Peace in our Hearts

 

This bead embroidery project was inspired by The Beadshop's similar Intentional Heart project. A milagro of a dove is at the center of the ultrasuede heart and I added seed beads and metallic spacers around it, with a beaded picot stitch to sew together the front and back. As I sewed the edging I inserted two jump rings at the top of the heart. I have since added a small chain to the rings to hang the heart with the rosaries hanging by my bed, but if I ever want to wear it it I can easily replace it with a longer chain.

It's shaping up to be a terrible year, and because of the ridiculous amount of personal crap I'm dealing with, I can't fight back against the administration as I wish I could. But I can pray for peace and justice.

Veritas: a Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife by Ariel Sabar

Sabar's excellent investigative work has it all -- faith, sex, fraud, ancient mysteries, and modern controversies, all wrapped up in compulsively readable prose. I found it hard to put down his tale of a very smart woman who falls for (in more ways than one) a scrap of papyrus purporting to mention Jesus' wife.

What's astounding is all the red flags that were there from the beginning: the unusual shape and appearance of the fragment itself; the bad grammar; the mix of dialects; the fact that "my wife" was incomplete and didn't necessarily refer to an actual woman, let alone the Mary mentioned elsewhere, let alone Mary Magdalene; the lack of transparency over the origins of the fragment; and Prof. King's own reluctance to let others look at photographs, let alone the original. But it was catnip to Harvard Divinity School, looking for relevancy, and the feminists, scholars, and theologians unhappy with the Church's understanding of Jesus, and the press who always want something guaranteed to generate views.

King may have ultimately been fooled, a victim of confirmation bias and her own desperate desire for evidence of her pet theories. But Sabar also suggests something even worse -- that King knew almost from the beginning it was fraudulent, and she was willing to ignore inconvenient facts in favor of what she felt was the truth. As her mentor explained, the value of a (hi)story lies "not in whether it is true but in whether it feels true." King herself, by training a historian not a theologian, would argue that historical time was a "Western construction" and "not serious, real, or true"; therefore what does it matter if the papyrus is dated to the 8th century and the ink to the 21st? The fragment is true because it is good, not because it is accurate.

The irony is that even if one buys her relativistic approach to history, the very words of the fragment itself don't come close to saying what she wanted them to say.  But it didn't matter to her; only her idiosyncratic beliefs about early Christianity did. That such an educated, gifted scholar would think this way is all the more disturbing given recent societal trends. She is far from the only American of recent years to reject demonstrable facts in favor of ideological "truth."

Bookburners by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Francis Slattery

A story about a secret black ops organization at the Vatican that hunts down and neutralizes demonic books was an obvious thing to add to my reading list. Bookburners is the first "season" of a novel that was initially serialized on the internet; as such, it reads like a collection of short stories with an overarching plot that becomes increasingly important. 

The POV character is Sal, a NYC cop and non-believing Protestant who learns about the existence of demons, magical books, and demon-possessed magical books when her brother is ensnared by one.  In an effort to save her brother's life (and soul), she joins Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum. It's fast-paced and a lot of fun to read.

It's also quite smart.  The Church's take on magic is that it is too dangerous, too easily corrupted by demons, to use, but there are characters within and without (good, evil, and neutral) who disagree -- to them, magic is simply a tool, and humans should learn how to use it before it's too late.  But rather than fall into cliches about repressive institutions and freedom-loving individuals, the authors treat the matter quite seriously.  Both sides are heard, both viewpoints are respected, and the events depicted don't fully vindicate either take. 

This parallels the story's treatment of religious faith; Father Menchú's rock-solid faith, Sal's atheism/agnosticism, and Asanti's pragmatism are all treated fairly.  It makes for a refreshing take on the usual tropes, and I can't wait to read "season" two.

1 Year of Stitches: Week 35

Two new motifs: a gridiron for St. Lawrence and St. Jerome's cross; both are the patron saints of librarians.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Having adored Uprooted, I was eager to read The Bear and the Nightingale, described by many reviewers as having a similar vibe.  Unfortunately, it wasn't as engaging, and it left me wanting to reread Novik's book.

Which isn't to say there isn't a lot to like about it -- Arden paints a vivid picture of life in the Rus, describing brutal winters so well I could almost feel my blood freezing (my overly air-conditioned workplace might have helped).  Her characters are for the most part fleshed out from their fairy tale counterparts, humanizing them and giving them believable motives. But after establishing a fascinating world, in the second half of the book she relies on fairy tale tropes too often.  The stepmother is evil because she is supposed to be; much of the antagonism between her and Vasilisa makes sense given their world views and the price (for both of them) of living in such a patriarchal society, but other instances of Anna’s cruelty seem out of place in the narrative.  The impossible task Vasilisa is given is another example -- a common trope that might might make sense in a brief, allegorical tale shows up jarringly and late in the narrative here, serving as an unnecessary excuse to get the heroine into the woods.

