Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

Feb18

Life is just one d— thing after another. ~Elbert Hubbard

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. ~John Lennon

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? ~Robert Penn Warren

Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians. ~Franklin P. Jones

Connie Willis writes some of the best books about time travel and history and epistemology and philosophy that I have ever had the privilege of reading. I first read her novel The Doomsday Book, about time-traveling historians from the future, in 2009. In that book Kivrin, a history student at Oxford in 2048, travels through “the net” back in time to the fourteenth century. After I finished The Doomsday Book, I immediately went out and found a copy of Ms. Willis’s next time travel history book, To Say Nothing of the Dog. It’s a delightful romp in which the fate of the universe may or may not be at stake. However, the course of history and the universe is “self-correcting,” shades of LOST, so the universe is never really in danger of imploding or careening off-track. Probably. I loved it even more than The Doomsday Book.

Now, in 2010, Ms. Willis has published two more future-historians-travel-through-time books: Blackout and All Clear. In these some of the same characters reappear, and the universe or the space-time continuum IS in danger of going off the rails. The focal point of all the temporal disturbance and crisis is World War II, and of course, several of our intrepid historians are criss-crossing Britain through time and space, trying to avoid the temptation to interfere in history and do something that, however well-meaning, might actually change the course of the war and end up making Hitler and the Nazis the victors. It’s not easy to observe history without changing it, however, as Polly and Mike and Eileen find out. It’s also not easy to survive the Blitz in London, even if you know about when and where the bombs are going to drop. Nor is Dunkirk a safe vantage point from which to observe heroism, even though there’s a lot of it going on.

I have several things to say about these two novels. First of all, they’re not really two novels; it’s one novel in two volumes, just as The Lord of the Rings is one book in three parts. So be sure to have the second book, All Clear, on hand before you start the first one. And read them in order even though there’s lots of time travel involved so that events in the novel(s) don’t exactly appear in chronological order.

Second, read these books. If you liked LOST because of the mind-bending time travel and suspenseful and philosophical elements, you should like what Connie Willis has done with these two books. If you’re a WW II buff, you will find these books fascinating. If you just enjoy a good science fiction or historical fiction story, read Blackout and All Clear. And read all the way to the end. It’s worth the confusion that accompanies the 1000+ pages of the two books. (Time travel makes my head hurt—in a good way.)

William Holman Hunt: The Light of the Worldphoto © 2007 freeparking | more info (via: Wylio)
Finally, I think these are what I would call Christian worldview novels. It’s not blatant or didactic or obvious, but if Ms. Willis is not a Christian, she has certainly co-opted Christian values and symbols and made the books breathe a Christian ethos in a way that is both attractive and entertaining. The central images and metaphors of the novels are Christian: The Light of the World, a painting by Holman Hunt, St. Paul’s Cathedral standing above bombed-out London, The Tempest by Shakespeare, a door that opens to another world. The themes are all about redemption and sacrifice and the power of obedience to what is good and noble even when you don’t know what the outcome will be. And this conversation, between a time traveler from the future and an elderly Shakespearean actor caught in the darkest days of WW II, toward the end of the second volume, clinches it for me:

“Was that your third question?” she managed to ask.
“No, Polly,” he said. “Something of more import.” And she knew it must be. . . .
“What is it?” she asked. . . .
He stepped forward and grasped the staircase’s railing, looked up at her earnestly. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?”
He doesn’t mean the war, she thought. He’s talking about all of it–our lives and history and Shakespeare. And the continuum.
She smiled down at him. “A comedy, my lord.”

Surely, Christians are the ones who believe that life and history are ultimately a comedy that ends in the Great Marriage Feast.

I loved these books.

Guide to the Oxford Time Travel books at The Connie Willis.net Blog.

Content consideration: These novels are adult novels, not for children, and the characters sometimes use bad language. The character Mike, in particular, does take the Lord’s name in vain on numerous occasions.

Reading Through Egypt: Books and Links

Feb15

Egypt is certainly in the news these days, perhaps inspiring some, like me, to read about this volatile and strategic nation with such a rich heritage and history.

