Blog Post: Manual Cinema at the Flynn

Manual Cinema is one of the more engagingly unusual performances I've seen at the Flynn Center. Read my review at the Flynn blog:
flynncenter.tumblr.com/post/171456961603/dark-shadows

Book Blurb: The Saint and the Sultan by Paul Moses

The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace by Paul Moses
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The basic story is well-established in the biography of Saint Francis of Assisi -- how at the height of the Crusades, he ventured into enemy territory to meet with the Sultan and to preach to him. Some suggest that Francis was seeking martyrdom, though the prevailing thought takes the saint at his word: he wanted to end the wars and felt that converting the Muslims to Christianity was better than trying to kill them all.

Beyond that basic summary, the details of the story can vary widely depending on who is telling it. More than any other event in Francis's life, I think, this episode tends to reflect not so much the ideals and worldview of the subject as of the biographer. In The Saint and the Sultan, Paul Moses delves deep into the history behind the incident, to try and get at the truth behind the spin.

Throughout his lifetime Francis played the role of conscience to the Institutional Catholic Church. His strict adherence to the Gospel ideals and a life devoted to Christ's teaching tended to put him in stark contrast to the Medieval Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. And nowhere was this more evident than in his reaction to the Crusades. While church authorities were beating the drums of war, Francis embraced the call to "love your enemies and pray for your persecutors." More than any other event from his life, I think, this one put him in direct opposition to the religious authorities and called them to a depth of soul-searching that they were not willing to do.

And so, while the story could not be entirely stricken from the Saint's biographies, it was watered down, reinterpreted, and revised, leading to the many variations we see today. Moses does a good and thorough job of tracing each version to its origin, picking apart the more dubious claims, and making some solidly educated speculations at the truth.

This book is more academic than most biographies I've read of Saint Francis, but I appreciated the author's thoroughness. It really gave me a deeper and more profound appreciation for the Little Poor Man of Assisi, who has always been an inspiration to me. I feel this book helped me get to know the Saint a little bit better than I had before.

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Book Blurb: Mrs. Sherlock Holmes by Brad Ricca

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes by Brad Ricca
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The title of the book calls to mind the famous and popular fictional Victorian-era detective, but the book is about actual real-life events which don't always wrap themselves up as neatly and satisfyingly as Conan-Doyle's stories. So in that sense, as engaging as it often is, the book promises something it can't quite deliver.

It's really two different stories. There is the story of Ruth Cruger, a young woman who disappears mysteriously in turn-of-the-century New York, where the police are unable (or unwilling) to get to the bottom of things; and there is the story of Grace Humiston, the lawyer-detective who solves the case. The two stories intersect briefly but for the most part stay separate and unrelated.

Ms. Humiston begins the story under the unfortunate name of Quackenbos before discarding both the name and the husband who gave it to her. She studies law, becomes a lawyer, and champions the causes of the poor and underprivileged -- primarily immigrants and women.

Set about a hundred years in the past, the issues dealt with here are remarkably current. In particular, Grace Humiston crusades against a male-dominated culture that exploits and generally has its way with young women. Almost a decade before women could vote, she was fighting the victim-blaming mentality that still today plagues our discussions of sexual crimes.

There is a lot to like about this book, unfortunately there is also a lack of focus. I enjoyed it a great deal, but ultimately it fell short of what it could have been.

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Book Blurb: Building a Bridge by Fr. James Martin

Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity by James Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Father Martin offers up a small, easily readable book which, for all the furor it's raised in certain sectors of the Catholic Church, is actually remarkably tame. There is nothing scandalous here, just one priest's sharing of his most effective ideas for reaching out to certain groups of marginalized Catholics.

In fact, I found myself wondering if Fr. Martin might not be offering us a blueprint for the various other deep divisions facing our society these days. All he's really advocating here is for two sides to listen to each other, make some attempt at dialogue, and to have the patience to let them work through whatever issues they have to work through. He offers no answers, only a process and a Christ-like pastoral vision.

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Book Blurb: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really a charming bit of sci-fi light space opera with an enjoyable ensemble of characters. It's been said that good sci-fi is less about predicting the future than it is about examining the present in which it's created, and this book really embodies that. At its heart, it's about a lot of very different cultures and conflicting ideologies all trying to get along -- something our own society is struggling with at the moment. This story takes the mostly optimistic view that it's possible to all get along in the end. It might not always be easy, but we can do it.