Also, Arden sets up an unfortunate and tired dichotomy between Christianity and the old beliefs.  Both human antagonists (who are, to be fair, complex and interesting) are Christian; Vasilisa is not. Worse yet, Christianity is portrayed as useless, even false. But given a world where magic is real and there are loads of non-human spirits, it does not make sense that the Church would ignore that for hundreds of years, would not have investigated and debated and gotten theologians to wrestle with the implications, would not have adjusted to better fight the evil present in the world.  Especially since that evil is ultimately defeated by a willing sacrifice; gee, I wonder where I’ve heard of that concept before?

There is a sequel in the works that will focus more on Vasilisa's sister and brother; her brother in particular is a devout Christian and so far, at least, a good guy, so perhaps the friction between the two belief systems will be better addressed.  Regardless, I look forward to reading more from Arden.

Cruz de Milagros

I've been meaning to make a cross covered with milagros for a number of years.

I started with a plain wooden cross from the craft store and painted it a deep yellow in the recess and purple elsewhere.  I then glued milagros all over, and for good measure added little pink plastic flowers (really teeny hair barrettes broken in half) to the corners.

I hung it with the painted cross and portrait of La Virgen de Guadalupe my mom gave to me.

Pre-Christmas Miscellany

A quilted bag from a kit:

Crocheted peppermints:

A travel oratory:

Door No. 9 has lovely ones which were my inspiration, allowing me to use my Our Lady of Guadalupe fabric:

A knotted rosary, awaiting a crucifix:

A Crocheted Christmas tree made from the last of the yarn my cousin gave me:

Good thing my cousin took a picture, because I forgot to

Merry Christmas!

Immaculate Heart

This was in the Quilting Arts Holiday 2015 magazine, but I don't actually consider it very Christmasy, it's more of an all-purpose ornament:

The original pattern, "Milagro Heart," is by Jane LaFazio.  Milagros are usually metal charms used as votive offerings, and the heart with the flame on top is meant to be either the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  I added a strip of metal roses to make mine an Immaculate Heart; I also tweaked the pattern pieces a bit.  And, it turns out, I was supposed to enlarge said pattern pieces by 200%, so my heart is smaller than it's supposed to be.  I like mine quite a bit, but it pales in comparison to LaFazio's hearts.

All Souls Day

It seemed appropriate to spend today putting in the last stitches of this:

While catching up on episodes of iZombie (soooo much better than the comic, by the way; Rose McIver in particular is brilliant, making a character that could be snarky and cynical instead be sad, thoughtful, and earnest).

Then I made soul cakes, the original treat for trick-or-treating:

These were delicious, not too sweet even with the powdered sugar.  The only change I would make to the recipe would be to add a little salt, to enhance the flavors.  Amusingly, I got the recipe from a Catholic blogger, but apparently it originates from a pagan site.

 I know far too many people who have died recently, including my dear, dear cousin.

Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.

Because I Can Never Leave Well Enough Alone

I'm very pleased with my Advent Calendar, but like secular calendars it has only 24 squares, corresponding to the days of December before Christmas.  I'm trying to teach the liturgical calendar to the kids, however, and that means celebrating the actual Advent season, which this year starts today.  I'd been meaning to make extra squares for those years Advent starts in November, and this year seemed the perfect time to start, since I'd only need to make one.

But what design?  I pretty much exhausted my repertoire of secular and religious Christmas symbols  I like.  A little bit of research, however, reminded me that December 12 is the feast day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, a big deal both for Latinos and Americans in general.  Perfect!

Because I am not nearly skilled enough to replicate the image in thread or pencil, the original plan was to sew a prayer card onto the felt square, but although I have a gazillion prayer cards stuffed into a cigar box, La Virgen wasn't one of them.  Then I remembered I had actual fabric printed with her image, which was even better.  I snipped out her likeness and attached it to the felt using gold thread and straight stitches to mimic the rays around her.  A few ribbon roses finished it off.

I wanted her on the twelfth day -- of December, not Advent, so the twelfth square on the main calendar section, and this sounds ridiculously complicated just typing it -- so I removed the square in that slot (a poinsettia) and sewed it on.  The poinsettia moved to the first slot, because the original square there, an Advent wreath, I want to always be first.  That I moved to a new panel designed to hold the extra "November squares":

Makes sense?  Of course, I now have an issue when Advent starts December 1, 2, or 3 -- the main calendar will suffice, but it won't have the Advent wreath square.  I'll deal with that in 2017.

