The Maze Runner - a Review

Life can sometimes feel like a maze, but in The Maze Runner, it really is. A maze filled with ginormous monsters. And secrets. And nutty survivor dudes.

 

Here’s the long pitch from the hardcover edition:

 

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he’s not alone. When the lift’s doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade—a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls.

 

Just like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they’ve closed tight. And every thirty days a new boy has been delivered in the lift.

 

Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up—the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers.

 

Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind.

Checks and Balances - Gun Control and Self-Worship

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, there’s been a lot of talk about guns. Or rather, there’s been a lot of shouting about guns. Both sides seem unable to see how anyone could believe differently, and in general, both act from good motives. On the one side, you have the Right, who are prepared to fight tooth and nail against increased gun control. On the other, the Left is pushing for a ban onassault rifles.

 

I recently listened to a particularly heated discussion—I should say knock-down, drag-out fight—on the subject between ultra-liberal Piers Morgan and ultra-conservative Ben Shapiro. First, kudos to Morgan for having the guts to have Shapiro on there, because Shapiro obviously came with an ax to grind (or a rifle to prime). Shapiro got off to a quick start by accusing Morgan of “standing on the graves of the Sandy Hook victims” to advance his political agenda. He proceeded to not pull any punches.

The Truly Great Man - My Understanding of St. Crispin's Day

Shakespeare is the number one best-selling author in the world, with Agatha Christie as a close second. (Taking into account that Bible has one Author, and He not of this world). But while Shakespeare is amazing as a writer, he really wrote to be spoken. When put in the hands of a brilliant director, like Kenneth Branagh, the result is magic. I’ve seen Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V several times, and it still gives me chills. Like Fiddler on the Roof, it’s one of the few older films that stand the passage of time.

There’s one scene in particular, near the end of the movie, which, without fail, makes my heart soar. King Henry V, nicknamed “Harry”, has led the British troops into France, and the Battle of Agincourt approaches. The French outnumber them by a large margin. It’s a pretty hopeless situation.

A fellow named Westmoreland laments, rather understandably, “O that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!”

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars - a Review

For centuries, human beings have disagreed about our destinies. Is the world only chaos, full of random choices, yet free ones? Is there freedom? Or are we bound to a fate written before our birth, written in a book that cannot be changed? Is God in control – or are we in control – or both?

 

That’s the question tackled in Katherine Marsh’s novel, Jepp, Who Defied the Stars. As the years have passed, I’ve grown less interested in YA fiction (though I continue to write it), but when I saw the title on a library shelf, it sounded too promising to pass up. Also, I love unlikely heroes, and Jepp seems certainly, ha, short, on the heroic potential.

 A teenage dwarf living in 16^th Century Europe, Jepp is immediately a distinct and unique voice, mixing old-fashioned, somewhat archaic language with simple, clear thinking. Living in the small town of Astraveld, he is raised to believe the stars decree a man’s fate. In this, he is similar to the author, who was raised in a family that focused strongly on astrology. But Jepp mixes the astrology with Christianity, and frequently uses Biblical allusions, something refreshing in a 21^st Century novel.

 

“There is no luck,” [Don] confided. “There are only the stars, Jepp. That is where our fortune or lack of it resides.

“Not with God?”

“God made the stars….But it is the celestial bodies that make us.”

Maybe It's Better

 

 

We live on a hill, surrounded by rolling and dipping hills and a tree-fringe and a hedge of blue mountains on the skyline. It had been raining gray skies for the last three days, and when the snow came, it was so quick it looked like streams of white cotton. It was only an hour before the ground was coated, invisible beneath a pale shroud.

 

The Dramatized Addison Walk

Your average Christian is going to know who C.S. Lewis is.

Your slightly less average Christian will know who J.R.R. Tolkien is.

A rather odd Christian will know that Lewis and Tolkien knew one another and were members of an Oxford-based club, the Inklings.

It takes a really weird Christian to know that Tolkien was one of the major influences on Jack Lewis's conversion.

Congratulations, you are now a really weird Christian. And if you want to be a fanatic, C.S. Lewis was nicknamed after a childhood neighbor's dog, Jack. (This calls to mind a certain Indiana Jones).

North, South, and Hobbit

I finally got around to uploading some violin covers to YouTube. The first my sister, Sarah, filmed back in the summer - we were at the park during a festival (my band Night Crossing had just performed) and I thought the water would be a great setting. It's the theme I've Seen Hell from the BBC period drama North and South (I highly recommend it).

The second was another opportunity I didn't want to miss. I only get dressed up once in a blue moon, so I decided that I should go ahead and film The Hobbit music while I was ready for my godbrother's wedding. I didn't really know the songs by heart, but it'll have to do until I can cajole Sarah into playing with me later. Sorry for the blinkiness - I hate contacts.

Enjoy,
Longish

Top 5's of 2012

Because I'm usually half a step behind the times, and generally wish I lived five hundred years ago, many of these things didn't come out in 2012, but that's when I discovered them.

Books:

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy – by the wonderful Eric Metaxas. This book not only tells the amazing story of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but it also paints in vivid detail Hitler’s sneaky political alliance with “the church” and what the real Church was doing behind the scenes. Disturbing parallels with modern America.

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery - also by Metaxas. I didn’t know very much about Wilberforce until I read this book, but now I think he’s one of the greatest influences on Western civilization in the last four hundred years. And a Christian.

The Fellowship of the Ring – by J.R.R. Tolkien. Yeah, yeah, I’ve read it before, but this is the first time I’ve really read it with the spiritual eyes open. Tremendous book. I'm halfway through The Two Towers, and I'm savoring every moment. Interestingly enough, I just found out that the copy we own (see pic) is the Ballantine second edition - and it has a weird misprint. If you happen to have several thousand dollars laying around, I'd be willing to negotiate.





Orthodoxy - by G.K. Chesterton. Simply foundational stuff. I loved this book. So many moments where one thinks "Gosh! It's so obvious, so obviously true, but I never thought of it. Amazing."










Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl - by N.D. Wilson. To come clean, I've only watched the bookumentary so far, but that was amazing. I won't quite look at anything the same way. Since, according to Shelfari, I've read about eighty books this year, it's quite an achievement. Along with Orthodoxy, it's had a major impact on my thinking.