A Most Moving "Edwardian" Experience

Among the best viewing pleasures we have had with Netflix options in recent months has been the sterling ATV mini-series from 1975, "Edward the King" starring Annette Crosbie as Queen Victoria, Timothy West as the adult Edward VII, Robert Hardy as Prince Albert, Helen Ryan as Princess/Queen Alexandra, Michael Hordern as Gladstone, John Gielgud as Disraeli and many other superb performances.

Both Claire and I found the long series enthralling. It's certainly better than most when it comes to historical accuracy (being conscientiously based on Sir Philip Magnus' excellent biography) and, as thoughtful and compelling viewing, it would be very hard to top. The writing, acting, editing, sets all represented a level of excellence that moderns rarely reach.

The 13-episode series is currently available on the Netflix instant download feature or via CD discs. We couldn't recommend it more highly.

Dorothy Sayers Quotables

Reading a Dorothy Sayers' mystery yields not only the regular enjoyment one usually derives from a Golden Age detective novel (Christie, Marsh, Carr, Tey, Allingham, Queen) but the most delightful of asides to think about. Here are just a few examples I noted from a recent re-reading of Sayer's 1926 Lord Peter Wimsey novel, Clouds of Witness.

“Ah, well, as the old pagan said of the Gospels, after all, it was a long time ago, and we’ll hope it wasn’t true.”

“Must have facts,” said Lord Peter, “facts. When I was a small boy I always hated facts.  Thought of ‘em as nasty, hard things, all knobs. Uncompromisin’.”

"If all these new-fangled doctors went out of way to invent subconsciousness and kleptomania, and complexes and other fancy descriptions to explain away when people had done naughty things, she thought one might just as well take advantage of the fact.”

“Did you want to be a missionary in your youth?  I did.  I think most kids do some time or another, which is odd, seein’ how unsatisfactory most of us turn out.”

“My lords,” interjected Sir Impey, “if the learned Attorney-General considers the word murder to be a triviality, it would be interesting to know to what words he does attach importance.”

2011's Reading Review

I'm afraid that I read fewer books in 2011 than in probably any of the preceding 25 years or so.  A much-changed schedule, especially dictated by my mother’s condition and then the activities surrounding her long hospitalization and funeral in Colorado, made serious reading a rather rare thing.  I even missed several assignments of our monthly book club this year. 

But 2012 looks to be a bit of a comeback for reading. At least, I hope so.

The reading list of 2011 totaled only 40 books and it included included the re-readings of several favorite pleasure books (novels by John Buchan, Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Helen MacInnes, P.D. James) and the Notting Hill Napoleons’ selections.  Of the latter, however, there were only a few books I especially liked this year.  They would be Jeff Shaara’s Rise to Rebellion and The Glorious Cause, Rafael Sabatini’s The Lost King, Nevil Shute’s The Breaking Wave, and Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. 

There were some other gems from 2011 though.  Early in the year came Jack Niewold’s A Frail Web of Intention, a combination of autobiography, spiritual memoir and cultural history. You can read my review of the book on the Amazon page I link you to here.  It was a very provocative book from a fellow I’ve come to respect and like.  In April there was Laura Hillenbrand’s exquisite WWII history, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption – a fabulously interesting and inspiring story.  I also found Anna Segher’s novel about an escapee from a Nazi prison camp extremely touching and insightful.  I came across The Seventh Cross at an old book store last year (The book was first published in 1942) and I’m so glad I did. All of the above I'd give 5 stars.

Also in the mix this last year were a couple by Evelyn Waugh, Scoop and Those Vile Bodies.  I liked them both.  But another I read around the same time was uneven, philosophically weak, grimly depressing.  That book was Max Miller’s I Cover the Waterfront. 

1961: The Inside Story of the Maris-Mantle Home Run Chase by Phil Pepe was quite interesting and so too was Jerry C. Davis’ History of the College of the Ozarks, Miracle of the Ozarks: The Inspiring Story of Faith, Hope and Hard Work U.  But even more enjoyable were the re-reading of a few treasures – Richard Adams’ Watership Down, Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, and Thor Heyerdall’s Kon Tiki.

And before I close, there’s one more book from 2011 that deserves special mention. It’s How Does a Christian Profit from Tough Economic Times?  If you’re figuring that this doesn’t sound like the kind of book I’d be reading, you’d be right.  And I wouldn’t have looked twice at the book had I not noticed the author – Fr. Val Peter, the Executive Director Emeritus of Boy’s Town and an old friend and pro-life colleague.  I didn’t think Fr. Peter would be giving out advice about how to enlarge (or even protect) one’s portfolio and, sure enough, he didn't.  Indeed, the book is a spiritual treatise on the culture bred by materialism. 

Fr. Peter is a hard but fair and illuminating critic of selfishness, the sense of entitlement, debt, lotteries, credit card dependence and the various financial immoralities indulged in by Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington, D.C.  As correctives, Fr. Peter points to spiritual health, giving, family togetherness, thrift, patience, simplified lifestyles and public virtue.  It’s a short book but an excellent one – and, in those brief pages, he packed as much food for thought as almost anything else I read this year.

So, there (excluding the reading I must do for Vital Signs Blog and the various studies in preparation for Sunday's sermons) is my 2011 reading in quick review. Feel free to send along any gems (or clunkers) from your experiences too. I'd love to read -- and share -- them.

Comparing Christmas Stories to the Real Thing

Do "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life" have anything in common?

And, beside being set at Christmastime, do they have anything in common with the all-too-true history of what happened in Bethlehem on the night of our Lord's advent?