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

As soon as The Book of Life,the last volume in Harkness's trilogy, came out, I snapped it up from the library, and spent the next several nights staying up too late reading.  It was as good as the previous two, filled with action and adventure, science and history, and magic and romance.  The secrets in the titular Book of Life were what I expected, and I would have liked more information about the origins and history of vampires, witches, and daemons and the implications of their relationship to ordinary humans, but the story ended satisfyingly.  There were also hints that Harkness might be planning a sequel, so there's that.

As enjoyable as the trilogy was, however, it confirmed for me that I am generally not interested in modern vampire stories (with one notable exception, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian). Vampires are evil.  They are predators who prey on rational, intelligent beings, often in cruel ways, and their actions are a perversion of the Catholic Mass.  I have trouble seeing them as decent, let alone romantic, creatures.  Some creators try to address this thoughtfully.  Joss Whedon's Buffyverse, for example, posited that a lack of a soul was responsible for the evil and cruelty of vampires, and if one got his soul back, as Angel did, he would be remorseful and strive to be good.  But this explanation is ultimately unsatisfying -- where are the souls when they are not in vampires?  Why would a soul make a difference, when demons have souls, as do humans, both of whom have no trouble committing evil?  What about Spike, who as a result of a long period of moral evolution chose to do good and fight evil, and chose to get his soul back so that he could be an even better person?*

Other creators never really address the problem of evil at all, and leave it to individual vampires to choose to do good or evil or both, like everyone else.  Anne Rice took this approach (at least in the first couple of volumes), focusing on the personal cost and effects of vampirism.  It is also the approach Harkness takes, but she also goes to some pains to develop a vampire social contract of sorts, which as she puts it is about "law, honor, and justice"; mercy and charity have no role.  She creates an elaborate set of rules governing vampire behavior, but it ultimately boils down to "might makes right," and that is something I find neither attractive nor interesting.  Matthew, being the hero, is always striving to do the right thing, but that is more a vestige of his human life -- his Catholic faith -- rather than a trait of his vampireness.  He is concerned with notions of sin and atonement and forgiveness, but many other vampires think him rather odd in this, and their good deeds tend to extend only to protecting those they love rather than any abstract notion of decency or charity.

By contrast, the witchy society seems much more humanlike in its approach to morality (although we do not spend nearly as much time in their culture).  Which is not to say there aren't evil witches; there are, and those in power are slow to punish them, but they are all motivated by the usual reasons rather than a species-wide justification.  That, plus their neato magic, makes them far more interesting to me than the vampires.  I hope any sequel focuses more on their world, and that of the daemons who were rather short-changed in the trilogy.

*I recently read that Whedon has stated he had no real education in any religious traditions, and that explains the screwy theology of is world -- not just the soul issue, but demons who are nevertheless sometimes good, and more critically the existence of a great, overarching "First Evil" with no apparent good counterpart, something that is present in pretty much any real world religious or mythological system that stresses the fight between good and evil.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

I'd been meaning to read The Name of the Rose: including the Author's Postscriptfor some time now, and I finally did! (Yeah, not a big achievement in the grand scheme of things.)

It's a mystery, of course -- a Franciscan friar and a Benedictine novice are tasked with discovering who's been killing the brothers at a monastery -- but that's not enough for the semiotician Eco.  It is also an intellectual exercise, as Eco spends vast chunks of the book on medieval life, politics, and religious strife, particularly the disputes that arose between various Franciscan orders*, heretics, Church hierarchy, and the increasingly secular rulers of various countries.  Eco also uses his characters to have in-depth discussions on faith and knowledge, and the intersection of the two.  While it won't be for everyone, it is a satisfying read, both entertaining and challenging.

Some people have argued that this book is anti-Catholic, but I don't think it is.  Yes, Church politics are a mess, but, well, they were in the 14th century -- the Church was losing much of its political power as governments became increasingly secular, the papacy was in Avignon (and eventually some anti-popes showed up), and there was the aforementioned infighting amongst the various Franciscan factions and the rest of the Church over the moral and theological significance of poverty (heh, the heads of capitalist Catholics would explode at some of the decidedly socialist theology of the time).  Many of the monks and friars in the novel are quite sinful, but so is everybody; we have a tendency to hold religious people to a higher standard (rightly or wrongly), such that we forget they are flawed humans like the rest of us.  Tellingly, very few of Eco's characters are actual hypocrites; even the most sinful ones struggle in one way or another with their actions, and display a genuine faith in God.

