faith.)  Context is key to understand this book.

It is actually a compilation of 4 books.  The first is an argument for God that follows the classic moral argument.  Lewis says that the law of human nature implies that there is something behind and above it.  (Morality needs a moral giver.)  It is interesting to see how this is employed, but many, like Christopher Hitchens, find it weak and failing.  According to Hitchens morality is just one step further from the animal paternal instinct.  (Lewis does address this).  Next Lewis focuses on the basics of Christian theology.  He says that this universe has a creator, but he did not create sin or evil.  Good vs. evil is a stark, strong reality.  Because of this reality and because of God’s love for his creation, God, the Son, comes on a rescue mission to set things right.  Christians therefore need to look to, and live in light of, the new heavens and the new earth.  Following this Lewis reviews how Christians are to live in this world where he addresses many valuable questions.  How are we to love?  How are we to seek justice?  And how should we seek and pursue a Christian society, if at all?  Finally Lewis returns to theology once again and explores the theological notion of the Trinity, the atonement, and our sanctification.  Because we are united in Christ by faith, we are sanctified by faith.   This idea is encouraging and worth exploring even more.

RC Sproul, in an interview with 9 Marks Ministries, noted that Lewis was not an apologist, even though many consider him so.  Did he do the work of an Alvin Plantiga, Josh McDowell, or Ravi Zacharias- yes and no.  Lewis sought to explain Christianity in an accessible, imaginative way to his context.  In this light he was an apologist.  If you look at his works you cannot dispute this.  (My favorite class at Grove City was CS Lewis: Christian Apologist.  His writings, Narnia, his signature series, and God in the Dock, all attest to this fact.)  But at the same time he was not a professional apologist like Ravi and Josh.   He was an ordinary layman who understood what it meant to be “always ready with a defense for the hope you have within you.”  And by doing so he became one of the most influential Christians of the modern age. He might rank right up there with Dante, Milton, Bunyan, and Edwards.

Umbrellas, Unbrellas, Rebrellas... Oh my.

I’m a sucker for a good dark fantasy novel. Un Lun Dun didn’t disappoint. It’s full of cleverness, delightfulness, and bizareness. I wondered at first if Un Lun Dun would be at all like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (and I think a lot of people have the same thought before reading Un Lun Dun). It is nothing like Neverwhere (though Miéville did get advice from Neil Gaiman while writing his story since Un Lun Dun does deal with a parallel London). But it’s just as good. It’s entertaining. It has action, danger. It’s heartwarming and creepy all at once. It’s incredibly inventive. At every turn of the page I thought to myself “this is genius!” about something Miéville thought up.

Loved it. LOVED it.

If you like dark fantasy, if you like middle grade novels that have an adult edge, if you like creepy, magical tales with characters you wish you could be friends with, go read this book. Go. Now.

Book Review: Three Men and a Maybe by Debbie Carbin

Beth Sheridan is happy with her life, she’s got a good job and she is totally in love with Richard. The only problem is that Richard has no idea she’s in love with him, and he’s shacked up with another woman in Portugal. But Beth doesn’t care because she knows one day he’ll come back to her, and she’s preparing herself for that very moment. But in the mean time, her best friend Vin is determined to find her another man, but Beth manages to meet 3. Should she choose Sean from the office who isn’t quite as strange as he first seems, handsome millionaire Rupert who she’s only contacted through email or Brad, who she met at a speed dating event and gets on really well with. Is Beth going to pick one of her three men or is she still holding out for her maybe??

I first heard of Debbie Carbin last year when she released her debut novel ‘Thanks for Nothing, Nick Maxwell’ which I quite enjoyed. So when I heard she had another novel coming out this year I was quite looking forward to it. I managed to get a copy from my library to read but I was a bit concerned because some of the reviews on Amazon weren’t overly positive about the book, but as usual I was willing to give it a go and form my own opinion about it. This book is the second of Debbie’s 2 book deal with publishers Black Swan, so another release isn’t yet guaranteed from the author.

