In a word: Wow.

(Side note: to those of you who have been putting it off, stop. Read the books. Or better yet, rent them on audio from your local library. Listening to Robert Dale perform these books has got to be the best way to experience them. Better than just reading them, and better than the movies. The Dude is amazing. Plus it's a timesaver because you can listen in your car.)

This book is ... I'm at a loss for words. If I call it a masterpiece, those of you who haven't read it will think I'm exagerating. Let's just say that it is up there among the finest of Children's literature...though this book really isn't for elementary age children.

These books really do keep getting better and better. The end of this one was like reading the end of "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. The whole thing is at school kid-stuff, even while the seriousness of the adult world is looming, it's still "out there", in the sense that it's not really in the realm of serious worry. And then you get to the end, and the hero (and the reader) finds out that what's been going on in school was the real world. And it's serious. And wham-o! It's life or death.

Whereas "Prisoner of Azkaban" lays the groundwork, this is where it turns really serious. The endings of books 3 and 4 are both amazing pieces of adrenaline rushes. It's like finally coming to the end of a roller coaster ride, only to find that the final screaming descent doesn't stop...It just keeps going. The endings of these two books just pulled me along.

A few thoughts:

Yaaaay. Finally, one of the books starts somewhere other than the Dursleys. I also liked that there is lots of story before we ever get to Hogwarts. The Quidditch World Cup...

The rift between Harry and Ron was a great addition to the story. Realistic. I began to root for them to reconcile, but was actually surprised (but relieved) that it happened as soon as it did. The scene where they reconcile is brilliant.

Ron is hilarious. "Percy wouldn't recognize a joke if it danced in front of him naked...wearing a house-elf's tea towel." I haven't said much about Ron, yet, but he is a brilliant character. His wisecracks are awesome. Each character in these books has real personality. ("House Elf Liberation Front!")

The Christmas Ball was hilarious. What a great picture of "the middle school dance". Neither Harry or Ron's dates really like them, and end up wandering off. Rowling does a great job of showing that at that age, girls are better at that romantic stuff than boys. She also does a great job of portraying how awkward and uncomfortable and stressful such things like who's taking whom to the dance is to young adolescents. Though it is set in the fantastical wizarding world, it was still so real. This is always a good mark of good sci-fi/fantasy.

Rowling is a great mystery writer too. Every thread every detail of the story ends up being important. When the big reveals come at the end, it turns out that everything that happened in the first chapters had a reason. How a writer has the end so well worked out even in the beginning, I'll never fully understand.

One quibble: if Voldemort's inside man had just turned Harry's Broomstick into a port key in the beginning, half the book wouldn't even have been necessary. ;-)

Please put your discussion and thoughts about book 4 under comments. I want to hear from you! But I haven't read books 5, 6, 7 yet, so no spoilers please!

Since I started going through the Harry Potter series, and am doing these discussion posts on each book one at at a time, I decided to go back and browse the quintessential Harry Potter post written by Kenny, that has one of the longest comment threads in thinkling history. (Surpassed only by the gatorade thread I believe.) Harry Potter Had Me At Hello

Apparently, my perspective on Harry Potter changed... like a frog in a kettle. ;-) I don't even remember writing this. It's from 2005.

But since I brought it up later in the same Polar Express, I'll elaborate here. I wrote:I recently watched the first Harry Potter, uh STARTED watching it. And I haven't finished it yet. I must admit the witchcraft weirded me out, and my wife won't watch it anymore because it creeped her out so much, so I only watch 10-15 minutes now and then after she's asleep. I'm determined to finish it, and then write more. But until I explain myself better, I'll just say that my kids won't be allowed to watch Harry Potter until they're either 18 or out of my house. (i.e. under my authority).

Now for the record, I support Kenny. If he loves HP, cool! In fact, I don't care if everybody loves HP. I am firmly with my fellow thinklings in the area of Christian liberty. So what I am about to share is STRICTLY personal. I have no expectation that anyone share my opinion.