One article I read discussed in particular on the fate of the library that is the pride of the monastery, described as the largest collection of works in Europe but heavily restricted in who can have actual access to the books. The destruction of the library (ok, spoiler, but you can see it coming) represents, to him, Eco's notion that the Church itself must be destroyed if knowledge and intellectual inquiry are to flourish. I think this argument goes too far, however.  Through his characters Eco acknowledges that it is because of the Church that so much knowledge, so many ancient texts, were preserved, and the severe restrictions on actually reading them are seen as the result of the particular beliefs of the librarians in charge, and not of the Church as a whole. 

Eco is, I think, an atheist, and definitely a modernist, and so of course some of those ideas are present in the book; it was written in the 20th century, after all.  But their mere presence, even in sympathetic passages, is not enough to make this novel an anti-Catholic polemic.  Especially not when Eco portrays men of genuine faith in far more nuanced ways than they are usually shown.

*In an attempt to understand what was going on, I did a little research on the Franciscans and ended up with a headache.  Fr. Beadbrother, O.S.B., told me of a long-standing joke, where one of the things even God doesn't know is how many Franciscan orders there are. (The others are what a Benedictine means by stability, what the Jesuits are up to, what a Dominican said, and what a diocesan priest means by obedience to his bishop; it's a little insider-baseballish.)

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

I don't know what took me so long, but I've finally read A Canticle for Leibowitz, and it is one of the best, most engrossing, most moving books I've read in a long time.  The book is divided into three parts, each a window into a post-apocalyptic society as humans struggle to regain what they have lost.  Miller only gives us a few characters and a smattering of details about what happened, but it is a testament to his skill that he is able to evoke so much with so little.

Shortly after a nuclear war devastated the planet, the surviving humans have turned their rage not just on the leaders responsible, but on any literate person.  Leibowitz is a former scientist who converts to Catholicism and founds an order of monks -- "bookleggers" -- dedicated to preserving any scrap of scientific learning they can.  In the first section, 600 years later, the abbey is still keeping "Memorabilia" safe and hidden from the violent, willfully illiterate tribes around them.  As the novel opens, a novice out on a Lenten fast stumbles upon a fallout shelter linked to Leibowitz, something that has major repercussions not just on their mission but on the canonization of their founder. This section has obvious parallels to the so-called Dark Ages, after the fall of Rome, when Catholic monasteries copied and recopied not just religious texts, but Greek, Roman, and Arabic works, in an effort to preserve their contents.  It is from this tradition that our university and educational system sprang.

The next section is the weakest, but still worthy in its own right.  600 years later, humans are on the verge of another Renaissance, and a secular scholar from the city-state of Texarkana travels to the abbey to examine the Memorabilia.  Many people have described this section as a battle between faith and science, but that's not what's going on at all.  The monks, after all, have spent over 1200 years preserving what scientific knowledge they could, and it is a monk who is the one to rediscover electricity, much to the scholar's chagrin.  Instead, the point is that faith cannot be divorced from scientific progress.  Humans should not let their pride and curiosity outstrip their morality; just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

The final section is the most moving.  Another 600 years have passed and humans are once again on the brink of nuclear war, having learned nothing from their own history.  All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.  Eden, Rome, America, Texarkana; the nuclear fallout is another Fall of Man.  And once again, a handful of monks are tasked with preserving whatever they can of faith, hope, and humanity.  It is tragic and profound and beautiful.  Go read it now.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

Hogfather is one of Pratchett's Discworld novels, and my Christmas reading for the year.  If you haven't read one of the Discworld books yet, you must.  Pratchett has created an alternate universe loaded with parodies of fantasy conventions, satires of the modern world, and lots and lots of silliness.  This book is no different -- on Hogswatchnight, someone has hired the Assasin's Guild to take out the Hogfather, with major consequences to Discworld's faith/mythology/deity complex.  Death (arguably the best character Pratchett has created) steps in to contain the damage, donning a red suit and fake belly and trying his best to be jolly, while his exceedingly practical granddaughter tries to figure what happened, with the help of a new deity, the oh god of hangovers.

Not surprisingly, this book had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion (to the consternation of my fellow commuters).  But such broad comedy would be tiring to read after a while, if it weren't for the fact that Pratchett manages to work in profound insight into the human condition -- a testament to his intelligence and skill.  Underneath all the flying pigs, adorable tots, verruca gnomes, incompetent wizards, and mince pies and sherries, Hogfather is really about the power of mythology, and the necessity of faith.  I'm hard-pressed to come up with a more succinct description than this:

"You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?"

YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.

