Books
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Don't be alarmed by the title, which I think is in fact a bit alarming. It strikes our ears as crude, at least, and is the product of a time and place in which Jews were seen as foreign and held in some suspicion, sometimes hostility. The time and place was a small town in…
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(mild spoilers) This is the third book in the Olav Audunsson / Master of Hestviken tetralogy. (See this for comments on the second book.) It's in two parts, "The Parting of the Ways" and "The Wilderness." The first part is shorter and I take its title to refer primarily to Olav's parting from Ingunn. They were…
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This is the second book in Sigrid Undset's tetralogy which, depending on the translation, is called either The Master of Hestviken or Olav Audunsson. The latter title is from the newer translation by Tiina Nunnally, and is in my opinion a handier title, if only because it creates a justifiable symmetry between Undset's two great…
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I was discussing C.S. Lewis's Perelandra the other day with someone who considers it the weakest of Lewis's science fiction trilogy, in fact pretty much forgettable. I disagree, and find it eminently memorable. And one thing I always recall vividly is the opening, in which the narrator takes a twilight walk from a railway station to…
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The title belongs to an Agatha Christie novel and to a three-part television adaption of it which recently became available on BritBox, and which I strongly recommend to anyone who likes This Sort of Thing. The sort of thing is a murder mystery featuring: an English village in the early 20th century; much beautiful photography…
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My first impulse was to begin this post with "If you only read one book about Newman…." Then I realized that I'm not in a position to say that, as it is the only book about Newman that I've read. But I will say at least that I don't feel any need to read another.…
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Hence, loathed melancholy. Something like that is what I'm thinking when I pick up a Wodehouse book. And it works, for when I'm actually engaged in the reading loathed melancholy is banished to its uncouth cell. (See the opening of Milton's "L'Allegro.") I feel the way champagne looks. I can't remember where it occurs or even…
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To my taste there's not a great deal of charm in the writing of P.D. James, at least in comparison with some other female British writers of detective fiction. She's not the kind of writer who makes me think "that was a nice stroke" at some turn of phrase or bit of wit. There's a…
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This novel, by the editor of the Catholic literary magazine Dappled Things and published by the Catholic press Wiseblood Books, has gotten a good deal of favorable attention that's very much deserved. For several reasons, including the scripture reference in the title and the fact that it comes from an explicitly Catholic author and publisher,…
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There never was much chance that I would want to see this. As I've said before, probably to the point of tedium, in the end I was more negative than positive toward the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings, in spite of there being many good things about it. I won't bother to go into…
Light On Dark Water 