John Hesch’s LDS Internet radio station KZION intrigues me — not so much because I’m into LDS music (I’m not — in fact I don’t listen to much music of any sort), but because it is an example of something that we should see more of in Mormon arts — a cooperative effort of artists [...]

In honor of Mormon pioneer day — July 24 — a pioneer song collected by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers that appears in the 1960 edition of History of Kane County:
THE PIONEERS
Tune (Keep the Home Fires Burning)
O’er the prairies came the pleading
Of a people sore distressed,
Who sought refuge in the mountains
Of the sunny, golden [...]

By now many of you may have already heard of the death of Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and one of the Church’s great sermonists. I’d like to add my own tribute to those already posted by Times & Seasons, A Soft Answer and By Common Consent.
Elder [...]

I usually only refence other blogs when I’m posting on a subject that other bloggers have posted on — and only then when those posts include actual commentary [see for example my post on the Doubleday Book of Mormon]. But I’ve decided that if I run across a post that is outstanding and very [...]

With a story by Orson Scott Card and a soundtrack by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Majesco’s upcoming action-adventure game Advent Rising appears to be the most Mormon video game ever — or at least until I complete my Doom mod “Porter Rockwell: Avenging Angel” [That's a joke. I've played, like, five minutes of a trial [...]

UPDATE: No word on the documentary, but I did contact Southern California LDS Public Affairs and have confirmed that Bro. Kane did work as a volunteer at the Los Angeles Family History Center. I realize that news outlets have already reported that, but considering how often they get Mormon-related stories wrong, I decided to do [...]

Now that Sunstone has put its earlier issues online, I thought I’d check for a review of Douglas Thayer’s Under the Cottonwoods and other Mormon stories. Sure enough, a review by Roy R. Bird appears in the Summer 1977 issue. Sunstone doesn’t provide direct links to articles so you’ll have to scroll down to read [...]

The short stories in Douglas Thayer’s collection Under the Cottonwoods and other Mormon stories are definitely Mormon — very Mormon, very male, very Provo. All (ten) of them feature male characters — many of them age 18-22– who live or grew up in Provo in the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. I suppose one could fault [...]

UPDATE 7.12.04: The Christian Science Monitor also makes the Krakauer connection (thanks to LDS Today for the link).
UPDATE: Read Deseret Book’s account of the Doubleday deal. Here’s a quote from DB head Sheri Dew: “Sheri is quick to add her feelings, ‘The Lord does not need Doubleday, nor does the Church. But I believe there [...]

Read: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
Too lazy to dig into the literary criticism on the genre, but curious about what the surface-level academic view of magic realism is, I decided to turn to The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism. The listing for “Magic Realism” referred [...]

As part of its continued Oprahfication, Deseret Book has started a book club. I have long thought that considering how small the market is, LDS publishers and booksellers should team up to provide enticements to book clubs — discounts, reading questions, extended author’s bio, sneak peaks at upcoming titles, background material (drawn from the research [...]