The House on Durrow Street by Galen Beckett

The people at goodreads were right -- the sequel to The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is much better. With the pastiches out of the way, the plot picks up quite a bit, and the last chapters in particular are enthralling.  Beckett has also taken all the disparate elements of the the first book -- rogue planets, magicians, illusionists, witches, deadly woods, weird day lengths, politics -- and started to tie them all together coherently.  I've already started the third novel and I'm excited to see what happens next.

My only complaint with the second (and, to a lesser extent, the first) book is the large portion devoted to the Eldyn character.  While he is a genuinely likeable character, it is not at all clear yet how his story is going to tie in with the others, or the over-arching plot, so a lot of this felt like a waste of time.  Moreover, it is his storyline that involves Beckett's analogue to the Catholic Church, and (no surprise) I was quite disappointed with the results.  While Eldyn's interest in becoming a priest was handled sensitively, by the end of this book it was clear that the Altanian Church was home to corrupt hypocrites and unforgiving puritans -- a depiction all too common nowadays.  And it was completely unnecessary!  Just a few character tweaks here and there, and Beckett could have had the exact same plot results without having every religious figure be a jerk.  In fact, given that many religions throughout history and in literature often claim to be the light that fights against the dark, it stands to reason that the Church here would be a valuable ally against the Ashen.

The rest of the book more than made up for this, and like I said, I'm onto the last volume now.  I'm so glad I started this trilogy after all three volumes had been published!

Book Round-Up

Goddess of Spring by P.C. Cast: This romance novel is a riff on the Persephone myth. Through a series of events, Lina, a middle-aged bakery owner, exchanges bodies with Persephone and agrees to bring the touch of a goddess to Hades. This was a pretty good re-telling of the myth -- Cast makes Hades, known as a dour god (unusual for the Greek gods in general), into a very attractive hero. Lina is smart and capable and mature, a refreshing change from the typical twenty-something heroine. The happy ending is unconventional but plausible (well, as plausible as one can expect in a world where the Greek gods are real). And Cast deliberately recast (heh) the myth in a feminist manner, getting rid of the (in)famous rape in the process. (In a comment on a Smart Bitches thread, Cast states that her research indicated the rape was not part of the original myth; I can't confirm this, except to say that this aspect of the story was not known in Homer's time.) Cast has written other books in the "Goddess" series -- the one below, plus ones based on the Undine and Beauty and the Beast stories, both of which I intend to check out.

Goddess of Light by P.C. Cast: This is the sequel of sorts to Goddess of Spring, and I did not like it nearly as much. For one thing it is set in Las Vegas, which holds no appeal to me. For another, Apollo is kind of a jerk -- there are several scenes where he is downright bullying to service people. I think we are supposed to find it romantic, a sign of how passionate and concerned he is for the protagonist, Pamela, but . . . no. Nor did I like the use of the antagonist, Bacchus. I found it odd that Cast chose the Roman version of this god when all other gods were the Greek counterparts, and while Dionysus is a natural foil for Apollo, chaos to his order, Bacchus here was not chaotic or wild, just gluttonous and petty and mustache-twirlingly evil. (And fat. Cast made a big deal of how disgusting he was.) On a more abstract level, I had a bit of trouble with the idea of the Greek/Roman gods being real (which I was able to overlook in the first book, because I enjoyed it so much, but still). Not surprisingly, God-with-a-capital-G (let alone the J-word) is not mentioned in the books, but neither is this some sort of alternate America where Judaism and Christianity do not exist. There are several off-hand references to a Christian understanding of prayer, much is made of how Hades is not like the Christian Hell, and in this book we learn modern dead people do not go to Hades at all. I was therefore left with a number of questions about the theology of the books (as dorky as that sounds, and yes, I am the type who over-analyzes romance novels). Nonetheless, the book was pretty well written, and again Cast came up with an unconventional yet plausible happy ending.

A Single Thread by Marie Bostwick: Bostwick has started a series centered around a quilt shop in Connecticut and a group of women who form a modern quilting circle. As you would expect, the women face all the standard problems -- cancer, divorce, betrayal, familial estrangement, career problems, and so on. Bostwick's skill, however, keeps the story engaging, perhaps because the characters are a little more self-aware than is usual in this type of fiction. Bostwick does make a couple of odd narrative decisions: although the story centers around four women, it is told from the first-person perspective of two, not all or just one; why? And several passages in the novel indicate that the two narrators are speaking or writing directly to someone; who? Otherwise, the book was well-written and enjoyable.

