This book released last week:

Douglas Wilson. Flags Out Front: A Contrarian’s Daydream. Moscow, ID: Canon, 2016.

Why does reading Doug Wilson sometimes feels like a guilty pleasure? Well, I read his new novel last Saturday, and it was a jolly read.

I enjoyed it more than his last one—which I enjoyed. (See my review of Evangellyfish.)

I don’t want to give away the plot. Let’s just say it’s a clever story about religion and politics.

Here are twenty lines that made me smile:

1. … [his] head bowed under the weight of the weighty thoughts he was going to have to bring in with him. They were so weighty he had to carry them around in an invisible duffel bag. (p. 9)
2. The only difference between salad and garbage is timing. (p. 9)
3. Dr. Tom could feel his mind rummaging in the basement of his conscience, looking for a way out. (p. 14)
4. Trevor had never before in his life seen ice out of doors, unless it was inside a glass of sweet tea. (p. 31)
5. They had mellowed out into a milder form of ultra-fundamentalism. (p. 34)
6. The girls were usually pretty sullen around her, although in a sweet southern way. (p. 35)
7. She had done a good job guarding her heart, even though no one had ever gotten anywhere close to it. (p. 35)
8. … a stellar theological program (if you don’t count all the unbelief and apostasy) (p. 53)
9. Whenever Dr. Rollins came into a room where Dr. Tom was, the spiritually sensitive could always pick up on a little atmospheric crackle. Dr. Rollins carried more envy around inside his rib cage than you could find at a drag show in San Francisco. And on this occasion, as Jake walked into Tom’s office, you didn’t need to be spiritually sensitive to notice it. You could set your iPhone out on the desk, and it would charge all by itself. (p. 54)
10. He kept his views entirely out of sight, except at the right conferences. (p. 55)
11. [He] figured out how to cross paths with her accidentally on purpose as they made their way to class. (p. 77)
12. A number of ponytails in the front rows bobbed because they saw that this was intended to make sense. (p. 82)
13. When introduced, Maria and Willow circled each other warily, but without the circling. (p. 105)
14. He didn’t look hard and sneaky, which is why he was so good at being both. (p. 136)
15. “Is he a believer?” Dawn asked. “Well, he is a Presbyterian. But he is the kind that believes the Bible.” (pp. 144–45)
16. He felt as though he had just eaten a couple of the five-pound plates from his weight-lifting gear in the basement. (p. 148)
17. … filled with the kind of aggrieved righteousness that you usually see in a cat that has just been hosed down by a ten-year-old boy. (p. 170)
18. He dumped out two buckets of cuss words onto the carpet, and then spent a good ten minutes kicking them around the room with his cowboy boots. (p. 181)
19. The governor did his cussing act again, each word hitting young Wendell on his right cheek and ear like a cold mackerel. (pp. 184–85)
20. If she had been a piano, she would have been a nineteenth-century upright. (p. 185)