Lift Up Your Hearts!

Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder (Basic Books, 2018)

This is my son-in-law's book, which I started perusing during our recent visit, to see if I might be interested. I found it both more interesting and slower to read than I had expected, so I'm borrowing it.

Sabine Hossenfelder, a German theoretical physicist, is worried about the state of her field. I'm not even going to try to summarize the book, which is an entertaining, if worrisome and frequently confusing, series of interviews with her colleagues. Let's just say that it is getting more and more difficult to test theories in particle physics by the time-honored means of experimentation in the real world; CERN's Large Hadron Collider has not provided the results many people were expecting and indeed counting on; and physicists are beginning to sound more like philosophers than scientists. 

I can't believe what this once-venerable profession has become. Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can't explain what was not observed. And they're not even good at that. (p 108)

In case I left you with the impression that [physicists] understand the theories we work with, I am sorry, we don't. (p 193)

Physics professor and popular science author Chad Orzel^* explains to her,

"As I understand it, there's a divide between the epistemological and the ontological camps. In the ontological camp the wave function is a real thing that exists and changes, and in the epistemological camp the wave function really just describes what we know—it's just quantifying our ignorance about the world. And you can put everybody on a continuum between these two interpretations." (p 135)

That sounds more like theologians than scientists.

Interviewed by the author, cosmologist and mathematician George Ellis looks at the big picture and doesn't like what he sees.

"There are physicists now saying we don't have to test their ideas because they are such good ideas ... They're saying—explicitly or implicitly—that they want to weaken the requirement that theories have to be tested. ... To my mind that's a step backwards by a thousand years. ... Science is having a difficult time out there, with all the talk about vaccination, climate change, GMO crops, nuclear energy, and all of that demonstrating skepticism about science. Theoretical physics is supposed to be the bedrock, the hardest rock, of the sciences, showing how it can be completely trusted. And if we start loosening the requirements over here, I think the implications are very serious for the others." (p 213)

Ellis continues:

"[A lot] of the reasons people are rejecting science is that scientists like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss and others say that science proves God doesn't exist, and so on—which science cannot prove, but it results in a hostility against science, particularly in the United States. If you're in the Middle West USA, and your whole life and your community is built around the church, and a scientist comes along and says 'Get rid of this,' then they better have a very solidly based argument for what they say. But David Hume already said 250 years ago that science cannot either prove or disprove the existence of God. He was a very careful philosopher, and nothing has changed since then in this regard. These scientists are sloppy philosophers." (p 214)

What's wrong with physics research today? Here are a few problems: universities no longer provide an atmosphere conducive to creative thinking; research decisions—and possibly results—are driven by funding; and peer pressure is a major unholy influence.

Division of labor hasn't yet arrived in academia. While scientists specialize in research topics, they are expected to be all-rounders in terms of tasks: they have to teach, mentor, head labs, lead groups, sit on countless committees, speak at conferences, organize conferences, and—most important—bring in grants to keep the wheels turning. And all the while doing research and producing papers. (p 155)

The fraction of academics holding tenured faculty positions is on the decline, while an increasing percentage of researchers are employed on non-tenured and part-time contracts. From 1974 to 2014 the fraction of full-time tenured faculty in the United States decreased from 29 percent to 21.5 percent. At the same time, the share of part-time faculty increased from 24 percent to more than 40 percent. Surveys by the American Association of University Professors reveal that the lack of continuous support discourages long-term commitment and risk-taking when choosing research topics. (p 155)

Another consequence of the attempt to measure research impact is that it washes out national, regional, and institutional differences because measures for scientific success are largely the same everywhere. This means that academics all over the globe now march to the same drum. (p 156)

You have to get over the idea that all science can be done by postdocs on two-year fellowships. Tenure was institutionalized for a reason, and that reason is still valid. If that means fewer people, then so be it. You can either produce loads of papers that nobody will care about ten years from now, or you can be the seed of ideas that will still be talked about in a thousand years. Take your pick. Short-term funding means short-term thinking. (p 247)

It's well known that such short-term thinking has already been disastrous for American businesses, as the leaders of corporations focus their efforts on the next quarter's results at the expense of long-term success and the health of the company. Politicians focus on winning the next election instead of building relationships and working together to serve the needs of the country. It's hardly surprising that academic research is suffering a similar problem.

In 2010, [theoretical physicist Garret Lisi] wrote an article for Scientific American about his E8 theory. He calls it "an interesting experience" and remembers: "When it came out that the article would appear, Jaques Distler, this string theorist, got a bunch of people together, saying that they would boycott SciAm if they published my article. The editors considered this threat, and asked them to point out what in the article was incorrect. There is nothing incorrect in it. I spent a lot of time on it—there was absolutely nothing incorrect in it. Still, they held on to their threat. In the end, Scientific American decided to publish my article anyway. As far as I know, there weren't any repercussions." (p 166)

Science is sometimes called the "marketplace of ideas," but it differs from a market economy most importantly in the customers we cater to. In science, experts only cater to other experts and we judge each other's products. The final call is based on our success at explaining observation. But absent observational tests, the most important property a theory must have is to find approval by our peers.

For us theoreticians, peer approval more often than not decides whether our theories will ever be put to a test. Leaving aside a lucky few showered with prize money, in modern academia the fate of an idea depends on anonymous reviewers picked from among our colleagues. Without their approval, research funding is hard to come by. An unpopular theory whose development requires a greater commitment of time than a financially unsupported researcher can afford is likely to die quickly. (pp 195-196, emphasis mine)

You'd think that scientists, with the professional task of being objective, would protect their creative freedom and rebel against the need to please colleagues in order to secure continued funding. They don't. (p 197)

You're used to asking about conflicts of interest due to funding from industry. But you should also ask about conflicts of interest due to short-term grants or employment. Does the scientists' future funding depend on producing the results they just told you about? Likewise, you should ask if the scientists' chance of continuing their research depends on their work being popular among their colleagues. ... And finally ... you should also ask whether the scientists have taken steps to address their cognitive biases. Have they provided a balanced account of pros and cons or have they just advertised their own research? (p 248)

If you believe smart people work best when freely following their interests, then you should make sure they can freely follow their interests. (p 197)

That last quote is hardly limited in its application to academia. Teachers, writers, musicians, mothers ... anyone in a creative field knows the frustration of being required by their jobs to do unrelated work that hinders the creative process. We need to recognize that and free them to do what they do best...

...but maybe not completely. Sometimes the interruptions that keep us from our "proper work" can be the key that pushes our work forward. We all want unlimited time to be immersed in our own narrow interests, but that may not be for the best. Still, I think we can all agree that researchers and missionaries are spending too much time fundraising, teachers are spending too much time on cafeteria duty, and church musicians are spending too much time in meetings.

How patently absurd it must appear to someone who last had contact with physics in eleventh grade that people get paid for ideas like that. But then, I think, people also get paid for throwing balls through hoops. (p 192)

Finally, this quote about the problems of peer pressure and insular communities has much broader implications and needs to be emphasized:

Research shows we consider a statement more likely to be true the more often we hear of it. It's called "attention bias" or "mere exposure effect." ... This is the case even if a statement is repeated by the same person. (p 157)

Oh, one more thing: What does beauty, the subject of the subtitle, have to do with all this, since I've left out all references to it?  Just that, absent sufficient experimental data, theories are being promoted for their aesthetic properties.  Hossenfelder has nothing against aesthetics, but fears that physics is losing its grounding in physical reality in favor of philosophical speculations.

Studies in Words by C. S. Lewis (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, first published 1960)

As I said previously, this is not a book aimed at the hoi polloi—those of us without a strong background in classical literature, Latin, Greek, French, and whatever else scholars were supposed to know in Lewis's day. It is a scholarly, not a popular book. I don't pretend I understood half of what he says, although I could have done better if I'd been more patient. No matter. I still learned a lot. I knew that ignorance of history causes us to misunderstand and falsely judge those who have gone before us; I know now that ignorance of the history of language does the same for the written word. Writing freezes an author's words at a moment in time, while the meaning of those words continues to evolve. Without knowing what a word meant to the author, we may get an entirely false picture of what he is saying.

So what should we do? I think, for ordinary readers, the best we can manage is to be aware that there might be a significant difference between what the author meant and what we think he has said. Simple awareness of the problem should give us the humilty to know that we might not know. And if the word, or phrase, or idea is something we think significant, we—unlike Lewis's original audience—have Google to assist us with a little philological research.

Here are just a few quotes, which ought to be clear enough despite lack of context. Bolded emphasis is mine.

