Supposed Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, etc, etc.

1. The Horse and His Boy (C.S. Lewis)
2. Velvet Elvis (Rob Bell)
3. Surprised By Hope (N.T. Wright)
4. Women, Slaves and Homosexuals (William J. Webb)
5. Gardens of the Moon (Steven Erikson)
6. The Darkness the Comes Before (R. Scott Bakker)
7. A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
8. The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)
9. Salt (Adam Roberts)
10. Blindsight (Peter Watts)
11. Dune (Frank Herbert)
12. Endless Love (Scott Spencer)
13. Collected Poems (Paul Auster)
14. New Collected Poems (Mark Strand)
15. Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)

HT to Chris Hubbs on this one. I tag no-one.

Mississauga Library just emailed me that Anathem is ready to pick up.

I’ll be unreachable tonight. Awesome!

Holy crap… Vernor Vinge has posted the entirety of his book, Rainbow’s End, online. So you can read it for free. And you should, because it will expand your mind. Despite its many, many flaws, Rainbow’s End is one of those books (along with Snow Crash, Accelerando, and another book I can’t remember right now) whose enormous breadth of vision can take your breath away. Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Attribution and License for the above photo.

I’ve been visiting the Library lately, catching up on my reading before the holiday seasons hits as it inevitably will with titanic force (and by titanic, I refer to the original Titans, not the ill-fated ship). Even though it takes longer, sometimes a lot longer, to get the books I want, it’s free, and Mississauga has a nicely-implemented online catalogue; right now I have

• Away: A Novel
• Gomorrah
• I Am America (And So Can You!)
• The Kite Runner
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• A Thousand Splendid Suns
• Water For Elephants
• The World Without Us

on hold. Most of which I should have my hands on relatively soon. In the meantime, I’ve read a few books I’d like to tell you about.

The Book of Illusions, by Paul Auster, is an exploration of what happens when extreme grief strikes and an accidental obsession spills out. Like most Auster, it’s an odd combination of interesting observation and illusive characterisation. Which, I imagine, sounds a bit like I’m just making things up. If you read Paul Auster, though, I think you’ll know what I mean. And if you read Paul Auster, you’ll know this isn’t one of his strongest outings. It’s worth reading, yes; but it’s not a must-read.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, is a vampire story. When you think of vampire stories, stately is not the first thing that comes to mind. The Historian is just that, though: at one stately, reserved, and really, really interesting. You should read this one.

Primary Inversion, by Catheriner Asaro, is probably one of the worst sci-fi debacles I have ever stopped reading after 20 pages. It had a cool cover, and the jacket implied it had some cool ideas, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say both were dreadful lies. The writing is so pedestrian you can almost imagine how many editors blanched whilst reading the manuscript; on one page I noticed eleven (eleven!) references to people laughing, grinning, and smiling. All this in on extended dialogue. I imagine the people talking must have been grotesque in their never-ending jocularity, their lips forever stretching in a simulacrum of a smile, never able to achieve any other expression in the readers’ minds. Don’t read this book, whatever you do. Please. Think of the children.

Rule the Web, by Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder of Boing Boing, is a well-written introduction to the internet, or at least the most-visited subsection of the internet, the web. This book will be outdated in two years, so read it fast. If you consider yourself familiar with how the internet works, and what you can do with it, don’t bother. If you are reading this in 2009 and you’re pretty good at this interweb stuff, don’t bother. I’m sure O’Reilly has come out with a Web 4.0 Croudsynergy guide you’re like better.

Sound Designs: A Handbook of Musical Instrument Building, by Reinhold Banek, is just what it sounds like. Light on theory, heavy on implementation, this book isn’t really what I was looking for. But if you’re into building stuff, you might want to give this puppy a spin. If you’re into any other kind of sound design, this is not the book for you.

Travels in the Scriptorium, by Paul Auster, happens to come in at half the length of The Book of Illusions. It manages to be, in those few pages, much, much more rewarding. Paul Auster has always struck me as a sort of Lynchian literary figure, and Travels is where his weirdness shines, where the creepiness he can induce ebbs and flows. Beware, if you like books with resolution, this is not for you.

Vacuum Diagrams, by Stephen Baxter, proves relentlessly depressing. Baxter, while a good writer, pens a future history of the human race that becomes more bleak as the book goes one. The book, by the way, is essentially a bunch of short stories and vignettes tied together with baler twine Baxter calls “Eve”. I want to like this volume, but I really don’t. I read the whole thing cover to cover, and though I appreciate the scope of his vision (and appreciate that a lot of writers like Kevin J. Anderson, in the Saga of Seven Suns, have cribbed ideas from this book), I pretty much hate his vision and hate his implementation. That’s not to say you won’t find value in this book. I did and didn’t. You may or may not. That said, I’ve never read a future history of the human race that did a good job; I’m not sure it can be done. Either the separate stories become fragmented and your investment in the characters wanes, or the author’s vision overwhelms him and he ends the book with some contrived crap ex machina. For an example of the latter, read Charles Stross’s Accelerando, otherwise a wonderful book.

I constantly marvel at the unbroken stream of offal emanating from Christian bookstores. Constantly. Now, I don’t like to be sexist, but it seems, from my experience at least, so take this with a grain of salt, that most of these books are bought by well-meaning but gullible women.