When I began reading, I’ll be honest and say that I really wasn’t into this at all. I found Beth extremely annoying and very silly, being totally obsessed with Richard when he had no idea, never mind the fact he’s in another country was just ridiculous and I just didn’t like this at all. The obsession just seemed to grow for the first quarter of the book and I was very close to giving up on it altogether. As I hate not finishing a book, I decided to stick with it and I’m actually glad I did because it really did pick up from then on.

As soon as the other male characters began to become a real part of the story, it became more realistic and believable (although not totally so, as you’ll see when you read it!), and therefore Beth became more likeable as well. Her best friend Vin was an absolutely brilliant character, quite possibly my favourite in the whole book and I’m glad Carbin wrote someone like into the book, just a normal person really. The male characters were nice enough, again guys that you believe you could get on with (even though one’s a millionaire) and they were all interesting. I was annoyed at how there was a really good scene with one of these, and then Carbin would drop in Beth’s obsession with Richard again and it took away from all the good she’d just done!

There is a big twist in this book halfway through that I didn’t see coming, and I think this was quite well done by the author. For a reader, it’s something to reignite your interest and I was quite eager to see how this was going to affect the outcome of the book. I genuinely didn’t see it coming so it was a surprise, which is good as some books I’ve read with a “twist” have been as subtle as a hammer to the head! The pace really picks up towards to the end, which is a shame as I feel the whole book could have done with speeding up at parts as I did feel the narrative dragged in parts.

Carbin uses the first person narrative for almost the whole book, only going away from this when focussing on another character for a short period of time. It seemed strange to change the narrative like this but it was easy to read and not all that troublesome so I wasn’t too bothered by it. The book was an okay read, it’s real downfall is the incredibly annoying main character (my problem with Carbin’s first book too) and the relentless obsession with Richard in the first part of the novel. As I say, I was nearly put off it because of this but do bear with it because it gets better. I must say I prefer Carbin’s first book to this one but it’s still quite readable as long as you don’t want your chick-lit all that believable!

Rating: 3.5/5

'Zarafa' by Michael Allin

1998, 202p

I seem to be tapping into other peoples’ obsessions at the moment (the philosophers in Richard Holmes’ Age of Wonder and the fictional counting-obsessive in Addition), and this book is certainly the fruit of a long-term obsession.  In this case, the object of fastidious attention is the giraffe donated to the King of France, Charles X,  by Muhammad Ali, the pasha of Egypt in the mid 1820s.   The author, Michael Allin, gives her the Arabic name ‘Zafara’ and in this book he traces her journey from her original capture in Sudan,  across to Khartoum strapped onto the back of a camel (I’m finding it quite hard to imagine this), then down (up?) the Nile to Alexandria, where she embarked a ship to Marseilles.  On arrival at Marseilles, it was decided that after a winter lay-over, she would walk the 900 km to Paris.  Her trip, which took 41 days, excited keen interest in the crowds that greeted her at each stop and indeed, the whole of France was convulsed with ‘giraffe-mania’.   She took up residence in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where she lived for another 18 years.  Her stuffed corpse now rests at the museum at La Rochelle where it is too fragile to shift further.

You might wonder how 200 pages can be devoted to a giraffe going for a long walk, but the book covers far more than this.  We look at the use of exotic animals by the Romans, the effect of the Enlightenment on the flowering of scientific knowledge, and the fascination with Egyptology.  The narrative lingers with the savants who stayed behind in Egypt after the defeated Napoleon sneaked back to France. It  emphasises the deep effect of the Egyptian experience on these intellectuals once they returned to post-Napoleonic France, often deeply imbued with a love of Egyptian culture and continued admiration of Napoleon in a changed political climate.  It links the gift of the giraffe with European diplomacy at the time, with the Pasha of Egypt hoping to distract and soften French and British anger over Egypt’s intervention in the Greek War of Independence.

This book is a real work of love and is beautifully presented with small pages with generously spaced print and many pictures.  When the author finally finds the stuffed Zarafa beside the staircase in the French museum, you feel a rush of affection for her and want to cheer the author and slap him on the back for his dedication to his obsession.

Definitely Dead - Book Review

My favorite thing about Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris is Quinn. He seems like such a good person, um, tiger. I dig that strong, masculine vibe and yet, he’s kind and caring. He also seems very loyal and dependable.