I finally finished the first HP. Special effects were awesome. There was much about the movie to like:
-The friendship between Harry, Hermoine, and Ron.
-The clever imagery and wordplay. I liked that the head of "slitherin" house was named "snape", and that they were the villians. No one likes snakes. :)
-Hagrid. He was awesome. And very funny.
-My favorite scene: Real Wizard's chess near the end. That was just plain cool.
-Ron's self sacrifice in that same scene. He was willing to die for his friend and for the cause. It was moving.
-I liked how Harry wasn't the hero alone. His friends' strengths helped and benefitted him in his quest.
-And lots more...

What I didn't like:
I admit it. The witchcraft. I don't mind magic. I have no problem with wizards, wands, dragons, centaurs, unicorns and even talk of good v. bad magic. Actually I love this stuff. (I love the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, which is very similar to Harry Potter, and I'm inclined to think that J.K. Rowling stole...er... was inspired by those books.)

But here, more so in the beginning of the movie, there was so much that reminded me of the real-world occult (and just images of witches) that I just couldn't get it out of my mind.
-Familiars- animals that are sort-of spiritual companions to those who practice witchcraft.
-spellbooks
-pointy hats
-brooms
-potions
-curses

Anyway, they just made me uncomfortable. I'd just as soon not expose my kids to that stuff in a positive way. But that's just me. Liking Harry Potter does not make anyone a bad Christian. There's much to like about it.

As far as the books, I will quote Bill from Comment #1 in this post: I've tried reading HP - I got through the third page (no kidding - that's as far as I got). A year later I picked it up again and... got through the third page. It just didn't grab me. I know that makes me a philistine, because the people who have read it love it.

That goes ditto for me. I got to about page three and quit. Tried again, and got through first chapter and quit. Not because of aversion to magic, but just sheer boredom. I'll probably try again someday... :)

249. Quaid - 01/10/2005 8:33 am CST

Thanks Shrode . . .

What interests me is how someone can pick up a book and read only three pages into it and say "it didn't grab me." I'm not attacking here - please don't hear it that way.

Don't you think you should at least try and go through one chapter first? It really wouldn't take too long. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you arrived at the same result - a not-read book.

I'm just wondering how three pages constitutes a go at a book. It's not too different then me watching the first three minutes of a movie and saying - "nah, not for me."

It's one thing if there's gratuitous secks or violence, but none of these things happen in the first three pages (and there is no secs later on, either - for the record)

What if I went into the Polar Express (since we're talking about that film), watched the first three minutes and walked out and asked for my money back because it didn't grab me. You'd probably think me odd, right?

250. Kenny - 01/10/2005 10:27 am CST

Interestingly, I had the same experience with HP. I Read the first three pages twelve times before buying the book and the rest is history.

251. Bill - 01/10/2005 10:33 am CST

Well, I was the first one to do the "first three pages" comment.

Basically, J.R.R. Tolkien it wasn't :-) I don't know how else to explain it. I'd prefer everyone not start piling on and say "Oh ho! But you've read [name book here] and that's not J.R.R. Tolkien! Aha!" - because I know HP are great books. I'd probably really enjoy them. But I don't have the inclination. Maybe I didn't like them because everyone else does. I dunno. It's just my personal preference.

If you walked out of Polar Express after three minutes I'd say that was your choice :-)

252. Kenny - 01/10/2005 10:46 am CST

Just for the record, I have yet to make it my mission to sway all to read HP. Unless things change and I begin to profit from it somehow, I am content to read and enjoy them and live peaceably with those who don't:)

253. Bill - 01/10/2005 10:50 am CST

Thanks Kenny - I appreciate that.

254. Bill - 01/10/2005 10:52 am CST

By the way, Kenny - it's cool to look at our front page, even though Jared and I have dropped out temporarily, and Blo is once again a fictional zephyr, and see you and Shrode carrying the load. Well done! You guys go hard.

255. Shrode - 01/10/2005 11:06 am CST

Quaid wrote:What interests me is how someone can pick up a book and read only three pages into it and say "it didn't grab me." I'm not attacking here - please don't hear it that way.Don't you think you should at least try and go through one chapter first? It really wouldn't take too long. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you arrived at the same result - a not-read book.I'm just wondering how three pages constitutes a go at a book. It's not too different then me watching the first three minutes of a movie and saying - "nah, not for me."

You're right Quaid. First, let me say that I have no doubt that HP books are good. And I'd probably like it fine. In fact I intend to try again. I only mentioned that in an anecdotal way, not as any kind of anti-HP comment.

