25 Words or Less

I'm working on condensing my current work in progress to 25 words or less (The editor in me wants to say "25 words or fewer" but who says that?) so that if anyone ever asks me what I'm writing, I can tell him without putting him to sleep.

This isn't the final draft, but it's what I've got so far:

A young woman returns to her hometown to evict her obsessive mother before a fire consumes her home.

You can do this with any book. We're in the middle of Life of Pi right now. My summary in 22 words would go like this:

A shipwrecked boy is trapped in a struggle for survival with the elements, and with the Bengal tiger who shares his lifeboat.

Think about the books you've read recently, or the books you love.

How would you summarize the plot in 25 words or less?

Something From Nothing

After a major fiasco of a garage sale when we moved back to the states several years ago, I refused to ever hold a garage sale again. We had puzzle pieces and straight pins all over the lawn, people dickering over the 25-cent price tag on a lead crystal vase, and women pulling on items of clothing they wanted like they would in a Black Friday sale on a B movie.

No more garage sales.

The problem is, what do I do with all the stuff I'm taking out of my house. Most of it goes to the church garage sale where it will be converted into cash to purchase supplies to build houses in Mexico. I'll even go work at this sale--that doesn't bother me. It's having MY stuff aired in front of the world that I can't stand.

I took 3 boxes of books out today, crossed a couple of bridges and found the Powells warehouse. Picture a warehouse full of bookshelves, books on every shelf, with a busy little army of Northwesterners pushing cartloads of books up and down the aisles to be shelved. One of 6 warehouses that feeds the Powells physical and online stores, it was a bibliophile's delight.

Only the books in the warehouse are not for sale... at least not at that location. If you want to handle to books, you have to visit one of their stores.

I walked into the warehouse with 3 boxes of books and walked out with 1 box and a Powells card loaded with $98.

Mission accomplished. Anyone want to go to Powells?

Purging

I've finally come to grips with the fact that we are in this house to stay. So, instead of dreaming of how to increase our floor space, I'm decreasing our belongings...

Starting with books.

15 apple boxes full of books have made their way off the shelves so far... 5 for storage, 4 for the church garage sale, 3 for used book stores, and 3 boxes of homeschool books to sell to younger families.

I know I'll miss some of these books. I'll hunt for them and won't be able to find them. But then, I've been doing that already. It seems when there's a book I really need to lay my hands on, it's gone into permanent hiding. At least now I can blame my purge instead of my memory loss.

How Did I Miss This?

I've been to Lyon a few times and have seen many of the wonderful places the city has to offer from the Cathedral of Saint Jean-Baptiste to the old city to the Roman ruins, it's a fantastic place to explore and discover. Besides that, it's the gateway city to the Savoie region, one of the most beautiful places God made.

But how did I miss this - the Bal des Argents bookstore in Lyon? You've seen a cathedral, you've seen 'em all. But a bookstore? Everyone holds a different trove of treasures waiting to be discovered.

Doesn't it look like the magical kind of place where you could get lost for ages and not even mind?

*photo taken from flickr.com and featured on The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World.

The Power of Story

I finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns last night and was amazed at how Khaled Hosseini was able to do what 8 years of TV news coverage on the war in Afghanistan has failed to do--make me see the people of that country as real people. I find it ironic that a cast of fictional characters lends more humanity to the place than the faces of real people, but I suppose that's the power of story.

To find love and acceptance, to provide for their children, to survive whatever hardships come along... these are the needs of women around the world. I've been working on my own story about a woman in Africa who faces different struggles, but they are really the same. When I finished reading this book, I felt like pressing the delete button on my own story. I want to tell an important story in a way that begs to be read, to expose glimpses of hope that survive the worst persecutions. Some day, perhaps I can capture the human condition as beautifully as Hosseini does, but I doubt it. All I can do is tell the story I have in the best way I can. I don't know if it will move anyone to tears, but I pray it will put a face on the people of West Africa, people who are real to me but are just video clips on the news to so many others.

A Little News

Usually, when I get a call from a stranger, it's someone from the police guild, my alma mater, or another non-profit. This morning, though, I got a different sort of phone call.

"Patty?"

"Yes?"

"I'm calling to tell you your novel has been selected as a finalist in our unpublished novelists' contest."

"Oh, that's great," I said. But inside I was shouting, "Yippee! Whoot! Whoot!"

I have 2 days to take the judges' suggestions and return a polished draft of my work. Winning would be great, but even placing in this contest gives me a foot in the door when talking with agents and editors this summer.

At the Feet of Giants

Sometimes giants come in small packages, like Jeanne, who at 4 foot something is one of the few people I can look down on. Jeanne has lived a long, productive life. She spent her first six years in Africa, back when a trip to Africa meant a weeks-long voyage on an ocean liner. She first came into our lives as a great supporter of our mission. She was the lady who, tirelessly, helped send out newsletters and who wrote thank you notes on our behalf. She was at the hospital when our first children were born and declared herself their grandmother. Just this week, she completed her memoires. She's not selling them, but I'm looking forward to being one of the few recipients of this very special book.

