New Books

Just finished The Return of the King. It left me feeling lonely at the end -- when you spend a great deal of time with a group of characters, often you are loath to part with them. On the subject of Tolkien, I just bought Matthew Dickerson's Following Gandalf, but I probably won't get to it for a couple of months at least. Dickerson interprets Tolkien's Middle Earth tales through the lense of free will and moral responsibility and makes what appears to be a convincing case for a Christian interpretation of the works.

Also, for bedtime reading, I've begun Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I've owned this book for years but have never read it. My interest was rekindled after a recent vacation that my wife and I spent on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina. Ocracoke is best known as the site, in November 1718, of a bloody naval battle that resulted in the death of Capt. Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard). Anyway, the story is told in A General History of the Pyrates, which was for many years attributed to Daniel Defoe. As it turns out, that's not the case; the book still makes for great reading though. Aarrgh!

Link of the Day: "Torture, War, and Presidential Powers" by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) (via the always-provocative LewRockwell.com).