Where the duller reader simply does not understand [a strange phrase], [the highly intelligent and sensitive reader] misunderstands—triumphantly, brilliantly. But it is not enough to make sense. We want to find the sense the author intended. "Brilliant" explanations of a passage often show that a clever, insufficiently informed man has found one more mare’s nest. The wise reader, far from boasting an ingenuity which will find sense in what looks like nonsense, will not accept even the most slightly strained meaning until he is quite sure that the history of the word does not permit something far simpler. (p. 3)

All my life the epithet bourgeois has been, in many contexts, a term of contempt, but not for the same reason. When I was a boy—a bourgeois boy—it was applied to my social class by the class above it; bourgeois meant "not aristocratic, therefore vulgar." When I was in my twenties this changed. My class was now vilified by the class below it; bourgeois began to mean "not proletarian, therefore parasitic, reactionary." Thus it has always been a reproach to assign a man to that class which has provided the world with nearly all its divines, poets, philosophers, scientists, musicians, painters, doctors, architects, and administrators. (p. 21)

When we deplore the human interferences, then the nature which they have altered is of course the unspoiled, the uncorrupted; when we approve them, it is the raw, the unimproved, the savage. (p. 46)

We have learned also from Aristotle, that we must "study what is natural from specimens which are in their natural condition, not from damaged ones." (p. 56)

It's interesting how often we don't follow Aristotle's advice, how often we try to improve situations by concentrating on that which is broken, instead of studying what is working right—from medicine to education, from business to family life.

Unless followed by the word "education," liberal has now lost this meaning [seeking knowledge for its own sake]. For that loss, so damaging to the whole of our cultural outlook, we must thank those who made it the name, first of a political, and then of a theological, party. The same irresponsible rapacity, the desire to appropriate a word for its "selling-power," has often done linguistic mischief. It is not easy now to say at all in English what the word conservative would have said if it had not been "cornered" by politicians. Evangelical, intellectual, rationalist, and temperance have been destroyed in the same way. Sometimes the arrogation is so outrageous that it fails; the Quakers have not killed the word friends. (p. 131)

That English and Protestant authors ... should depend for a scriptural phrase either on Vulgate or Rheims will seem strange to many. Very ill-grounded ideas about the exclusive importance of the Authorized Version in the English biblical tradition are still widely held. (p. 144)

Communis (open, unbarred, to be shared) can mean friendly, affable, sympathetic. Hence communis sensus is the quality of the "good mixer," courtesy, clubbableness, even fellow-feeling. Quintilian says it is better to send a boy to school than to have a private tutor for him at home; for if he is kept away from the herd (congressus) how will he ever learn that sensus which we call Communis? (p. 146)

Et Tu, Quintilian?

Innocent, simple, silly, ingenuous ... all illustrate the same thing—the remarkable tendency of adjectives which originally imputed great goodness, to become terms of disparagement. Give a good quality a name and that name will soon be the name of a defect. Pious and respectable are among the comparatively modern casualties, and sanctimonious was once a term of praise. (p. 173)

One of the first things we have to say to a beginner who has brought us his [manuscript] is, "Avoid all epithets which are merely emotional. It is no use telling us that something was 'mysterious' or 'loathsome' or 'awe-inspiring' or 'voluptuous.' Do you think your readers will believe you just because you say so? You must go quite a different way to work. By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel-melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, we readers, not you, exclaim 'how mysterious!' or 'loathsome' or whatever it is. Let me taste for myself, and you’ll have no need to tell me how I should react to the flavour." (pp 317-318)

And I thought the insistence on "show, don't tell" among current authors was a recent phenomenon. But C. S. Lewis agreed.

The "swear-words"—damn for complaint and damn you for abuse—are a good example. Historically the whole Christian eschatology lies behind them. If no one had ever consigned his enemy to the eternal fires and believed that there were eternal fires to receive him, these ejaculations would never have existed. But inflation, the spontaneous hyperboles of ill temper, and the decay of religion, have long since emptied them of that lurid content. Those who have no belief in damnation—and some who have—now damn inanimate objects which would on any view be ineligible for it. The word is no longer an imprecation. It is hardly, in the full sense, a word at all when so used. Its popularity probably owes as much to its resounding phonetic virtues as to any, even fanciful, association with hell. It has ceased to be profane. It has also become very much less forceful. (pp. 321-322)

I have noticed this effect with profanity today. No matter how much it bothers me, I have to admit that the monumental overuse of words that in my youth weren't even allowed in the dictionary has pulled some of their teeth. On the other hand, it appears that the human creature has a need for forbidden words, because at the same time as we have liberated the old theological, scatological, and sexual epithets, old words have been repurposed into new obscenities. Oddly enough, those who are most free in the ubiquitous overuse of the old swear words, even—or especially—in the presence of those who still find them offensive, are often the least tolerant of those who fail to acknowlege the new prohibitions.

It's funny how often when we react against something we nearly always throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Having had my cultural-formation years, and well as my Christian-formation years, steeped in Protestantism of the more Reformed sort, there were two things it never occurred to me to do: (1) show any particular respect for Mary, the mother of Jesus (except briefly, at Christmastime), and (2) read the Apocrypha—those writings from "between the Testaments" that are considered to be part of Holy Scripture by Catholics but not by Protestants. (I'm simplifying the situation somewhat.)

I think the greatest reason for the first was that Catholics make so much of Mary, often—or so it appears to Protestants—making her seem more important, and more venerated, than Jesus. To avoid that error, it was safest to ignore her. Plus there's no denying a certain historical bias against women. In more than one church of my experience, certain (male) saints are highly venerated, especially St. Paul. Also St. Peter, though he's a bit tainted because he's so important to Catholics. But Mary? Almost no mention at all, and very little honor paid. In fact, we once were called on the carpet over an instrumental-only version of the beautiful and famous Bach/Gounod Ave Maria played during the service. Did I mention that it was instrumental only, i.e. no words, offensive or otherwise?

It's not surprising that I never heard anything from the Apocrypha during a church service. Church readings tend (rightly) to be from Scripture, and if you don't think a book is part of the Biblical canon, better skip it. But these books (more or less) were included in the Bibles used throughout most of Christian history, including by Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and John and Charles Wesley. Luther called them "useful and good to read," though not equal in value to the canonical books. The Anglican "39 Articles" accepts the Apocrypha "for instruction in life and manners, but not for the establishment of doctrine." What's more, they were part of the world in which Jesus lived, and one can see their echoes in the New Testament.

But none of these reasons are why I decided to—finally!—read through the Apocrypha. I was tired of being culturally illiterate. In the world of art, music, and literature, many important works reference stories from the Apocrypha. Even if we consider them completely fictitious, why do we not learn their stories the same way we learn the ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse myths? We know about Apollo and Daphne; why not about Judith and Holofernes?

 
Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio

Cultural literacy aside, what did I think of the Books of the Apocrypha? Mixed. Here's the list, as they appear in my Revised Standard Version Bible (Catholic edition), followed by my reactions. (I deliberately read these books without learning anything about them, wanting to collect my own first reactions, unprejudiced.)

Tobit, Judith, The Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, and The Prayer of Manassah.

The reading started out well. It was exciting to read the stories, such as those in Tobit, Judith, and Susanna. Several of the others seem to fit in with Old Testament books, but apparently are not considered authentic enough to be included.

The Wisdom of Solomon reads very much like Solomon's writings in Proverbs. Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) is a collection of similar proverbs, but feels as if written at a later time than Solomon's. Proverbs is one of my favorite Bible books to read, but I found Sirach, on the whole, boring—sometimes even offensive.  Many of the proverbs show wisdom, but others are strange. For instance:

Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good, and it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace.

This one's better (emphasis mine):

Speak, you who are older, for it is fitting that you should, but with acccurate knowledge, and do not interrupt the music.

Speaking of music, how about this one?

Do not associate with a woman singer, lest you be caught in her intrigues.

On the other hand, this is an interesting anticipation of the language of the Eucharist, which if you first encounter it in Jesus' words seems more shocking than it probably was for his disciples.

[Wisdom speaking] Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more.

Sirach is also the source of the familiar line, Let us now praise famous men. Many such revelations pop up in the Apocrypha: "Oh, so that's where that came from!"

The biggest disappointment was the Maccabee books, not only because they are much like my least favorite parts of the Old Testament—war and more war—but mostly because the story of the miraculous eight-day supply of oil, which is the event celebrated at Hanukkah, is not there, where I expected it to be. Apparently that event, though it occurs in the time of the Maccabees, was not written down until much later, in the Talmud.

I very much enjoyed the between-testaments "feel" of the books, particularly in the ones that are not just additions to Old Testament books. You can see how Jewish thought is evolving, in particular to include belief in resurrection and life after death, and in the Messiah whose coming was fully anticipated to bring military triumph to the Jewish people.

1 Esdras reads like normal Old Testament history, but 2 Esdras is just plain weird. If you enjoy Revelation, you'll love 2 Esdras.

My verdict on the Apocrypha? I'd say Luther was right. It is "good to read," though not as infallible Scripture. It is at least as interesting, helpful, and important as the history, wisdom, and stories we read from other sources without thinking twice about it.

I see no reason why the books of Apocrypha, honored in religion and culture for most of their history, should in modern times be in such disfavor. I won't be reading them annually the way I do the Old and New Testaments, but I'm glad I finally made their acquaintance.

