CNMC: Wow!

We went to the Catholic New Media Conference in San Antonio three years ago. It was ok, but ultimately satisfactory. Somehow it didn't register at the time that that was only the second CNMC.

This year, suddenly registering it was the 5th CNMC, I am able to judge just how very far they have come.

And believe me, there is light years' difference between then and now.

This CNMC is a well presented conference, smoothly done but with plenty of personal contact available between everyone there. The content is simply fantastic. I spent yesterday wishing that Tom was there. As the perpetually curious guy who takes it all in and synthesizes information in a "big picture" way I think he'd have been fascinated by the talks.

As someone just taking it all in myself, just there for the face-to-face time, I found it well-rounded, informative, thought provoking, and mostly entertaining.

(None of us are ever going to forget the very ill-considered "elephant in the room" ... and in the video ... which was the only misstep I saw from a presenter ...)

I'm impressed and y'all know I don't say that if I don't mean it. Let me say it like this. I have no idea where the conference will be next year, but I actually would travel somewhere to attend. Seriously. It came on my radar because it was going to be in Dallas where I only have to drive 30 minutes to get to it. I'll be looking out for it next year, wherever it is.

Today is the Bloggers Day, at which I speak, and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say.

Congratulations to Father Roderick and the SQPN board and everyone who kept the vision, worked so hard, and gotten the CNMC to this point. I can recommend it without reservations to anyone who may be considering the Virtual Ticket which has audio recordings of every talk.

Gone CNMC'ing UPDATED

I'm at the Catholic New Media Conference ... may be able to check in here, but probably will be super busy the whole time.

If you're there, look me up and be sure to say hi!

Catch ya Monday!

UPDATE
Check out these great people who gathered at my place for some cocktails and pizza. What a fun evening! The rest of the conference just will not be able to match up. Period.

Well, except for that 2:00 slot on Friday afternoon for Catholic Blogger's Day.

Busy with the pizza, the cleaning ... the preparations ...

Since the Catholic New Media Conference is in Dallas (which is what made me even think of submitting a topic for the Blogging Conference Day ... I'm speaking at 2 p.m. on Friday if anyone is going to be attending who is also reading this) ... we're having a group of bloggers over for cocktails and homemade pizza (and suchlike) this evening.

AND Sarah Reinhard will be our houseguest for the duration of the conference. So very much talking as I anticipate ... oh yeah ...

Rides have been coordinated. Housecleaning has been done (do not look too closely in the corners, please!). Groceries have (mostly) been bought.

And now I commence wit da cookin'.

We're having Vesuvio pizza, Garlic Chicken pizza, and a Mexican pizza of my own devising. And some Caesar-ish salad and possibly some Tiramisu to follow.

What I'm Reading Now: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bleak House is on my personal challenge list, meaning that I should be chiseling away at some book from that list or I'll keep putting them off forever and never read one.

Having been surprised by how much I loved A Tale of Two Cities and having heard that Bleak House is Dickens' best, it is the next of his books I thought I'd try. However, it is so intimidatingly hefty that I've had the book on hand for several months before finally launching myself at it. (I'm about halfway through this 800+ page book at the moment.)

Dickens begins by introducing several strands of story and then settling on a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, at least for this section. At this point we are just meeting Mrs. Jellyby and I actually laughed aloud. I know a Mrs. Jellyby. Don't we all? So much engaged in her African cause that she ignores the very real want in her own family gathered around her. I love the way that everything Esther picks up or tries to use garners the comment, "It was dirty." Children fall down stairs unnoticed, the carpet is coming off the stairs in a most dangerous fashion, dinner is almost raw, and all the while Mrs. Jellyby "fixed her fine eyes on Africa again."

However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor Peepy as he was going out, and to take him up to nurse. He looked very much astonished at it, and at Ada's kissing him; but soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have though so little about it.

I laughed aloud reading this.

