"Cross Purposes" -- an adventure/fantasy/historical novel about four kids whose dream holiday turns into a nightmare beyond their wildest dreams.
books2read.com/u/mZnXk2
#kidlit #mglit #booksky

A World Without Stories: What It Does to Us...and Our Children | A Conversation With Martin Shaw YouTube video by Gadfly Academy

A World Without Stories: What It Does to Us...and Our Children | A Conversation with Martin Shaw on myth
youtu.be/o5a5vnGardw?... via @YouTube

#myth #mythology

"Cross Purposes" Four children off on a seaside holiday suddenly get carted away to a place about as far from the sea as you can get. They encounter strange people, mythical creatures, & get caught up in the start of a war. Will they ever get home?
methodius.blogspot.com/2022/10/cros...
#booksky

A Twist of Sand: a novel set in Namibia 65 years ago A Twist of Sand by Geoffrey Jenkins My rating: 4 of 5 stars I first read A twist of Sand about 60 years ago, before I ever went to Namib...

Notes from underground: "A Twist of Sand": how a novel set in #Namibia 65 years ago shaped my preconceptions before I went there, and reactions to rereading it many years later
methodius.blogspot.com/2026/04/a-tw...
#amreading #bookreviews #booksky

St Thomas Sunday - Antipascha

Wozani sihambe, siy'eZulwini
Siyabona amanxeba ezandleni zakhe.

Ocelayo uyophiwa ofunay’ uyofumana)
Ongqongqothay’ uyovulelwa Ngegama leNkosi.

The Sea -- a novel of first love, marriage, loss and death The Sea by John Banville My rating: 5 of 5 stars Max Morden reflects on some of the turning points of his life after his wife dies and he...

Notes from underground: The Sea -- a novel of first love, marriage, loss and death
methodius.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...

#reading #readingcommunity #booksky

Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón Biography of Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, President of the Government of Spain. Introduction and curriculum vitae.

Meet the leader of the Free World...
www.lamoncloa.gob.es/lang/en/pres...
#FreeWorld #leader

Because you're worth it!

He tried to portray himself as a saintly healer, shortly after telling the American public that there was no money for healing people, only for killing them.

He does not miss

How convenient.

If you’re not mentioning this as part of why Israel won’t stop the bombings, you’re not telling the whole story. Bibi is out for Bibi.
www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

Nope, it's Israel first.

Let's see ... He praises Allah, on Easter. He's had a lot of wives, serially, but still. He never touches alcohol ...

TRUMP IS SECRETLY A MUSLIM!

Leave this where your rightwing uncle can see it.

The Other Inklings: interviews with scholars of the Oxford Inklings The Other Inklings: Interviews with Scholars on C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Inklings-Adjacent Figures by G. Connor Sal...

Notes from underground: The Other Inklings: interviews with scholars of the Oxford Inklings.
methodius.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...
#literature #Inklings #bookreviews

The Singularity and children’s literature I was looking at the question and answer web site Quora, and came across a question: What is the most horrible children’s book ever written? My answer, without hesitation, was Uncle Arthur&#8…

The Singularity and children's literature: how autonomous should machines be?
khanya.wordpress.com/2019/10/17/t...
#singularity #AI #childrensbooks #literature

The US “respects Israel’s sovereign right to determine its own laws,” but it doesn't respect South Africa's right to do the same thing, threatening all kinds of sanctions unless South African laws follow US dictates.
msn.com/en-us/news/w...
#USA #hypocrisy #racism

Most of my posts get no more response here than they do on exTwitter, so one can't really blame "the algorithm" for the lack of engagement.

The Day we met a Saint Thirty years ago today we met a man I believe should be numbered among the Saints.  On Monday 1 April 1996 I spent most of the day working a...