Hidden Treasure

I picked up a book from my nightstand this morning, one of those that's been shuffled to the bottom of the stack over and over for the past 3 months. One I wasn't too excited to read.

And you know what? I think it's going to be good. I love finding a hidden treasure buried amongst the books I already know and love. It's like finding money in your pocket when you pull out your winter coat in November.

Shh! I'm reading!

Read Aloud

One of the coolest things about my kids is that they love to be read to. Out loud. Every day. Even the teenagers.

Of course, their tastes have changed and they beg their dad to read fantasy fiction to them at night while they draw pictures of dragons. But mornings are my time to read aloud and I get to choose the books.

We recently started reading THE TREES by Conrad Richter. This classic first book in THE AWAKENING LAND trilogy was first published in 1940, but reads like a much older story. It's one of those books that, if you were assigned to read it in English class, you would have complained and skimmed through it for answers, not because it's not a terrific book, but because you were assigned to read it in English class.

Don't tell my kids that it's classic American literature. Don't tell them they're learning from it. Because they love it. They're engaged in the story. They're learning the vocabulary. They care about Sayward and Sulie and Genny. Just like earlier this year they grew to love Scout and Jem and Atticus Finch.

What do you think we should read next?

BBC's Big Read!

In 2003, the BBC asked British citizens to name a favorite novel. Here are the top 100 (updated a couple of times since 2003)

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. I've read slightly more than that (54), but I bet not as many as my dad.

Instructions:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) *Star the ones you loved.
3) Italicise those you plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. *The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. * Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. *To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. *The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. *Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (major plays, sonnets, but not everything!)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. *The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. *The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. * The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. *Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. *Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. *Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. *The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. *The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39. *Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. *A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. *Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. *Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. *Charlotte’s Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. *The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
98. *Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
99. *Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Oh, dear. I seem to have lost #100. Please fill in with the book you think should be on this list.

Cozy Corner

There are certain places where you can't help but feel at home. Nana and Papa's house is one of those places. Everyone who enters feels the warmth of home, a home where people love each other and love their hobbies.

Papa's library is one of my favorite rooms in the house. I say "one of my favorites" because each room has its own function and charm. But to sit in yellow light in a high-backed chair, a warm fire at my feet and the company of books around, does my spirit good.

Whatever you could wish for is here... a loom and some knitting needles for the crafter, a chess board for the strategist, Southwestern art, spinning wheels, and a comfortable window seat or two.

And most nights, by the fire, Papa and his book.

Midwife

There's nothing like bringing a baby into the world. Nothing. The birth of my three children is at the top of my list for wonder and joy. I've also been privileged to be in the delivery room for the birth of a friend's child. And I've been on hand for countless kittens. There's something incredible about new life breathing for the first time.

In a similar way, seeing a new book born makes me proud. Inspiration is, in a sense, the Spirit breathing through the author. I haven't yet seen one of my own books born, but I've had the chance to play midwife for a couple of them. Jessie, my mom's book, may be getting a new incarnation with a new distributor soon. 

I got to hold this little gem last night for the first time. Bon Voyage is the first in a series of devotional books for Christian travelers. This one's for cruise ship passengers. I've seen it in a bunch of incarnations for a couple of years, but there's nothing like holding a book you've waited for in your hands for the first time. 

Congratulations, Laurie!

Drumroll, Please...

And the winners from the book drawings are...

Dum-da-dum!

Blindsided goes to Zack, who entered by phone.

Every Secret Thing goes to Linda. (can you send me your address?)

Greg is our only double winner with Vessel of Honor and A Promise for Ellie.

The Bible or the Axe goes to Sandi (I drew it randomly, I promise!)

Shelli won The Parting.

And the Max and Me Mysteries go to Jackie.

Ta da!

I'll try to get these in the mail on Tuesday. Congrats to all the winners and, to those who didn't win this time, keep coming back. Maybe I'll try this again some time!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.

Day 4 - Into Africa and Out Again

Vessel of Honor by Melvin J. Cobb is a fictionalized account of what happened to the Ethiopian chamberlain of Acts 8 after his return to his homeland. He feels the need to rectify old relationships, right past wrongs, and turn his back on the ruthless ways of his past. How will his changes affect those who depend on him?


I love the idea of this book and I'm excited about the line it comes from, the Institute for Black and Family Development. This imprint, in association with Moody Publishers, is reaching out to the African-American Community with stories and books that shed light on their culture and their history.


Another book by the same imprint is The Bible or the Axe. This is the true story of William Ochan Levi, a Christian who grew up as a refugee in Uganda. When he returned to his homeland of Sudan, he faced persectution, arrest and torture. This is the story of his escape from his jihadist captors and his war-torn country. It raises the question of how we should fight, with the worldly weapons or the word of God.