Meanwhile, the fog is everywhere. One wonders if that fog which makes lawyers focus on details in the Jarndyce case until the money is gone although they are still making a fine living, is the same which clouds Mrs. Jellyby's vision. It is easy to ignore the real significance of life around you when focusing on the intangible elsewhere gives us the excuse to ignore the immediate demands we find less attractive, like a filthy home or crying baby. It adds a disturbingly eerie element.

I must concede Will Duquette's contention that Dickens characters can be very unrealistic. But who would give them up for the realistic ones? And Dickens does realistic very well, when he needs to. Esther is realistic. Mr. Guppy also ... although so amusing while one is sorry for him. And then there is Mr. Bucket. Possibly one of the best detectives I've ever seen (at this admittedly early point in the book) ... how is it I didn't know Dickens wrote a detective? And one so canny and good at blending in?"

You know, I expected that I'd read a few pages (slogging through them) and intersperse them with a newer book. But I'm hooked. I can never possibly convey how great, how riveting I am finding this book. It is a mystery, a horror novel, a romance, a look at character (or the lack thereof), and much more ... all laced with a self awareness that I find startlingly modern. O Dickens. And here I thought A Tale of Two Cities was sublime. How little I knew...

As a result of my amazement at how good this book is, it will be the November book for A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast. 900 pages of solid goodness. Ladies and gentlemen, start your reading now!

Ginger Chicken

Get it at Meanwhile, Back in the Kitchen.

Community - The Third Season

We got the fresh-off-the-press dvd of the third season of Community and have really been enjoying watching it in a concentrated dose.

One thing that hit me, now that we're four episodes from the end, is that I thought it was uneven when watching during the season. But rewatching I see that the entire season was good. It is just that three brilliant episodes made the others look below par.

1. Remedial Chaos Theory - you know this one, Community fans. Rolling the die to see who goes to get the pizza.
2. Pillows and Blankets - part of the struggle between Blanketsburg and Pillowtown, in Ken Burns' documentary style.
3. Basic Lupine Urology - Who killed the study group's yam in Biology? Investigated "Law & Order" style, with a special thank you to Dick Wolf at the end.

I am looking forward to another episode that may join these three in the Hall of Fame: Digital Estate Planning.  (Pierce and his friends must play a video game to see who will inherit his family fortune ... as part of the game.)

Joe Ledger: The Missing Files

This review originally appeared at SFFaudio.

The description for this brief collection of short stories says "... author Jonathan Maberry fills in the blanks in his action-thriller 'Joe Ledger' novels."

This isn't something I'd have picked up myself and, frankly, wouldn't have bothered if it weren't sent as a review book. I am usually disinterested in add-on short stories that sew up "loose ends" of novels or serve to tell us what a character's been doing between one book and the next. In my experience, those are toss-offs and these days, what with 99-cent stories on Amazon, they just serve as money grabbers.

However, we all know I'm a sucker for Joe Ledger and I absolutely love the narrator's way with these stories so if I wasted a few hours on mental cotton candy so be it. Also I was mildly interested in what seem to be two stories that aren't connected to any novels, "Deep, Dark" and "Material Witness."

Countdown: The prequel to Patient Zero and it told me nothing I didn't learn in the beginning of the book. Honestly, it seemed as if it were a story prospectus given to a publisher to gain interest.

Zero Tolerance: The second story added a little to Patient Zero's ending since it could have been called "What Happened to Amirah." (Pardon my spelling as I've only heard the audio for the novel.) Worth paying for? Not to me.

Deep, Dark: Finally, with the third story we get to something interesting. As is the case in Joe Ledger novels, it teeters on the knife's edge between probability and supernatural/horror fiction. The Army has a little problem in one of their underground complexes. A little bio-engineered problem. It's just a "bug hunt," as it goes in one of my favorite lines from Aliens, but one that has righteousness on its side.

