Saturday Good Reads - Oct. 14, 2023

It’s literary prize season, and the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse. You’re not going to read in most, if not all, mainstream media reports, but Fosse is known as both a writer and a Catholic writer. Merve Emre at The New Yorker wrote a brief profile, while John Wilson at Prufrock finds some reasons to be encouraged by many of the prizewinners.  

In September, we has the great good fortune of being able to see the new exhibition at London’s National Gallery of Art, “Frans Hals.” One of his best-known paintings is “The Laughing Cavalier,” but the entire exhibition was rather wonderful. William Cook at The Spectator enjoyed the exhibition as well, and he wrote about Hals’ sense of fun. 

 

If you’re interested in intelligent, thoughtful book reviews, including those of classic books, you might consider Joel Miller, who writes his Miller’s Book Reviews column on Substack. This past week, two posts in particular were well done – The Strange(r) Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and G.K. Chesterton: The Man Behind the Fence.

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

Processing: How Dan Sinykin Wrote Big Fiction – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft. 

 

In Search of Writer’s Haunts – Drug Bruns at The Millions.

 

The Immense Appeal of Ordinary Characters – Lou Berney at CrimeReads. 

 

So you want to be a writer – poem by Charles Bukowski.

 

British / Irish Stuff

 

Raped by the IRA – Josephine Bartosch at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poetry

 

Why the Russian Protest Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky Still Matter Today – Philip Metres at Literary Hub.

 

Poetry Pairs, 5: “Some One” and UT Tower Shooting, 1966 – Megan Willome at Poetry for Life. 

 

The Colour of Dreams in Cryonic Sleep – Roger Hare at Ice Floe Press.

 

Art

 

How museum guides are being enlisted in the US culture wars – Julia Halperin at The Art Newspaper.

 

Raining – watercolor by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Faith

 

Psalms for Men Who Are Struggling – Scott Slayton at One Degree to Another.

 

Today’s Defining Question: What is a Human? – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

The Light Never Fades – Kristin Couch at The Palest Ink.

 

American Stuff

 

The Dusty Bookshelf: The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style – Max Longley at Emerging Civil War.

 

Culture

 

Campus Cowardice and Where the Buck Stops – Bari Weiss at The Free Press.

 

Hold On – Katy Nichole

 Painting: Lady Reading by a Window, oil on canvas by Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856-1916). 

Waiting

After 2 Peter 3:9 

We wait on a promise,

a promise to be fulfilled,

a promise spoken and

unspoken from

the beginning. Waiting

is not an acceptable word

in our vocabularies. Yes,

we believe. Of course,

we believe. But can’t it

happen now? The years

become decades, become

centuries, become 

millennia, and yes, we

believe, but when, when

will it be time? We don’t

understand why it’s so

slow, why it takes so long,

almost as if you want all

to be saved, none to perish,

all to repent, none to be 

left behind, all to be

embraced, all to walk

in the light.

 

Photograph by Zhu Liang via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Zeal – poem by Sofia Starnes at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

Forgiveness in the Foam – Dwayne Sheridan at An Unexpected Journal.

 

Israel, Palestine, Hamas and Some Things That Are True at the Same Time – Eric Geiger.

"The Rise" by Ian Rankin

The Rise is a luxury residential building facing London’s Hyde Park. Units start at about 10 million pounds. To no one’s surprise, while all of its residences are owned, few are occupied. Corporations own a few for investments. Foreigners own a few as safe havens. The developer lives in a penthouse on the top floor. 

When the body of the security guard (called a “concierge”) is found in the lobby, the suspects look to be a relatively small group of people. A Middle Eastern princess and her bodyguards. The building’s developer. The wife of a known and much-sought gangster. A young actress whose best days may already be behind her. A Russian oligarch.

 

Detective Sergeant Gish pulls the night call for the murder. She’s working with Detective Inspector Jack Milton, a few months from retirement. Their investigation takes them into the worlds of art, gangsters, crime, affairs, and more. And it is Gish who will slowly but methodically discover what happened. 

 

The Rise is a short story by acclaimed Scottish writer Ian Rankin, author of the Detective John Rebus stories. While it’s described as a short story, it might be more accurate to call it a short-short novel. At 86 pages, it’s one long short story.

 

Ian Rankin

Rankin is an international No. 1 bestselling crime novelist and the author of 40 books, including John Rebus novels, short stories, non-fiction, and other works. He’s received an Edgard Award, a Gold Dagger Award for fiction, a Diamond Dagger Award for career excellence, and the Chandler-Fulbright Award (an international award funded by the estate of detective writer Raymond Chandler). He lives in Edinburgh.

 

Short story or short-short novel, The Rise is an entertaining and gripping story. One wonders if it’s the beginning of a new detective series. If so, it will be something of a branching out from Rankin’s home territory of Scotland, the setting for his Rebus stories and novels. It has the classic Rebus touches – the plodding and exhaustive police investigation, the back alleyways those investigations can discover, and something of a surprise ending.

 

Related:

 

Ian Rankin’s Standing in Another Man’s Grave.