Fiction books about modern-day Egypt for adults:
Woman At Point Zero is a classic novella by Egyptian doctor and feminist writer, Nawal El Saadawi. Recommended at BrownGIrl Speaks.
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa as Aswany. Reviewed by Kimbofo at Reading Matters.
The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. First book, Palace Walk, is reviewed at Amy Reads and also at Farm Lane Books.
In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif. Reviewed at Amy Reads.
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. Reviewed at Of Books and Bicycles.

Nonfiction books for adults:
Beneath the Sands of Egypt: Adventures of an Unconventional Archaeologist by Donald P. Ryan. Reviewed by S. Krishna.
Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror by Nonie Darwish. Reviewed at Amy Reads.
A Border Passage: From Cairo to America by Leila Ahmed.
More Egyptian Nonfiction from The New Yorker.

Books about Egypt for children:
The Day of Ahmed’s Secret by Florence Parry.
Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris by Nancy Milton. Reviewed by Magistramater.
Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by Tomie de Paola
What’s the Matter Habibi? by Betsy Lewin.
Look What Came from Egypt by Harvey Miles. Franklin Watts, 1998.
We’re Sailing Down the Nile by Laurie Krebs.
More books for children about Egypt, a list compiled by Bernadette Simpson.

Stories on the web:
Mama Maggie: the “Mother Teresa of Cairo.”
So far, Alexandria’s library is safe and pursuing its mission.

Boy Meets Girl

Feb14

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, my ruminations on the state of love, romance, and marriage in contemporary Young Adult fiction:

Boy meets girl.
Boy loses girl
Boy finds girl again.
Marriage, happily ever after.

But now it seems that the recipe for romantic comedy (in the sense of happy ending) in Young Adult novels is more like:

Boy meets girl.
Boy loses girl, or at least complications ensue.
Boy finds girl again.
Mandatory premarital sex in the penultimate chapter.
Ambiguity and lack of commitment.

I’ve read two young adult novels this past week that followed the latter formula, and although I could see it coming, it was a disappointment both times. I liked the characters in both novels. I wanted more for them than a quick coupling in a motel room or an act of incredible vulnerability and tenderness that ended in a nebulous commitment to “see where this relationship takes us.”

The problem with this ubiquitous plot outline is not that premarital sex is mentioned or portrayed or described. Of course, young people engage in premarital sex, and it’s naturally going to be a part of young adult fiction sometimes. However, the problem that I see is that young people are being trained —in books, movies, magazines and on the web– to expect that their relationships with the opposite sex will lead to one night stands and uncommitted sex. No one connects sex to marriage, either before or after the act; no one seems to want commitment or marriage. Hardly anyone expresses the idea that sex means anything. It’s a just a fun, expected thing to do together on or after a date, like walking on the beach or going to a movie. On the third date or after a certain amount of time, you are expected to have sex if you really care about someone. But don’t think that this physical act means that the relationship has entered a new level of commitment, or heaven forbid, that you and your sexual partner, whom you of course love very much, will get married, spend your lives together, and create a family.

Let me emphasize that sex is NOT what the following books are about. That’s part of the problem. Sex is an afterthought or a step in the logical progression of a relationship that may or may not last. And nobody in any of these books tells the young characters that sex is meant for marriage, that two people who are committed to each other for a lifetime can express themselves in sexual relationship in ways that go way beyond the physical and touch the spiritual. Or even that it will hurt like you-know-what to have a sexual relationship with someone and then break it off and move on. Or, on a very practical level, that STD’s are rampant, and casual sex is an excellent way to contract an STD that may become a more constant companion than the guy or girl you slept with last night.

Here are just a few of the otherwise good recent YA novels that seem to me to reinforce this idea that sex is just another bump in the road, something to be experienced whether the relationship is going to last for five months or for a lifetime:
Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly. An autistic teen learns that sex can feel incredibly good and bring her close to the young man she loves, but neither the girl nor her paramour mentions marriage.
Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson. Semicolon review here.
Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson. Semicolon review here.
Willow by Julia Hoban. Semicolon review here.
Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler. Semicolon review here. Sex as a game, recreation for the bored and the vacationing.
How to Say Good-bye in Robot by Natalie Standiford.
After the Moment by Garrett Freyman-Weyr.