Material Witness: This story was more interesting than anything preceding it (or following, as it turned out ... yes, foreshadowing!). However, that was mostly because Maberry was filling us in on another series of his, the creepiness that is Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. Imagine the house from The Shining, but ... it's a whole town! Maberry's melding of the two worlds was rather intriguing but not enough to make me want to get whatever book it was he wrote about Pine Deep. For one thing, spoilers abound. I wonder if I already knew all about that "world" if the story would have kept my attention as it did.

Dog Days: The final story and the one which was the test of whether Maberry had improved at short story writing or whether the previous two just created interest because of the unfamiliar material. Yep. Choose door number two. It wasn't a terrible story, just extremely easy to figure out as Joe Ledger goes to settle a personal grudge against the world's deadliest assassin. The most interesting thing about it to me was the introduction of Ghost, the wonder dog. One feels (at least I do) that this should have been a prequel or flashback in The King of Plagues. I especially feel this since I spent much of the beginning of that book wondering what the heck happened to Ledger's cat and why only one or two sentences gave us the dog's history. This almost reads as discovery writing or something that was edited from a book. Ghost is ok, but he is definitely "made" to be Ledger's dog, as he is a Wonder Dog with super-canine reflexes and understanding.

Summing up - these files could've stayed missing. It's only four hours long but that is four hours you could use on something uniformly good.

A sale to help raise money for a son's surgery ...

My son needs surgery.

Not planned surgery but that kind of kick-in-the-gut surprise surgery that is halfway between, sure okay and It’s An Emergency.

Heather Ordover is truly one of the most generous and giving people I know ... this is a deserving cause. Please take a look at her sale to help her raise money for her son's surgery.

Or you could just drop something in her tip jar. That works too.

Scott switches to Dapper Dan and Julie sings into a tin can.

O Brother, Where Art Thou is the topic at A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast.

GeekLady, c'mon down. You won The Right to Be Wrong book giveaway!

Congratulations for winning our book giveaway! I'll be emailing you to get your contact info to give to the publisher of The Right to Be Wrong.

UPDATE
I can't email you because you are very private lady (which I salute). However, WordPress won't let me into your comments boxes (for reasons which I won't go into here except, really, WordPress? Really?).

Anyway, email me at: julie [at] glyphnet [dot] com

Robot & Frank: "like Philip K. Dick without the amphetamine-induced paranoia"

Now that's interesting.

The trailer shows so much of the movie that I had no fear of spoilers in reading this Tor.com review.

The movie sounds charming and the review completely wins me over by saying that instead of being sappy "The end result feels more like Philip K. Dick without the amphetamine-induced paranoia. If such a thing is conceivable."

That either completely mystifies you or makes you interested. You know which I am.

Social Justice and Ryan the Heretic

You know, I love it when I wake up and can read about relevant Catholic stuff in my paper's editorial section. I like that someone's staying on top of that stuff.

Oh, sorry Dallas Morning News, did you think I meant you? We all know I was talking about the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, about William McGurn's piece this morning.

"I'm not endorsing Paul Ryan," [Paul Ryan's] bishop told me later by phone. "People are free to disagree with him, and disagree vehemently. But it's wrong to suggest that his views somehow make him a bad Catholic."

Unfortunately, suggesting that Mr. Ryan is a bad Catholic is the entire case. Stuck with the fact of Mr. Biden, who has long since made his peace with the party's absolutism on abortion, progressive Catholics know that it would be laughable to try to present Mr. Biden as faithful to church teaching. They know too that clarity about church teaching does not work to their advantage. The only way to take on Mr. Ryan is to tear him down.

Think about that. In another age, Catholic progressives would have laughed at the suggestion that people were corrupted by reading certain works; now they believe Paul Ryan's soul is in peril for his having read Ayn Rand. Before, they would not have feared science; now they insist that a program such as food stamps ought to continue ad infinitum without consideration of its effects. And while they believe that the pope and bishops have nothing of value to offer about the sanctity of marriage or the duty of protecting unborn life, when it comes to federal spending, suddenly a miter means infallibility.

Do go read it all.