Notes from underground: The Day we met a Saint
methodius.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...
#Orthodox #mission #missiology #Madagascar

Poetic Diction and the LLMs Since you have an internet connection, Dear Reader, I guess you’ve heard about ChatGPT.  The Web is full of people arguing over what consciousness is and whether a Large Language Model (LLM) can ha…

Those who are bothered by the influence of AI and LLMs on literature might find this reassuring, or they might not.
idiosophy.com/2023/04/poet...
#literature #LLMs #AI #writingcommunity

So much for academic freedom in the "land of the free"

Holy Poverty
ondermynende.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/h...
#theology #ChristianLiving

In which I wrote a book…. If you have read my work over the last 3 years or so, from my blog posts about _Nightmare Alley_ to my interviews with scholars like Charlie W. Starr about their work on C.S. Lewis and his circle, you know I am interested in the Inklings. And in what Jennifer Woodruff calls the Inklings-adjacent figures, people who knew the Inklings or explored similar ideas. Writers like Joy Davidman and Dorothy L. Sayers, who knew the Inklings circle, or figures like John Dickson Carr and William Lindsay Gresham, who came close to the group in some way while exploring similar ideas in very different genres. In 2025, I began compiling my interviews with scholars on the Inklings and the -adjacent figures into a book, which was accepted by Apocryphile Press. If you like Charles Williams or enjoyed the essay collection _The Inklings and King Arthur_ (2017) you likely know that Apocryphile publishes excellent content on Williams and other members of the Inklings as well. Here is an excerpt from the introduction: > One of P.G. Wodehouse’s characters opines after listening to an author talk about how they came to write their book that a simple apology would have sufficed. He had a point. Even if he didn’t, the fact that I have been publishing words since I was nineteen means I probably do not need to offer more words about how I got here. > > However, this is my first book, and a curious book that requires some explanation. > > My plan to avoid the scholarly life started to derail during my freshman year of college. I liked books, but wanted to make a living as a writer, which meant practical experience over theory. I was in a publishing program that encouraged students to start their careers while they were still in school. I had also taken all my college-level English classes in high school (that’s another > story). > > Although I didn’t need English classes for my degree, I liked C.S. Lewis and the college had an archive devoted to C.S. Lewis and his friends. The archive was supervised by Joe Ricke, an English professor who encouraged students to give short presentations on the Inklings every Friday at “C.S. Lewis Teas.” I gave several presentations. I liked the visiting scholars I met through the archive. Scholars like Matthew Dickerson, who gave a talk to the student body at morning chapel about vocation and a talk to computer scientists in the afternoon about “Can Computers Think… and Enjoy Sex?” After attending both talks (the answer to the computer question turned out to be “no”), I bought Dickerson’s book _From Homer to Harry Potter_ and asked him to autograph it. When Dickerson did another presentation series the next year, I attended his talk on interrogation ethics in _The Fellowship of the Ring_ and he kindly autographed the book again. Something in the way he wore several vocations, and a story he told about how he decided which one to make into a career, left me wondering whether I had to choose between being a proper writer and being someone who studied writers. Perhaps especially because Dickerson was never an English major either, yet he had contributed to the _J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia_. > > After college, I became a journalist at a smalltown newspaper and occasional contributor to a literary magazine that often published articles on the Inklings. The COVID pandemic led to Ricke turning the C.S. Lewis teas into a virtual event. Then job changes led him to turn the virtual teas into a new entity, The Inkling Folk Fellowship (IFF). I began spending Friday afternoons > over Zoom watching Dickerson and others present on anything from C.S. Lewis’ BBC talks to Charles Williams’ mystical Christmas plays. I also became interested in another group Dickerson belonged to, the Chrysostom Society, and asked for his help connecting with fellow members who had known the late poet Robert Siegel. I had picked the worst time: Dickerson was staying in an off-grid cabin as artist-in-residence for Alaska State Parks. He kindly followed up a month later, helped me connect with Siegel’s friends, and offered to let me interview him about his current projects. Being a proper writer and being interested in “English major things” still seemed like separate worlds. But worlds moving closer together. > > A year later, the literary magazine had published my interview with Dickerson, and its lead editor asked for my help. A hacking attack had damaged the magazine’s website, and someone needed to manage the new site while the editorial team reorganized resources and fixed the damage. I was no longer working for a newspaper, and missed hearing a new person’s story every day. A friend from those C.S. Lewis Teas had recently published a short story in a fantasy anthology, and after interviewing him, I realized I knew many other writers interested in the Inklings. The magazine seemed a good space to create a weekly column for conversations with scholars, maybe even scholars researching niche topics not yet explored much in academic literature. > > This book contains many interviews from the following two years, many of the interviewees foundational figures in the second wave of C.S. Lewis scholarship (roughly 1990 onward). It also contains interviews acquired specifically for this book and interviews released elsewhere discussing figures connected to the Inklings. > > I should probably explain why the book is about _the other Inklings_. Partly because the book progresses into discussing figures not discussed much in Inklings literature, which means that the book increasingly becomes about whether our image of the Inklings (who they were, who they influenced) is a flattened version of a more nuanced reality. It also does not primarily discuss J.R.R. Tolkien, because Luke Shelton was already building a collection of interviews with Tolkien scholars and fans when I started my interview column. I also made the mistake several years ago of answering a scholar’s question of why Tolkien scholarship seemed to be receiving all the awards from academic groups. I wrote an article for the scholar’s blog where I laid out some problems I saw in current Lewis scholarship. I offended a few, do not think I convinced anybody, and remembered an important lesson. It is helpful to analyze a problem, too easy to complain about the problem, and very hard to fight the problem. Hopefully, these interviews fight the problem. **In _The Other Inklings_ , G. Connor Salter takes readers deep into the world of Lewis and his circle—not through conventional biography, but through revealing interviews with the people who have spent their lives studying them. Scholars, poets, theologians, and novelists share what drew them to these writers and how their ideas continue to inspire new generations.** **Covering everything from fantasy and theology to ecology, Shakespeare, secret societies, and even William Lindsay Gresham’s crime thriller _Nightmare Alley_ , this book offers an unprecedented glimpse into the lively, eccentric, and sometimes unexpected world of “Inklings-adjacent” figures.** **Whether you’re a lifelong fan of the Inklings or just discovering their work, The Other Inklings invites you into the living conversation—a fellowship that spans generations.** **_The Other Inklings: Interviews with Scholars on C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield & Inklings-Adjacent Figures_ (Apocryphile Press, 2026) is available in digital and physical formats from all major book sellers.** ### Share this: * Share on X (Opens in new window) X * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Like Loading... ### _Related_

