Dec 18, 2024
I wanted to like this movie. Really, I did. I tried to like it. But modern realism is just totally unsuited to the Homeric epics and like, also...maybe to telling a coherent story at all? Ralph Feinnes and Juliette Binoche are both terrific actors, but The Return failed for me at every level and here's why. Plus: read...
Dec 10, 2024
And the Inkling Award goes to...
This year, for the first of what I hope will be many times, I'm announcing my awards for the best books I read in four categories, with one bonus:
Non-Fiction
Criticism
Fiction
Theology
Bonus Category: Worst Book of
the year
You can find links to the winners above, and a few runner-ups
Nov 27, 2024
"I cannot rest from travel," says Odysseus in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses. But wasn't resting from travel...kind of the whole point? Come to think of it, what does happen to an indelible character when his story comes to an end? Maybe the answer is, it doesn't. As a coda to our series on Homer, here's one last look...
Nov 25, 2024
Hey you! Yeah, you!! PUT DOWN THAT NAT KING COLE CHRISTMAS ALBUM. It's not time yet!! Technically, it won't even be time on December 1, which is the beginning not of Christmas but of the Advent season. It's also the beginning of the liturgical calendar. And since these sorts of things can be hard to focus on unless you...
Nov 19, 2024
It's payback time. Odysseus at last throws off his disguise and wages holy war on the men who tore up his house and home for ten years, in what is still one of the most metal sequences in all of world literature. Does he go too far? Lots of people think so--but I don't. I think he gets right up to the brink and then, in...