Review: Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The basic setup:

Once presided over by a flamboyant Hollywood mogul during the Roaring ’20s, the magnificent West Coast property known as Roseland is now home to a reclusive billionaire financier and his faithful servants. And, at least for the moment, it’s also a port in the storm for Odd Thomas and his traveling companion, the inscrutably charming Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell. In the wake of Odd’s most recent clash with lethal adversaries, the opulent manor’s comforts should be welcome. But there’s far more to Roseland than meets even the extraordinary eye of Odd, who soon suspects it may be more hell than haven.

I love the Odd Thomas books overall. However, what this book showed me above all is that I love the first trilogy of the Odd Thomas books. (Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd). Each of those were written as complete stories showing sweet, gentle but capable Odd Thomas fighting evil supernatural for the good of the innocent who were threatened. They have beginnings, middles, and ends ... or at least resolutions of an evil situation with Odd sometimes on the road to find somewhere that a simple fry cook can earn a living.

The second trilogy, as I've come to think of them since seeing another book, Deeply Odd, is on the way, are told in a completely different fashion which I find ultimately unsatisfying. Beginning in Odd Hours Koontz just drops us in the middle of the action, a la a thriller where we learn the back story later after having begun with a pulse pounding chase. I actually could forgive that if there ever seemed to be resolution to the story. There is a resolution to Odd's current predicament, however, nebulous hints about the "big meaning of things" are all we get, despite all the action. Ho hum ... and they drive off into the sunset ...

Odd Apocalypse picks up about a week after Odd Hours ended, we are finally told after a thoroughly confusing intro where we've been dropped into a series of very odd events (ha!). Poor Odd is put through a series of gyrations and problem solving tasks because no one can give him a single straight answer. Now, I expect this from the bad guys. But for Annamaria, his mysterious companion picked up in Odd Hours, to do the same is just annoying. She may have a mystical hold on everyone she encounters, but I am mysteriously untouched by it. Odd Thomas tells us this is a haunted house book but for my money it gets a toehold in the Lovecraftian universe before settling down solidly into H.G. Wells country. I won't say which book so as to avoid spoilers but it becomes very obvious toward the end.

Koontz seems to have just thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this book without remembering to give us what was so satisfying about the first three books. An actual story.

I will read the next one simply to see if this ongoing murk ever clears up, but at this point feel it will be more from a sense of duty than anything else. And to give Koontz a chance to pull it all together in a way that makes me like all three of the second trilogy in a "really one book" sort of way.

Weekend Joke: How to Be a Cat

From Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine.

The Book J.R.R. Tolkein Read to His Children: Snergs

Pssst! All fans of The Hobbit! And lovers of fantasy, in general...

My latest offering for "Project Kaitlyn" (stories for my niece) is an unabridged reading of The Marvellous Land of Snergs (1927) by E.A. Wyke-Smith, which J.R.R. Tolkien read to his children and acknowledged as a sourcebook for his The Hobbit. This is a most clever and delightful story. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take Tolkien’s: “I should like to register my own love and my children’s love of E.A. Wyke-Smith’s Marvellous Land of Snergs...”

What's even better is that you don't have to take anyone's word for it.

Amy H. Sturgis, writer of the words above, read this book not only for her niece, but is generously sharing the files with all of us. She is a superb narrator as anyone who regularly listens to StarShipSofa knows. Just click through and download.

If you want to know more about the book itself, Amy's review on Goodreads is here. I have only listened to the first half-hour and already can see the great appeal of this clever, whimsical book which combines just the right amount of reality and sweetness, while never underestimating the intelligence of the reader.

A lot to say based on one half-hour? Yes. But all true. Download for yourself and give it a try. After all, J.R.R. Tolkein can't be wrong.

4 Things Science Fiction Needs to Bring Back

Beginning with optimism.

A great list from Cracked.com. Keep in mind that this is Cracked and they will use offensive language.

Still, it is a great list and perhaps the reason why I still enjoy listening to old science fiction from LibriVox. It's usually got those four things.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease: Myths About Atheism and Christianity

Third, the international polling outfit WIN-Gallup International has released a new global survey that shows atheism is on the rise, but 59 percent of the world's population still describes itself as "religious."

