Canon press is offering their books in full on Google Books. When I discovered this, I intended to read just a few pages of Leithart’s Against Christianity. A third of the way into the book, I realized I hadn’t stopped after a few pages.

HT to Mike Frizzell

Birthday gift cards to Borders make me very happy. I picked up two books I’ve really been wanting today: Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God, and Alister McGrath’s Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. I can’t wait to get to them, but they’re several books down the list (which means, yes, Chris, you can borrow them if you’d like…)

St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. Last year, I had a pretty good drinking night. This year, the budget’s a bit tighter, so it’ll be a bottled Killian’s Irish Red at home. Something would feel not quite right about having a big drinking night during Holy Week anyway, I think.

And speaking of Holy Week, I’ll be posting a few Michael Card performances as a way of observing Holy Week. There are few Christian musicians I can tolerate these days, but Michael Card is tremendous, especially when it comes to songs that are thematically linked to the major events of the Christian calendar.

Finally, stay tuned at The Hog’s Head (and check out the new blog if you haven’t yet!). I’ll be doing a Book Giveaway there – Andrew Peterson’s On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, which I’ll be reviewing here and at that blog.

Anne Rice converts to Christianity, writes a few books about Jesus, and then returns to vampires. Which is exactly what she should do, really. The problem is the statement she made right after returning to her faith:

I would never go back, not even if they say, ‘You will be financially ruined; you’ve got to write another vampire book.’ I would say no. I have no choice. I would be a fool for all eternity to turn my back on God like that.

Of course, she shouldn’t have made the first statement; there’s nothing inherently contradictory about being a Christian and writing scary vampire stories. She plans to write them differently now, she says. That makes sense, too; she doesn’t want to write vampire stories in a way that “turns her back on God.”

I’m going to need to get Anne Rice on my reading list at some point in the future.

For more on the need for scary elements in stories, even by Christians, see my forthcoming book (Fall/Winter ‘08).

On overload right now. I’m planning two massive posts in the near future: “Post Pauldom Depression,” and something on Christian Theology and Libertarianism. I have all these thoughts during the day, but by the time I’m sitting down late at night to have a beer and write, it’s all jumbled. Maybe I should put the beer down.

I’m buried in books at the moment. I’ve already read these in the first two months of this year:

• Madeleine L’Engle: A Wind in the Door
• Scot McKnight: A Community Called Atonement
• Madeleine L’Engle: A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• Richard L. Purtill: J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion
• Sara B. Kajder: The Tech-Savvy English Classroom
• Rowing: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

And I’m working on this pile right now:

• Madeleine L’Engle: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
• McGrath and McGrath: The Dawkins Delusion?
• Joseph Pearce: Tolkien: Man and Myth
• Richard Beach: Teachingmedialiteracy.com
• J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion

On deck are Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia and Capon’s The Fingerprints of God.

Back to Pearce until I crash.