What's next?  I'll begin my yearly cycle again when Advent comes, but in the meantime, since I just finished reading C. S. Lewis's book, Reflections on the Psalms, I think I'll run through the Psalter. For this purpose I'll step briefly away from the Revised Standard Version and pick up my 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which retains the Coverdale translation of the Psalms. I think I'm still reacting to my two years with The Message. After this, I'll revert to the more middle-of-the-road RSV. Lewis says,

Even of the old translators he [Coverdale] is by no means the most accurate; and of course a sound modern scholar has more Hebrew in his little finger than poor Coverdale had in his whole body. But in beauty, in poetry, he, and St. Jerome, the great Latin translator, are beyond all whom I know.

What a pity we can't get both modern scholarship and beauty!

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books, 2013)

I was hoping to have another Brother Cadfael book for my Sabbath reading, but #8 is currently unavailable at our library in any form.

Enter, at the precise moment of need, the hearty recommendation of my daughter for Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist. Sanderson's works were previously recommended to me by my brother, and then by our grandson, but both of them have a predilection for very thick books in very long series. Knowing that Heather read The Rithmatist in a day—albeit one that cost her more sleep than it should have—and enjoyed it thoroughly was enough push to overcome my inertia.

My only disappointment is that the final words of the book are "To be continued." Never trust an author who prefers to write in series form. Worse, the sequel isn't due out for some time yet. Nonetheless, the book is complete enough in itself and was nearly impossible to put down. Apparently a New York Times review included the complaint, "there is almost no action until the climax." Were we reading the same book? Is the reviewer using the term "action" merely as a synonym for "battle scenes"? The Rithmatist is bursting with action and excitement from beginning to end.

Sanderson has created a very clever "alternative world" and I look forward to reading more about it. Since that time seems to be well into the future, perhaps I should venture into his Mistborn series, though his own blurb for that promises "romance" among other things—and that's often enough to kill my interest. Still, that part can't be too bad, or my grandsons wouldn't be recommending it.

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language by Eugene H. Peterson (Navpress, 2002)

It's my habit to read through the Bible at a rate of approximately once per year. My last cycle, however, took twice that long, thanks to the version I chose to read. I like to switch up versions, both for the variety and for the slightly different perspectives each brings. This time I chose the very popular The Message, which, as its Wikipedia article notes, "is a highly idiomatic translation, using contemporary slang from the US rather than a more neutral International English, and it falls on the extreme dynamic end of the dynamic and formal equivalence spectrum." In other words, more a paraphrase than a translation.

I'm glad I read it, and I'm sure The Message has been helpful to many, but for me the effort was like slogging through mud. This is the Bible with all the poetry, beauty, and life sucked out of it—not to mention that "contemporary slang" sounds dated the moment it hits print. In the Wikipedia article you can see how Peterson's interpretation of a couple of popular passages stands up against both the King James and the New International translations.

Did I say The Message is a paraphrase rather than a translation? More than that, it's a sermon from beginning to end. Not that I should have been surprised, since Eugene Peterson was a pastor, and the book arose from a lifetime of crafting Bibilical texts into sermons.

Let's just say that I'm glad I have a pastor who occasionally speaks over my head and expects me to rise to the challenge. Peterson's efforts feel condescending and often made me wince.

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote,

The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man. ... We may call that doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.

The greatest crime of The Message is that it makes the whole Biblical epic sound dull—and like a made-up sermon illustration rather than the messy record of real, historical people that it is.

My apologies to those who find The Message inspiring and exciting. From all I've heard of Eugene Peterson, he was an amazing person, pastor, and scholar. I'm sure his books, including The Message, have been helpful to many. Tastes differ, and I'm thankful we have such a variety of resources available to us.

But for my next cycle, I'm going with the good ol' Revised Standard Version (RSV). Not the new one (NRSV), which also makes me wince, but the version of the book presented to me by "the Church School of the First Reformed Church of Scotia, New York, June 4, 1961." Well, technically, not that book, since most of my reading is done through YouVersion's Bible App. But that version. It's clean, it's poetic, and it should be a good palate cleanser. We'll see if I still feel that way after a year.

Recasting the Past: The Middle Ages in Young Adult Literature by Rebecca Barnhouse (Boynton/Cook, 2000)

This was another book from my son-in-law's wish list that I found intriguing. It turned out to be both disappointing and enlightening.

The disappointment was my own fault: The stated purpose of the book is "to provide teachers, librarians, and scholars of adolescent literature with a discussion of fiction set in the Middle Ages," so I should not have been surprised that the author talks like an educationist. Neither should I have been surprised (though I was) that the books she analyzes are all very modern. It reminds me of the fifth grade teacher who required that during their "free reading time," her students read only books from the Sunshine State Young Readers Awards list. This, she assured me, was because she wanted to make sure the children were reading quality books. Once I discovered that even to be nominated for that list a book had to be fiction and published withing the last three years, I knew why I was far less than impressed with the selection. I suppose modern authors need some support, but inflicting their works—to the exclusion of all others—on helpless students is even more unfair than forcing the students to eat school lunches.

This teacher-orientation and modern-author bias of Recasting the Past got my reading off on the wrong foot, but I was able to get over it because there really is some good information here. I've long known that much historical fiction, particularly for some reason that favored by schools (and popular movies), plays fast and loose with the facts. I figured the blame mainly fell on lazy authors, who had a story to tell and liked the idea of fitting it into an historical time period, but preferred to make the time fit the story rather than the other way around. Barnhouse opened my eyes to an entirely different source for the problem.

Although the author does not acknowledge this, I'm convinced that the base culprit is that there is such as thing as "young adult fiction." Why there should be is beyond my ken. Anyone who is mature enough to handle the subjects dealt with in these books—which include torture, religious doubts, and sexual activity—should be offended by dumbed-down reading levels and the assumption that everyone of a certain age must be interested in the same things.

Be that as it may, these are aimed at a young adult audience, and it shows. First and worst, the authors are apparently viewing their stories primarily as vehicles for teaching, and teaching 21st century values more than teaching history.

One such value is literacy. Barnhouse notes that much historical fiction aimed at schoolchildren is anachronistic in its attitude towards reading, writing, and book learning. No doubt they want to encourage the same in their modern readers, but it is wrong to give the impression that back then books were considered the key to knowledge, ignoring the practical ways knowledge was passed on in those times.

Modern authors also seem uncomfortable with allowing their young readers to experience attitudes not in line with 21st century standards. The young protagonists must be models of tolerance and diversity as defined by modern educationists; if anything negative is said about Jews, for example, it must come from the mouth of a character that the readers are not likely to like or respect. In a similarly unrealistic approach, Jews, Muslims, and generally anyone-but-Christians are treated by authors of much young adult fiction as paragons of virtue, instead of as human beings.

Barnhouse touches on other subjects, including stories that appear to be set in medieval times but actually belong in the Fantasy genre.

The primary use of his short book is for developing some tools for recognizing anachronism in so-called young adult fiction. Perhaps the most important of these tools is simply being aware of the problem.

Just two short quotes this time, emphasis mine:

The words "Middle Ages" imply a time between two eras, the Roman Empire and the rebirth of Roman culture in the Italian Renaissance. However, tell a twelfth-century Parisian scholar like Peter Abelard that Roman learning is dead and you'll get a surprised look—that is, if you can pry him away from his study of Greek and Roman historians and philosophers. Abelard and his contemporaries used the word modern to describe themselves. The big lie perpetrated by the Renaissance Italians, who said everything was dark and barbaric until they reinvented Rome, shows how little they knew about the transmission of thought, culture, and learning in the medieval period. While it's true that the vast majority of people didn't participate in all of this learning, neither did the majority of Romans. (Introduction, p xiii)

Well-told modern tales of the Middle Ages abound. ... The writers who research carefully enough to understand the differences between medieval and modern attitudes, between different medieval settings, and between fantasy and history, can help their readers understand a strange and distant culture: the Middle Ages. Writers who create memorable, sympathetic characters who retain authentically medieval values teach their audience more than those who condescend to readers by sanitizing the past. Trusting readers to comprehend cultural differences, presenting the Middle Ages accurately, and telling a good story results in compelling historical fiction, fiction that, like medieval literature in its ideal form, teaches as it delights. (p 86)

UPDATE 11/5/19 Here's a table from Stephan, summarizing the book's evaluations.  Click to enlarge.

Stephan says, What might be confusing about the table is the multiple use of the comments column. The first books with a fidelity rating > 0 come with comments that summarize very briefly Mrs Barnhouse‘s critique; those with a rating = 0 with a „fantasy level“ comment; and the rest with a summary.

On a whim—or more accurately, a teaser from my sister-in-law—I put the show Rizzoli & Isles on our Netflix list. It's another crime/mystery series, which, if you consider our Netflix history, you might think is 90% of what interests us. (Including, but not limited to, Rumpole of the Bailey, Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, The Bletchley Circle, Death in Paradise, NCIS (multiple versions), Monk, Foyle's War, Castle, Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis, Endeavour, Grantchester, Murdoch Mysteries, Father Brown, Maigret, Nero Wolfe, Numb3rs, Lord Peter Wimsey....)