I went back and checked. It appears I latched onto Bill's comment and exagerated. My book mark is at end of chapter one, so I know I made it at least that far the second time. The first time I "read it", was actually me and my wife together. We read to each other, and we decided to try Harry Potter. She read it to me and we both got bored, probably because we never got past Harry living with his foster family under the stairs. I just looked at my copy of the sorcerer's stone, and we must have made it past chapter one, because I remember him living under the stairs and being mistreated. I even remember all the letters. But we never made it to hogwart's. We just sort-of gave up.

I tried on my own later, and made it at least through chapter one. I don't think I "gave up on it" akin to walking out of a theater, so much as I just never got around to picking it up again. I plan on trying again someday. Especially having read Quaid's comment number 64 today.

64. Quaid - 07/26/2003 12:16 pm CDT

As far as Harry Potter goes, I am a pretty big fan. Something that I wanted to mention that many might not be aware of, as I was not aware of until just recently (as I just finished the fourth book), is that Harry Potter has something pretty integral to the entire Fantasy World literature genre.

The Harry Potter series, in the end of Book IV, begins what appears to be an epic war of Good vs. Evil. Although the first three books are fun and extremely entertaining, there was a kind of sitcom-like aura about them.

Here is (more or less) how the first 3 books go:
You get your cast of characters, they fall into some sort of hijinx, hilarity ensues. Evil presents itself, more hijinx, more hilarity, evil is overcome (for at least the time being), no one good gets hurt too badly, everyone goes home (until the next time . . .). [This is done in a very entertaining fashion, mind you]

In Book Four, however, things begin to change DRAMATICALLY which I think will make the series incredible.

Book Four goes along, more or less, with the same formula until you get towards the end, and all of a sudden, the evil is larger than it has ever been and innocent people (quite graphically) begin to get hurt and die. The end of Book Four is quite a cliffhanger (the evil is NOT overcome), and presents the introduction to what will be a battle for the entire world.

Although Harry Potter is just easy-to-read, child's play fun, it is extremely entertaining. In addition to this, however, the books are beginning a sequence of events that may keep this series going for a very long time, not just when the fun wears off after the series ends.

Just as LOTR is still popular today even though it was written many, many years ago (the 40's, right?), Harry Potter seems to be a series that is growing into a timeless classic.

For those fighting the Harry Potter battle today, be prepared to continue fighting. Your grandkids will be wanting to read them, too.

I'm quite proud that I made good on my promise to "try again someday." I'm glad I did. Quaid was right. Though, I noticed the "big change" at the end of book 3. I just started book 4, so I can't wait to see what Quaid is talking about.

For the record, I'm planning on going back to watch all of the movies in order, after I finish all of the books first. By then, maybe the "Deathly Hallows" movie will be completed? I heard they are going to break that into two movies. I wonder what the titles will be?

Also, above I said my kids can't watch the movies til they are 18. That was probably a bit harsh. I think my 4 years ago self may have been wrong. I'm thinking now, that I'll let my kids read the books when they are in middle school. But in my opinion, they are not good for elementary age. But that's just me. My 8 year old hasn't been allowed to see "The Incredibles" or "Madagascar" or "Ice Age" yet so I'm just a curmudgeon. ;-)

Well, I finished the second Harry Potter book. I'm going through each of them in order FOR THE FIRST TIME! Will you talk about this one with me under comments?

I liked it a lot. Here are some things that struck me:

Just to repeat the rules. Please discuss this with me under comments. But no references to books AFTER this one please. Don't spoil it for me.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't read this book yet, read on at your own risk.

This one was as good as the first. As a refresher, it starts with Dobby, the house elf warning Harry about going back to Hogwarts.

It also was a reminder to me of how horrid the Dursley's are. I was disturbed by their treatment of Harry in this book, even more than in the first. What Rowling is describing here is child abuse in my opinion, and I wondered how a 10 year old reader would take these descriptions.

One thing that disappointed me a little was that the plot was similar to the first one. Harry is trying to find something hidden at Hogwarts. And again it is hidden under the school. And again, when he finds it, he must confront Voldemore. Sigh. Like a movie sequel that is trying to duplicate it's success, it's like retelling the same story. End criticism.