I like the shifters in the Sookie Stackhouse series but not more than I love the vampires. I have a serious soft spot for vampire stories. Therefore, my second favorite aspect of this book is getting to delve deeper into its world of vampires. I really like the Queen and I loved hearing her history. It was cool to get a little peek into more of Eric’s history as well. I enjoyed how Harris used Hadley as a way to introduce so many new storylines and possible plot twists. Harris definitely knows how to write mystery and write it well.

Part of me, just a teeny bit, is still pulling for Bill. He is flawed, sure, but so is Sookie, and I’m starting to believe he may be the only one who truly loves her for her. We’ll see though, eh?

I think my only real complaint about the whole series thus far is that Sookie doesn’t seem very proactive on her own behalf. Harris throws a lot of crap at her, and sure, she stands up for herself and fights back. But it’s like she never goes on the offensive. She seems purely defensive to me. Perhaps, that’s intentional. I don’t know. I like Sookie, don’t get me wrong, I’d just like to see a little more personal growth, and not just by way of her becoming jaded.

Excerpt from Spiderwoman

This is the Cover Art for the Book Spiderwoman - Photo From Dreamstime.com

Spiderwoman is the third book that I officially published, actually the fourth if you include the short story I did for Headlight Anthology. This book was a long process that started with stories I did in a Carleton University creative writing class with Tom Henighan. You can buy the book at: http://stores.lulu.com/kakonged.

It is a beautiful rainy day

It is a beautiful rainy day; (July 9, 2009)

 

            The book “Odette Toulemonde” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt contains 8 novellas; they are excellent but I will focus on two of them.  “It is a beautiful rainy day” is a great novella for character description. Helene is the type of women used to appreciate symmetry in people and in nature; She dwells on the details of imperfections such as changing her dresses when noticing any tiny spot, permanently tidying her room, feeling horrified in any disynchronisation in group dancing, and offbeat notes in musical tunes; she used to cry when receiving returned books with pages marked on the corners.  Most of her potential friends lost her confidence because of imperfect details that did not match her subjective perfection.  In adolescence she realized that nature is as bad as men: one of her tits was slightly different in form; one of her feet was slightly longer than the other; even her height was shocking: it stabilized at 171 cm instead of 170 or 175.

            Helene accumulated many boyfriends; the relationships never lasted more than a couple of days because she seeked idealistic perfection: she focused on imperfections and she could easily differentiate asymmetric aspects. The two required necessary exigencies of idealism and lucidity could never be assemble in any one individual.

            By 30 of age Helene was a cynical and disillusioned; intelligence in others did not impress her: she mastered several language and she was a lawyer.  Her physic was attractive and agile.  Antoine, a lawyer, fell in love with Helene; she permitted plain Antoine to press his initiatives simply because he was a foot taller than her.  Helene tolerated Antoine for longer than she had the habit of retaining lovers: Antoine was an “ageeable” fellow though he was a fake slim guy when undressed; he prolonged foreplay so that he won’t have to repeat intercourse; his foreign languages were poor and he was pretty naive.  Helene kept silent as Antoine expressed to include her in his future plans.

            Antoine took Helene to the North Sea instead of the sunny Mediterranean Sea she was used to spend her vacations.  On the first morning a thunderstorm broke out and it poured rain. Helene was terribly upset.  Antoine retorted: “This is a beautiful rainy day” and explained how they would enjoy this day with new shades of colors that the sky, trees, and nature would take; how they would dry their clothes by the fireplace while taking hot teas; how they will had the oportunity to make love several times, to have lengthh conversation.  Antoine’s hapiness sounded abstract to Helene but she decided to go along.  Optimist Antoine saw the lovely and charming aspects in the streets, the stores, the waitreses, and the food.  Helene was disgusted with everything and could not agree with Antoine hapiness.  Helene confined that she never looked at the seas or the waves but was content of enjoying the sun.  Antoine was amused with Helene’s negative comments thinking that she was being purposely funny and ironic and he laughed a lot that day.