The teaser was that one of the Rizzoli & Isles shows—I don't know which one—involves a genealogical investigation. We've been through the first season plus a bit, and haven't yet spotted it, although there is one cringe-worthy episode in which two perfectly-matched DNA samples are proclaimed to be, not identical twins, but half-siblings: one male, one female, no less. I felt as Porter must when he watches movies that play fast and loose with historical facts.

Be that as it may, I plan to keep watching, at least until I get to the genealogy episode, because the characters and the stories are interesting. The usual problems associated with television series apply, at least based on what I've seen so far.

• It is a truth universally acknowledged that a story written by committees of writers, constrained by never knowing how long the series will run and which actors will unexpectedly die or quit along the way, cannot have a story arc that knows its end from its beginning. I know that novelists are often surprised at the directions their stories take as they are being written, but by the time a book gets into the hands of its readers the story is fixed. Not so with long-running TV series. I find this annoying.
• Hollywood producers, directors, writers, and actors are nearly universally liberal (in the sense of the label as it is used these days) in their political, social, and religious views, and this is as evident in Rizzoli & Isles as in most other popular television shows. One does not need to posit ill intent, or a conspiracy to corrupt the population, to acknowledge that these stories are drenched with, steeped in, and pervaded by a world view antithetical to most Christians, most conservatives, and most Americans who live outside of the West Coast, the Northeast, or large cities. It is what it is, and one has a choice: ignore most television and movies altogether, or be alert and aware, noting the sea in which the shows' characters and events swim. The latter is possibly the more rewarding path, but definitely the more dangerous. It's hard to stand in the water without getting wet, and if the frog-and-kettle story isn't actually true to nature, as a metaphor it's spot on.
• The level of graphic violence varies widely from one TV series to another. Rumpole, for example, is only secondarily about the actual crimes, and not at all graphic; NCIS Los Angeles is about some exceedingly violent and gruesome stories, and makes no attempt to hide the visceral realities from viewers. Rizzoli & Isles, so far, is somewhere between the midpoint and the graphic extreme.

So why am I finding the shows worth watching?

• I'm anticipating the genealogy episode.
• The characters and mysteries are interesting, especially the friendship between the title characters. It reminds me a little of the relationship between the two brothers on Numb3rs: one tough and street-smart, one polymath—but with some twists as well. I'm a sucker for quirky, misunderstood—if nonetheless respected—geniuses, hence my attraction to Numb3rs, Monk, Inspector Lewis, and The Bletchley Circle.
• I like the music (Irish-ish)

The show is set in Boston, and I always enjoy recognizing places and people I'm familiar with. In just the first season (2010) there have been some interesting events.

• References to Whitey Bolger when he was still at large (he wasn't recaptured till 2011)
• A show about killings during the Boston Marathon, three years before the famous bombing in 2013. Interestingly, although the event is clearly the Boston Marathon—e.g. a famous marathon set in Boston, mention of "Heartbreak Hill"—in the show it is called the Massachusetts Marathon, which leads to speculation. Probably the name "Boston Marathon" is copyrighted, and perhaps the organization decided they didn't want their race associated in people's minds with violent death. Oops.

Speaking of television series, don't talk to me about the final episodes of NCIS last season. Not only did we miss them when they aired, but we also missed the opportunity to see them free on the CBS site. Season 16 won't be released to DVD till September 3—and who knows when after that they will be available on Netflix. So—someday, maybe.

Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments by Joy Davidman (The Westminster Press, 1953)

I recently re-read Joy Davidman's book because it seemed logical to include in my C. S. Lewis retrospective. How long ago was my previous reading I can only guess, but it's likely two decades or more.

The first time around, I remember being quite impressed by Davidman's take on the Ten Commandments; this time, less so. It's still a book worth reading, but perhaps two decades further on has made her examples and emphasis seem more dated. Her analysis is still pretty good, however. Basic human nature doesn't change—and neither do the Commandments.

The one thing that bothers me most is certainly very minor in the scheme of the book, but it comes up over and over again. Not in anything directly related to her arguments, but in her assumptions about society: that is, that one of the biggest problems of this world, and a concern of all intelligent people, is overpopulation. I think my children don't understand quite how intense the pressure was in my generation to have no more than two children. I'm very glad that has now eased—but the attitude still rankles when I run into it.

Maugre all that, there were plenty of quotes worth extracting. Remember that Davidman was writing in the early 1950's, and reflect how à propos they still are.

The articulate, the leaders of opinion, the policy makers, all those who set the tone of our society, seem for the most part to be frightened men. (p 18)

Despite her fears of overpopulation, Davidman has a pretty good take on much of what's wrong with family life today.

Everybody today ... will agree that that family life is indispensable to human health and happiness. Yet we find ourselves accepting conditions that make war on the family. The lands behind the Iron Curtain deliberately weaken family ties in their schools, lest loyalty to parents should conflict with devotion to the sacred State. Our own country tries to keep the home fires burning with verbal sentiment about Mom, but meanwhile forces Mom to leave the hearth fire untended while she tends the factory machine. A century ago, American houses were twelve-room affairs designed to hold grandparents, and maiden aunts, and uncles, as well as parents and children; today they are usually cramped little flats and cottages, and we feel lucky to get those. We can hardly do much about honoring Father and Mother if there's no room for them in the inn. (pp 63-64)

I will add that the Iron Curtain may have fallen, but schools are doing no less to weaken family ties, and today they've been joined by a host of other assailants, from governmental policies to music, movies, and television.

Every age has its professional apologists, and ours are working hard to convince us that our worst sins are virtues. A mother forced to take a job needs a crèche [daycare] for her baby, admitted—but that does not justify the false comforters who tell us a crèche is better than a mother. An overcrowded school must pick up its pupils in large handfuls all of an age, and pass them along without paying attention to their individual abilities—yet this hardly warrants the current theory that children ought to be herded in age groups, as if we gave birth to them in litters! The cooped-up small families of cities are likely to develop unhealthy tensions, as we all know—need we, therefore, swallow the fashionable psychological doctrine that it's natural for all sons to hate their fathers? Were it really true that sons and fathers are natural enemies, how could mankind ever have dreamed of such a thing as the Fatherhood of God? (p 65, emphasis mine)

Through such apologies, and our own mental laziness, we are in danger of accepting without question some very queer distortions of human life. Already our generations are being walled off from each other: teenagers flock together deaf to all language but their own, young couples automatically drop their unmarried friends, whole magazines address themselves to age groups such as the seventeens or the young matrons or the "older executive type." Vast numbers of people think it is "natural" to hate your in-laws, "immature" to ask your parents for advice after your marriage, "abnormal" to value the companionship of anyone much older or younger than yourself. (pp 65-66)

Our modern cities have created a society in which children are in the way. They are physically in the way, and therefore we find them in the way emotionally too. There are many who do not want them at all, like the girl who recently told this writer that a civilized woman can "realize her creative impulses through self-expression" without needing anything so dirty as a baby! Even those who do want them are sometimes rather shame-faced about it; pregnancy, once something in which a woman gloried, is now treated as a disfigurement to be concealed as long as possible; and giving suck, the greatest joy and greatest need of both mother and child, is quite out of fashion among us. "I'm not a cow!" some American women will remark scornfully, as if it were preferable to be a fish. (pp 66-67)

Worse yet, perhaps, is the taming process we are forced to put our children through in order to keep them alive at all in city streets and city flats. In their infancy we must curb their play, and force adult cautions and restraints on them too soon; in their adolescence, on the other hand, we must bend all our efforts to keep them children at an age when our ancestors would have recognized them as grown men and women ready to found families. Our objection to child labor is admirable when it prevents the exploitation of babies in sweatshops, but not when it keeps vigorous young men and women frittering away their energies on meaningless school courses and still more meaningless amusements. (p 67)

It is gratifying to know that in our time pregnancy, nursing, and rearing independent children have been enjoying a comeback, but the gains are yet small and the opposition still great.

Let us remind the innumerable Americans who don't seem to know it that begetting and rearing a family are far more real and rewarding than making and spending money. (p 69, emphasis mine)

"Honor thy father and thy mother" is not the only Commandment on which Davidman expounds—it's just the one for which I found the most interesting excerpts. Here's one for "Thou shalt not steal," followed by one each for "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and "Thou shalt not covet."

Our society, in some respects, is a vast confidence game. Even our money sometimes becomes a swindle; no crueler form of theft was ever devised than an inflation, and since the value of paper money depends on that doubtful commodity, faith in the Government, it is hard to see how all present currencies can help inflating. Those who remember the German inflation of the 1920's know what happens, in such cases, to trusting old people living on pensions and savings. (p 105, emphasis mine)

Sadly, even our professional economists seem to have forgotten the horrors of inflation. I only need to look back as far as the 1970's to fear inflation—and we were in a good position then, with salaries that inflated along with the dollar. Inflation is very attractive to governments and other debtors; it rewards spending beyond our means, promotes consumerism, and punishes thrift and contentment. Unfortunately, for governments and those crippled by debt, inflation looks like a promising get-rich-quick scheme. We all know where those lead.

