I have been busy, busy, busy these days. A combination of work, church, and family has kept me away from the computer for long stretches. For you political types out there, here are some links from the past week or so that I have posted at Right Shelf. They are also reviews, interviews, and/or discussions of some of the political books that are in my TBR pile. So look for my take on many of these titles in the future.

- A hot topic of late has been whether the GOP is better off losing the House this year in order to position itself for 2008 and to regain its conservative limited government focus. Much of this debate was kicked off by the release of Stephen Slivinski’s Buck Wild (BTW, look for a review here in the coming days. I know, I know, promises promises) a description of how the GOP became the party of big government and an argument for divided government. The American Spectator has posted a mini-debate of sorts on this interesting and important topic.

Last Wednesday David Hogberg wondered if this strategy wasn’t “too clever by half.” Hogberg fears the GOP will learn the wrong lessons in defeat, spend to much time in ugly post-loss internecine battles, and that the Democrats will use the majority to cut deals with President Bush in ways detrimental to the country and the hopes of regaining the Republican majority. He concludes:

Yes, conservatives, myself included, are rightly disgusted with Congressional Republicans’ profligacy. But that disgust is beginning to get through, with Congress recently approving an online database to track spending and the House passing the aforementioned earmark reform. Such efforts will surely stall should Democrats win control of the House. The answer is to keep up the pressure through the grassroots and blogosphere efforts like Porkbusters. A GOP loss of the House in November is just as likely to create more problems for conservatives than it is likely to solve, proving once again that, in politics, there is little virtue in losing.

Slivinski responded by arguing that partisanship is the one thing you can count on in DC:

One thing we have seen, however, is that Bush, like all politicians, is a political animal. On domestic policy, he usually cares more about scoring one for his own team than upholding a coherent position on the role of government in a free society. I suspect the president would go hunting for his veto pen more often if he were faced with a Democratic House. And imagine how congressional Republicans would fight the sorts of big government schemes they currently push if those proposals came instead from the mouths of Democratic majority leaders.

Divided government isn’t a cure-all. But I’m willing to entertain the notion that those who value limited government would be at least no worse off under it than they are now.

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Okay, I admit it. I sometimes pay attention to marketing and buzz. Not all the time mind you. There are plenty of books that take the world by storm and I have no interest in reading them. The Da Vinci Code? No thank you. The Left Behind series? Nope.

But when Amazon was all abuzz about The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue I was really curious. What grabbed their attention and made them want to promote the book to such a degree (they had Donohue interviewed on Amazon Fishbowl, sent out copies to their top 100 reviewers, posted extra material about the book and its back-story, etc.)? Combine this buzz with my interest in myths/fairy tales, and fiction that mixes the fantastic with the everyday, and I bumped the book to the top of my TBR list.

I am glad I did. The Stolen Child is an imaginative and evocative coming of age novel about memory and loss; and about how we come to terms with our past. It is a remarkable first novel from an author I hope we hear more from in the coming years.

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The folks over at Paraclete Press publish some thought provoking books. Everything from musings on the Sabbath from a former practicing Orthodox Jew turned Anglican Christian; to interesting fiction (see here and here); to memoirs about the “surprising gifts” of growing up in a fundamentalist family. Given my interest in faith and religion, I suppose it is not surprising I find their catalog interesting.

A recent addition to their catalog continues this trend: How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins. It is certainly a thoughtful and thought provoking read.

One of the problems with a book like this, however, is that you wonder if it will ever be read by anyone outside the community it describes. Rollins is attempting to describe the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the “emerging church” or the conversation that is taking place around the world about how to approach the Christian faith in a post-modern era.

To do this he brings the work of deconstructionist theory, and the history of Christian mysticism, to theology and faith. In doing so he tries to avoid the dichotomy of fundamentalism on the one hand and relativistic nihilism on the other. He wants to challenge and re-imagine the Christian faith without abandoning its core meaning.

This is not an easy task. I have a feeling that many more traditional Christians will be turned off by 1) what they will perceive as a threat to orthodoxy; and 2) by its language rooted in post-modern criticism and theory.

But I would recommend that this book be read in the spirit in which is written. Instead of viewing it as a threat to orthodox Christianity, view it as a challenge and a source of potential insights. Rollins certainly challenges traditional ways of thinking about theology and faith.

