Being a writer and
historian, I have always been interested in what successful authors have to say
about their craft. I put Andrew Klavan into this category.
I have read several
of his award-winning mystery novels. Klavan pivots away from fiction with The Truth and Beauty, which focuses on the power of the written word. Here, he reviews
the lives of some of literature’s giants: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Milton,
and Shelley.
In my own book, I explore what it would be like to live in a world without words. All communication happens through the thought process. My work illustrates what happens when there are no words, no Logos, and essentially, no humanity.
I
love Klavan’s book because he is a master at illustrating how our humanity is
linked to language. He does this by revisiting some of the greatest literature of the nineteenth century.
Follow Andrew Klavan to a deeper, richer understanding of the words of Jesus.
Andrew Klavan believed what he read in the Gospels, but he often struggled to understand what Jesus really meant. So he began a journey of wrestling with the beautiful and often strange words of Jesus.
He learned Greek in order to read the Gospels in their original languages, and he vowed to set aside any preconceptions about what the Scriptures say. But it wasn't until he began exploring how some of history's greatest writers wrestled with the same issues we confront today--political upheaval, rejection of social norms,…
Lee
Child struck gold when he created the Jack Reacher character. What I love about this particular book is the recurring theme that has been popping
up throughout the series, which manifests itself in a big way in The Enemy. That
theme has to do with family.
In a scene that takes place in a beautifully
rendered Paris, tough guy Reacher has a
bitter-sweet reunion with both his brother and mother,
which is just as powerful as anything
James Lee Burke or John D. McDonald ever came up with.
Yes, there is a lot of
action, but you cannot deny Child is a master craftsman of the written word.
Jack Reacher takes a call reporting a dead soldier found in a sleazy motel used by local hookers. The dead man is a two-star general on a secret mission. When Reacher goes to the general's house to break the news, he finds a battered corpse: the general's wife.
For
some reason, I had always shied away from Dune. Not sure why. I loved The
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire,
and The Wheel of Time books.
So, fifty-eight years after it was first
published, I finally gave it a chance and was immediately mesmerized by the
universe Herbert created.
A universe with a deep history embedded
within the unforgettable characters and technicolor images that splash across every
page. That is what I love about Dune. Herbert’s imagination is splashed
across each page like a Jackson Pollock painting, drawing the reader deeper
into a story broadcast in color, never black and white.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
Archodial Bragen is in trouble
with the truth—a truth related to bones found in a cave on Apollis.
This truth
shatters the unthought that males and females never existed and children are fables,
misinformation continually being erased from the Galaxial Warp, where all
thoughts are linked to the Hive.
As part of the progressional advance, Synthon Bragen
is programmed to look toward the future, not the past. Yet the strange bones Bragen
discovered contain DNA that sucks zam into a different time, where children are
more than fables and the past is never over.