 

Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Gaza Hostage Crisis is an American Hostage Crisis – Armin Rosen at The Free Press.

 

Murders for October – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine on new mystery novels. 

 

Watney Market and Watney Street, Shadwell – A London Inheritance.

Some Wednesday Readings

A Song of Lament for Israel – poem by James Tweedie at Society of Classical Poets. 

Uses and Abuses of History – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review talks with historian Thomas Kidd. 

 

“A Brave and Gallant Officer”: Colonel Thomas M. Griffin in the 18^th Mississippi – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War. 

 

The Man from Porlock Poetry Challenge – Society of Classical Poets.

Photograph by Jared Craig via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Watching "The Two Towers" at Royal Albert Hall

I have to confess. I am a Ringhead.  

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in high school, using what came to be known as the “pirated Ace editions.” I read the authorized versions about six years later. About 2000, when I learned that director Peter Jackson was making film versions, I read the books again. And then, four years ago, I read the books yet again. 

 

These wonderful stories never get old. They never seem dated. Each time I’ve read them, I’ve discovered something new. And I continued to be awed by the imagination that created them. 

I’m not alone. Facebook groups about the author and his works draws tens f thousands. Tolkien and his works are some of a book-publishing industry. Sitting on my desk right now, in all of its 938-page glory, is the recently published The History of the Hobbit by Tolkien scholar John Rateliff. I’ve deliberately put off reading it to delay the reading pleasure I know is coming.  

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Drop-in by Hélène Demetriades – Nigel Kent, Poet and Reviewer.

Poetry at Home – Jane Clark Scharl at Plough. 

Two Poems in the Style of Robert Frost – Dusty Grein at Society of Classical Poets. 

"A Killer in the Wings" by Benedict Brown

Christopher Prentiss’s former bully / old school friend Marmaduke rushes to Lord Edgington’s estate to find his friend and the lord, once a chief detective at Scotland Yard. Marmaduke, an aspiring actor, has been rehearsing his small role a play in London’s West End. A bizarre accident has happened – an actor has been killed during rehearsal by a stage prop -- an old suit of armor with an ax. 

The retired detective and his grandson accompany Marmaduke to London and work with the police. It appears to have been an accident, but Lord Edgington suspects otherwise, and Christopher finds the evidence. As they investigate, they discover a tangled web of motives, past histories, jealousies, and strong emotions. The difficulty is separating reality from what the actors in a play normally do – project strong emotions. Slowly they realize that someone in the cast or crew seems to be following the plot of the play itself as a guide – and it’s a murder mystery.

 

Benedict Brown

A Killer in the Wings is the 11^th Lord Edgington mystery by British author Benedict Brown, and it’s something of a breakthrough for two reasons. First, it happens almost entirely with central London (no country estates home in this one). Second, Lord Edgington is deliberately leading and misleading Christopher into solving the crime itself. And the young man will do exactly that (not without a few false starts and blind alleys). 

 

In addition to the Lord Edgington stories, Brown has written seven Izzy Palmer mystery novels and three novellas. A native of south London, he lives with his family in Spain. The Lord Edgington mysteries are likely aimed at both the general reader as well as the young adult audience. And they’re well-researched stories, full of information about the mid-1920s.

 

A Killer in the Wings includes the author’s usual humor and detailed descriptions of scenes such at the Hotel Savoy on the Strand, Leicester Square, a West End theatre, the area of London known as Little Venice, and more. It’s an entertaining story, and it’s fun to cheer on Christopher as he officially solves two murders on his own. 

 

Related:

 

Murder at the Spring Ball by Benedict Brown.

 

A Body at a Boarding School by Benedict Brown.

 

The Mystery of Mistletoe Hall by Benedict Brown.

 

 Death on a Summer’s Day by Benedict Brown.

 

The Tangled Treasure Trail by Benedict Brown.

 

The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts by Benedict Brown.

 

The Crimes of Clearwell Castle by Benedict Brown.

 

The Snows of Weston Moor by Benedict Brown.

 

What the Vicar Saw by Benedict Brown.

 

Blood on the Banisters by Benedict Brown.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Today is Israel’s 9/11 – Bari Weiss at The Free Press.

 

Things Worth Remembering: A Time of War – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

The (American) Revolution in the Hudson Highlands – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

An unpublished interview with Gabriel Garcia Marquez – El Pais. 

 

Classical Education’s Aristocracy of Anyone – Micah Meadowcraft at AEI National Affairs.

Which is cleaner

After Luke 11:37-44 

A question for the ages:

which is cleaner,

the unwashed hands

or the unwashed heart?

Another way to ask it:

what are we more

concerned with, dirty 

hands or dirty heart? Or

what is more important,

to wash our hands or

to cleanse our hearts

of anger, lust, greed,

murder, desire, idolatry?

The man answered

the question two

millennia past, and

the answer is still

the same.

 

Photograph by McKenna Phillips via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Encircled, Enclosed, Squeezed In – Glenna Marshall. 

 

What No Eye Has Seen – Lee Hutchings.