It was still an excellent book. Speaking of horrid, Snape's a jerk. But apparently he's a competent wizard, showing the kids the disarming spell, "Expeliarmus", which gets used a bunch in book 3 - The Prisoner of Azkaban. (Confession: I just finished that one too, I'm just late on this post.)

Again, in this book, Rowling shows a great sense of humor. Gilderoy Lockhart is a great character. She does a great job of showing that he is a pompous, incompetent, self-centered fool, without ever having to say so. And just when you think he can't get anymore audacious, he's autographing copies of his textbook for students. (I checked to see who played him in the move. Kenneth Branagh?!?! No! I think that guy's a great actor and all, but that's not who I pictured. I imagined the long haired blonde guy from Die Hard 1 and the Money Pit.) Count that as bad professor #2 for the "Defense against the Dark Arts".

The Weasley family is awesome. Fred and George rock the Casbah. Who wouldn't want to live with them? I was so surprised when Harry went back to live with the Dursley's at the end of the book. The Weasleys would obviously welcome him. It seems like a bit of dishonest story telling for him to keep going back to the Dursley's. It's like she has to keep the formula of the first few chapters being how miserable Harry is at the Dursley's followed by going to Diagon Alley for school supplies.

Another thing that impressed me about this book was the surprises. I was not expecting the ending at all. Rowling is obviously good at that, and I'm curious to see how that will continue in the later books. I never saw Ginny Weasley coming or Tom Riddle either for that matter.

It's interesting how objects from the first book become important in the next - like the sorting hat. My understanding is that Rowling does even more of that as the series continues. (but don't tell me!)

Is it just me or is Quidditch sort of a pointless game? Here's what I mean by that: the way Rowling has the rules set up, whoever gets the snitch wins the game. Period. Though theoretically, throwing the quaffle through the hoops, could outweigh the 150 points that the Snitch wins, but that's never how it turns out. It basically comes down to which seeker catches the snitch first. It doesn't seem to much matter what the other players do. This makes Harry pretty important obviously, but eliminates Quidditch as a team sport. It seems to be a lot more of a one on one contest in reality, seeker vs. seeker.

What did you think of Book 2?

Just sayin'. :-)

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A public service announcement.

"Mmm" is when you are tantalized by or hungry for something.
"Hmm" is when you are thinking about or contemplating something.
"Umm" is when you are hesitant or unsure.

Mixing them up can be, ummm, amusing.

Also:

"Yea" is when you're celebrating ("Yea, team!") or assenting to a vote ("I vote yea.").
"Yeah" is when you are answering in the affirmative.

Thirdly:

A "desert" is a dry environment.
A "dessert" is something sweet you eat after dinner.

Fourthly:

"Whoa" is when you're taken aback or stopping a horse.
"Woe" is a portend of something ominous.
"Whoah" and "Woa" are nothing. Seriously, don't use them.

Finally:

It is "Whoomp! There it is!", not "Womp" or "Oomp" and certainly never "Unhh."

That is all.

I admit it. I'm late to the party. Really, really late. But I just finished "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and now I'm halfway through "Chamber of Secrets." Now I'm starting to see what all the kerfluffle is about. It's good!

As I cruise through every book in the series, I wonder if anyone would be interested in discussing them as I go, one at a time. Discussion will be carried on under comments.

This thread is about the Sorcerer's Stone only. I'll do another separate post for each of the subsequent books. Spoiling any of the other Potter books for me will result in severe punishment for you...like having to do detention in the magic forest. Please don't!

I'll get us started.

One thing I never expected about Harry Potter was the humor. It's funny. Peeves the poltergeist cracks me up. The images of Quirrel, professor of "Defence against the Dark Arts" stumbling, and stuttering, afraid of his own shadow was hilarious. This was supposed to be the guy who fights werewolves and vampires. Oh and then there was Professor Dumbledore's welcome speech.

"Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
Thank you!"

Hilarious.

Another thing that impressed me was the friendship between Ron, Harry and Hermione.

"From that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them."

Brilliant.

