Blogging Around: Grab Bag Edition

Werewolf Cop

We've gotten used to seeing lots of urban fantasy but not by the likes of Andrew Klavan who is known for hard-edged thrillers. I read reviews regularly at Brandywine Books where Lars is a confirmed fan. So it surprised me when I saw the supernatural edge to his latest. Read Lars' review here where he gives it his highest recommendation. And here's one at Books and Culture that they pointed to later.

A Look Inside Jeb Bush's Catholic Faith

“You hear people say, ‘I don’t want to impose my faith,’ ” Mr. Bush told the newspaper The Florida Catholic days after leaving office in 2007. “Well, it’s not an imposition of faith. It’s who you are.”

Read the NY Times story. Via The Deacon's Bench.

A Holy Year of Mercy

Pope Francis announced an extraordinary jubilee, a Holy Year of Mercy, to highlight the Catholic Church’s “mission to be a witness of mercy.” ... which will be celebrated from Dec. 8, 2015, until Nov. 20, 2016. [...]

Traditionally, every 25 years the popes proclaim a holy year, which features special celebrations and pilgrimages, strong calls for conversion and repentance, and the offer of special opportunities to experience God’s grace through the sacraments, especially confession. Extraordinary holy years, like the Holy Year of Mercy, are less frequent, but offer the same opportunities for spiritual growth.

I picked this up at The Deacon's Bench which is where I see lots of interesting news. He's got links and other info here.

Neil Gaiman on Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett, may he rest in peace, was evidently not the cheery fellow one would think from his hilarious and insightful books. Neil Gaiman writes that he was fueled by rage. That actually makes sense to me. It doesn't make me like his books any less or any more. It's just interesting. Read it here. Via Will Duquette who, as he has done with so many other favorite authors, read most of Pratchett's books aloud to his family.

Cinderella

All the excellent reviews of the new Cinderella movie have me chomping at the bit to see it. I love the idea of a straight, respectful telling and in Kenneth Branagh's hands it has evidently become a piece of art. I especially liked Steven D. Greydanus' review. Here's a bit.

Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella is such a gallant anachronism, such a grandly unreconstructed throwback, that it offers, without ever raising its voice, a ringing cross-examination of our whole era of dark, gritty fairy-tale revisionism. These stories have been around for centuries, the film seems to say. Are you sure they will be improved by making the heroines oppressed by society or their parents, making the male love interests the moral or cultural inferiors of the heroines, adding battle scenes and so forth?

I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t mind seeing some revisionism in Cinderella’s story. I would like the heroine to be a more active agent in her own story. The film, though, brushes this aside: Never mind what you would do with it; this is the story. Isn’t this a good story, worth telling just as it is?

And you know what? It is. As told by Branagh and screenwriter Chris Weitz (About a Boy), the tale of a much-abused “cinder girl” and a high-minded prince who fall in love at the ball is as magical and romantic as you remember it being the first time you saw the Disney cartoon.