His deconstructionist approach to knowledge and truth will feel awkward and potentially heretical to most Christians, and it isn’t always easy to sift through the language, but there are a number of keen insights for those who put in the effort. Some examples are below.

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Some stimulating pixels for your viewing pleasure:

- Ross Douthat discusses Jules Verne sans Captain Nemo over at Books & Culture:

Memory forgives a multitude of literary sins. Middling prose, wooden characterization, boilerplate dialogue—all of these will be overlooked, if a writer can only seize upon one great story and carry it off reasonably well. James Fenimore Cooper’s novels are bathed in bathos and bad writing, but he has survived two centuries of critical disdain because of five thrilling words: The Last of the Mohicans. H. Rider Haggard churned out 69 books that are forgotten by everyone save scholars of Victorian arcane—but King Solomon’s Mines ensured his immortality even so. Bram Stoker wrote 12 terrible novels, but nobody cares, because the thirteenth was Dracula.

Then there is Jules Verne. He is remembered by the critics as “the father of science fiction” and hailed for his uncanny technological forecasts: submarines and skyscrapers, rocket ships and long-range missiles. But in the popular imagination, it doesn’t matter much anymore that Verne wrote about space flight 90 years before it happened, or that his descriptions of a deep-diving submarine inspired inventors to improve upon the primitive designs of the 1860s. What endures are his stories, not his prophecies: Phileas Fogg racing around the world and against the clock; Captain Nemo, the deep-sea revolutionary, plotting his course through depths where even Ahab feared to tread.

Robert Birnbaum has another interview up at Identity Theory. This time he talks with Elizabeth Benedict author of The Practice of Deceit. Here is his description:

Elizabeth Benedict and I (and Rosie) met on a fair, late summer Saturday at a favored venue, The Mt. Auburn Cemetery, for a wide-ranging conversation. It, of course, included her latest novel, literary generational divides, cultural distractions from literature, Philip Roth’s Everyman, high school literature, the con artist story, Grub Street, sex (or at least writing about sex), Sigrid Nunez and a generous portion of snappy repartee (which may have been edited out).

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The Christian Fiction Blog Alliance rolls on this week with Something That Lasts by James David Jordan. Seeing how I am ridiculously behind in my reading I had to skip this one. But it looks interesting. The book’s description certainly grabs your attention:

When Ted Balik rises from his pew to speak, no one in the crowded sanctuary of the O’Fallon Bible Church can imagine that their peaceful community will be shattered by his shocking disclosure: Reverend David Parst, beloved husband and father and pastor, committed the unthinkable crime. He had an affair with Mrs. Balik. As the church members explode into an uproar, Ted silently grabs a gun out of his pocket, raises it to his temple and pulls the trigger. These few moments of horror plunge the reverend, his wife and their twelve-year-old son into a struggle with God and one another that will span generations - a struggle to find something that lasts beyond the rage, lies and fear.

More information can be found at the author’s website.

This week seems to be the week to talk about “fictional depictions of unique subcultures as experienced by their authors.” What prompted this rather awkward description? Well, Squat is an attempt by Taylor Field to bring to life the world of the homeless in urban America based on his experiences. In a way, Naomi Alderman’s first book Disobedience seeks to do the same thing with world of Orthodox Jewry in London. Here is a brief description:

For Ronit Krushka, thirty-two and single, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Orthodox Judaism is a suffocating culture she fled long ago. When she learns that her estranged father, the pre-eminent rabbi of the London Orthodox Jewish community in which she was raised, has died, she leaves behind her Friday night takeout, her troublesome romance, and her boisterous circle of friends and returns home for the first time in years.

There, amid the traditional ebb and flow of the community — the quiet young women returning from their kosher shops and the men with their tightly clutched prayer books — Ronit reminds herself of her dual mission: to mourn and to collect a single heirloom — her mother’s Shabbat candlesticks. But when Ronit reconnects with her complex and beloved cousin Dovid and with a forbidden childhood sweetheart, she becomes more than just a stranger in her old home — she becomes a threat.

So here we have two first time authors both writing about a unique world they have experienced first hand. I noted in my review that I found Squat largely disappointing, so how did Alderman fare? Much better. While there are certainly some weaknesses evident in Disobedience - and more about that below - it is a captivating and thought provoking story about the clash between the modern world of freedom and desire and the orthodox world of tradition and restraint. It is also a timeless story about living with the consequences of our choices.