Gina Dalfonzo over at BreakPoint thinks so. And she just might add an important new perspective to your reading and viewing these Christmas classics.  Check it out right here.

The Surprising Dakota Christmas

Conservative writer and editor Joseph Bottum has a surprising hit on his hands, Dakota Christmas, a warm-hearted holiday reminiscence that has soared to the Number One slot among Kindle readers. And, in so doing, Dakota Christmas represents a challenging phenomena to traditional publishers.

My opinion of Dakota Christmas? I'll have to let you know because I just ordered it a few minutes ago.

In the meantime, here's Patrick Hruby in the Washington Times:

A writer loses a plum magazine-editing job in New York City, decamping to his native South Dakota. Out of the blue, a major online publisher asks him to adapt and expand an 11-year-old piece about his holiday memories. The resulting essay, warm and wise, becomes a surprise electronic best-seller - topping works by authors such as Nicholas Sparks and Tom Clancy - and a small beacon of hope for a beleaguered profession struggling to survive in the digital age.

“It’s been sweet,” said Joseph Bottum, who has recently lived that scenario. “What else could one want for a Christmas piece?”

A freelance writer and former editor at the conservative religious journal First Things, Mr. Bottum is the author of “Dakota Christmas,” a top seller for Amazon’s Kindle, an electronic reader and e-bookstore.

By turns serious and comic, the piece offers a richly detailed, loosely chronological account of Mr. Bottum’s bookish boyhood on the Dakota plains, reflecting on both the spiritual and secular meanings of the holiday season in a sentimental, melancholic manner...

Read on to learn more about Dakota Christmas and about the new life being experienced by the author and his family. And then go right here and purchase a (very inexpensive) Kindle copy of Dakota Christmas to enliven your own holiday season.

Andy Willams Talks About His TV Christmas Shows

Books for Christmas -- Suggestions for Kids

Over at Breakpoint, a few of the contributing writers (among them, Gina Dalfonzo and Kim Moreland) have put together a list of "books to buy your kids at Christmas." Not having read (or even heard of) most of the recommended titles, I don't have much to comment on. Nevertheless, for you parents and grandparents looking for some ideas, I figured you'd do well to check it out. They're smart, principled people over there.

However, reading their lists encouraged me to drop in a few suggestions of my own. Ready?

For little kids (of all ages), you can't go wrong with the Winnie the Pooh books by A.A. Milne; the Freddy the Pig series by Walter Brooks; The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; the collected fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm; or stories about such heroes as Robin Hood and the Knights of the Round Table.

As these kids grow older, toss in C. S. Lewis' Narnia series; Arthur Conan Doyle; Laura Ingalls Wilder; Robert Louis Stevenson; Robinson Crusoe; Peter Pan; Jules Verne; John Buchan; James Herriot; O. Henry; and biographies of missionaries, explorers and warriors.

By the time they are in their mid teens, let's hope they've become acquainted with J.R.R. Tolkien; Randy Alcorn's fiction; G.K. Chesterton's poetry and his Father Brown series; Louisa May Alcott; G.A. Henty; Charles Dickens; Alexandre Dumas; Thor Heyerdahl; Rafael Sabatini; and plenty of history books. In the latter category, please be sure and include Shelby Foote, Samuel Eliot Morrison and Walter Lord.

Happy Christmas shopping. And don't feel bad that you're going to go out and order the books for your kids that you really want to read too! Literature should promote sharing!

A Review of Wait No More

Among our most respected and long-term friends are John & Kelly Rosati, Christian pro-life colleagues who we have known since their time in Nebraska -- before John's service in the Air Force and Kelly's service for Focus on the Family took them to Hawaii, Wisconsin, Hawaii again and Colorado. They are a very impressive couple: smart, caring, and visionary.

John & Kelly's new book, Wait No More: One Family's Amazing Adoption Journey, was a project they were asked to write by Kelly's Focus on the Family colleagues. It was a labor of love about an even greater labor of love; namely, raising a family of adopted children. I'm almost sure you will find the book as interesting and inspiring as I did...

Read the rest of Claire Hartford's comments right here.

All I Want for Christmas Is A Good Book (Or Two)

One of my favorite places to go during the weeks leading up to Christmas is the American Spectator's annual survey of book recommendations. The magazine draws in suggestions from noted "readers and writers," creating an article I always find interesting and from which I always find a few titles to pick up on. In fact, during the years before the internet, the December issue of the hard copy magazine was my favorite and it served as an inspiration for me to create a similar service on the radio program I did in those years. People still tell me that these programs (shows where I shared the book recommendations of writers, preachers, musicians, politicians, housewives, etc) were among the most memorable in our 13 years.

But anyhow, back to the American Spectator's collection for Christmas 2011. This year's recommendations come from such people as Doug Bandow, Mark Tooley (a fellow who frequently is linked in Vital Signs Blog posts), Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Sean Hannity, film director Ron Maxwell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Florida Congressman Allen West. Go on over and check 'em out.

Really Good "Bad" Writing

Claire and I, former teachers that we are, got a big laugh out of this collection of Really Bad Analogies that came from stories written by high school students. I think you will as well. Remembering papers I've graded back in the day, I fear that a few of these lines may be "quite innocently" bad. But I'm sure you'll agree that most of them are so cleverly, exquisitely bad that the writer just had to have done it on purpose. Raymond Chandler, eat your heart out.

Let me drop in right here a few of my favorites and you can go on over and find yours.

* Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

* He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.

* He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

* The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

* He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

* The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

* The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

* Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.

* They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”

* It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.