I got home today, and everyone else was at the dentist’s. The house was silent. There were so many things I could have used that time for: a decent blog post, for example. But no…I spent it reading other people’s blogs. And when I had just turned my attention to blogging, everyone came home.
Oh, well.
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins, is, as probably everyone knows, the final book in the trilogy that began with The Hunger Games.
I’m going to begin with a general assessment; and then I’ll probably need to get into spoiler territory.
The book is an adequate resolution to the trilogy. If you enjoyed the first couple of books, you’ll enjoy this one. As a whole, I enjoyed the trilogy well enough; it kept me turning pages. On the other hand, well…at least the main characters don’t sparkle in the sunlight.
OK, onto the spoilers. If you’ve not read the book, and you think you’d like to, this is where you should stop reading.
The Hunger Games was all about Katniss, and her efforts to survive in the Arena. Catching Fire expands the view to include civil unrest in the districts, and the effect of Katniss and Peeta’s example on the citizenry. Mockingjay is about the revolution and Katniss’ role in it, culminating in the taking of the Capital. Katniss remains the main viewpoint character throughout.
Collins has made an interesting choice, here. Katniss is the figurehead of the revolution. She’s the main character of the series. But she’s not in charge. She’s not aware of everything that’s going on. She’s not in on all of the planning. She’s of use to the leaders, and she has a certain amount of clout (and she uses it) but she’s also a tool. More than that, she’s a wreck emotionally, and this becomes more and more pronounced as the book goes on. She survives, just. She finds happiness…of a modified and minimal sort. She is forever scarred, forever fragile. Like Frodo, she pays a price so that others may benefit.
There are things to dislike in this book. Peeta’s story arc is ultimately unconvincing, and I found the defense of the Capital to be ludicrous. The horrible attacks the tributes suffered in the Arena are referred to by the Game Masters as “pods”; and pods have been installed all over the Capital to destroy as many of the attackers as possible, sometimes four and five of them in one block. I’m sorry; I just didn’t buy it. It’d make a good movie, though.
So…not a classic, but adequately entertaining.
I started reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins a few days after I finished The Hunger Games, but it didn’t grab me. Teen angst, I thought. Teen angst! Who needs it!
I mentioned this to a friend of mine who was in the middle of it, and he told me that it started slow, but picked up speed quite nicely; and then he finished it, and assured me that I should by all means continue. So this week I finally picked it up again (which is to say, I found it way down the list of books in my Kindle app), and what can I say? He was right.
I won’t say much about it—no spoilers here—but it kept surprising me right up to the end, where it got a little clumsy; Collins gives us significant information in a quick little info-dump, and it really seemed to me that she’d gotten tired and wanted to get it over with.
Nevertheless, I’m curious about the third book, and expect to read it soon. We’ll see if she sticks the dismount.
Overheard in the car on the way home from Mother’s Day dinner:
No one expects the princess inquisition!
Bad Religion, by Ross Douthat, is a look at religion in contemporary America…and specifically at the heresies present in contemporary America. Heresy is one of those words that gets folks riled up—it seems to cry out to be said in a low, cutting, judgmental voice with a menacing hiss—but it’s a perfectly good word. It’s also misunderstood. People think of heresy as being some kind of wrong belief (which it is), but it’s wrong belief that comes about by putting too much emphasis on some particular right belief. The Arian heresy, for example, put too much emphasis on Jesus’ humanity and taught that he was not God, but rather a created being.
So what Douthat’s interested in is not the complete spread of religion in the United Stated; he’s interested in what’s going on with the historically Christian majority, and the distinct ways in which they are going astray from a rather nebulously defined orthodoxy. He’s not pitting Catholics against Protestants, here; he’s pitting those who are historically orthodox in the manner of their denomination against those who aren’t, and those who have move out of their denominations altogether. He’s looking at the belief systems that have drawn folks partially or completely away from orthodoxy while still leaving the semblance. Though “pitting” is much too strong a word—the book is not a screed, is not strident at all.
He begins with a lengthy discussion of how religion changed in America over the course of the 20th century. I won’t go into that; anyone who was been following the turmoil in the Anglican Communion over the last twenty years, as I have, is already well aware of how the leadership of the mainline Protestant churches have been running into the arms of the zeitgeist over the past fifty years. It’s a sad tale, and although I learned a few things I didn’t know it’s a familiar one. A religious community simply cannot conform itself to the world without losing its reason for being. They do it to be welcoming to the world, to be “inclusive,” to be popular, to draw more people in; but frankly, the worldly are quite capable of being worldly without coming to church, and the more a denomination has followed the path of “inclusion,” the more they have shed members.