I never saw Quirrell coming. Never. I even saw the movie several years ago, but all I could remember was Alan Rickman, the bad guy's bad guy, as Professor Snape. (For the record, that's the only Harry Potter movie I've seen. I will go through the rest of the books before I see anymore movies.) I was just so sure that Snape would be the bad guy. Rowling fooled me too.

And finally I really liked Hogwarts. The whole atmosphere was amazing. Rowling has created a magical world. And like Narnia, Xanth, and Middle Earth, I found myself wishing I could go there.

Please put your thoughts about the first Harry Potter book under comments. Any thoughts at all.

Author Ayn Rand has had a resurgence in recent days. As a reaction to the obnoxious, creeping statism of our government, people are talking about the libertarian icon more and more, inspired by the idea of "going Galt", etc.

My knowledge of Rand was, for many years, limited to a dusty copy of Atlas Shrugged in my parent's house that looked far to thick to read, and a reference to "the genius of Ayn Rand" in the liner notes of Rush's album 2112. But in the past year Eldest Daughter saw a reading of The Fountainhead take two of her close friends down a path from Christianity to some form of self-serve Deism, and Eldest Son has also expressed frustration with the growing Rand cult amongst conservatives (and had a mini run-in with an atheistic Objectivism fan at an evening lecture last week).

On this subject, Peter Wehner weighs in: Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut:

Ayn Rand was, of course, the founder of Objectivism – whose ethic, she said in a 1964 interview, holds that “man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” She has argued that “friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.” And about Jesus she said:

I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn’t that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.

. . .

Yet there are some strands within conservatism that still veer toward Rand and her views of government (“The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force,” she argued. “This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.”), and many conservatives identify with her novelistic hero John Galt, who declared, “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

But this attitude has very little to do with authentic conservatism, at least the kind embodied by Edmund Burke, Adam Smith (chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow), and James Madison, to name just a few. What Rand was peddling is a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy. No society could thrive if its tenets were taken seriously and widely accepted. Ayn Rand may have been an interesting figure and a good (if extremely long-winded) novelist; but her views were pernicious, the antithesis of a humane and proper worldview. And conservatives should say so.

I find that there really are human beings who think fairy tales bad for children. I do not speak of the man in the green tie, for him I can never count truly human. But a lady has written me an earnest letter saying that fairy tales ought not to be taught to children even if they are true. She says that it is cruel to tell children fairy tales, because it frightens them. You might just as well say that it is cruel to give girls sentimental novels because it makes them cry. All this kind of talk is based on that complete forgetting of what a child is like which has been the firm foundation of so many educational schemes. If you keep bogies and goblins away from children they would make them up for themselves. One small child in the dark can invent more hells than Swedenborg. One small child can imagine monsters too big and black to get into any picture, and give them names too unearthly and cacophonous to have occurred in the cries of any lunatic. The child, to begin with, commonly likes horrors, and he continues to indulge in them even when he does not like them. There is just as much difficulty in saying exactly where pure pain begins in his case, as there is in ours when we walk of our own free will into the torture-chamber of a great tragedy. The fear does not come from fairy tales; the fear comes from the universe of the soul.

. . . . .

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it-- because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. [emphasis mine]

G.K. Chesterton, excerpted from his essay The Red Angel

This really resonates with me, because from a young age I rode like a squire through the Arthurian legends, crouched quietly in the belly of the horse with Odysseus, galloped alongside Centaurs in Lewis' Narnia, and went into the dreadful dark of Moria with Frodo and Sam. These led me one day to open up a Bible and begin reading what Lewis would call the "true myth" of the ultimate, and fully historical, defeat of the dragon.

As parents we should, of course, protect our kids. But I think Chesterton makes a compelling case here for not limiting them with politically correct, neutered fiction that contains no dragons. How will they ever know that the dragon can be killed?

Cross-posted at Out of the Bloo

Once upon a time, in the days of yore -- oh, say, about 7 years ago -- The Thinklings were the 7th most linked to evangelical Christian blog. We were a top ten staple. This was, of course, before every megachurch pastor, Christian author, scholar, and other Christian culture personality started blogging. :-)
But we were big fish in a small pond. It was a tighter community then. Michael Spencer and The Boar's Head Tavern guys had been around a while before that, of course, but they were big, and so was Challies, Dan Edelen, Adrian Warnock (who tried (and failed) to make everybody big with his constant blogroll entrepreneurship), Eric Siegmund of The Fire Ant Gazette, and a guy who ended up on top quite a bit, Joe Carter of the Evangelical Outpost.