            They finally got married. Helene had a boy and a girl but she knew that nothing inside her has changed; she was basically the same Helene with one alteration: Helene refrained from expressing her opinions and learned to keep silent.  “Agreeable” and happy Antoine allowed Helene to see opposite perspectives and a comfortable joyful family life.  Antoine had to die.  Helene walled her life and then decided to travel the globe; she could not enjoy traveling as Antoine did.  (There is an ending but I prefer the reader to invent an ending and then compare it with the original)

 

            The other novella that I like to review is “The intruder”.  This novella was a practical eye opener for understanding what Alzheimer disease means; recent memory goes first and retrograde to when you were born.  Odile sees her face in the mirror and thinks that an old woman intruder is harassing her and switching and moving around her belongings; she calls the police and finds no intruder.  Odile confuses her son for her husband; she thinks that her son’s wife is her long dead husband’s mistress.  Odile is rewriting the introduction of her thesis that she published so many years ago.  Her son, wife, and two grandsons are relieved as Odile returns to the period before her wedding. Soon her son will cuddle his old mother as a newborn lady.

            (What is that? We are as old as our memory permits it and as young as it fails! It is a shame that people with Alzheimer cannot write their diary; we would have great recalling of early childhood emotions and feelings.  I propose that professional psychologists should study these patients and record what they say as they retrograde in their memory.  We could have excellent descriptions of how children feels and react to adults’ behavior)

Book Review - Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

Seth Godin’s blog is a regular read for me.  I don’t always find use for everything he says, but I think he has a lot of great ideas and certainly can stir up some new ways to think.  So picking up Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (Amazon link) wasn’t a stretch.  I had heard a lot of good things about it, so I figured it would be a good read while I was up north at the cabin relaxing.

Overall the subject of the book is extremely important to companies that want to continue to compete in the changing marketplace.  The first few chapters are great explanations of why being a purple cow is important and how marketing has changed, and Seth offers some good examples of companies which have made a business of being remarkable.  There is one very important point Seth makes, that I think is important for all companies:  marketing, strategy and design departments can no longer work independently if remarkable products are going to be properly created and launched.

Purple Cow was a quick and easy read.  Seth Godin has structured the book like a blog – short text excerpts divided by catching titles.  There are some great tidbits of information that are set off with bullets – which can stimulate some great trains of thought.  The case studies are short and to the point, many of which are followed up with some points to ponder. However, there are a few where I wanted a bit more information about what the company did to become remarkable.  There are also several places where a company or product is mentioned as remarkable, but I had never heard of it, which is fine, but I would have liked a bit of an explanation of what they did.  (While I could search for it, I feel like I paid some money for the book, so it would be nice to get the information all in one place).  There is a Purple Cow website which includes a few bonus chapters and additional information.

Purple Cow was a good book for up north.  It would be a good book for the beach.  Most of the information is now widely accepted (the book was originally published in 2002), but still not widely implemented.  The current recession would make a good opportunity to transform a business.  I don’t think Purple Cow would necessarily be useful to Marketers who are in-the-know with current trends online and in social media, but it could spark some great brainstorming.  Purple Cow definitely would be a good book for any higher level management that’s looking for a way to use the recession as an agent of change for their company and for any marketers and product designers just getting into online strategies.

Have you read Purple Cow?  What did you think?

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable (Amazon link)

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Did Early Christians Transcend Ethnicity?

Denise Kimber Buell, in Why This New Race?, says no (see a review here).  She surveys a wide range of Christian literature from New Testament writings, apologetic treatise, martyrdom narratives, Nag Hammadi texts and so on to uncover claims that Christians constitute a new ethnos (nation) or genos (people/race) (1 Peter 2:9; Ep. Diog. 1:1; Aristides Apol. 15:2-3; Acts of Andrew 33:4; 50:5), descendants of venerable ancestors (Abraham – Gal 3:29; Rom 9:7-8; Dial. 11:5; 119:3-6; Seth for Sethian Gnostics), the true Israel (Dial. 11:5; 123:5-9), neither Judean or Greek but a “third race” (Ep. Diog. 5; Clement Strom. 6.5.41 [Kerygma Petrou]; Tertullian Ad Nationes 1:8), or the “immoveable genea (race)” (Apocryphon of John, Sophia of Jesus Christ, etc.).   She writes, “As formulations of those not in power, pre-Constantinian Christian texts that employ ethnic reasoning can be read as attempts to consolidate and mobilize geographically, theologically, and organizationally disparate groups under one banner-figured as a people, ‘the Christians.’” (4).  She argues that ethnic reasoning allowed Christians to take advantage of the privileges granted to other ethnic communities to practice their native religious customs, to determine the criteria for membership into the Christian people, to engage in a universal mission and to uphold a pure form of “Christianness” that excluded rival Christian identities (2-3). 

