After reading George MacDonald’s "Phantastes" it is clear to me why CS Lewis chose MacDonald to be his Virgil in "The Great Divorce."  "Phantastes" is truly one of the most remarkable works I have ever read.  Overflowing with rich imagery and lyrical finely measured prose (along with some superb longer ...

Bibliophiles take note, Aaron, of cangooglehearme.com fame, has released a beta version of his product and it looks very promising.  He calls it Book Lamp.  Click on over to their site and watch the video description of how Book Lamp works.  I was very impressed and I think you will ...

I am obsessed with Ex Libris (Bookplates). These images are from a site devoted to scanning images of old books. Superb. Do you have any bookplate images on file? If you created your own Ex Libris what would it look like?

L'Engle herself from Walking on Water, Reflections on Art and Faith, pg 27-28: Of course, because I am a struggling Christian, it's inevitable that I superimpose my awareness of all that happened in the life of Jesus upon what I'm reading, upon Buber, upon Plato, upon the book of Daniel. ...

I just found out that Madeleine L'Engle passed away yesterday at the age of 88. L'Engle is an author I have always been particularly fond of and her writing has challenged me to stretch my mind as well as my imagination. She was a brilliant thinker and writer ...

This sort of thing is getting boring; is it even possible to take fundamentalist Muslim Leaders seriously?  Esteemed author, Salman Rushdie, was just awarded a well-deserved knighthood.  Now, unfortunately, Sir Rushdie will be watching his back again with a renewed vigor.  Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister of Pakistan, told the ...

I just finished reading the latest Tolkien book, Children of Hurin. I hadn’t planned on finishing it this quickly, but my untimely bout with the flu resulted in some extended downtime cozying up with the tome. Children sure didn’t brighten my spirits; the story is wild and viciously dark. Yet, ...

Christopher Tolkien, the third son of JRR Tolkien, has been working for thirty years on an unfinished manuscript left by his father. J.R.R Tolkien began "The Children of Hurin" in 1918 but never finished it. His third son, Christopher, has spent nearly 30 years piecing together drafts to turn them ...

I’ve been craving some George MacDonald lately. I’ve scoured all the best used bookstores in town over the last week and have come up essentially dry. I did find an old illustrated hardback copy of At the Back of the North Wind, but it was illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, ...

How is a man destroyed?  Is it through a grievous defect of character?  Is it through a series of uncontrollable circumstances that place him in an impossible situation?  Is it through a man’s own cultivated perversion?  Are these destroyed men dealt a bad hand from Fate herself?  Or are they ...