It pays to have been there in the "beginning." Most of the endorsements on my book came about from our having been compatriots in the early Christian blogosphere trenches with these fellows.
But times change. The Thinklings are not only not in the top 10, we're not in the top 100. There's the top 100 and then there's "everybody else," and we are these days everybody else. But never count out nostalgia, which is what I think was at work in Joe Carter's heart last week when he invited me to join some actual, current big guns in launching Evangel, a new group blog under the banner of the renowned First Things magazine that is designed to be sort of an evangelical doppelganger of NRO's Corner. I am honored and humbled to be in the company of the other names on the Evangel masthead and grateful to Joe for the invite.

My first post for the site is in response to an introductory question -- "What is 'evangelical'?" -- and is titled People of the Gospel.

In other news, I am pleased to share that I have recently signed on to produce a Bible study resource (with multimedia leader kit available) called God vs. Suburbia which will release from Threads sometime in the Spring of 2010. The study can be done by individuals but is designed mainly with small groups in mind, and it will highlight gospel-centered spiritual formation. Specifically, the book will be about how to subvert the idols of our age and culture (e.g. comfort, convenience, conspicuous consumption, individualism) with the rhythms of the kingdom of God (prayer, Scripture reading, fasting, generosity and service, community). I hope it will be a blessing to many.

In the meantime, I have completed the outlining stage of my next trade book, which is tentatively titled Postcards from the Revolution: Parables as Sabotage. I hope to have a submittable manuscript for it sometime in the next few months.

I want to thank everyone who has bought, received, read, reviewed, blogged about, glanced at, or even spit on my book Your Jesus is Too Safe. I hope it has blessed you.

Btw, Spring is currently wide open for me right now, so if your church or group might be interested in having me speak, preach, or yell at somebody, go here and let me know.

Thus ends the commercial. Fuh-givah-ness, please.

I'm gonna give away two copies of my book Your Jesus is Too Safe.

All you have to do is comment and tell me why you'd like to read the book. That's it.

Two winners will be selected randomly on Monday at a time TBD by personal whim and announced on this blog.

Only comment once. Additional comments from same poster will be deleted (and don't use a different name, b/c I can see IP's.)
You have to answer the question to be eligible.

Good luck! predestination!

(P.S. Don't comment if you don't plan on emailing me your shipping info, should you win. I can't endure the pain of "winner silence" again. :-)

UPDATE:
Okay, no more entries.

Using a random number generator, the winning comments are:

#30 Elizabeth

and

#6 Tom

Email your shipping addresses to jaredcwilson AT yahoo DOT com and I'll get your book to you ASAP.

Also tell me if you want it signed, and if addressed to anyone in particular, who and how.

Here's a new meme from Lars Walker of Brandywine Books. Looked interesting - join in on your blog, as I'd be interested in reading your responses

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

Me: I'm going to try. I read a good amount, but a lot of that is re-reading. Will I get to fifteen? I know I'll forget some (or have writer's block and only list about eight).

Well, here goes (not necessarily in order):

1. The Bible. Default answer, but definitely tops on the list.
2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. "Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron". An amazing work of literary genius.
3. Perelandra by C.S. Lewis. Reading this one inspired ne to worship
4. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Lots of people don't like this one. I'm so grateful to have the backstory of Tolkien's masterpiece
5. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. Awesome. Beautiful. Profound. Thought-provoking and different every time I read it.
6. Watership Down by Richard Adams. A rousing story of heroism and adventure. Brilliant
7. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. An exquisite work of art
8. Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz. This man is one of the pioneering flight directors of NASA, and the man who directed both the Apollo 11 moon landing and the team that saved the Apollo 13 flight. Gene Kranz is one of my personal heroes, and a man of humility, courage, and faith. This is a great book.
9. All The Trouble in the World by P.J. O'Rourke. P.J. is a brilliant writer, and an astute observer of the ridiculous and the tragic. His books are hilarious but they contain a lot of earthy wisdom as well.
10. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. A must read for every Christian or anyone thinking about becoming a Christian.
11. Give War a Chance. More P.J. Excellent
12. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis. Sensing a pattern here? Lewis is a master. I absolutely love this book. It inspires me.
13. Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. I'm a NASA geek, in particular when it comes to the golden age of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. I read everything I can find on that era. This book is the account of the Apollo 13 "successful failure" by the guy who commanded the mission and survived to tell about it.
14. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I devoured this book (Lars had this one on his list too).
15. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. This was the start of the journey. I believe God used the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien to open my heart to wonder, and they were one part of the many influences that eventually led me to seek the God of wonder. The road goes ever on and on.