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Book Blurb: The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories by Connie Willis

The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Connie Willis ranks near the top of my list of favorite authors. Those top spots, I've found, go to those rare and wonderful artists who quite clearly and obviously love what they're doing, and let their joy shine throughout their body of work.

One piece of advice I often hear from artists to artists for succeeding in the creative arts is to "write what you enjoy, and eventually the rest of the world will catch up." Or sentiments to that effect. And throughout this collection of stories (as with the rest of Ms. Willis's writings) you get the sense that she's doing exactly that. Her stories are fun (they tend to read like old screwball comedies) and she makes it look easy.

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Book Blurb: Cairn: A Dragon Memoir by Rebecca Ferrell Porter

Cairn: A Dragon Memoir by Rebecca Ferrell Porter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This turned out to be the second book of a series, but was easy enough to follow without knowing anything about the first book. It's a light, easy read with some engaging characters and intriguing world-building -- enough that I'm now curious about the first book.

The world presented here is a neat little subversion of normal expectations for a fantasy. Fairies are presented as aggressors; trolls are decent folk wanting to be left to themselves; and dragons are a noble race who have overcome their baser instincts.

The one drawback which kept me from fully enjoying the book was that it needs a more thorough editing. The typos and wayward apostrophes were just prevalent enough to distract me from the story being told.

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Book Blurb: Frances and Bernard, by Carlene Bauer

Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I picked this up to start reading, I didn't realize it was an epistolary novel. Not generally my favorite form of literature. But somehow this immediately took hold, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

A large part, I think, is the characters. Frances and Bernard are exactly the sort of people I would love to engage with in this kind of long-term philosophical exchange. Based very loosely on Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell, these characters delight in sharing all manner of philosophy, theology, wit, and well-written correspondence that is exactly the kind of thing I'd get into myself. I have, in fact, had a few such epistolary acquaintances over the years, and this reminded me of the best of those times.

So it drew me right in. And these characters and their writings kept me engaged throughout the twists and turns of their lives. Really a delightful and engaging read.

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Book Blurb: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.

For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.

I could have given this book the full five-star rating, and I still wonder if I'm being a little too hard on it. It's a wonderful book, well-written, gripping storyline, which kept my interest throughout -- except when it didn't. Its main drawback, I found, is something it has in common with other multi-POV narratives I've read; some characters just aren't as interesting as others.

Actually, this book doesn't just change its POV character every so often -- it also jumps ahead decades at a time. Each new section drops you into a whole new story: new characters, new time period, new setting, new circumstances. Only gradually does it start to tie it back to previous sections, and to the larger narrative. And most of the time it works fabulously. It's only a few instances where my interest started to lag, though even then the connection to the larger narrative kept me plodding on.

Over all, a very engaging read despite a few slow moments.

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Book Blurbs: "Femme: A Nameless Detective Novella" by Bill Pronzini

Femme by Bill Pronzini
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is the second Bill Pronzini book I've taken out of the library. The first -- I think it was Betrayers was a really enjoyable, tightly written mystery/thriller that left me wanting to read more.

The book was part of Pronzini's "Nameless Detective Agency" series. It's one of the only times I've seen detective literature deal with an agency of several detectives instead of the traditional solitary private-dick. Different chapters take different detectives as their point-of-view character, sometimes weaving back and forth between different cases that have little or nothing to do with each other. So the book came out feeling like a really well-written television serial, the kind that pulls you in and makes you want to keep watching.

Unfortunately, Femme seems to be where the series jumps the shark. It's shorter. It only focuses on two point-of-view characters, who are both working the same case -- a case either one of them should have been able to handle on his own. It builds up a lot at the beginning but never quite delivers on its promises.

The previous book I'd read was good enough that I'll give Pronzini, and his "Nameless Detective" series, another chance. But if I'd started with Femme, I can't say that I would have.

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Book Blurb: Three Graphic Novels. House of Java; Feynman; Three Shadows

On the website GoodReads.com I've been briefly logging my thoughts about the books, comics, and graphic novels I've been reading. Here are a few recent entries.