Following that, he talks about the four main streams of heterodox thought and practice in modern America: what they are, where they came from, how they flow into each other.
The first is the quest for the latest “historical Jesus”—the desire to find, either in the canonical scriptures or in various extra-canonical texts, by dint of much analysis and tortured logic, the Jesus you want instead of the Jesus who was, and who people have followed for nearly two-thousand years. It almost always leads to a Jesus who was not divine, but was a wise teacher. The remarkable thing about the quest for the historical Jesus is that nobody has really built a religion around any of the specific historical Jesus’s, but the notion that the Orthodox Jesus can’t be right and that I’m free to make of him what I will has taken firm root. In the name of truth, then, they have rejected truth. This notion underlies the other three.
The second is the Gospel of Prosperity. Worship God, and he will give you everything you need in this life, including the nice home, the new car, and so forth. The newer preachers of this message have evidently gotten more sophisticated than the prosperity preachers of yore, but the message remains much the same: God will bless you with every material thing if you are devoted enough; and if He doesn’t, then you weren’t devoted enough. The witness of the martyrs in every age, those who stood strong for Christ despite oppression, torture, and death, stand against it.
The third is what Douthat calls “the God Within”. This is the faith of those who are “spiritual but not religious”. Folks in this group regard all religions as ways to approach God, who is to be found deep within our own souls. They do not reject Christ as such; but it’s sad that those of us who insist on an orthodox view of Christ haven’t come to fully understand him. Closely tied to the “God Within” is the therapeutic gospel—the notion that God’s job is to make us well-balanced, emotionally stable, and fundamentally happy.
The fourth is nationalism: the notion that God has especially blessed the United States and has a significant purpose for the USA—and that consequently, what the U.S. does when it is most true to itself is sure to be blessed by God. Note that Douthat is not rejecting a healthy love for one’s own country; he is rejecting the notion that the USA, simply because it is the USA, can save the world.
All four of these notions, being heresies, are true to an extent. Being heresies, though, they go astray. The quest for the historical Jesus is about truth, but ends up relativizing truth. God really does want to give his followers what they need; what they need, not what they want. God really can be found deep within our own souls, and he really does want to give us the peace that passes understanding; but on his terms, in keeping with his majesty and glory, not on the basis of our feelings. And being “The City on the Hill”, it turns out, is more about being careful of one’s deeds because everyone is watching carefully, rather than a sanction for whatever that city wants to do.
These are familiar notions, familiar trends in society, and I agree with Douthat that they are trends that American Christians need to push back on, whether they are Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, non-denominational Evangelical, or whatever.
The Price of the Stars, by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, is an old favorite which is out-of-print in paperback but is currently on sale for the Kindle for $2.99, one of Amazon’s 100 Books for $3.99 or Less for May. I snagged a copy, and spent some pleasant hours getting re-acquainted.
How to explain the Mageworlds series, of which this is the first book?
Suppose that Han Solo and Princess Leia got married, and had three kids. The first was born during the war itself, and was raised by Chewbacca’s family; he’s a medic in the navy. The middle boy is a Jedi, apprenticed to Luke, the current head of the Jedi order; and the youngest, a girl, is a pilot like her father.
Then Leia is murdered, and Han gives his daughter the keys to the Millenium Falcon if she’ll find out whodunnit. Of course, all three siblings get involved.
That’s sort of the premise of this book, except that it isn’t actually Star Wars fan fiction. The backstory is somewhat similar in its broad outlines, but even if the inspiration is clear the authors have taken it and done something distinctly different with it. I’ve enjoyed the whole series, and especially this book and its immediately sequel. Recommended, if you like space opera.
Today I shall be attending a “First Communion Retreat” with my youngest, who will be making her first communion in about a month. This is a new thing for me. They’ve been doing these retreats for the kids for some years, but I think this is the first time they have asked a parent to attend as well. At least, it’s the first time we’ve been asked.
I’m quite curious about it. I don’t know whether I’ll be with my daughter all morning, or whether the adults and kids are going to spend some time getting catechized separately. (I’m hoping the later; more adult faith formation is a Good Thing.)
I’m continuing my slow progress through Etienne Gilson’s The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (slow because I’m mostly reading it while eating lunch at work on those days when I eat by myself) and I’m rather enjoying it. I’m finding it much more accessible than Gilson’s The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which I attempted a couple of years ago and didn’t get too far with. (To be fair, I think I’d have an easier time with it now than I did then.)