There’s just no sense whatsoever in these books of the sacredness of a sexual relationship. Our bodies are connected to our souls. We are persons made in God’s image, and what we do with our bodies affects our entire being. Sexual coupling was intended for a committed long-term marriage relationship, and without the commitment, it’s a harmful and ultimately unfulfilling act for both the man and the woman involved. When are we going to tell teens and each other the truth about sex?

Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Feb14

Amazing story. If it weren’t so heavily footnoted and corroborated, I would find it difficult to believe such a miraculous survival story. Louis Zamperini, the subject of this riveting biography, was an Olympic runner. He won a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and he planned to compete in the 1940 Olympics. Louie, as he was called, was getting close to breaking the four minute mile, but World War II derailed Louis’s Olympic and world record hopes. However, the rest of the story which chronicles Louie’s experiences during and after World War II is even more astounding and transcendent than any world record in a sporting event. I don’t think I’ve ever read about anyone who survived the multiple ordeals that Zamperini was able to live through and then also managed, by the grace of God, to live a full and joyful life afterwards.

One of my urchins says she doesn’t believe in miracles. I think she’s saying she’s never heard a Voice from on high or seen a person instantly healed or witnessed the sudden appearance of manna from heaven. However, if what happened in the life of Louis Zamperini wasn’t a series of miracles, I don’t know what to call it. First of all, Louis and the pilot of his B-24 bomber survive a crash in the Pacific and forty plus days on a raft without supplies in the ocean. And it only get worse when the two Americans land on the Marshall Islands and are “rescued” by the Japanese army.

But the greatest miracle of all comes after the war is over for everyone else, when Louie is still trapped in the prison of his own mind.

No one could reach Louie, because he had never really come home. In prison camp, he’d been beaten into dehumanized obedience to a world order in which the Bird (a cruel Japanese prison guard) was absolute sovereign, and it was under this world order that he still lived. The Bird had taken his dignity and left him feeling humiliated, ashamed, and powerless, and Louie believed that only the Bird could restore him, by suffering and dying in the grip of his hands. A once singularly hopeful man now believed that his only hope lay in murder.
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird’s death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.

This book actually brought me to tears, something that seldom happens to me while reading. I was reminded that as Corrie Ten Boom often said, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

I was also reminded of my conviction that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary evils. The Japanese were not planning to ever surrender to the Allies. In the book, Hillenbrand tells how the POWs in Japan saw women and children being trained to defend the homeland to the last person. And the Japanese had a “kill-all policy” which ordered prison camp commanders to kill all the prisoners of war if it ever became evident that they might be rescued and repatriated. This policy was carried out in several Japanese prison camps, and “virtually every POW believed that the destruction of this city (Hiroshima) had saved them from execution.”

Man’s inhumanity to man continues on into this century, but if we are to avoid and prevent future horrors, we must remember the past. And we must be presented with stories that affirm the possibility of redemption, even from the darkest of atrocities.

Epitaph Road by David Patneaude

Feb14

Dystopian novels usually start with a dystopian premise: something has happened to change the world we know into a horrible place to live.

What if government become so big and so repressive that it controlled everyone and everything?
1984 by George Orwell.

What if everyone in the world suddenly lost their fertility and stopped having babies? What would the world be like after twenty or thirty years of no new pregnancies?
Children of Men by P.D. James.

What if our world were destroyed and reconfigured by climate change and the greed of oil hungry corporations and industries? How would a future world cope with a severe scarcity of oil?
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Semicolon review here.

What if the world seemed perfect, no hunger, no violence, no inequality? But what if the underlying mechanism that sustained the culture and kept it pure and perfect was horribly unjust and hateful?
The Giver by Lois Lowry.

What if a repressive government used cyber-tools to monitor and control all dissent and to quash freedom?
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Semicolon review here.

In Epitaph Road the premise is: what if most of the men in the world were killed by a virus that only affected males, and as a consequence women ruled the world?

As it turns out, the result of getting rid of all of the men looks pretty good at first. Poverty, crime, war, and hunger have all disappeared. I happen to think Mr. Patneaude is mistaken in his predictions of what a female governed an female dominated world would look like, but it’s an interesting proposition anyway.

Kellen Dent is one of the few, the disrespected, the males. He and all of his fellow men are restricted by law to only a few possible professions and required to have “minders” with them whenever they travel. So when Kellen finds out that the virus that killed all the men in the first place is coming back and may infect his father, it’s not easy for him to find a way to warn his dad. Then, as Kellen finds out more and more about the governing authorities and what’s really going on beneath the surface of his seemingly peaceful world, he must make life-and-death decisions not only for himself but also for the people he loves and for whom he is responsible.

The best part of this novel was the way it turned everything upside down as far as gender roles and prejudice are concerned and yet at the same time it reinforced the preconceptions that we have about the real differences between men and women. In the book, the men are responsible for all the violence and crime in the world. With men a distinct minority, women are free to walk out alone in the cities without fear, to be intelligent without caring about male competition, to go anywhere, do anything. Men, on the other hand, are restricted, discriminated against, sometimes even treated as potential criminals and second-class citizens. One of the most coveted jobs for a man is sperm donor. I really liked the way the book made me think about why we need both men and women to make a vibrant God-honoring culture and about what roles men and women play in the growth of good government and cultural achievement.

The issue that I had with the novel was that it seemed to move too fast. The characters came to decisions and acted in ways for which I, as a reader, felt unprepared. I often read reviews in which the reviewer complains that the pace of the novel was “too slow” or “uneven.” I actually felt that the pace of Epitaph Road was way too rapid. I needed more time and information to get to know the characters in the novel and to understand why they acted the way they did. Kellen was generally understandable, probably because I knew him the best. The rest of the cast–Kellen’s parents, his aunt, his two female friends/accomplices–seemed to act too quickly without adequate motivation or at least without reasons that I had enough knowledge to understand.

Still, as long as I skipped over the questions about motivation and preparation, I enjoyed reading the book. I would be interested in a sequel–if it answered my “trust questions” such as why did Tia and Sunday suddenly trust Kellen enough to risk their lives for him? And why did Gunny, another character, protect some kids he didn’t know? And why did Dr. Nuyen share secrets with Kellen when she was essentially working for his enemies?

Good solid dystopian fiction for the die-hard fan.