Perhaps what unsettles the modern mind most is its despair of ever knowing truth and the conflicting and untrustworthy and very dusty answers we get in our daily life. There are people who believe that not only are there no truths, but there are not even facts—all is a matter of "subjective values." Whatever the merits of this as a philosophy, its practical use is often as a method of evasion and rationalization. ... The denial that truth exists is a good beginning for habitual lying. And if we start confessing our habitual lies, shall we ever be done? There are the lies of gossip, public and private, which make haters out of us; the lies of advertising and salesmanship, which make money out of us; the lies of politicians, who make power out of us. And the lies of the sort of journalist who manufactures a daily omniscience out of the teletype machine and the Encyclopaedia Britannica! And the lies of a professional patriot who assures us that our cause is so just that it doesn't matter what injustice we commit in its name! Two hundred years ago Dr. Johnson wrote:

"Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie."

The observation still holds good, except that the scribblers no longer live in garrets. The pay is bigger nowadays—but then, so are the lies. (p 111, emphasis mine)

Seeing God face to face is our goal; the pleasures of life, and even life itself, are the means to it. Therefore the milk and honey and corn and wine and soft chairs and fine houses and swift automobiles—all those pleasant things!—exist primarily as a kind of currency of love; a means whereby men can exchange love with one another and thus become capable of the love of God. ... We value such things not only for their pleasantness, but also because we can give them away and give our love with them; or else because, in receiving them, we receive others' love for us as a baby at the breast sucks his mother's love with her milk. (p 122, emphasis mine)

What a delightful view of the giving and receiving of gifts!

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Crown Business, 2013)

This book was on my son-in-law's Amazon wish list. Since in my own life I have chronic difficulties with decision-making, I thought I'd read it myself. Often I can do this while the book is in my hands awaiting a trip to Switzerland, but that doesn't work for Kindle books. However, our local library came through.

It was not quite what I had hoped. Having read other books by the Heath Brothers, I was prepared for this book to be primarily about business.  But even when they deal with personal issues they are more weighty ("Should I break up with my boyfriend?") than help for someone who has trouble deciding what to order at a restaurant.

And yet the book was still very interesting, especially the real-life examples, and it has given me ideas to ponder. Decisive is not long (253 pages, plus some notes at the end) and not hard going. The quotations below are almost random, chosen for the interest they piqued, not as any kind of meaningful summary of the ideas presented. Emphasis in bold is my own.

David Lee Roth was the lead singer for the Van Halen band. Their concerts were massive productions involving complex set-ups. Roth knew that even a small mess-up could put the safety of the band at risk. They could control their own technicians, but what about all the work done by local stagehands at the venues before they arrived?

Rumors circulated wildly about Van Halen's backstage antics. ... Van Halen seemed committed to a level of decadence that was almost artistic. ... Sometimes, though, the band's actions seemed less like playful mayhem and more like egomania. The most egregious rumor about the band was that its contract rider demanded a bowl of M&Ms backstage—with all the brown ones removed. There were tales of Roth walking backstage, spotting a single brown M&M, and freaking out, trashing the dressing room.

This rumor was true. The brown-free bowl of M&Ms became the perfect, appalling symbol of rock-star diva behavior. Here was a band making absurd demands simply because it could.

Get ready to reverse your perception.

The band's "M&M clause" was written into its contract to serve a very specific purpose. It was called Article 126, and it read as follows: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation,." The article was buried in the middle of countless technical specifications.

When Roth would arrive at a new venue, he'd immediately walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he'd demand a line check of the entire production. "Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error," he said. "They didn't read the contract.... Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show."

In other words, David Lee Roth was no diva; he was an operations master. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention—whether they'd read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. (pp 26-28)

Or maybe he was still an obnoxious diva—but a very savvy one.

The question a college-bound senior should be asking ... is not "What's the highest-ranking college I can convince to take me?" Rather, it should be "What do I want out of life, and what are the best options to get me there?" Those two questions are in no way synonymous, and once families start thinking about the latter one, they often find that they have many more good options than they ever thought possible. (p 40)

Ay, there's the rub. How many people don't have a clue what they want out of life until the approaching end of college forces them to think about it?

A study of graphic designers demonstrates the value of multitracking. The designers, tasked with making a banner ad for a Web magazine, were randomly assigned to use one of two creative processes. Half of them were instructed to design one ad at a time, receiving feedback after each new design. Each designer started with a single ad and revised it five times based on rounds of feedback, yielding a total of six ads. The other half of the designers were instructed to use a "simultaneous" process, so that each one started with three ads and received feedback on all three. Then, in successive rounds, the set was whittled down with further feedback to two ads and then one final ad.

All of the designers ultimately created the same number of ads (six) and received the same quantity of feedback (five ad critiques). The only difference was the process: simultaneous versus one at a time.

As it turned out, process mattered a great deal: The simultaneous designers' ads were judged superior by the magazine's editors and by independent ad execs, and they earned higher click-through rates on a real-world test of the banners on the Web site. Why?

The study's authors, trying to explain the better performance of the simultaneous designers, said, "Since [simultaneous] participants received feedback on multiple ideas simultaneously, they were more likely to read and analyze critique statements side-by-side. Direct comparison perhaps helped them better understand key design principles and led to more principles choices for subsequent prototypes."

In other words, the simultaneous designers, by multitraking, were learning something useful about the shape of the problem. They were able to triangulate among the features of their three initial ads—combining their good elements and omitting the bad. (pp 53-54)

Plus, as it turned out, the simultaneous designers were happier about the feedback they received, and felt more confident in their abilities as a result of the experience. Not being 100% invested in a single design made them more likely to see criticism as a useful informative tool rather than as a personal attack.

When life offers us a "this or that" choice, we should have the gall to ask whether the right answer might be "both." (p 65)

Or neither. Binary decisions (either/or, "Should I quit my job?" "Should I marry Oliver?") rarely lead to the best decisions. Adding just one or two more options to the list forces you to widen your view and get better insight.

Imagine a new restaurant has just opened near you. It serves your favorite kind of food, so you're excited and hopeful. you search the restaurant's reviews online, and the results show a handful of good reviews (four out of five stars) and a handful of poor ones (two stars). Which reviews would you read?

Almost certainly, you'd read more of the positive reviews. You really want this restaurant to be great. A recent meta-analysis of the psychology literature illustrated how dramatic this effect is. ... The researchers concluded that we are more than twice as likely to favor confirming information than disconfirming information. (So, scientifically speaking, you'd probably read twice as many four-star reviews as two-star reviews.) (p 95)

I admit to struggling with what they call "confirmation bias," but this is totally different from my own approach to online reviews. I do start off with a product that has mostly positive reviews, as if the sample size is large enough, that's probably a good indicator of general quality. But what I concentrate on reading are the negative reviews, because I want to know why people didn't like a product. Often it's irrelevant to the product itself (late arrival, damage in transit, reviewer's ex-wife liked it therefore it must be bad). Sometimes the negative is about something that doesn't apply to me ("not enough romance in this book"). Sometimes they're genuinely helpful. Then I read the middle-of-the-road reviews, as I figure they're more likely to see both the positives and the negatives. Finally, I'll check out a few of the five-star reviews, just to be sure someone else thinks the item is what I hope it is.

Rather than jump headfirst ... dip a toe in.

Think about a student, Steve, who has decided to go to pharmacy school. What makes him think that's a good option? Well, he spent months toying with other possibilities—medical school and even law school—and he eventually decided pharmacy was the best fit. He's always enjoyed chemistry, after all, and he likes the idea of working in health care. He feels like the lifestyle of a pharmacist, with its semireasonable hours and good pay, would suit him well.

But this is pretty thin evidence for such an important decision! Steve is contemplating a minimum time commitment of two years for graduate school, not to mention tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and forgone income. He's placing a huge bet on paltry information. [An obvious move] would be to work in a pharmacy for a few weeks. He'd be smart to work for free, if need be, to get the job.

Surely this concept—testing a profession before entering it—sounds obvious. Yet every year hordes of students enroll in graduate schools without ever having run an experiment like that: law students who've never spent a day in a law office and med students who've never spent time in a hospital or clinic. Imagine going to school for three or four years so you can start a career that never suited you! This is a truly terrible decision process, in the same league as an impromptu drunken marriage in Vegas. (pp 137-138)

Phil Tetlock, a professor of psychology and management at the University of Pennsylvania ... resolved to design a study that would, for the first time, hold experts' feet to the fire. He recruited 284 experts, people who made their living by "commenting or offering advice on political or economic trends." Almost all of them had a graduate degree and over half had a PhD. Their opinions were eagerly sought: 61% of them had been interviewed by the media.