The Mouse Guard comics by David Petersen: Petersen has created an unusual comic universe -- a society of mice who survive in the wilderness despite being surrounded by predators. Fall 1152 is about a rebellion against the Mouse Guard, a group who keep other mice as safe as they can; Winter 1152 deals with the aftermath of he rebellion and a harsh winter. Although the plots at times were a little thin, the world is rich and deep -- there is a history (including a war against weasels and an alliance with hares) that we only get snippets of, there are mousish poems and proverbs, and there is even a list of the quotidian professions of mouse commoners. The artwork, sized to fit onto square pages, depicts mice that are both adorable and deadly serious. I look forward to the next installments.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey: Over-the-top title aside, this is a great book of literary criticism by Shippey. I read it a decade ago and then lent it to Beadmom, where it sat neglected on a book shelf until I reclaimed it last month (like me, Beadmom has more books than time to read). I've now re-read it, and it was just as enjoyable the first time around. Shippey devotes each chapter to a major work of Tolkien's while tying it to a particular theme -- myth, the nature of evil, and so on. Sometimes he overstates his case, but it is clear he knows both Tolkien and his writings very well, which gives him a lot of insight into the works. He also does a close reading of the texts, paying special attention to particular words Tolkien used and even invented (not surprising, given that Shippey, like Tolkien, was a linguist at Oxford). I love language, particularly etymologies, so this is right up my alley.

Although Shippey quotes them, it is nonetheless hard to believe there are people who think the Lord of the Rings et al. is trivial and simplistic. I get not liking the books, but if you think they are just inconsequential little stories, you clearly weren't paying attention.

Recipe of the Day

My colleague found a recipe for "Bible Cake" folded up in The Improved Housewife, from 1845. I wasn't able to copy down the whole recipe, but it was made from ingredients mentioned in various Bible verses, such as honey, flour, figs, raisins, and nuts -- a cute idea. No fatted lamb, though.

A google search shows many modern variations, if you want to make one yourself.

Book Round-Up

The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba: The lead singer of My Chemical Romance is apparently determined to become a modern-day Renaissance man; he developed the concept and original sketches of this comic, in addition to writing the stories. Umbrella Academy is about seven children conceived and born under unusual circumstances, and raised by a cold, eccentric millionaire to fight crime. By the time they are adults, they are fully dysfunctional, as one would expect. This collection, the first six stories, serves as an introduction to the characters as they try to prevent one of their own from destroying the world. The writing is quirky and dark and cute, a good match for Ba's clean, wonderfully expressive artwork.

A Short History of Nearly Everything By Bill Bryson: Bryson wasn't kidding with that title -- he covers everything from the creation of the universe to the extinctions we face every day, the earliest humans to the scientists of the last century, stars to volcanoes to tiny little single-cell organisms. He synthesizes this into a highly organized, compulsively readable, occasionally terrifying narrative -- particularly impressive since I already knew most of the information in this book. People often lament the abysmal lack of scientific knowledge most Americans have; requiring everyone to read this book would remedy that.

Waking Up in the Land of Glitter by Kathy Cano-Murillo: I adore Cano-Murillo's crafty/artistic sensibility, so I was excited to pick up her first novel (plus, I am required to read all craft-themed novels). It is a light book, about three Latinas in Phoenix whose lives intersect around arts and crafts. Everything in the story is resolved exactly as you would expect, in a pretty, glittery bow, but what makes this book stand out from others in its genre* is the unexpected ways the characters got there. There are a lot of left turns and odd little detours that kept me engaged, and I liked that the characters, if not fully dimensional, were nonetheless quirky and interesting. Cano-Murillo's writing style could use a little work -- she had some neat turns of phrase, but she has a tendency to tell instead of show, and some of the transitions were a little abrupt; my copy also had a few typos. Overall, I really enjoyed the book.

*There needs to be a name for this genre; it has its rules and conventions, just like any other. I won't accept "Chick Lit," or even "Chica Lit," because first of all the term at its broadest includes every book ever written by a woman, making it not-at-all helpful. Second, men write books in this genre too. Third, it just serves to ghettoize fiction written by women as being something different from "regular" fiction. Fourth, it facilitates the dismissal of books read primarily by women as being less important that the books men read. See also: the way romance gets less respect than any other genre, including scifi; Franzen's Oprah kerfuffle when he balked at the idea of ordinary women reading his masterpiece; the theory that no woman could write the great American novel because women write about families, not important stuff (never mind all the male writers who write about families and are acclaimed for their insights on the human condition); etc.

Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso: Ostensibly a fantasy, because it takes place in another world where people have hair like artichoke leaves, this graphic novel follows a few generations of a family as they struggle with a civil war and its aftermath. Kelso's illustrations are cute and deceptively simple, but the subject matter is anything but. Like the real world, everything is messy, loyalties are confusing, and neither side is entirely right or wrong. The story was quite poignant, if a bit thin, and it left me wanting to know more about the characters.

