BitterSweetLife

Sometimes good links accumulate too fast for me to mention them one at a time, and I'm forced to pull the link-pressure release valve and let them all gush out in a single post. Here are three good ones.

1. Some people are content to post their "top ten" albums of the year list, but when you're a die-hard fan of indie music, that's way too limiting. Enter my friend Kevin Cawley, with his "Favorite 30 Albums of 2007." Wow. Great list--although I can't help thinking The Shins' new album deserved more than honorable mention! (Maybe I'll make my own list after all. ;)

2. Next up: In Middle Earth or Narnia?, Tim Challies compares J.R.R. Tolkien's mythical world to C.S. Lewis's, evaluates their relative merits, and explains why he prefers Middle Earth. Very interesting read, although I tend to think Lewis and Tolkien compliment each other as authors, each possessing different strengths that appear in their writing. For example, Narnia's simple history lends itself to a theological clarity that's lacking in Tolkien's more layered, sophisticated "mythic history of Britain." For me, it's a both/and proposition. Oh, and I also enjoyed Tolkien's Silmarillion, which I assume Challies is alluding to when he says that, "I haven’t ever bothered to read Tolkien’s long, dense and boring histories of his world, evolutions of the language, and so on." Well, nobody is perfect, and I'm willing to extend grace. ;)

3. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Camille and co. are initiating a new movement, in defiance of the hipster scene--which is already becoming passe. This will be called the Post-er movement:

To be a Post-ster, a person should embrace post-postmodernism-- a return to actually believing in stuff. We aren't saying what the "stuff" should be. I could tell you what my stuff is, but that would be redundant, as this entire blog is devoted to my stuff.