They were asked to make predictions in their area of expertise. ... As predictions go, these were pretty basic—nothing more strenuous than multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. Tetlock was trying to create such clear questions that experts would have nowhere to hide if they were wrong. ...

How'd the experts do? They underperformed, to say the least. Even the best forecasters did worse than what Tetlock calls a "crude extrapolation algorithm," a simple computation that takes the base rates and assumes that the trends from the past few years will continue (e.g., predicting that an economy that has grown at an average of 2.8% over the past three years will continue to grow at 2.8%). ...

Surveying these scores across regions, time periods, and outcome variables ... it is impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms. ...

Sadly, pundits aren't the only experts who have prognostication problems. Previous research has shown that psychologists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and car mechanics are also poor at making predictions. ...

Does this mean that expertise is worthless? No. ... [In another experiment], when students proclaimed themselves 100% certain that something would happen, they were wrong 45% of the time. When the experts were completely certain, they were wrong "only" 23% of the time. ... What the data shows is the base rates are better than expert predictions, which are better than novice predictions. (pp 140-143)

The strange words appeared anew every day, printed in capital letters in the corner of the blackboard, right underneath a warning to the cleaning crew to "Please save." The university students who attended the class were mystified by the words, which appeared to be in a foreign language: SARICIK. RAJECKI. KADIRGA. NANSOMA. ZAJONC.

On some days, only one of the words appeared; on other days, there would be two or three. “Zajonc,” in particular, seemed to appear a lot more than the others. The professor never acknowledged the words. Students were mystified; one later said of the words, "They haunt my dreams."

After the words had been appearing on the blackboard for nine straight weeks, the students received a survey with a list of 14 foreign words on it, and 5 of the 14 words were the ones from the blackboard. They were asked to assess how much they liked each word. ... The most-liked words were the ones the students had seen the most. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, then, but more like contentment.

For decades, psychologists have been studying this phenomenon, called the "mere exposure" principle, which says that people develop a preference for things that are more familiar (i.e., merely being exposed to something makes us view it more positively). ...

What's more troubling is that the mere-exposure principle also extends to our perception of truth. ... When the participants [in another study] were exposed to a particular statement three times during the experiment, rather than once, they rated it as more truthful. Repetition sparked trust. This is a sobering thought about our decisions in society and in organizations. All of us ... will naturally absorb a lot of institutional "truth," and chances are that much of it is well proven and trustworthy, but some of it will only feel true because it is familiar. As a result, when we make decisions, we might think we're choosing based on evidence, but sometimes that evidence may be ZAJONC—nonsense ideas we've come to like because we've seen them so much. (pp 163-165)

It's possible that the Mere Exposure Principle may be the most important take-away from this book. Certainly it deserves its own blog post. Or two. Two that have been floating around in my brain for years; perhaps seeing this succinct statement in print will spur me to bring one or both to birth.

Short-term emotion [sometimes makes us] erratic and too quick to act. ... More commonly [it] has the opposite effect, making us slow and timid, reluctant to take action. We see too much complexity and it stymies us. We worry about what we must sacrifice to try something new. We distrust the unfamiliar. Together, these feelings make individuals and organizations biased toward the status quo. (pp 172-173)

Yep, that's my gift, and my curse. Some people jump at any new idea with full enthusiasm, and only later discover the drawbacks. My mind immediately goes to what could go wrong, and I disappoint people by my slow, sober response—even if I become excited after careful consideration, the damage has been done. But both approaches are important.

Perhaps the most powerful question for resolving personal decisions is "What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?" (p 174)

Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, suggests that we create a "stop-doing list." What sparked the idea was a challenge from one of his advisers to consider what he would do if he received two life-changing phone calls. In the first call, he'd learn that he'd inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second call would inform him that, due to a rare and incurable disease, he had only 10 years left to live. The adviser asked Collins, "What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?" (pp 187-188)

That, too, deserves its own blog post.

There's [a] technique that is useful in guarding against the unknown. It's surprisingly simple, in fact: Just assume that you're being overconfident and give yourself a healthy margin of error. (p 208)

Simple, sure, but we're surprisingly poor at taking that advice. Richard Killmer, Janet's oboe professor in college, is famous for his playing, his teaching, and who knows what else—but what I remember most is his habit of always being early. When driving from Rochester, New York, to New York City, for example, he'd plan to arrive two hours early for his performance. Usually, that's what would happen, but the time wasn't wasted—there was always something productive to do with that time. But if an accident on the Thruway snarled traffic—no stress.

Contrast this with my own habit of tailoring my activities precisely so that I will be ready to leave for church at the exact right time. That may sound clever, but let Porter say—as he does with disconcerting frequency and little-to-no notice—"Let's stop at X on the way to church," and I'm undone. How much more reasonable just to plan to be ready to get in the car a half hour early, and then use any extra time to my advantage. It may sound easy, but....

By bookending—anticipating and preparing for both adversity and success—we stack the deck in favor of our decisions. (p 217)

Of course, time is only one of many factors that benefit from a healthy margin of error. Because we are so notoriously poor at prediction—how much time, how much money, how much profit—a technique called "bookending" can help mitigate problems on both ends of the event spectrum. Some of us are accustomed to considering the worst-case scenario, and trying to build in mitigation, but unexpected success can be nearly as great a problem. What if your new product takes off beyond your wildest dreams, and you have no way to handle the sudden onslaught of orders?

With the right tripwire, we can ensure that we don't throw good money (or time) after bad. (p 231)

I found the section on tripwires especially interesting, particularly because of the story of Kodak's failure to recognize the importance of digital photography. That's a story I lived through, being in Rochester and having several friends who worked for Kodak and saw that failure up close. Van Halen's obsession with brown M&Ms was a tripwire, warning of potentially dangerous carelessness. Kodak might have not gone under if their confidence that digital photos would never be acceptible to the public had been hedged by a tripwire such as, "We will reconsider when more than 10% of the public finds digital images satisfactory." Parents might tell a recent graduate, "You're welcome to move back home and work full-time on your art, Vincent, but if after six months you haven't sold a painting, you'll need to find another source of income."

Our first instinct, when challenged, is usually to dig in further and passionately defend our position. Surprisingly, though, sometimes the opposite can be more effective.

Dave Hitz, the founder of NetApp, says he learned that "sometimes the best way to defend a decision is to point out its flaws."

"Let's say you have decided to pursue Plan A. As a manager, it is part of your job to defend and explain that decision to folks who work for you. So when someone marches into your office to explain that Plan A sucks, and that Plan Z would be much better, what do you do? ... My old instinct was to listen to Plan Z, say what I didn't like about it, and to describe as best as I could why Plan A was better. Of course, the person has already seen these same arguments in the e-mail I sent announcing the decision, but since they didn't agree, they must not have heard me clearly, so I'd better repeat my argument again, right? I can report that this seldom worked very well.

It works much better if I start out by agreeing: "Yep. Plan Z is a reasonable plan. Not only for the reasons you mentioned, but here are two more advantages. And Plan A—the plan that we chose—not only has the flaws that you mentioned, but here hare three more flaws." The effect of this technique is amazing. It seems completely counterintuitive, but even if you don't convince people that your plan is better, hearing you explain your plan's flaws—and their plan's advantages—makes them much more comfortable. (pp 244-245)

A Morbid Taste for Bones: The First Chronicle of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters (Little, Brown, first published 1977)

Everyone wants to give the surprise, spot-on birthday gift. True, the wish list was a great invention, allowing us to give gifts that will be welcomed, even though we aren't close enough (physically or emotionally) to a person to know well what he wants or needs. But perhaps the best gift is one that comes unbidden and meets a need or desire we didn't even know we had.

Such was this book for me. Once having cleared up my initial confusion of reading the author as Ellis Potter, an entirely different sort of writer, I recognized Brother Cadfael as a PBS show, of which we may have seen an episode long ago. Apparently we were not impressed enough to continue the series.

Not so with the book! I was hooked immediately by this medieval murder mystery, combining as it does two of my favorite genres. And, much more than that: the characters, plot, and actions are all touched by that quality so rare in any tale and especially modern writings: grace. To quote the last sentence of the second book, One Corpse Too Many, without giving anything away: From the highest to the lowest extreme of a man's scope, wherever justice and retribution can reach him, so can grace.

I began this review after having read just two of the books in the series; at the time, my thoughts were almost entirely positive. Now I have devoured five books, and binge-reading tends to exaggerate the presence of small negatives. Hopefully all that has done is make me more realistic in my assessment. After all, I still adore the books of Miss Read, even though a recent re-reading of everything I have of hers—which is very nearly everything she wrote—similarly raised the profile of the books' faults.