Her thesis seems counterintuitive because of the modern perception that ethnicity is something you are born with while religion is voluntarily chosen, but Buell argues that  ethnic groups are socially constructed and that ethnic reasoning is characterized by both fixity (common origins/descent) and fluidity (changing culture, language, religion, etc) (6-10).  That is, the ancients could view ethnicity as ascribed and defend a shared myth of origins (e.g. common ancestors – Abraham [Judaeans], Hellen [Greeks], Aeneas [Romans]) but also defined by a specific way of life where membership can be acquired by adopting specific customs or cultic practices (barbarians are Hellenized by adopting Greek language and culture, Gentile proselytes to “Judaism” became like native-born).   Religion was an essential component of ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean.  The Romans had a myth of origins (e.g. The Aeneid claimed they were of Trojan descent), but the Romans were more united by the sense that the gods had chosen them to rule and spread humanitas (civilization) to the rest of humankind (e.g. Pliny Natural History 3.39; Aeneid 6.851-3).  Honouring the gods in a proper Roman way was a mark of religio while ”uncivilized” subject peoples often practiced superstitio.  After the Persian invasion in 480-479 BCE the Greeks defined themselves against an Other (”barbarians”) and the historian Herodotus History 8.144.2 puts on the lips of the Athenians the classic definition of Greek identity as shared blood, language, shrines/cult and way of life.  The covenant with Yahweh, whose temple resided in Jerusalem, set the Jews (or Judaeans) apart from the idolatrous nations (ethnē).  The Egyptians were often maligned for venerating animal images (e.g. Plutarch Isis and Osiris; Juvenal Satires 15.1-8, 11-13; Philo Decalogue 16.76-80; Josepus Against Apion 1.224-226).  Elsewhere Paula Fredrickson summarizes “religion” in the Greco-Roman world:  “And gods also attached to particular peoples; ‘religion’ ran in the blood…a mark of a successful empire (the subordination of many different peoples to a larger government) was the variety of gods it encompassed (since many peoples meant, naturally, many gods) and accordingly the range of traditional religious practices it accommodated” (Fredrickson, “What Parting of the Ways,” 39-40).  Could it be that, as Christians distanced themselves from  Judaeans and Judaism (contrast Paul, for whom Gentile Christ followers are adopted into the family of Abraham and are grafted into Israel), since a “world religion” was not a category in the ancient world the Christians defined themselves as a people or nation with their own beliefs and customs? 

• Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race?: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
• Paula Fredrickson, “What Parting of the Ways?  Jews, Gentiles, and the Ancient Mediterranean City,” in The Ways That Never Parted (ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007)

Wuthnow, Boundless Faith, part 1

Wuthnow, Robert. 2009. Boundless faith: the global outreach of American churches. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wuthnow studies the influence of American Christianity as part of the broader “transcultural church”. Wuthnow’s research question is “how have American churches influenced the world?” His focus is on the influence of American churches as well as how American churches are interconnected with the global Church.

Wuthnow’s critiques the Global Christianity paradigm popularized by Philip Jenkins, Andrew Walls, Samuel Escobar, Mark Noll, and others. Wuthnow summarizes the main tenants of this paradigm: “Christianity on a global scale has experienced significant growth during the twentieth century and this growth will continue. The majority of Christians now reside outside of the United States and Europe. The growth of Christianity in these other parts of the world has been exceptionally strong and will remain so. The growth is happening primarily through the efforts of indigenous Pentecostal and other Spirit-filled churches, and for this reason Christianity in the global South is especially vibrant and authentic. During this same period Christianity has been weakening in the global North and as a result countries in the South are now sending missionaries to the North” (p. 36). Wuthnow analyzes two forces which he believes have significantly shaped the Global Christianity paradigm: secularization and postcolonialism.