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This week is the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance tour for the novel Squat by Taylor Field.

What in the world is a book with the title “Squat” about? Here is the publisher’s description:

“We live in a squat. We don’t know squat. We don’t have squat. We don’t do squat. We don’t give a squat. People say we’re not worth squat.”

In the shadow of Wall Street’s wealth, homeless people with names like Squid, Saw, and Bonehead live in abandoned buildings known as “squats” where life is hand to mouth, where fear and violence fester. The light in Squid’s obsessive-compulsive mind’s eye is Rachel, a loving soup kitchen missionary who tells him about faith and unfaith, hypocrisy and justice, the character of God and finding identity in Him. And in the wild twenty-four-hour passage of literary time that is Squat, Squid begins to believe that his life may actually amount to something.

When I first heard about the book and saw the blurb I was intrigued by the potentially unique perspective it offered; particularly as the author has a great deal of real life experience in this area having worked in inner city ministries in New York since 1986. With an M.Div. from Princeton and Ph.D. from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, and a well received non-fiction book on the subject, I was interested to see how he communicated his world and experiences in fiction form.

Unfortunately while I did find the subject matter and perspective interesting, I was mostly disappointed with the book as a whole. Field sets up the story with a strong first chapter and the novel successfully helps the reader to conceptualize and experience the daily issues that the homeless face. But after a strong start the story begins to drag and mostly falls flat. The Publishers Weekly review sums it up well:

While Field may know this world well, the characters he creates are not compelling enough to get readers to care very much about what happens to them. The dialogue is decent (if a few of the witnessing scenes feel improbable), but the story moves far too slowly to an unsatisfying conclusion. While this could have made a fine short story, there’s not enough material for a book.

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Everyone calls her Toby. Her real name is Gwendolyn, but few know that. For sixty-nine years she’s been Toby, ever since her brother John called her Gwendolyn, and she spat peas from her seat in the high chair and said, “That sumbitch called me Gwenlum. My name not Gwenlum. My’s Toby.” The dog’s name. The name stuck, long after the dog died, and now only she and John remember how she got the name, and John, once a fallingdown drunk, either can’t tell or no one would believe him.

So begins The Floor of the Sky By Pamela Carter Joern part of the Flyover Fiction Series from the University of Nebraska Press. From this intriguing beginning Joern weaves a poetic and loving portrait of the Western Plains that is at the same time a restrained and understated tale of love and loss; of tragedy and family secrets that reflects its harsh, remote, but beautiful setting.

Here is a brief description of the story:

Toby Jenkins, an aging widow, is on the verge of losing her family’s ranch when her granddaughter Lila—a city girl, sixteen and pregnant—shows up for the summer. While facing painful decisions about her future, Lila uncovers festering secrets about her grandmother’s past—discoveries that spur Toby to reconsider the ambiguous ties she holds to her embittered sister Gertie, her loyal ranch hand George, her not-so-sympathetic daughter Nola Jean, and ultimately, herself.

What I really appreciated about the novel was its balance between character, plot, and language. There is enough plot and story line to keep the novel moving forward and to pique the reader’s interest. But the story is really about the characters - with the setting being a character as well. Joern does a masterful job of capturing both the internal and external, the emotional and physical, landscape of rural America through the eyes of her characters. At the same time, the language is understated yet powerful; its straightforward yet poetic prose reflecting the setting and people it is describing.

A number of potential culture war issues are touched upon: teenage pregnancy; the demise of the small town and the rise of the superstore; the role of agribusiness and the difficulty of family farming; even the role of faith and religion. But Joern doesn’t address these issues to make political points. Instead she simply allows us to see their impact through the eyes of her characters. She skillfully allows us to see the world through a variety of perspectives: young and old; married and single; rich and poor.

It is appropriate that the University of Nebraska Press is part of the partnership involved in the Willa Cather Archive, as Joern seems very much in the Cather tradition. Anyone with an interest in fiction centered in rural America, or who simply enjoy compelling stories with strong characters, should be sure to check out The Floor of the Sky. I highly recommend it.