As I commented last week, Gilson is concerned to delineate in exactly how there can be such a thing as a “Christian Philosophy” distinct from theology; and his argument is that there are truths, accessible by philosophical methods, that occurred to Christian philosophers but not to the earlier Greeks purely because they were suggested by Judeo-Christian revelation. The neat thing is that in order to support this claim, Gilson needs to lay out very carefully how scholastic philosophy, and particularly the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, differs from its Greek antecedents.
The result, so far, is fascinating. The books I’ve read previously have generally talked about Thomas and Aristotle at the same time in much the same way. While recognizing that the former received and extended the latter’s thought, they have generally discussed them together, as a unit. And yet there are significant differences.
As an example (and the subject of Gilson’s fourth chapter), Aristotle has the notion of the unmoved mover, the entity ultimately responsible for all motion in the universe. Remember that for Aristotle, “motion” includes all change, including things coming to be and ceasing to be. But for Aristotle, this unmoved mover is simply stirring the pot. The universe has always existed, and new things that come to be are made out of previous things that existed. Most things are in flux, and it’s the unmoved mover that makes that happen. There is no notion of creation in the Christian sense in Aristotle. The unmoved mover is in some sense pure Thought; but it is not (as Thomas would say) Being itself.
In Thomas’ view, and using essentially the same arguments as Aristotle, the unmoved mover becomes the cause, not only of motion, but of being. As Being itself (“I am who am,” as the burning bush tells Moses), the unmoved mover is responsible not only for the changes in things but for their very existence, for the existence of all things other than itself. This is consistent with Aristotle’s understanding; but it goes further and deeper.
In short, Gilson is casting light on both Thomas and Aristotle, and helping me to see both in new ways. I’m curious to see what’s coming next.
When you sign up with Apple because you’ve got an iPod or an iPhone, or an iPad, or a host of other reasons, you get an Apple ID. The Apple ID password is really important; you end up using it fairly often.
And Apple has a new thing, where if you mistype your password too many times they tell you, “So sorry, you’ve entered the wrong password too many times; you’ll have to reset it.” This is intended to protect me, of course, from some bozo you steals my phone and wants to buy tunes or apps on my nickel, and as such I approve of it.
But today, I mistyped my password twice. That’s two times. T-W-O. And the second time it informed me that I was going to have to reset my password.
This goes beyond protecting me; this is just annoying.
James Clavell’s Shogun concerns the rise of the Tokugawa (in the novel, “Toranaga”) Shogunate in Japan around 1600 AD. The Tokugawa dominated Japan for over two-hundred and fifty years until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, an event that set the stage for the modernization of Japan (and ultimately for the Pacific theater of WWII). Fittingly, Gai-Jin, the last of James Clavell’s novels, is a sequel to both Shogun and Tai-pan, taking place in the European enclave of Yokohama in the early 1860’s.
There are two major threads. The first concerns Toranaga Yoshi, a descendant of the first Toranaga and member of the Council of Five that governs the Shogunate. (The current Shogun is a petulant, not terribly bright boy of sixteen who was chosen for the convenience of the Council of Five.) His goal is to abolish the Council of Five and become Shogun himself.
He is opposed not only by other members of the Council and a variety of daimyos (feudal lords) but also by the shishi, ronin samurai who have dedicated themselves to restoring the power of the Japanese Emperor and to the expulsion of the gai-jin, that is, the Westerners.
In fact, the presence of the gai-jin is the dominant political issue of the day, and the various powers in Japanese life are divided primarily about how to expel them and the extent to which it will be necessary to adopt Western ways and technology in order to do so.
The second major thread involves Malcolm Struan, grandson of Dirk Struan, the first tai-pan of the Noble House, and son of Culum and Tess Struan. As the book begins, Malcom is riding near Yokohama when he is attacked by a shishi and is nearly killed; his father dies, and he becomes the ostensible tai-pan of the Noble House; and he falls in love with a beautiful French girl, Angelique Richaud. Tess Struan opposes the marriage vehemently, and Tess usually gets what she wants. Naturally, the Brock family also has a presence in Yokohama, leading to additional conflict.
The two threads are woven intricately together, as both Europeans and Japanese struggle to learn about each other for their own benefit. The result is an entertaining if slow-paced novel; I enjoyed it more than Noble House, if less than Clavell’s other novels.
The View from the Foothills 