Weekly Links: Wodehouse, Tolkien, and more!

Guarding the good reading...

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

(I should note: I've skipped posting this for a few weeks, but I was still collecting links, so this week's version is super-long. Sorry!)

(Note the second: if you want some good fictional reading, please take a look at my short story "An Anonymous Source" in Havok's Heroes vs. Villains edition. Hope you enjoy it!)

 

Faith 

-"Association Between Religious Service Attendance and Lower Suicide Rates Among US Women".

-"The Evangelical Gender Crack-Up" - There's so much good stuff here.

-"Individuality: a fresh concept":

You see what’s going on here? The prophet’s audience, the Jews of the Babylonian exile, find it hard to understand how anyone – let alone God – would not want to punish a son for his father’s wrongdoing. And vice versa. Acting in any other way seems to them not only stupid, but positively unjust. What we see happening here is a major cultural shift. A brand new idea in human history, imported from outside our world.

-"The Distressing Disguise of the Slut".

-"'We Know that We Are Going To Be Killed': An Interview with an Iraqi Priest".

-"Donald Trump, Man of Faith" - particularly this bit:

...the gloomy aspect of traditional Christian practice is also the wellspring of Christian compassion. At the moment a Christian asks for forgiveness, he must acknowledge his own weakness and look mercifully on the weakness of others. In the Our Father, the Christian asks that he be forgiven, just as he in turn forgives. From the holy terror that Peale called “fear thoughts” comes the light of Christian love.

Family 

-An older article that might be good to revisit this week: "How silence can breed prejudice: A child development professor explains how and why to talk to kids about race".

-"I'm Good With Whatever: The High Price of People Pleasing".

-"Because Life Doesn't Give Do-Overs".

Fiction

- "On Writing Negative Reviews" - I have to agree: negative reviews can be incredibly useful to the reader. And, I'd argue, to the author as well. I know I've read negative book reviews and thought, "The reviewer might not like that, but I'd love it," and gone ahead and picked up the book.

-"All In": On giving it everything, every time you write.

-"Interviews: P.G. Wodehouse" - just delightful.

-"Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year": I'm going to try. I truly am. Only 83 to go...

-"The Magic of the Lord of the Rings Books":

My favorite book began with a disappointment: The hero disappeared at the end of its first chapter...

-"Belle's Fairy Tale Education: Learning Virtue in Disney's Beauty and the Beast": a lovely meditation on the value of fairy tales, as seen in my favorite Disney movie ever.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

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Bertie Wooster on Napping

The kids are home from school, the last candle on the Advent wreath is lit, and I just read the perfect description of what I want out of my Christmas vacation:

It was with something of the emotions of one preparing a treat for a deserving child that I finished my tea and rolled over for the extra spot of sleep which just makes all the difference when there is a man's work to be done and the brain must be kept clear for it.   

-from "Right Ho, Jeeves", by P. G. Wodehouse

Ah . . . sleep. Rest. And then good work and play, at home, in the company of those I love. If the Lord is willing and Christ tarry.

Dear ones, may your days - your next few, especially - be merry and bright!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

I recently read a top 100 list of the best first lines in fiction*. And while it got some things right - chiefly, it managed to include "There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it" - I can't help but think it was incomplete without this gem:

"As I sat in the bath tub, soaping a meditative foot and singing, if I remember correctly, 'Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar,' it would be deceiving my public to say that I was feeling boomps-a-daisy."

Ah, Mr. Wodehouse. I lift my glass to thee.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

*I'm sorry, I can't remember where.

links! Dr. Seuss, P. G. Wodehouse and religion in sci fi

Here's a good reflection on religion in science fiction: how it can be done badly, how it can be done well, and why it isn't done as much as it should be.
Ooooh . . . Peace Hill Press, the folks who brought you The Well-Trained Mind and The Story of the World, is releasing a Bible curriculum next year. Want!
This analysis of Dr. Seuss' great work Green Eggs and Ham is funny in its own right, but I have to admit that I like it most because it assures me that I am not the only person who has to restrain her snickers when reading the line, "I would not, could not, with a goat."
See, this is why Chip MacGregor's blog is so worth reading. (Link includes discussion of P. G. Wodehouse, so you know it's good.)
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book 9 of 15: Carry On, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

"Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to smiling." -from Carry On, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

Ah, this was the perfect antidote to yesterday's slog. This was a book of ten stories about Wooster and Jeeves by the king of comic writers, P. G. Wodehouse. By the last few pages of the first story, Jeeves had extricated Wooster from an engagement to a young lady intent on improving the tone of Wooster's mind. Jeeves somberly told his master, ". . . it was [the young lady's] intention to start you almost immediately upon Nietzsche. You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound."
And that was the point at which, for me, "the sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more." I settled down for an enjoyable time, and an enjoyable time is exactly what I had.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell