Inspired by a feature on the website of author William Gibson--as well as intermitent requests from visitors to the King's Meadow site for more personal recommendations and comments--I have decided to create this somewhat daily online journal or weblog (from whence the name "blog" is derived).
My plan is to post random musings, recommended book lists, commentary on current events, recommended book lists, observations from my travels around the country, and of course recommended book lists.
I probably ought to start at the start, with the book that got me thinking about this notion in the first place: William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION (Putnam). It is far and away his finest work since the groundbreaking NEUROMANCER. I found it haunting, disturbing, fascinating, profane, creative, and stunningly insightful. Though clearly written from a non-Christian worldview, I find Gibson's perspective in this novel about modern advertising, internet communications, logo design, global product placement, and cultural tipping points, particularly valuable. This is not the sort of book I would recommend to the faint of heart--it is often promiscuously vulgar and brazenly perverse, but then so is this poor fallen world in which we live. This is the sort of book that I really think cultural leaders need to interact with--even if I cannot whole-heartedly endorse it.