The negatives (with some mitigation) of the Brother Cadfael series, based on the first five books:

• Too much romance. As a genre, Romance ranks only slightly better than Horror in my mind. To Peters' credit, the romance takes second place to the mystery, but it's still too prominent for my taste. In many ways the Cadfael books remind me of George MacDonald's novels. MacDonald is one of my favorite authors (as he was of C. S. Lewis), but many of his novels (as opposed to his fantasies and children's stories) have Romantic elements clearly designed to appeal to his 19th century audience. I bear with the Romance because of the serious philosophical content of which it is the vehicle. (MacDonald was a preacher, and it shows—but far from detracting, that is what makes his novels worth reading.) In Cadfael, I bear with the Romance because of the detective story content. The Romantic elements are also (at least so far), pure love stories—nothing embarrassing about them.
• The stories are somewhat predictable. That is, I find myself able to guess many of the plot twists and outcomes. But hey, it doesn't bother me to feel smart.
• More troublesome is the occasional feeling of anachronism, with both attitude and action sometimes owing more to modern sensibilities than to those of the 12th century. But it's reasonably subtle and does not get in the way of the story, at least not in my limited experience. In any case, I don't know enough history to be certain of calling it out. The author seems to take seriously the historical accuracy of the setting—the period of English history known as The Anarchy. Perhaps when you write in modern English—and what else could she do?—modern phrases and modern perspectives will creep in.

The positives:

• Grace, as mentioned above. For the most part, it's not cheap grace, either. (“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
• The character of Brother Cadfael: come late to his life as a monk, carrying with him his experience as a soldier, a sailor, and a Crusader, he's a gentle, kindly man with a vast store of knowledge and a razor-sharp wit. He is wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove.
• The respect shown for the Christian faith and the Church. Peters—and Cadfael—do not brook hypocrisy, arrogance, boorishness, and deep evil when they appear within the monastery, but there is goodness there, too, and also self-sacrifice, justice, mercy, patience, forebearance, duty, responsibility, and humanity.
• Happy endings. I love happy endings. Love triumphs, justice prevails, courage and hope live. The real world is quite full enough of darkness and sorrow. Happy endings, at least if done right, are not escapism nor foolish denial, but an expression of faith in the ultimate victory of justice and mercy. As C. S. Lewis said, "Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage."
• The mysteries. They're clever, and fun.
• The setting. The castles and monasteries, medieval towns, knights, monks, squires, damsels in distress—and not in distress. (One of the giveaways that Ellis Peters is a modern author is her use of strong, intelligent, and courageous female characters. That's okay with me.) Brother Cadfael's herb garden and medicinal concoctions. Evil that is portrayed as evil, but not luridly painted. Good that is good, and desirable. Indeed, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful shine here.

Incidentally, should any of my family decide to read these books, be aware that you are related to some of these historical figures. For example, the Empress Maud (aka Empress Matilda) who is contesting with King Stephen for the English throne, is my 25-great-grandmother, and Porter's 24th-great-grandmother. Genealogy makes history—and historical novels—personal, which adds to the pleasure of the experience. Brother Cadfael also serves to render more familiar those bizarre Welsh names that appear in our family tree, such as Efa ferch Madog and Hywel ap Meurig. And I have our new rector to thank that a character's pilgrimmage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is meaningful to me, and not just another unfamiliar historical reference.

If the rest of the series lives up to the promise of the first five books, I should be set for a while with temptations away from my more serious readings. (Thanks to Wikipedia for the list.)

1. A Morbid Taste for Bones (published in August 1977, set in 1137)
2. One Corpse Too Many (July 1979, set in August 1138)
3. Monk's Hood (August 1980, set in December 1138)
4. Saint Peter's Fair (May 1981, set in July 1139)
5. The Leper of Saint Giles (August 1981, set in October 1139)
6. The Virgin in the Ice (April 1982, set in November 1139)
7. The Sanctuary Sparrow (January 1983 set in the Spring of 1140)
8. The Devil's Novice (August 1983, set in September 1140)
9. Dead Man's Ransom (April 1984, set in February 1141)
10. The Pilgrim of Hate (September 1984, set in May 1141)
11. An Excellent Mystery (June 1985, set in August 1141)
12. The Raven in the Foregate (February 1986, set in December 1141)
13. The Rose Rent (October 1986, set in June 1142)
14. The Hermit of Eyton Forest (June 1987, set in October 1142)
15. The Confession of Brother Haluin (March 1988, set in December 1142)
16. A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael (September 1988, set in 1120)
17. The Heretic's Apprentice (February 1989, set in June 1143)
18. The Potter's Field (September 1989, set in August 1143)
19. The Summer of the Danes (April 1991, set in April 1144)
20. The Holy Thief (August 1992, set in February 1145)
21. Brother Cadfael's Penance (May 1994, set in November 1145)

The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church To The Dawn Of The Reformation by Justo L. Gonzalez (HarperOne, 2010)

My list of books read this year shows June's tally to be woefully short, a mere two books. In part that shortfall is due to being on vacation with much else calling for my attention, but the primary cause was this 530-page book. I read most of it in June, but it squeaked over into July before completion.

Our rector chose this book for his six-week class in church history. I chose the Kindle version because that enabled me to begin the reading while still out of town—unfortunately we had to miss three of the six classes, and I wanted at least to keep up with the reading.  It wasn't easy, because Fr. Trey set a pace that was blistering even to a bookworm like me, though perhaps not to one who has so recently been in seminary and law school.

But I more than kept up. I finished the book yesterday, and the last class isn't until mid-month. What can I say? Once I get started, it's hard to stop. And I have a new birthday book—Brother Cadfael—calling out to me.

Plus, the book is interesting. The earlier chapters are better than the later to my mind, because the closer the author gets to modern times, the more obvious his biases become. I'm wondering if the trend will continue in Volume 2.

Mind you, I don't hold against him the fact that his biases show, even if they are sometimes frustrating. How can someone write on any subject, let alone one as difficult and as sensitive as history, without leaving the imprint of his own life's experiences? Isn't that why particular people write particular books? But the experience illustrates the truth-seeker's variant of caveat emptor: Be leery of trusting single sources.

I'll spare you the collection of quotations this time, but simply share one of my strongest and most lasting impressions.

As most of my readers know, it is my habit to read through the Bible once each year. I like to switch off different versions, and currently I'm using the one called simply, The Message. I don't doubt that many people find this version useful and enlightening, but for me it combines slogging through a swamp with enduring fingernails on a blackboard, so it's taking me a while to make progress. I'm well into my second year, and still in the Old Testament. The constant grind of God sets us on the right path—we mess up badly—God gets mad and threatens to give up on us—bad things happen—God decides he loves us too much to abandon us completely—God sets us back on the right path—we mess up badly—ad infinitum, is getting really old. This theme-and-variations seems a little repetitive in any translation, but it's orders of magnitude worse in The Message.

Enter this book on church history. History in general has been a weakness of mine ever since I learned in school that one could enjoy/be good at science and math or English and history, but not both. (I know. Surely no one actually said that? But that's what I heard.) About the history of the church I know even less, hence my eagerness to take this class. Reading the book made me glad to be experiencing the Old Testament at the same time. Why?

The impression given in most churches seems to me to be that God did a lot of work through history preparing mankind for the Incarnation—the coming of Jesus—and then considered the job done, with nothing left to do till the Second Coming. That's like jumping from the Garden of Eden to the Stable at Bethlehem, without considering all the years of history and preparation in between. What learning something of church history has shown me is how similar the Anno Domini years have been to those Before Christ. It's the same old song in a different key: make a good start, mess up—sometimes disastrously—receive correction, try again, mess up again, etc. Gradually learning, clarifying, and growing in the midst of and in spite of and even because of some really bad stuff going on. Just like Old Testament Israel.

Everything changed with the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And yet ... plus ça change ... people are still people. God's process of teaching, refining, clarifying, and polishing goes on. His work in and on and through his Church is just as important as his work with Israel. It is much like his work with individuals: everything indeed changes radically when one becomes a Christian, but God's work in us is far from complete.

Why do we learn so much in church about what God does in our individual lives, and what he did with Israel BC, but so little about his work with the Church AD?

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ♦ Prince Caspian ♦ The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" ♦ The Silver Chair ♦ The Horse and His Boy ♦ The Magician's Nephew ♦ The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis (Macmillan, 1950-1956)

I have elsewhere averred that Lewis's Narnia septet is worth reading annually. Not even the rapid growth of our grandchildren has made me more cognizant of the rapid passage of time than realizing that the last time I read these books was in 2010. That was the year I began keeping a comprehensive record of my reading; without it, I would have been certain it had been no more than a few years since my last reading. Wow.

Their turn came up recently in my C. S. Lewis retrospective, in which I'm reading his books in a rough chronological order. They have always been my favorite of his books, and my discovery of Michael Ward's Planet Narnia enhanced my admiration by an order of magnitude.

One thing I noticed this time around—thanks to my awareness of the chronology of his writing—was the salutory effect the entrance of Joy Davidman into his life appears to have had on his view of women. Lewis's attitude towards women sometimes makes me cringe, but as I've become aware of his biography, I'm amazed he wasn't a total misogynist. His beloved mother died when he was very young, and his subsequent experiences with women were not conducive to developing healthy ideas about normal family life and competent, caring females. Even his relationship with Davidman could hardly be called normal.  But she was strong and intelligent, and it's hard not to conclude that the presence in his life of such a woman influenced him to give his female characters more respect as the Narnia series progressed.

That is, if you read them in publication order. I'm 100%, whole-heartedly of the belief that one should read the Narnia books in the order listed above. It is fashionable now to read them in chronological order, supposedly the order Lewis recommended. But if that truly was his recommendation, then I'm bold enough to say he was wrong, even if he is the author. The Horse and His Boy and The Magician's Nephew work very well as flashbacks in the story, much more interesting because of their non-chronological positions in the Chronicles. Scenes in The Magician's Nephew, such as the "planting" of the lamppost, would lose much of their wonder and magic for me if I had not read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first. Similarly, I think meetin Aslan for the first time works better in Lion.

This series deserves the highest praise. It's some of the cleverest and most uplifting material I've ever read. I'm sure I would respect it even more if I had better knowledge of Dante, but reading Planet Narnia was eye-opening enough. The only thing that makes me cringe just a bit is that in two of the books the culture of the heroes is clearly modelled on England, while that of the villains is like something out of the Arabian Nights. I think this makes perfect sense for a British author writing for a largely British audience, and since the books were written in the 1950's, this obviously has nothing to do with the current political situation.  But it is worth being aware of.

Ocean-Born Mary by Lois Lenski (J. B. Lippincott, 1939)

I grew up with Lois Lenski's Indian Captive, a fictionalized version of the story of Mary Jemison, captured by Indians during the French and Indian War. She remained with the Senecas all her life, and I have seen her grave in Letchworth State Park, one of our favorite spots in Western New York. It remains one of my favorite stories.

Many years later, after moving to Florida, I discovered the Newberry Award-winning Strawberry Girl, Lenski's novel about rural Florida in the early 20th century, and liked it also.

I wish Lenski's books weren't so hard to find. Recently I discovered a new one, in little Hillsboro, New Hampshire's tiny library: Ocean-Born Mary—and it's as good as the other two.

There's a reason this book is in a New Hampshire library: it is the fictionalized story of Mary Wilson Wallace, who was born on a ship that was part of the 18th century Scots-Irish immigration to New England. She grew up in New Hampshire, and her grave is in Henniker, the next town over from Hillsboro. Our New Hampshire grandchildren will want to be sure to read the Afterward, where they will find such familiar names as The Isles of Shoals and Star Island.

Warning: some spoilers below, but important for parents to read.

I loved Ocean-Born Mary. This is the world many of my ancestors lived in. Lenski has fictionalized the story and softened some of the harsh details for the juvenile audience, but there is great historical detail and it rings true. Written in 1939, it does not have 21st-century sensitivities, and modern parents may cringe at the casual references to "Negro slaves." But that was reality, and it's good for Northerners to realize what they would love to forget—that slavery was not exclusively a Southern sin. It was part of life at that time, as were smallpox and starvation, Indian attacks and British oppression.

Many modern parents may find even more objectionable the protagonist's friendship with an older man of very ill repute, and the fact that she sneaks away on several occasions to meet with him. Nothing untoward happens, and there is nothing at all romantic in the modern sense about the relationship. I've read many modern children's books that are infinitely worse in that dimension. Nonetheless, it may make modern parents queasy, which is why I'd suggest this book as a read-aloud, or that parents might at least read it themselves, first.

But I do recommend Ocean-Born Mary, highly. It's a gripping story, enjoyable to read, and I think it paints a good picture of colonial New England.

A Book of Narnians: The Lion, the Witch and the Others by C. S. Lewis, text compiled by James Riordan, illustrated by Pauline Baynes (HarperTrophy, 1994)

When I read a book, it's the words I care about. I confess that I rarely look at illustrations; even when reading picture books to our grandchildren I mostly ignore the pictures. (You can guess how I feel about the "wordless books" that were popular for children at one time.) My view is that if you can't tell a story without illustrations, you're not really telling the story. So much for "a picture is worth a thousand words," at least as far as my reading habits are concerned.

On the other hand, in A Book of Narnians the illustrations are the book, and as far as I'm concerned are the whole worth of the book. Sadly, James Riordan's descriptions of the various Narnian characters, even though taken largely from the books themselves, make me cringe. I'm not certain why, except that—unlike Lewis' words in their original context—they feel condescending, as if someone decided that because this is a picture book, it should be written on a childish level. That's an attitude no intelligent and self-respecting child would put up with.

But it doesn't really matter. The star of the show here is Pauline Baynes' paintings, full color and worth taking time to study. Included as well, to my everlasting delight, is a reproduction of the original published map of Narnia, a poster of which hung for years, alongside a similar map of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, in whatever house or dorm room I happened to inhabit.

(The map of Narnia now resides with our daughter, who takes better care of it than I, alas, ever did. I'm sorry to say I don't know what happened to the Middle Earth map, which was just as delightful.)

On Stories and Other Essays on Literature by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982; originally written between the mid-1940's and the early 1960's)

This is a surprisingly delightful, eclectic collection of essays. They are less informal than Mere Christianity, which was originally a series of radio broadcasts, but more accessible than his deeper, more philosophical works, like Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Not that these are any less intellectually honest, but the shorter lengths and the variety of subjects make On Stories a joy to read, with relatively little effort.

Table of Contents

From "On Stories"

Lewis is speaking of a film version of H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, but he captures much of my complain about the film version of The Lord of the Rings.

At the end of Haggard's book ... the heroes are awaiting death entombed in a rock chamber and surrounded by the mummified kings of that land. The maker of the film version, however, apparently thought this tame. He substituted a subterranean volcanic eruption, and then went one better by adding an earthquake. Perhaps we should not blame him. Perhaps the scene in the original was not "cinematic" and the man was right, by the canons of his own art, in altering it. But it would have been better not to have chosen in the first place a story which could be adapted to the screen only by being ruined.

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one’s adult enjoyment of what are called "children’s books." I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty—except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.

[N]othing can be more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace popular written fiction. The elements which it excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera.

It is very difficult to tell in any given case whether a story is piercing to the unliterary reader's deeper imagination or only exciting his emotions. ... The nearest we can come to a test is by asking whether he often re-reads the same story.

It is, of course, a good test of every reader of every kind of book. An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristram Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he "has read" them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? 

From "The Novels of Charles Williams"

Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

From "On Three Ways of Writing for Children"

A children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. The good ones last.

Since it is so likely that [children] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. ... I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book. Nothing will persuade me that this causes an ordinary child any kind or degree of fear beyond what it wants, and needs, to feel.

The question "What do modern children need" will not lead you to a good moral. If we ask that question we are assuming too superior an attitude. It would be better to ask "What moral do I need?" for I think we can be sure that what does not concern us deeply will not deeply interest our readers, whatever their age. But it is better not to ask the questions at all. Let the pictures tell you their own moral. For the moral inherent in them will rise from whatever spiritual roots you have succeeded in striking during the whole course of your life. But if they don't show you any moral, don't put one in. For the moral you put in is likely to be a platitude, or even a falsehood, skimmed from the surface of your consciousness. It is impertinent to offer the children that. For we have been told on high authority that in the moral sphere they are probably at least as wise as we. Anyone who can write a children's story without a moral, had better do so: that is, if he is going to write children's stories at all. The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author's mind.

The child as a reader is neither to be patronised nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man. But the worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle. We must of course try to do them no harm: we may, under the Omnipotence, sometimes dare to hope that we may do them good. But only such good as involves treating them with respect. We must not imagine that we are Providence or Destiny. I will not say that a good story for children could never be written by someone in the Ministry of Education, for all things are possible. But I should lay very long odds against it.

From "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said"

In the Author's mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. ... This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with the longing for a Form: verse or prose, short story, novel, play or what not. When these two things click you have the Author's impulse complete. It is now a thing inside him pawing to get out. He longs to see that bubbling stuff pouring into that Form as the housewife longs to see the new jam pouring into the clean jam jar. This nags him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It's like being in love.

From "On Science Fiction"

Speaking of the charge of "escapism" in some literature:

I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple questions, "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?" and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

From "A Reply to Professor Haldane"

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong, he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality.

From "Different Tastes in Literature"

In literature the characteristics of the "consumer" of bad art are [easy] to define. He (or she) may want her weekly ration of fiction very badly indeed, may be miserable if denied it. But he never re-reads. There is no clearer distinction between the literary and the unliterary. It is infallible. The literary man re-reads, other men simply read. A novel once read is to them like yesterday's newspaper. One may have some hopes of a man who has never read the Odyssey, or Malory, or Boswell, or Pickwick: but none (as regards literature) of the man who tells you he has read them, and thinks that settles the matter. It is as if a man said he had once washed, or once slept, or once kissed his wife, or once gone for a walk.

From "Unreal Estates"

A book's no good to me until I've read it two or three times.