Once upon a time I held a comment contest to give away 3 copies of a book. The 3 winners had ample time to get me their addresses so I could mail them their FREE books, but nobody responded.

So I waited. And then I got tired of waiting, so I picked another 3 winners.
Only 1 of those responded. 2 have not.

Getting tired of waiting again.

Darin and Clinton, you have one more day to email your shipping info to jaredcwilson AT yahoo DOT com, or I'm picking another 2 winners. And these two I will pick at random from the remaining entries in the original post. Because I'm also tired of judging which stories are 7th, 8th, and 9th best. :-)

People ask me all the time how I got published or how they can get published. Some thoughts:

1) You have to be a good writer. There are exceptions. But don't try to be one. Get critical feedback. Don't be like those honestly deluded folks on "American Idol" every year. Just because you think you're good, and your spouse does too, doesn't mean you are. Get better.

2) Get an agent. It's harder and harder to get viewed well by an editor if you are not represented. It's sad to say, but long looks at unsolicited manuscripts are going the way of the dodo, including in the Christian publishing world.

Once you're in an editor's hands, if he or she likes what you've written, the process is kinda weird. Here is a great post from my agent on how the decision to publish a book gets made.

The pub board makes or breaks you. It's a business, folks.

My first novel Otherworld (still unpublished) -- which I know some of you have read -- got quickly snatched up by a zealous editor in charge of helping launch a Christian publishing company's new "supernatural fiction" imprint. The editor loved it and pitched it with a select few other faves as books to launch the imprint with. But the pub board didn't love it. They said female readers wouldn't like books about UFO's.

It didn't matter that the book wasn't about UFO's (not really, anyway) or that, if women readers are your target, "supernatural fiction" probably isn't the best genre to go with. They didn't think the book would sell, so they said no.
(I confess a smidgen of schadenfreude when the imprint folded a year later.)
Before Kregel picked up Your Jesus is Too Safe an editor at another good publisher wanted it and pitched it to his company. Again, the pub board said nope.

So I guess the final bottom line is "Write a marketable book and pitch it to a publisher who deals in that market."

That's all I got.

The iMonk's review of Jared's excellent book Your Jesus is Too Safe is up. Check it out.

A money quote (among many):

What I know is that Jared has written a book about Jesus that, for many of the readers of this [blog] and for vast numbers of evangelicals, should be THE book about Jesus they read in the next few months, because it may be the best popular level book written this year to re-introduce the Christ of scripture to the people who say they know him.

I agree. I'm reading the book now, and will write my review/endorsement when I'm done, but as I read I realize more and more what an important book this is. Some might be fooled by the conversational tone, pop-culture references, and that great Wilson humor, but this book goes deep. It's about Jesus, and it's a book most of us need to read.

OK, the original 3 winners are AWOL and I've given plenty of time to contact me. So I'm picking new winners, as follows:

Grand Prize Winner of a copy of Christian George's Godology and a copy of my book Your Jesus is Too Safe is:

Darin - Because his engagement with the JW's was hardcore enough to get them to try to throw demons out of him.

Winners of a copy of Godology are:

Clinton - Because someone got injured in his story.

Joe - Because he and his friends wrote a song that included both Oprah and Calvinism (somehow). (Also, I think he won't stop bugging me until he wins something. He's like the persistent widow in Jesus' parable.)

WINNERS, PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR PREFERRED SHIPPING ADDRESS AT jaredcwilson AT yahoo DOT com

If you don't, I'm burning these books and scattering the ashes over the Tennessee River.

