Reading Highlights from 2024
I missed the boat for TGCA’s Year-in-Books series this year (see last year’s picks here). Nevertheless, here are some of the books I enjoyed in 2024. Fiction My two favourite fiction books this year were warning-shots fired from slightly different political trajectories. In Prophet Song, Paul Lynch’s protagonist Eilish Stack—wife, mother and microbiologist—watches in eloquent horror as her native Ireland slouches toward a Pinochet-like tyranny and then civil war. As her personal loses accumulate, Lynch draws us close enough to hear Eilish’s heart break. We feel her dread and see how the ordinary (and extraordinary) concerns of her life make it impossible for her to escape the tragedy. Lynch’s writing…
In a Bleak Midsummer
As you, God born of God long ago, Son of the true Father, eternally existed without beginning in the glory of heaven, so your own creation cries with confidence to you now for their needs, that you send that bright sun to us, and come yourself to lighten those who long have lived surrounded by shadows and darkness, here in everlasting night, who, shrouded by sins, have had to endure death’s dark shadow. (“O Oriens” [“O Dayspring”], Anglo-Saxon Advent Antiphon, translated by Eleanor Parker) In the Christmas traditions of Northern Europe, Christ comes in the dead of winter when all the world is dead and frozen under a pall of…
Ghost Stories and the Eye of Faith
I like a spooky story. I like (plausible) spooky stories because they disrupt the arrogant certainties of scientific materialism and fit with the ornate cosmos I see revealed in the Bible: a world of angels and demons and spiritual powers and unclean spirits (whatever they are). I like the idea that there is a hidden world that still reveals itself and confounds atheists and materialists—even when that revelation is malign. Encounters with the Other World Over the last year or so, I have been listening on and off to “Otherworld”—a curated podcast that collects first-person accounts of all kinds of weird and wonderful experiences ranging from encounters with cryptids (Bigfoot,…
Review: Mania by Lionel Shriver
(Contains spoilers for Lionel Shriver’s novel Mania) Cognitive discrimination has been outlawed in the America of Lionel Shriver’s novel Mania (2024). Nobody is stupid, everyone’s brain is equal; the country is falling apart. Mania opens with Pearson Converse, the story’s protagonist, being summoned to remove her son from school after he used the “D-word” about the slogan on another child’s t-shirt. The Principal is unyielding: “Playground obscenities would be one thing. Slurs are quite another. This is a suspension level offense. Any similar violation in the future could merit expulsion.” Pearson initially complies, and teaches her children to hide what they really think. But she is unable to follow her…
On Christ’s Two Wills: Responding to William Lane Craig
A couple of weeks ago the renowned Christian apologist and philosopher, William Lane Craig caused a small flurry on the internet by declaring his rejection of the orthodox doctrine of the two wills of Christ (dyothelitism), and his preference for another Christological aberration known as Apollinarianism. I have a great deal of respect for Dr Craig and often enjoy listening to his discussions and debates. I also think it is possible to make too much of his heresy—especially since I think his pronouncements are (at least partly) the result of a misunderstanding. Yet, because I have done quite a bit of reading and thinking on the topic, I thought I…
Considering Barbie (and Marriage and Singleness)
Being human can be very uncomfortable … People make up things like the patriarchy and Barbie to endure how uncomfortable it is. Jen and I saw Barbie over the weekend. We both liked it; were both surprised by it. I thought it was funny and smart and multi-layered to a degree that I still haven’t fathomed. The film’s reframing of sexual politics as an existential problem allows it to address deeper human questions that apply to both men and women. I also found it surprisingly compassionate. It managed to proclaim the let’s-take-down-the-patriarchy part of its message without anger and without, as Jen put it, being preachy. Barbie’s final rejection of…
What’s the Point of Christian Fiction?
What’s the point of Christian fiction? Can it do any good? Should it even exist? These are some of the questions I have been mulling over as I have been working on several novels over the last ten (or thirty) years or so. I have found them difficult to answer, but here are some scattered ideas that I have tried to rake into a pile. Should Christian Fiction Even Exist? From one point of view, the whole notion of “Christian fiction” is dubious or offensive From one point of view (often a “literary” point of view), the whole notion of “Christian fiction” is dubious or offensive. Christians should seek to…
Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Minor spoilers for the novel follow. Published in 2021, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun predates the excitement and consternation generated by the advent of large-language-model AIs. Yet this astonishing novel has some important things to say to us about quasi-intelligent machines, and how our interactions with them might affect us. Klara, the protagonist and narrator is an android—or AF (artificial friend)—built to provide companionship to a human child. As we first meet her in her shop window, waiting to be purchased and looking out on the world, we encounter a mind that is charming and strange. Klara is curious, childlike, innocent and compliant, but she is also highly perceptive…
Toy Story 4 and the Gods That Fail
Recently I have been listening to, and very much enjoying, Nate Morgan Locke. Nate appears regularly with Glen Scrivener on the “Speak Life” podcast and vlogs on his own Youtube channel as the “Reformed Mythologist”. Nate thinks deeply about fun things—especially movies. He explores the nature and history of our cultural artefacts and ferrets out their themes and their appeal with a clear-eyed appreciation of the world as the Bible describes it. Most of the time, I think he gets things right. But not always. And that brings me to Toy Story 4. You. Are. A. Toy! As you can see if you watch his discussion, Nate is a big…
Gravity Waves and Singing Stars
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Last week, scientists announced the discovery that the universe is vibrating with low frequency gravity waves. Music analogies proliferated. It was a “cosmic bass note”, a “hum”, a “chorus”, the “background sound of the universe”. Astronomer Adam Frank, writing in The Atlantic, put it most poetically: The whole universe is humming. Actually, the whole universe is Mongolian throat singing. Every star, every planet, every continent, every building,…