Leave a comment if you want a chance at these books.

Day 3 - Prairie Duet

I got hooked on Christian fiction reading the prairie romances of Janette Oke and the sweet, simple stories of Grace Livingston Hill. Though the genre has grown to include thrillers and contemporary stories, literary fiction and mysteries, the backbone of the market belong to historical fiction.

Lauraine Snelling, with her Red River of the North Series, has put the town of Blessing on the map.

Literally.

Her North Dakota stories are so popular and have brought so many people to the area looking for the town of Blessing, that the town of Drayton's city council proclaimed it's town the official site of the settlement of Blessing.

A Promise for Ellie is the first book in the Daughters of Blessing series, the continuing story of the next generation in the Red River Valley.

Beverly Lewis has made a name for herself writing novels about the Pennsylvania Amish. Her books, based on real life events, tell the stories of simpler times. But not as simple as we like to think. The Parting is the first book in the Courtship of Nellie Fisher series. It tells the story of one young woman in a community at its breaking point.

Do you wish you had these books in your library? Leave a comment, they could be yours!

Day 2 - Every Secret Thing

Every Secret Thing by Ann Tatlock is the story of a teacher who returns to her own high school to teach. The place and the people stir up memories and bring up old questions. She opens her heart to new people and, in helping them work through their problems, finds she must deal with her own.

Every Secret Thing tells its story in a more layered, a more pattered way, than I've come to expect from Christian fiction. I found it to be a good read.

If you'd like a copy of this book, leave a comment and I'll pick a name at random at the end of the week.

5 Day Give-Away

One blessing of doing book reviews is that I have new books show up in my mailbox from time to time. Some I ask for, others I don't. And while most of them get read, very few fit my criteria for review.

So, for this week, I'm going to pass a bit of the blessing on to you. Each day I'll post a different book, with a little blurb about it. If you'd be interested in a free copy of the book, leave a comment and I'll choose at random who gets each one. I've read some of these books, but not others.

Today's pick is Blindsided by Calvin Miller, published by BH Publishing Group in September 2007.

"The only one who saw it coming was the one who could not see."

Calvin Miller, best known for his book The Singer, presents a modern thriller. In this tale, a blind priest and pet wolf hold the key to breaking up a Muslim terrorist group in Seattle.

Interested?

Books, Books, Books

Now for the books I'm planning to read...


Honestly, I had a list, but I found it rather confining. I like to just pick up a book and see where it leads me. No plans. No expectations.

Just the freedom of being pulled from world to world in the endless wonder of story.

Back to the Books

And now... back to my regularly scheduled life. I honestly feel that way. Dog search and rescue ate my whole week and I've not been so relieved in a very long time. But, I started following Dad's trend to list all the books I've read recently, all I'm currently reading, and what I'm planning to read.

So, here's installment 2 - books I'm currently reading.

Demon: A Memoir by Tosca Lee. A demon and an editor collaborate on their magnum opus.

Healing Stones: A Sullivan Crisp Novel by Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn. A story about healing and forgiveness in the aftermath of an affair.

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborn. On how little acts of love can change the world.

Covenant by Kay Arthur. A Bible study I'm supposed to be doing with a friend, but I've fallen way behind. (Don't give up on me!)

Proofreading and Copyediting for Dummies.

Postcards from France, French in Action, C'est Comme Ca, and a bunch of other books I'm using as we work on our French"semi-immersion, kinda" month.

Blood Brothers by Rick Acker. Fraud, corruption and bribery bring brothers to blows.

What are you reading? Anything good?

Books I've Read

Dad just invited people to list their recent readings. I, like him, have an ever-shifting stack of reading material in various rooms of the house. Here's my list of books I've read in the past month.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - a terrific book on eating locally.

The Mystery of History III by Linda Hobar - I picked this history book to represent any number of books we use for homeschooling. We're actually using this one online until it rolls off the presses in May.

The Shack by William P. Young - I've got a review of this book coming out in Wineskins some time this week.

And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street by Dr. Suess - Again, a representation of the hundred or so children's books I've read with my youngest. Only now I' more of a reading consultant as she figures out most of the words on her own.

Let's Play Games in French by Bernard Crawshaw - just a resource to help make my French class a little more interesting.

Chihuahuas for Dummies -A Psych 101 book on our little house guests

Galatians, Psalms, and Isaiah - 3 different books for 3 different studies.

Buffalo Valley and a few others by Debbie Macomber - In preparation for the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference.

Embrace Me by Lisa Sampson - a literary novel about a circus sideshow freak, a self-mutilating preacher and both of their paths to forgiveness. A real gem. I'll probably review this one next.

Talking Drums by Patty Slack - It may not count as a real book yet, but I've read over my novel manuscript several times this month. And I'm now 5 pages in on my next book, No Other Gods.