Unlocked by Courtney Milan: My first e-book! (Well, sort of -- I have copies of Flatland and ABC for Book Collectors on my laptop too. So, my third.) I could not resist the Smart Bitches review or the dollar price, and reading a novella on my laptop was no hardship. A common complaint about a certain style of "old-school" romance is that the purported hero is a complete and total ass to the heroine until the very end when he realizes how good and pure she is; a quick apology (if that) later and they are Happily Ever After, while the reader thinks the heroine could have done so much better. Milan inverts this. The bad behavior the hero committed occurs ten years before the start of the book, when he returns to London much more mature and determined to make amends. But the apology is not enough -- he then has to earn her trust and her friendship before he can even begin to earn her love. This was a quick, emotionally satisfying read with thoroughly likeable characters. Special props to Milan for the heroine's mother, a proto-feminist, but not the spitfiery, iconoclastic, totally unrealistic type that shows up in historicals.

Ego and Other Tails by Darwyn Cooke: Cooke is a writer/illustrator of comics who has a wonderful retro style -- no surprise that he worked on Batman: The Animated Series. This collects several of his pieces about Batman and Catwoman. My favorite image by far is the cover to Batman: Gotham Adventures #50, which perfectly captures the personalities of Batman and Catwoman, and their relationship. The main Catwoman story, "Selina's Big Score," I already owned, so I bought this mainly for the Batman story "Ego." A recurrent motif in comics is the struggle between Batman and Bruce Wayne, and which is the real person. Cooke literalizes this by having Wayne confront his dark side, the Batman, who is cold and ruthless in his pursuit of justice. The lesson Wayne learns -- that he must control his dark side, not give in to it or ignore it -- is entirely unsurprising, but it was nonetheless a good crystallization of the Batman mythos.

What caught my eye in "Ego," though, was an argument the Batman figure made: Wayne needed to kill Joker to finally put an end to his crimes; his longstanding moral code of never killing anyone is "cowardly." This is exactly the argument that has been floating around the Catholic blogosphere concerning the morality of torture or weapons of mass destruction. Those of us who argue (correctly) that torture and the indiscriminate killing of civilians are intrinsically evil and never justified are moral cowards, afraid to make the tough choices that real life requires. This reasoning is not confined to conservative Republican types, either; it is related to the view among a certain segment of comic readers that the only authentic, realistic comics are those filled with death and extreme violence and despair (because that's totally the real life these comic book readers experience in suburban America). Although neither group probably realizes it, the core of this viewpoint is nihilism, and a contempt for anything good. Bruce Wayne recognizes this, and understands that he can use his dark side for the strength and edge it gives him while never allowing it to overtake his morality. (He still violates the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to a ridiculous extreme, however, and he is totally a state actor.)

Jesus Christ, Superfrog

The title says it all. I would pay good money to see it.

Good and Evil and the Lord of the Rings

Earlier this week Salon.com ran a review of a Russian novel, The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov, that purports to re-tell the story of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from Mordor's perspective (there is no official English translation yet). In general, I think reimaginings can be interesting, but this one does not appeal to me. For one thing, I love the source material too much to enjoy a book that completely subverts everything that was good and beautiful in the original. For another, it sounds awfully similar to Noam Chomsky's and Howard Zinn's unused commentary for the DVD release of The Fellowship of the Ring, which was a big old satire of certain trends in scholarship that are worthy but can be taken too far, especially if used for their own sake and not to discover something true.

Two things that surprised me, however (although it should not have), were the way this re-telling has been praised for subverting LOTR's "overly simplistic morality," and the assumption that it is a story for kids, specifically teenage boys (something Yeskov himself thinks). Others go farther and praise The Last Ringbearer for correcting the unrealistic, fantastical, "unscientific" LOTR.

There's a lot going on here, and I am not sure I can address it all coherently. For one thing, to suggest that LOTR is juvenile fiction, on par with the Narnia books or The Wizard of Oz or the Harry Potter books (all of which I love), is bizarre. LOTR is a very dense book with a lot going on, not just a sword and sorcery story. Tolkien incorporated a great deal of scholarship and philosophy into the books, and while people can certainly read it on just the top level, a magical adventure story, that does not prevent it from being read on deeper levels. I first read the series in sixth grade, and I have re-read it countless times over the years, always getting something from it. There is stuff in here about good and evil, love, self-sacrifice, restraint, power, corruption, environmentalism, progress . . . I could go on and on.