Taken together, the results seem to debunk two persistent myths about global religion:

• Atheism is mostly a Western phenomenon. Instead, Asia is by far the world's most atheistic continent, with China alone home to two-thirds of the roughly 900 million atheists on the planet.
• Christianity is in decline relative to other world religions, especially Islam. Instead, nine of the world's 10 most religious nations are majority Christian, and people who self-identify as Christian are more likely to describe themselves as "religious" than Muslims (81 percent to 74 percent).

A few of John Allen's cogent observations about myth and reality as exposed in the latest poll results released about international religion.

Western atheists are the loudest and Islamic terrorists are the loudest. And we let them define truth for us oftentimes.

In which we meet the unique detective team of Doan and Carstairs.

Holocaust House by Norbert Davis, part one at Forgotten Classics podcast.

Don't blame the Church for wicked Christians

This is from Day 201 in A Year with the Church Fathers by Mike Aquilina. Tom and I joke that at the rate we are working our way through this it will be more like 4 years with the Church Fathers. However, we continue reading them to each other at work during lunch whenever we get a chance.

St. Augustine has timely advice which also serves to remind us that human nature doesn't change.

Don't bring up against me those people who claim the name of Christian but neither know nor show any evidence of the power of their profession. Don't hunt down the numerous ignorant people who, even in the true religion, are superstitious, or so given up to evil passions that they forget what they've promised to God. I know that there are many who get really drunk over the dead, and who bury themselves over the buried in their funeral feasts, and indulge their gluttony and drunkenness in the name of religion. I know that there are many who claim to have renounced this world, and yet desire to be burdened with all the weight of worldly things, and rejoice in those burdens.

My advice to you is this: that you should at least stop slandering the Catholic Church by protesting against the conduct of those whom the Church herself condemns, trying to correct them every day like wicked children. Then, if any of them are corrected through good will and by the help of God, they regain by repenting what they had lost by sin. On the other hand, those who persist in their old vices with wicked will are indeed allowed to remain in the field of the Lord,and to grow along with the good seed, but the time for separating the weeds will come.

St. Augustine, Morals of the Catholic Church, 34

Book Giveaway! "The Right to Be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America"

... Ask either faction whether it believes religious liberty is a human right and you’ll get a passionate, tub-thumping — mostly hypocritical — speech in favor of the idea. That’s because religious freedom is so familiar, so American a concept that nobody can really admit to opposing it. That would be like opposing apple pie. So even those who are at each other’s throats over religious liberty have to insist they all absolutely love the stuff. Instead of confessing that they’re actually opposed to religious freedom for all, the Pilgrims and the Park Rangers among us equivocate. When they say they support “religious freedom,” the Pilgrims mean the freedom of their religion, while the Park Rangers mean freedom from others’ religions. That way, they can all sound so very American — they can say they’re in favor of something called religious freedom — and still be as oppressive as they want to be.

I'm a huge fan of The Right to Be Wrong by Kevin Seamus Hasson, which has just had an updated paperback version released.

I believe if we respected each person's right to conscience, their "right to be wrong," our country would be a much more peaceful place. My ability to articulate this belief was both solidified and made easier to articulate when I read Hasson's book. It's a book we all need to read in these contentious times.

Hasson is a constitutional lawyer who heads up a non-partisan, public-interest law firm that specializes in defending free religious expression for all faiths. Hasson asserts, “We defend all faiths but we are not relativists. On any given day, I think most of my clients are wrong. But I firmly believe that, in an important sense, they have the right to be wrong.” This is not a very long book and it is written in a conversational and easy style, but it packs a heavy punch.

The updated book adds a chapter and afterward that discuss the latest set of religious struggles, which have been elevated past the tussles over Nativity scenes on government property to include federal healthcare insurance.

Read my original, indepth review here.

To enter for a chance to win a copy, leave a comment for this post!