Ed. Toby Forward & David Johnson, The Spiritual Quest of Francis Wagstaffe, 1994.

The book is a very funny series of letters from a "Francis Wagstaffe" to various bishops in the Church of England, and the responses of those bishops.

Most of the letters revolve around Francis's offer to let all those CofE-ers disillusioned by the upcoming move to ordain female priests join the church that he bought (by purchase thus becoming Archbishop, Primate, and Metropolitan of the Old Northern Catholick Church of East Riding). At any rate, from advice about toupees to getting gun salutes for his investiture to starting television programmes--Baywatch, only with people on missions in swimsuits instead of lifeguards--to casting about for advice, the humour in this collection was enough to keep me in fits. The solicitude and engagement of the bishops who wrote back is quite impressive indeed.

Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier.

I came across this book because of a review in Salon that talked about one of the character's approaches to Christianity:

When Embi insists to Jón the importance of delivering sermons, at least at Christmas and other ceremonial occasions, the pastor answers: "Oh, no, better to be silent. That is what the glacier does. That is what the lilies of the field do." As Embi only incompletely and reluctantly realizes, Jón is a Christian mystic of the old school, convinced that shoeing and feeding horses pertains more to "the cure of souls" than preaching the gospel. In shuttering the church and turning to the outdoors, repairing farm implements and living off donated fish and bread, he is returning his religion to its ancient roots.

The line about the glacier being silent made me decide to read the book. I decided to love it when I read another line, later in the novel: "Whoever does not live in poetry cannot survive here on earth."

It's a weird book. A young man, a theology student, is sent as an emissary of the bishop (Embi) to investigate what's going on in the parish near Snæfells glacier, where the church is apparently borded up. The student is told to listen to the people, to ask questions, and not to argue--but mostly, not to make up his mind about anything, but merely to record what he encounters.

The people are very strange--from the house-keeper, who feeds Embi only cakes and coffee, to the poet who's a little to fond of modern kitchen counter surfaces, to the pastor who wishes to fix things, to the man who finds horses--only to leave them to go looking for others, to women who disappear, to almost-Buddhists, to new agers who believe in bioinduction... All in all, Embi is frustrated at every turn, to the point of falling in love with a mysterious & disappearing dead woman.

You will find this book odd, if you decide to pick it up. The sparse elegance of the characterizations and the dialogue kept me compelled by the book. Its odd subject matter is intriguing, and though it's hardly riveting in a traditional sense, it's a book not to be abandoned, and well worth picking up.

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, 2003.

Archbishop Williams gave the 2001 John Main Seminar Lectures on "the wisdom of the desert"--that is, what's relevant about the Desert Fathers for our faith today.

The book is the edited versions of those lectures, plus a Question and Answer session, that discuss four principal ideas with which the Archbishop engages: neighbours, silence, flight, and stability. Williams starts each lecture with a saying from the desert fathers, understands the saying in its context, and then deals with what it can impart today. As he goes through his lectures, he hits on ideas of vocation and ministry, of what it means to be a member of the church, and of what it means for one's decisions and attitudes to be a follower of G-d.

The Archbishop is compelling; each point he makes is hard indeed to refute, and I found myself increasingly convinced by his arguments. The one flaw of the book is that it feels like a series of talks rather than like a book: two many colloquialisms or standard modes of speech remain that should have been excised.

For people unfamiliar with the Desert Fathers, this book serves as a wonderful introduction, better perhaps than Merton's The Wisdom of the Desert--my copy of which I can't for the life of me find--at helping a newcomer to enter the tradition of the Fathers. It would be nice if the book had more of their sayings; readers are going to want to find a copy of Merton's Wisdom or Sister Benedicta Ward's The Sayings of the Desert Fathers if they want to spend some extended time with the thoughts of the Fathers.

Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library, 2005.

Fasman's thriller blends two plots: a contemporary murder mystery, and the sinister recovery of a number of objects related to alchemy. Or, as the blurb from Penguin's webpage about the book puts it, "competing visions of an obscure professor's life take a young reporter from a sleepy New England town to the heart of an international smuggling ring that may hold the secret to eternal life."

The images that the objects provide, and their interpretations, may be the most intriguing part of the book, but the book takes far too long to read for those alone. The contemporary murder mystery is plodding and far from satisfactory in its resolution; the only compelling portion of that tale is the characterization--particularly of the main character, Paul Todd.