For similar reasons, the charge that LOTR's morality is "overly simplistic" is flat out wrong. It may not be apparent to everyone, but the books were intentionally suffused by Tolkien with Catholic theology, particularly on the nature of good and evil. I think part of the reason this accusation exists is because of a modern tendency, in this country at least, to reject the idea of Evil-with-a-capital-E, of Satan, in favor of a focus on the evil deeds that men do. To a certain modern sensibility, the idea that there is an inhuman, magical creature like Sauron who is pure evil seems childish. It's not, of course; even if you don't believe in anything super- or preter-natural, go read Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas and then tell me that the Catholic theology of good and evil is simplistic.

But even if Sauron is cartoonish in the way that Voldemort is, he is hardly the only representation of evil in the book (just as Voldemort is not in those books, something people tend to overlook when criticizing Rowling). Evil isn't just the actions of demonic powers, it is in the actions of ordinary men and women who commit evil because of human weakness. Nor is it simply just a matter of good versus evil. Frodo, the hero of the books, and an undeniably good person, fails his task -- at the last minute he succumbs to temptation. Gandalf, the "white wizard," has to keep on constant guard that he does not abuse his considerable power and allow it to corrupt him as it corrupted Saruman (who had a chance at redemption despite the tremendous evil he committed, but allows his pettiness and bitterness to rule the end of his days). Boromir, a noble, strong, smart, well-intentioned man, has a weakness that leads him to do a very bad thing; nonetheless he is given a moving act of redemption. Denethor commits great evil despite his desire to keep his kingdom safe and good, because of his pride and despair. Even sniveling, disgusting, corrupt Gollum is shown to have a true humanity and flashes of the innate goodness buried deep within him. This is not the stuff of simplistic fairy tales.

The impression that some critics, including Yeskov, don't fully understand or appreciate LOTR is strengthened by Yeskov's very long, very rambling follow-up article in Salon about why he wrote his book. After a section on the nature and ethical considerations of derivative works (and for the record, unlike some other fans of LOTR, I have no problem with The Last Ringbearer as a concept), Yetsov writes that a fantasy novel in general and LOTR in particular has a medieval black-and-white ethos that forbids moral relativism, and is more appealing to adolescents than adults. There is a lot wrong with this claim. First of all, this is a false dichotomy he has set up. As the examples I listed above show, it is in fact possible to have a notion of absolute good and absolute evil and yet have characters and situations that are "gray" -- after all, humans are flawed creatures. An acknowledgment of the contradictions in human nature, and the ability of a person to commit good, bad, and neutral acts, sometimes all in the same day, is not at all the same thing as moral relativism, which holds that the the terms "good" and "evil" have no universal meaning. Second, there are a number of fantasy books that do, in fact, incorporate moral relativism, or at least a much more elastic view of good and evil. Third, the claim that this fantasy ethos appeals only to adolescents is insulting to both adolescents and adults who are capable of a nuanced understanding of morality and for whom the concept of absolute good and absolute evil is a thoughtful, reasoned part of their faith or beliefs.

There are other, nitpicky misunderstandings of LOTR floating around. In the same article, for example, Yeskov (a scientist) discusses the scientific errors in LOTR, mentioning in particular another critic's focus on the geologically impossible nature of Middle Earth because there is only one continent. My first thought, like a true fangirl, was "No, there are two continents, and maybe more, given that Tolkien deliberately left vague the peoples and lands to the east and south of Middle Earth." Similarly, Yeskov likes to stump Tolkien afficionados by asking what currency was used, his point being that Tolkien's failure to mention any is a significant flaw in the realism of the book. Only, Tolkien does mention it -- the hobbits in one scene pay for beer with silver pennies. That kind of sloppy fact-checking does not incline me to take seriously the critic. Moreover, while I totally understand the impulse of a specialist to correct errors in a work (I could rant for days on the laughably wrong understanding of the legal system most Hollywood writers have), I don't think it is fair to let such errors obscure literary merits (especially since Tolkien was not an earth scientist and plate tectonics were not well-understood then).

My not-at-all-expert opinion is that what is really going on is simply that some people don't like the fantasy genre in general, and LOTR in particular, and therefore get hung up on "realism" issues like money and plate-tectonics and demonic evil. But while there is nothing wrong with not liking a genre, it is a (very common) mistake to assume that what you do not like is no good. Complaining about the realism of a demonic evil presence in a book whose genre is predicated on the existence of such supernatural and preternatural forces is silly. Expecting a professor of linguistics to have a deep understanding of plate tectonics (ahead of his time, no less) is unfair. While a sloppily-researched or poorly-thought-out book should be criticized for that reason, we should not get carried away with realism. Not the least because there is more than one kind of realism: Tolkien may have created an impossible geography and he may have ignored certain realities like money, but he depicted the realities of loss and sacrifice, temptation and free will, quite well.