For two years, I've been working on a book.I've mentioned it occasionally. In fact, you may recall the following photo I posted of the manuscript. I submitted this ream of paper to my publisher last year:As you can see, I was, well, a little wordy.I had to cut it way down. Susan, my editor at David C. Cook, and I tossed out entire chapters in hopes of getting it to a … [Read more...]
Long-Awaited Logophile Lists
(CC) Gaetan Lee, www.flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/In Write to Discover Yourself, Ruth Vaughn tells about a character named Julia Redfern in a children's book called A Room Made of Windows. Julia keeps a "Book of Strangenesses" in which she makes lists. Her lists include Beautiful Words (Mediterranean, quiver, undulating, lapis lazuli, Empyrean) and Most Detestable … [Read more...]
Do It Again!
As I mentioned in a recent post, I only read a few early chapters in Acedia & me, by Kathleen Norris, before I had to return it to the library. However, I found myself pondering some of her words. For example, she wrote, "The difficult thing about days is that they must be repeated" (p. 12*). Acedia, it seems, struggles with the sameness and … [Read more...]
Hospitality to Oneself
Kathleen Norris and her new book, Acedia & me, must not have a strong Web presence. I presume this because a rambling post I published after hearing Norris speak at the Festival of Faith & Writing last year seemed to gain a lot of hits for people searching "acedia" or "Kathleen Norris acedia." I can't imagine the post was all that informative. Fortunately for … [Read more...]
WFMW: Online Versions of Devotional Books
I like real books. I like holding them in my hand and turning pages. I like hauling them around in a canvas bag (A-B-A-B).So, I also like using several books as part of my daily devotional routine. My routine changes from time to time, and a conversation with a dear friend inspired the following choices (links to book versions are provided first). I've returned to an old … [Read more...]
Just Fifteen Minutes a Day: Ready…Set…Read!
Jennifer at Scraps and Snippets posted about Lifelong Learning at her blog, citing a 2006 article by Harvey Mackay packed with statistics to make an autodidact sprint to her bookcase and grab anything within reach: Only 14 percent of adults with a grade-school education read literature in 2002. 51 percent of the American population never reads a book more than 400 … [Read more...]
Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture
Some time ago I read Mary DeMuth's book Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture: Practical Help for Shaping Your Children's Hearts, Minds, and Souls.I "met" Mary online while clicking around from blog to blog as a relative newcomer to the blogosphere. I landed on hers and found myself charmed by her personal chronicle of life in southern France. She and her husband … [Read more...]
Thankful Thursday
Prairie Prologue reminded me that it's Thankful Thursday. She linked to the carnival hub at Sting My Heart.So I pause, in my thinking and learning and reading and writing and cleaning and planning, to give thanks: Laughter from upstairs. Two children putting dresses on stuffed animals. Neighborhood swimming pool. Having one's own pool sounds like a lot of fun, but sharing … [Read more...]
Corrie Ten Boom Online Treasures
Check it out! I can write a short post!I thought I'd prove it to you...in contrast to yesterday's incredibly long post about touring the ten Boom museum. Online I found some Ten Boom treasures to share with you: A youthful Pat Robertson interviews Corrie in 1974 (interspersed with a few short clips from "The Hiding Place" movie). It's so neat to see and hear … [Read more...]
The Ten Boom Museum – Betsie and Corrie ten Boom
Scroll down about halfway, if you'd prefer to eschew the long, somewhat tedious, personal introduction. [Updated: Visit the ten boom Museum website for a fantastic 360-degree, narrated tour—you'll feel like you are right there (be sure to enter the hiding place itself, in Corrie's bedroom)] The trip that we just took to Europe was all about family. As you know, the … [Read more...]
Is Google Making Us Stoopid?
The cover article for the current issue of Atlantic magazine (July/August) is entitled “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” Hm. Is it?Author Nicholas Carr writes:“As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems … [Read more...]
Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places
When I was relatively new to blogging, every once in a while I'd be scanning comments on somebody's post and spot one by L.L. Barkat. I'd read the well-formed response and think, "Wow. That person's smart!" I wasn't sure, at first, if this person was male or female. No photo confirmed gender, and the initials L.L. didn't help me know for certain. At some point I finally … [Read more...]
How Many Nonfiction Books Did You Buy Last Year? How Many Did You Read?
I grabbed a bunch of magazines from my tower of reading material to browse on the plane. One of them is a New Age-y health magazine called Body + Soul. There's some strange stuff in there, but I leafed through and got a recipe for baked beans that looks promising, and found on page 26 some interesting statistics: Last year, 85% of North American households didn't buy one … [Read more...]
Rob Bell on Boiling Down to the Essence
I still have a few notes left from the Festival.This comes from the conversation-style session with Rob Bell one afternoon near the end of the Festival. If you're interested, I found an interview of Bell online that had a few similar thoughts, but it's dated. I think based on some of his answers in that article that he's evolved as a creative artist-preacher-writer, having … [Read more...]
Books offer a Rehearsal for Life
At the Festival of Faith & Writing, children's book author (twice awarded the Newbery Medal) Katherine Paterson sat with her son David to discuss the process of transforming the story of Bridge to Terabithia from book to film. (EW interviewed David for a story about the process with some of the same information.) David was co-writer and producer for the film. He … [Read more...]