- Win a free book! As part of its promotional efforts Simon & Schuster is announcing The Thirteenth Tale Special Leather-Bound Edition Sweepstakes. Here is how it works: Any reader who visits the book’s website before November 30, 2006, can enter to win a signed, leather-bound, limited-edition copy. Simply visit the website, find your way to the “Win a Special Leather-Bound Edition link, and fill out the form. Please mention the fact that you found out about the sweepstakes via Collected Miscellany. What is in it for me? Well, if for some odd reason more people find their way to the contest via this site than any other I could win a prize as well. Given my traffic and click-through rates, I can’t say I am confident. But you dear readers can always prove me wrong.

What is The Thirteenth Tale? Here is the publisher’s description:

The Thirteenth Tale is gothic suspense at its best. In Vida Winter’s long career as a novelist, she has become famous for weaving tales not only on the page, but about her own life. Each time she gives an interview, the story she tells of her life is more fantastic, more richly imagined than the last. But as she comes to the end of that life, she decides to finally tell the truth. And the truth is darker and more fascinating than anything she could have made up.

So if that sounds like your kinda book, feel free to click through and take a look around the website. A free book is a free book, right?

- If you can’t get enough of this pod-casting thing there is a lot out there to listen to. The Bat Segundo Show just released a number of new shows. And now word comes that Unbridled Books has taken the pod-cast plunge:

Unbridled Books is excited to announce the launch of its new podcast, Unbridled Aloud. This a series of half-hour podcasts produced and hosted by Kay Bonetti Callison and featuring interviews with Unbridled Books authors, book commentary, readings, and more. Each show will be available on www.unbridledbooks.com/podcast and through multiple online outlets. CDs of each show are available upon request. We will also offer the podcast to bookstores and the larger book community.

The first one is available and features Lise Haines, author of small acts of sex and electricity. Listen to it here.

Here is the upcoming schedule:

*September 15: Unbridled Aloud chats with Edward Falco, author of the lauded collection, Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha, and Wolf Point, a literary thriller just released in paperback. Both titles were Book Sense Picks. Sabbath Night was also nominated to be a Lit Blog Co-op Read This! Selection.

*October 1: Unbridled Aloud talks with William J. Cobb, author of the second novel, GOODNIGHT, TEXAS, which is an October Book Sense Pick and has earned a starred Library Journal review as well as kudos from George Saunders and Daniel Woodrell.

*October 15: Unbridled Aloud speaks with Carolyn Turgeon about her debut novel, RAIN VILLAGE. Due out in November, this Pulpwood Queens Book Club Pick is the perfect next read for those who loved Water for Elephants.

*November 1: Unbridled Aloud chats with acclaimed novelist, musician, and activist Marc Estrin about all his books, with special emphasis on his latest, Golem Song, due out in November. Golem Song is currently being serialized on www.unbridledbooks.com. The print edition hits stores in November.

*November 15: Unbridled Aloud features Timothy Schaffert, author of the charmer The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God. This popular read and book club favorite was a Barnes and Noble Discover title as well as a Pulpwood Queens Book Club Pick.

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Cross posted to Right Shelf.

Without getting into the whole Ann Coulter good or bad debate, or the state of conservative publishing, I wanted to note Tim Noah’s lame piece in Slate on conservative authors. Noah’s basic theory is that the problems of the Bush administration is causing conservatives to writer like Ann Coulter - i.e. “outrageous views” and “poisonous rhetoric.”

But I’m inclined to think the main driving force is the bankruptcy of contemporary conservatism as represented by the Bush administration. An aggressively interventionist foreign policy has stumbled badly; a sharp cutback in taxes has failed to bring prosperity to the middle class; and, since Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans, citizens have come to regard governmental incompetence less as a reason to vote Republican than as a reason to hold Republicans responsible for indifferent stewardship.

When you don’t have anything new to say, and what you’ve been saying in the past no longer has much plausibility, you have three choices. You can shut up. For conservative commentators, this is inconceivable, not to mention financially ruinous. You can re-examine your premises. This is not the conservative style. Or you can pump up the volume.

Noah then goes on to attack Jonah Goldberg and Dinesh D’Souza for giving into this “pump up the volume” tendency.

First, it is worth pointing out that conservatives obviously don’t believe that their ideas are bankrupt but that GOP politicians have failed to implement them. And they are not shy about proclaiming this: Imposter, The K Street Gang, Buck Wild, Conservatism Betrayed, etc.

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