Wuthnow critiques the Global Christianity paradigm on the grounds that it is, in fact, not so “new”, that it oversimplifies the numbers, it speaks nothing to the issue of “influence” of different shapes of Christianity globally, and it avoids any mention of how the global Church is interconnected. Wuthnow wants to offer a more (in the words of Edward Said) contrapuntal approach to the study of global Christianity. In other words, the Global Christianity paradigm speaks of the globalization of Christianity only in terms of quantity concentrations and avoiding, ironically, analysis of the actual interconnectedness of global Christianity (the very essence of the flat world idea). This critique is worth mentioning, though perhaps too vehemently stated by Wuthnow. Rather than slamming the scholars of the Global Christianity paradigm for forsaking analysis of the interconnectedness of the church, it seams more reasonable to consider what has been written thus far (think: Jenkins, Noll, Todd Johnson, Walls, Barrett, etc.) as the first step in a broader, systematic analysis of the global church. After all, we can’t understand how the church is connected until we know that the church exists globally and some things about its many incarnations in the global south.

On another note, I find this statement very interesting and massively consequential:

“It is more likely that the new paradigm popularized by Jenkins, Walls, Escobar, and others gained popularity because it resolved — or appeared to resolve — underlying concerns about the fate of Christianity.”

This poses the general question on which I am currently writing: “What cognitive phenomenon shape Christian thought?”

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, b Laurie Viera Rigler – A Review

Is there always another chance at happiness? Are we bound to our past, or do “we all have the power to create heaven on earth, right here, right now?” Important questions heroine Jane Mansfield must come to acknowledge and understand in Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie Viera Rigler’s parallel story to her best selling novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. 

This time around, it is Jane Mansfield a gentleman’s daughter from 1813 who is transported into the body of twenty-first century Los Angelean Courtney Stone. Jane awakens with a headache, but it will take more than aromatic vinegar to solve her problems. Where is she? Her surroundings are wholly unfamiliar to the usual comforts of her parent’s palatial Manor house in Somerset. Is she dreaming? She remembers a tumble off her horse Belle, but nothing after that point. She looks in the mirror and the face reflected back is not her own. How can this be? A young man named Wes arrives who calls her Courtney. Is he a servant? Who is Courtney? Ladies arrive for a visit concerned by her odd behavior. Why is she acting like a character in a Jane Austen novel? 

Jane is indeed a stranger in a strange land. As her friends, or Courtney’s friends Paula, Anna and Wes, help her navigate through the technology of cell phones, CD players, washing machines and other trappings of our modern life it becomes les taxing. She relishes her privacy and independence to do as she chooses, indulging in reading the four new (to her) novels by Jane Austen that she discovers on Courtney’s bookshelf – one passion/addiction that she shares in common with her over the centuries. Between Jane Austen’s keen insights and the fortune teller called “the lady”, she might be able to make sense of this nonsensical world she has been thrown into. Is this the same fortune teller she met in Bath in her own life? She had warned her not to ride her horse. Or did she? Are her memories and Courtney’s one in the same? The lady tells her she has work to do to put Courtney’s life in order. Jane only wants to return to her former life and Charles Edgeworth, the estranged beau she left behind. 

Seeing our modern world from Jane’s nineteenth century eyes was quite revealing. I do not think that I will ever look at a television screen again without remembering her first reaction to the glass box with tiny people inside talking and dancing like characters from Pride and Prejudice! These quirky insights are what Rigler excels at, and her Regency era research and knowledge of Jane Austen plays out beautifully. We truly understand Jane’s reactions and sympathize with her frustrations. Not only is Rude Awakenings a comedy of lifestyle comparisons across the centuries, it supplies a very interesting look at modern courtship and romance with a bit of genteel feminisms thrown in for good measure. Interestingly, what principals and standards that Jane learned in the nineteenth century, will straighten out Courtney’s mixed up twenty-first century life at home, work and in her budding romance with Wes. 