In church this Sunday I saw one of these woman with a book by Bruce Wilkinson, something to do with unlocking the secrets of abundance of some such. If sounding curiously like prosperity gospel isn’t bad enough, the cover of the book had three — THREE — trademark symbols on it, as if they meant to be remarkably clear that the secrets of abundance somehow involve having your own brand name and an enterprise whose mission is essentially to hoodwink people who have stopped using whatever critical skills they may have ever possessed.

All this is a preface to a little passage I read this morning, when I picked up a book called “Getting Anger Under Control”. Which, I might add, is a pretty noble sentiment and a good idea, etc etc. The only problem being I never actually got to read the book because the dedication in the front — the first few sentences — actually blew my mind. I mean, I’ve got a gasket loose in here now. I’m dazed and confused.

So, I’ve reproduced the passage verbatim, as is my fair use right:

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, occurred as we were doing the final editing of this book … Americans responded in disbelief and wondered how this could happen to us, a peace-loving nation. But what was intended to dishearten and destroy us took a different turn. It brought out a heroic spirit of brotherhood and revealed that the church is still the soul of America … These deplorable acts of violence brought about a righteous indignation that caused our country to unite against godless terrorism.

There’s so much wrong with that little paragraph that I won’t even address the things I bolded up there (yes, that was me), except to ask this: Is that really what Americans think of themselves? Really?

I assure you not a single other nation on the face of the earth, including their beloved allies to the north, and their “special relationship” allies over the pond, thinks of America a peace-loving nation. Nor do they think that the church is the nation’s soul, or if they do, it scares the living daylights out of them.

And, in the last analysis, it would be hard to explain why America declaring war on “godless” terrorism is anything more than rank hypocrisy.

I’ve been reading some fiction, but more than that a couple nonfic theological books I checked out of the church library (which is a really funny library, by the way). They are: What Is Reformed Theology, and a book explaining the theology of a Christian Sabbath. I don’t remember the name of the latter.

In any case, I really appreciate WiRT, as I do most books by RC Sproul; especially when he explains the difference between the study of religion and the study of theology, not to mention the distinctive Reformed theological trait he develops, that Reformed theology is primarily concerned with the God. Every other point flows from that viewpoint, and as a staunchly Reformed young man myself, I cannot but agree.

The second book isn’t as well-written; it still puzzles me how so many books about the Christian Sabbath can start off as a polemic, when they really should start as a celebration. One of the best things going for Sabbath theology as exposited today, a rather recent innovation in Reformed and Presbyterian circles from what I can ascertain, is its focus on and celebration of a coming and extant kingdom represented in a future and present day of rest. But as you move past the “greedy people who want to turn Sabbath into every other day” bits, it’s a really rewarding book. Even if you don’t agree with the idea of a Christian Sabbath or a day of rest as a creation ordinance (Luther certainly didn’t, and Calvin did or didn’t depending on whether you read his exposition of Exodus or his Institutes), it’s a good introduction to why people make such a big deal out of things like the “Lord of the Sabbath” quote.

Whilst reading Paulo Coelo’s novel “The Pilgrimage”, I am struck by the many pithy, insightful, and plain resonant things he touches on. The problem is his approach, so very different from my own, from the one I consider to be right.

Ironically, this is a question the book deals with, among others. How is it that two people traveling radically different paths can arrive at the same destination? And how is it that a man walking down the wrong road can get to some place of truth before the man taking the right one?

This is how life goes – we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord’s. I need to bear this in mind.

From “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson.

…it would be better merely to suffer as I had in the past, when other people I loved had left me. I would be better just to lick my wounds, as I had also done in the past. For a while, I’ll think obsessively about her, I’ll become embittered … I’ll try to justify what happened, spend days and night reviewing every moment spent by her side … When I walk down the street, I’ll keep seeing women who could be her. I’ll suffer day and night, night and day. This could take weeks, months, possibly a year or more.

Until one morning, I’ll wake up and find I’m thinking about someone else, and then I’ll know the worst is over. My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing the beauty of life once more. It’s happened before, it will happen again, I’m sure. When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive …

I want to believe that it is wonderful to be free. Free again. Ready to find my one true love, who is waiting for me and who will never allow me to experience such humiliation again.

Masterful. The quote is from Paulo Coelho’s latest book, The Zahir. It is also complete bullshit.

There must be something in the water here in Canada, seeing how so many great High Fantasy novelists come from this country. See, High Fantasy isn’t a terribly over-populated genre, as it appeals to a select few. But it seems as if – along with female pop vocalists – Canadians are over-represented. I present for your consideration just three High Fantasy novelists who are not only Canadian, but are also in posession of enviable skill.

• Guy Gavriel Kay and his series, The Fionavar Tapestry. Although that series isn’t my favorite, another of his books, Tigana, is in my top 20 fantasy novels ever.
• Steven Erikson with the Malazan Book of the Fallen (a ten-book sequence, some still unwritten). Almost every book in the series is gold. Read it.
• R. Scott Bakker and The Prince of Nothing, a trilogy completed just this year. Four more books are – possibly – in the planning stages. I personally can’t wait.

Seriously, folks. If you do nothing else in literature this year, read The Darkness That Comes Before, Gardens of the Moon, and Tigana. I’ll bet the pork barrel you’re glad you did.