All in all, this book seems to be in the vein of the The Rule of Four and The DaVinci Code: it's chosen interesting subject material, and done not enough interesting story-telling around it.

Stephen Coonts, Liars and Thieves, 2004.

More of the same from Coonts. Less good than the others.

James W. Huston, Flash Point, 2000.

The roommate of a Navy fighter pilot--Tomcats--is killed by terrorists in Israel; the pilot retaliates, writes to the Hill, gets war declared on the terrorists, bombs them, gets shot down, etc. Predictable, and plotted a little too loosely. Some fun, but not convincing enough for me to read anything else by Huston.

Stephen Coonts,
America, 2001,
Liberty, 2003.

Hm. Well, that's all of the published Jake Grafton novels; now we can move onto something else.
America is the story that revolves around stolen submarines, plots to destroy the United States' economy through electromagnetic Tomahawk missiles, a Star Wars -type space defence missile shield. Improbably, ridiculous, decent pulp.

Liberty was written after the attacks of September 11th. Like a number of other books, it's about bad guys--this time terrorists, instead of agents of other states--trying to get a hold of WMDs, in this case Russian nuclear warheads. Jake has to find all four before they're exploded. Naturally, life's complicated. He decides to retire at the end of the book--two or three books late, in my opinion, but hey. Decent fun, nothing special.

Stephen Coonts,
Under Siege, 1990
The Red Horseman, 1994,
Cuba, 1999,
Hong Kong, 2000.

Four more Jake Grafton novels. (Two to go)

Under Siege I've read before. Jake serving his Joint Chiefs tour, in the Counter-Terrorism sector. A whole bunch of drugs lead to domestic terrorism, assasination attempts, etc. Decent but unexciting.

The Red Horseman is a tad too unrealistic. Russia/CIS falling apart, post Gorbachev, etc. Nukes stolen, invading the country that they were sold to by corrupt Russian forces officials, etc. Jake's there with the Defence Intelligence Agency, observing and then running the show. Hard to swallow.

Cuba deals with Castro's death, biological warheads. Jake's in command of the carrier battle group that's in the Caribbean, and has to deal with the mess. Solid.

Hong Kong is weaker than Cuba. Coonts' plot has Grafton sent to Hong Kong back to investigate Tiger Cole, his old bombardier from Flight of the Intruder, now the consul-general to Hong Kong, a tad after the Chinese takeover. Revolution ferments, bad things happen, more Jake in hand to hand combat.

Two left--let's see how they are.

Stephen Coonts,
Flight of the Intruder, 1986,
The Intruders, 1994,
Final Flight, 1988,
The Minotaur, 1989.

Four Jake Grafton novels.

The first one, Flight of the Intruder, has become a movie that's not awful, but the story definitely makes a better book. What the movie does do well is attempting to capture what life is like aboard an aircraft carrier as the pilots of the air wing conduct bombing missions over Vietnam in the dying days of the war. Lots of implausible bits, but on the whole, it affords a view of what life must have been like.

The Intruders, which was written after the other three that I'm posting about here, but is the next in the sequence, is about Grafton's life aboard a carrier immediately after his last tour ended, this team with a Marine A-6 squadron, instead of a Navy squadron, thanks to an ill-advised barfight with a civilian. Really, it's about Jake trying to decide if the Navy will be his career. Sadly, this book's a little too much like Flight of the Intruder and Final Flight, in a way that The Minotaur is not. More implausibility, more general fun.

Final Flight is a nice, riveting thriller about a plot to steal nuclear bombs from a carrier. Nice segue from attack planes to fighters like the F-14, and far more interesting than Top Gun-type crap.

The Minotaur is all about Jake finding a life in the Navy after his flying days are done, and is an intriguing little spy thriller that's quite nicely done.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dragon Wing and Elven Star.

The first two volumes of the Deathgate cycle. I've been rereading some pulp, just relaxing and resting my brain before I tackle the new Ishiguro novel. At any rate, these two are a bit of mindless fun. The cycle of novels lets Weis and Hickman invent all sorts of new worlds and play with them, bringing back old favourite characters for new purposes.

Elven Star is the more fun of the two, with Zifnab and the constant references to other works of fantasy, fiction, and our science. Neither book is taxing, and they're both pleasant enough. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to read the rest of the cycle; it may well take up too much time. 5 more books to read, if I do. I think it'll depend on how my mood is.