I attended Book-Moot last night with our newly published author Jared, Jared's bro Stroke, and the mythical Blo, to celebrate the release of Jared's new book Your Jesus is Too Safe. Moot went hard.

The only downer of the night was that Bird wasn't able to be there. We had great conversations, but I mentioned to Jared late in the night that we needed Bird's well-honed ability to inject his own unique brand of comedy into the middle of deep debate. We missed you Bird.

Some pictures:



Holding my copy (signed by the author!). This is a dream come true, something long hoped for and prayed for. Jared, may this be the first of many. I'm proud of you.




Yes, he's a big-time author now, but he still puts his pants on two legs at a time and grills his own Moot-meat.




Blo temporarily manifested himself as a corporeal being and held forth on the merits of Jared's manifesto.

It was a great Moot - or should I say half-Moot, since we didn't go all night but only till about 1:00am - and it was topped off by an ancillary mini-Moot over IHOP pancakes for Blo and me. Jared couldn't attend that, as he had to rest up for the book signing at the Woodlands Lifeway today.

Heading to the book signing now!

This Saturday I will be at the LifeWay store in The Woodlands, TX from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Come by to say hi or get your book signed (if you're into that sort of thing).

The next day I will be preaching at Kaleo Church in Houston. Service starts at 10 a.m.

Any Texas peeps close to the Houston area, would love to see you at either or both of these places.

The eclectic author, J.C. Hallman, has a recently published collection of stories that I plan to read and then write about here on Thinklings. (His publisher was kind enough to send me a copy for review.) His collection of stories is called The Hospital for Bad Poets, and you can buy it on Amazon here.

If Hallman excels at anything, it's storytelling; The Chess Artist is more than enough proof of that. I'm sure his new release won't disappoint, even The New York Times has recently spoken favorably of it.

Stay tuned.

I've got books to give away!

Christian George's new book Godology (Moody Press, foreword by J.I. Packer) is a book that makes theology fun. From Trevin Wax's review:

What makes this book stand out is not its content, but the accessible way in which it is written. Teenagers, college students, and young adults with little theological knowledge will be able to pick up this book and receive an informative book that is easily understandable (and even entertaining!). If you are looking for a book to pass on to others, Godology is one you will want to pick up.

I've got 3 copies of Godology to give away. If you'd like a chance at winning one, just leave a comment in this post telling me your favorite "theology is fun (or funny)" story. Interpret that however you want. Tell me about the time you bucked the system and trick-or-treated even though your church said it was a sin, or the time you challenged your Sunday School teacher to Bible Trivia, or the time you cannonballed into the baptistry, or the time you verbally duked it out with some Jehovah's Witnesses at your door . . . or whatever. Loose connection to "theology" okay; heavy on the fun/funny.

In a few days, I'll pick the best three stories, and you'll each get a free copy of Godology. I'll throw in a copy of my book Your Jesus is Too Safe for the best one too.

Let's hear it!

UPDATE:

Okay, contest's over!

Here are the winners:

Runners up and winners of a free copy of Godology are:

SV -- Because I couldn't get the image of dead body dust floating around out of my head. I s'pose something about it appealed to whatever it is about me that prompts my zombie fixation. And zombies are cool.

Junia -- Because I remember too well "demon stories" when I was a church kid and getting freaked the heck out telling them to each other.

And first place, winner of Godology and Your Jesus is Too Safe:

Peter Mular -- Because piranhas in the baptistry is so stinkin' awesome.

Thanks, all, for playing. I'll do some more giveaways in the coming weeks for Your Jesus is Too Safe.

Winners, see the comment thread for details on getting your swag . . .

AFTER 3 WEEKS, NONE OF THE WINNERS EMAILED THEIR SHIPPING ADDRESSES TO ME OR CONTACTED ME IN ANY WAY, AND I HAVE TO GIVE THESE BOOKS OUT SO I'M PICKING NEW ONES. SEE COMMENT THREAD

Got word today that my book has already hit the shelves of some stores earlier than I expected. If you've got a LifeWay close to you, may wanna check there. Not sure about other retailers yet.

This also means that my copies to give away should be arriving soon. If you'd like a shot at winning a free book, you can still join the fan page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Blog tour folks, I will be emailing you in the next day or so. Thanks for your patience!