Rude Awakenings is a cheeky comedy with a message. Like Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, it helps us to look at mistakes in our past, and reminds us that “time is fleeting, and few of us are fortunate enough to notice that there is always another chance at happiness.” I enjoyed the humor, fondly remembering why I became a Jane Austen Addict in the first place. 

5 out of 5 Regency Stars 

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, by Laurie Viera Rigler
Dutton (Penguin Group USA) 2009
Hardcover (293) pages
ISBN: 978-0525950769

Additional Reviews

• Stephanie’s Written Word
• The Jane Austen Review
• Genre Go Round Reviews

A bunch of books I forgot about

Forgot to add a bunch of books that I’ve read in the last week.

 

How to Ruin My Teenage Life -  Simone Elkeles

A sequel to How to Ruin A Summer Vacation.  Amy now lives with her father and is trying to cope with a boyfriend in a different country, setting her dad up on dates, having a new stepfather, and having to work.  As funny and touching as the first book.

 

Wasted – Marya Hornbacher

A memoir of a life of a bulimic and anoretic.  Honest and graphic.  At times, you want to put it down and not finish.  No details are held back. 

 

Prom Crashers – Eric Downing

A fluffy book about a girl who is trying to track down a cute boy she met.  She lost his phone number, but knows he’s attending is prom soon, so she hatches a plan to attend all the proms in the area as she didn’t get the name of the school cute boy attends.  A nice piece of fluff.

 

Birthday Blues – Anne Cassidy

Julia becomes friends with Tina while she (Julia) is buying a home pregnancy test.  One of them is pregnant and abandons Baby Bobby by the side of the road.  Who is the mother?  This book is great as the mystery of who is Bobby’s mother isn’t solved until almost the end of the book.

Dead Until Dark

Title: Dead Until Dark
Author: Charlaine Harris
Pages: 292
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Rating: 4.5/5

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much. Not because she’s not pretty. She is. It’s just that, well, Sookie has this sort of “disability.” She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He’s tall, dark, handsome – and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life…

But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of – big surprise – murder. And when one of Sookie’s coworkers is killed, she fears she’s next…

I’m assuming most have heard of the hit HBO series True Blood, and I’m assuming most of you are also aware that True Blood is based off of the Sookie Stackhouse series, a.k.a. The Southern Vampire Mysteries series. I’m now officially a fan of both.

I’m really glad I watched the first season of True Blood before reading Dead Until Dark. It makes it much easier to hear the characters voices in my head, and picture them. I normally like being able to make this all up myself, but I don’t mind it this time around. Probably because I don’t want to imagine another pathetically tragic Edward. Because this is much, much better than Twilight.

I like that the book wasted no time and got straight to the point. It moves much faster than the TV series, but there’s more time spent getting to know the characters and other small, invented sub-plots on the TV series. One of the things I missed in Dead Until Dark was Tara, and Lafayette. Lafayette exists in Dead Until Dark, but doesn’t play much of a role.

Harris has a unique writing style when it comes to the internal dialogue of Sookie. I didn’t feel like it was the typical internal thoughts found in most fictional books – it was much, much more realistic and personal.

One thing I feared was that it would turn into something a little too Anita Blake. Which is to say, sex, sex, and more sex. There’s sex, but not too much of it, and the story remains realistic and balanced.

I would recommend Dead Until Dark (and most likely the entire series) to anyone who already watches True Blood, or anyone who’s a fan of vampire fiction.

NEW SAUSAGE.

THE SAUSAGE.
A blog by “Morning Briefing” host Tim Farley.

“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion
as we know how they are made.” (John Godfrey Saxe)

JULY 2, 2009

Yesterday I sat down with Bradley Graham to talk about his new book, By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld. It’s a long but rewarding read about the controversial and enigmatic former Secretary of Defense. (Listen to a clip from my interview with Graham)

I’m also just about finished with The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works by Representative Henry Waxman (written with an assist from Joshua Green, Senior Editor at the Atlantic). And by the way, Rep. Waxman checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for testing after reporting that he wasn’t feeling so hot. I hope he’s better now.