House of Java: Vol. 1
by Mark Murphy

Jul 01, 13

3 of 5 stars

A slim collection of short, slice-of-life comics -- not stories so much as little vignettes, mostly centered on a Seattle coffee shop and the people who frequent it. Interspersed within these vignettes are longer stories, some of which work better than others. The first of these long-form stories, "Rest Stop," seems decidedly out of place among the low-key everyday kinds of character-driven narratives that make up the rest of the book. "Rest Stop" feels as though it wanted to be a kind of psychological thriller but lost interest somewhere along the way. The rest of the stories, though, are enjoyable. I also like the loose, sparsely elegant drawing style, which accents the feel of quick sketches grabbed at the local coffee shop.

Feynman
by Jim Ottaviani (Goodreads Author), Leland Myrick (Goodreads Author) (Illustrator)

Jul 22, 13 

4 of 5 stars

I'm becoming quite a fan of Jim Ottaviani's graphic novels, which focus on notable scientists and scientific achievements. I'd never heard of Richard Feynman, but this book presents him as an intriguingly eccentric sort of genius with a fondness for expressing quantum physics principles using funny little pictures -- making him a natural subject for a graphic novel.

At times the presentation of his physics lectures gets to be rather dense and hard to navigate. At least, I found it so for a few days when I came to it at the end of a long day and was probably more than a little too tired to wrap my head around these ideas. Feynman, at least as presented here, seems to take a kind of impish delight in accentuating the ways that physical laws at the quantum level simply don't conform to any of our usual expectations and common-sense. The funny little pictures ultimately make it easier to follow, I think, but it is more dense in places than the average comic-book. 

Three Shadows
by Cyril Pedrosa

Josh Mcdonald's review

Aug 16, 13

5 of 5 stars

It's difficult to say a lot about this story -- a kind of allegorical fantasy about a family trying to avoid a dark, threatening destiny (represented by the titular three shadows).

It shouldn't be much of a spoiler to say that the book is the author's response to the death of a friend's young son (the cover-flap says as much.) I saw where at least one reviewer questioned what exactly the story is saying about destiny and the necessity/futility of trying to change it. But I think it's a mistake to try and pin this story down to a "message". Instead, it should be taken as a kind of meditation, as the author's attempt to come to grips with unacceptable reality, to explain the unexplainable. The two parents in this book have very different responses, and ultimately neither is any better or worse than the other.

The artwork I found particularly engaging. It seems at times deceptively simple, almost haphazard in its loose sketchy quality, but there is a tight precision behind it all. It carries the story well without being distracting.

Book Blurb. The City & The City by China Mieville

The City & The City by China Miéville

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is good, solid murder-mystery-thriller with a pretty intriguing twist. The whole thing takes place within two city-states occupying the same geographic area. So although the two cities are intermingled and generally mixed together, residents as a matter of course make a point of not seeing (or "unseeing" as they call it) anything that is a part of the "other" city. And while it may sound just outlandish enough to stretch the credulity of the whole story, Mieville actually makes it work by offering it as just another of those things we all do, without question, to keep society functioning in the manner to which we are accustomed.



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Book Blurb. Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the FaithCatholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith by Robert Barron

"Aristotle said that the best activities are the most useless. This is because such things are not simply means to a further end, but are done entirely for their own sake. Thus watching a baseball game is more important than getting a haircut, and cultivating a friendship is more valuable than making money The game and the friendship are goods that are excellent in themselves, while getting a haircut and making money are in service of something beyond themselves. This is also why the most important parts of the newspaper are the sports section and the comics, and not, as we would customarily think, the business and political reports. In this sense, the most useless activity of all is the celebration of the Liturgy, which is another way of saying that it is the most important thing we could possibly do.

My own total lack of interest in sports notwithstanding, this passage does a good job, I think, of capturing the heart of why I remain a devoted Catholic. That sense of God's values being mostly the polar opposite of the World's values is, for me, a large part of what following Christ is all about.

My one disappointment with the book is that it does feel very much like it's preaching to the choir. I found myself nodding in agreement with most of it and enthusiastically agreeing with bits of it, and finding almost all of it to be familiar and well-trod territory. There was really nothing here to challenge me or force me to re-think or see anything in a new light. And I've always felt that religion and religious thought is pretty much useless if it doesn't challenge one's comfort zones or prompt the occasional re-thinking of one's accustomed values. Although I will say that this book does a very good job of stripping away the fluff and boiling down to the essence of what a Christ-centered life is all about -- and the reminder of what is truly important certainly has value. So maybe it did prompt me to re-think some long-held assumptions after all...?

On the whole, this book was a very good refresher on why I am and remain a Catholic.


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