My friend Connor wrote a book! #Inklings #CSLewis gcsalter.wordpress.com/2026/03/11/in-which-i-wr...

Inklings forum revived YahooGroups is dead: Long live groups.io There have been several Internet mailing lists for discussing the literary works of the Inklings literary group, of whom the best known were C.S. Lewis, Cha…

Inklings forum for discussion of #theology and #literature, after the fashion of the Oxford #Inklings, with a subforum for #writers to discuss their #WIP (works in progress)

khanya.wordpress.com/2019/10/23/i...

Going to join in on this one- had this book on my radar for a bit- anybody else interested in reading along?

The Enchanted Grove My children's book, The Enchanted Grove , is available in paperback from Lulu Bookshop . It is suitable for kids aged 9-12 (and also for th...

Yesterday I donated copies of my children's novel "The Enchanted Grove" to the Silverton and Alkantrant branches of the Tshwane city library & belatedly sent a copy to the Legal Deposit section of the National Library of South Africa.

methodius.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-...
#writingcommunity

Easter – Christian or pagan? It has often been claimed in some circles that Christians “stole” Easter from pagans. The claim has been repeated so often that it has become a factoid (a piece of unreliable informatio…

It's that time of year again.
Easter - Christian or pagan?
ondermynende.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/e...
#Easter #Pascha

Steve Hayes: "Words and Things" YouTube video by TGIF

Steve Hayes: "Words and Things": a TGIF talk on words that can have confusing meanings
youtu.be/7QNBX6llXwA?... via @YouTube

#language #usage #words

in a world of social media trolls, C.S. Lewis helps us think about the problem of judging a book by its author instead of its argument I have a book on the way to print. Woo! and hoo! I thought my dominant feeling would be pride when I finally spoke those words. I probably will feel pride when, in the tradition of authors for the …

Trumpkin Derangement Syndrome and Book Review Bulverism
apilgriminnarnia.com/2026/03/20/t...
#writing #literature #litcrit

Forward to the past: South Africa is back in 1985 When I hear the rhetoric of South Africa political leaders and the commentariat on the media, I sometimes think I’m stuck in a time warp. There was that film Back to the future. set in 1985, …

I wrote this nearly 8 years ago, but when I read what many people write on social media, I think it needs to be repeated.

Forward to the past: South Africa is back in 1985 khanya.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/f...
#RSA #culture #racism