The books are unrelated, but they both remind me how few areas of black and white exist in Washington, D.C. Competent people do stupid things, occasionally (but not always) partial good triumphs over fractional evil, and the “truth” (if such a thing can be singularized) is as evanescent.

Graham portrays Rumsfeld as brilliant, driven, occasionally petty, ambitious, loyal, and alternately intractable yet obsessed with change. Rep. Waxman characterizes lawmaking as an exercise in perseverance, patience, teamwork, and being able to apply legislative legerdemain or hard-nosed confrontation, depending on the circumstances.

Neither subject—the former SecDef nor lawmaking (see “sausage”)—can be captured with bullet points, and I’m surely oversimplifying here. Just do yourself a favor and take one (or both) on your next trip.

As I said, in the case of Graham, it had better be a l-ooooo-n-g trip. (We’re talking 700 pages.) But the destination makes it worth the drive. Waxman is a shorter journey, but also a satisfying one.

Book Review: Mummy Said The F-Word by Fiona Gibson

Mummy Said The F-Word is a book based around Caitlin Brown, a mother of 3 young children whose life is turned upside down when she accidentally finds out her husband Martin is having an affair with dopey Daisy from the water-cooling firm.

Cait kicks him out, and takes on single parenthood with gusto, relying on her best friend and single-dad Sam to share her woes. Cait soon finds she needs a job, and so ends up working as a agony aunt at her friend Millie’s magazine Bambino, and is convinced her doling out advice is fraud. But soon she starts getting emails from a man who signs his emails ‘R’….

I have to start the rest of the analysis by saying I really did adore this book. It was a riot from start to finish and I just could not put it down. The author Fiona Gibson has such a realistic way of writing that you are just sucked into the story and wanting to find out what Cait is going to do next. Cait’s first person narrative is hilarious and so easy to read, it is just chick-lit at its very best. As its written from Cait’s perspective, we hear a lot of anti-Martin remarks (and rightly so) as well as the hardships of parent-hood which any mum or dad up and down the country will recognise! Also, the agony letters to Cait through the magazine guarantee laughs as well – it does make you wonder whether people really send in these questions to magazines! Cait’s guilt over not being able to reply to them makes her human, I think I’d feel the same actually!

Cait is a very well-developed character and is a pleasure to read about, she’s a strong woman who clearly adores her children but feels somewhat a lone island after Martin’s departure. Martin is written as the hate-character in the book, for obvious reasons! He is quite spineless, especially in his treatment of his kids which is dire! Sam the next door neighbour pops up little and often, but is a nice character and you do get under-currents of something between him and Cait. Millie, the editor of Bambino, is just hilarious, especially in the fact that she edits a parenting magazine when she doesn’t have any children! Wonders never cease, hey?! The children are also written well, her youngest son Travis is hilarious and a bit like my Harry, mischievious but very loveable! Her daughter LOla isn’t about much but her eldest boy Jake plays an important rle later on in the book, and Gibson writes the trials and tribulations of both Cait and Jake incredibly well in those areas.

I think it’s the realism in this book which makes it so likeable. Gibson writes with a natural flair of parenting, its obvious that some of the things in this book have probably happened to her or her friends, as its just so realistic, and it made me laugh out loud! Tantrums in the shop over a sausage, pulling bugs out of the mud and various other child activties happen in this book, and I’ve already been through a few of them, which weren’t funny at the time, but reading them back is just hilarious! Cait’s honest commentary throughout also helps, with her at times at the end of her tether, showing us we can’t all be super-mum all the time! Parenting is a topic which is covered time and time again in the books these days, but this book stands out for me among the many titles on this topic out there, just for its laugh and readability, and for me that is pretty good!

I can honestly say this book was fantastic. It dove straight in there with its gritty plotline but quickly melted into its easy reading, pleasant narrative from a very likeable lead character whom you naturally grow very fond of throughout the book. Very realistic throughout, this book is a must-read for mums and dads out there, just so you know it happens to us all, and even for non-parents as a stark reality of what is to come! It’s hilarious, it’s fabulous reading and I must say that it is a must-read! A superb novel, I shall be hunting out more of Gibson’s work after reading this!

Rating: 5/5