Saturday Review of Books: February 12, 2011

Feb11

“You can cover a great deal of country in books.”~Andrew Lang

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week of a book you were reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. The Lemme Library (One Crazy Summer)
2. Collateral Bloggage (The Last Sorcerers)
3. Collateral Bloggage (Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods)
4. Janet, Across the Page (Safely Home)
5. Florinda @ The 3 R’s Blog (The Warmth of Other Suns)
6. Florinda @ The 3 R’s Blog (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
7. the Ink Slinger (The Voyage of the Armada)
8. Reading to Know (The Hunger Games)
9. Reading to Know (The Littles Take a Trip)
10. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Betti on the High Wire)
11. Reading to Know (What are You Waiting For?)
12. Reading to Know (The Duggars: 20 & Counting)
13. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Read Aloud Thursday–Valentine’s Day picture books)
14. Donovan @ Where Peen Meets Paper (The Art of the Commonplace)
15. Beth@Weavings (Heart of Lies)
16. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (A Study in Scarlet)
17. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (State of the Onion)
18. Barbara H. (50 People Every Christian Should Know)
19. Barbara H. (Looking for Anne of Green Gables)
20. Page Turner / Heather (Emily Climbs)
21. Bonnie (In Siberia)
22. Carol in Oregon (Hilaire Belloc Sampler)
23. Laughing (The Book Thief)
24. GoldenGrasses (UnPlanned)
25. Iris on Books (The Taste of Sorrow – Jude Morgan)
26. Melody @ Fingers & Prose (Nine Horses–poetry)
27. Melody @ Fingers & Prose (True Grit)
28. Lazygal (The Returning)
29. blacklin (Man’s Search For Meaning)		 30. Lazygal (The Death Catchers)
31. Lazygal (Imaginary Girls)
32. Lazygal (The Preacher)
33. Heather @ Books For Breakfast (Tim To The Rescue
34. Sarah Reads Too Much (Lolita by Nabokov)
35. Nicola (Unbroken: A World War II Story by Laura Hillenbrand)
36. Nicola (Grasshopper on the Road by Arnold Lobel)
37. SmallWorld Reads (On Agate Hill–Lee Smith)
38. Nicola (Batman: Mad Hatter’s Movie Madness)
39. Nicola (Children of the Sea, Vol. 4)
40. Nicola (The Whicharts by Noel Streatfeild)
41. Nicola (The Dynamic World of Chemical Reactions)
42. Nicola (The Whirlwind World of Hurricanes)
43. Nicola (Falcons Gold: Canada’s First Olympic Hockey Heroes)
44. 1morechapter (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
45. Beckie@ByTheBook (Doesn’t She Look Natural?)
46. Beckie@ByTheBook (Head in The Clouds)
47. Beckie@ByTheBook (Mrs. Elton in America)
48. Mental multivitamin (Reading life review: January)
49. Judy @ Seize the Book Blog (If God is Good)
50. S. Krishna (The Best American Travel Writing 2010)
51. 1morechapter (Moon over Manifest)
52. S. Krishna (Choker)
53. S. Krishna (The Pioneer Woman)
54. S. Krishna (Love in Complete Sentences)
55. S. Krishna (A Discovery of Witches)
56. 1morechapter (Ship Breaker)
57. S. Krishna (Look Again)
58. S. Krishna (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother)		 59. Word Lily (The Chasm)
60. Megan (Open House)
61. Girl Detective (Room)
62. Girl Detective (Gilead)
63. Beth S. (Does My Head Look Big in This?)
64. Melinda (Kingdom’s Dawn…and giveaway)
65. The Worm Hole (Matched)
66. Civil Thoughts (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother)
67. kort @ one deep drawer (On the Banks of Plum Creek)
68. Amber Stults (Spellbent)
69. Kathryn @ Suitable for Mixed Company (The Godly Man’s Picture)
70. Mystie (Knowing God)
71. Alice@Supratentorial(My Reading Life)
72. The Book Thief (My Devotional Thoughts)
73. Scandal Becomes Her (My Devotional Thoughts)
74. Carina @ Reading Through Life (Room)
75. Carina @ Reading Through Life (Annabel)
76. Carina @ Reading Through Life (Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain)
77. Carina @ Reading Through Life (If I Stay)
78. Carina @ Reading Through Life (The Spark)
79. Diary of an Eccentric (Defending the Enemy)
80. Diary of an Eccentric (Meet Molly)
81. Diary of an Eccentric (Speak)
82. Kevin Stilley (Antigone – discussion questions)
83. Kevin Stilley (Oedipus the King – discussion questions)
84. Gina @ Bookscount (The Polished Hoe)
85. Dana(Cartoons Flannery O’Connor)
86. Yvann (Life After Yes)

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Poetry Friday: I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood, 1837

Feb11

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses red and white,
The violets and the lily cups–
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,–
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
The summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

Sad poem with a kind of Thomas Hardy/A.E. Houseman feel to it. According to Wikipedia, Hood was a humorist and a poet. He liked puns and wordplay. He certainly wasn’t feeling very humorous when he wrote I Remember, but it does have an almost pleasant sort of melancholy feel to it.

Hood was friends with Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray who said of Hood: “Oh sad, marvelous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! … Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted.”
Nice epitaph.

Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Feb10

I think I ordered this YA novel from the library because it was on the list of nominees for the Cybils, Young Adult Fiction category, and I had some grandiose idea of reading several of the books that were nominated in that category after finishing the Middle Grade Fiction list. The title of this particular novel begins with “A”, and it’s about a road trip. With a premise like that, how could it miss?

(I love road trip stories. It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Road to Rio with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Rain Man with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. The TV series Route 66. The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. However, I’ve never actually read the classic American road trip book, On the Road by Kerouac, because I’m not much for trippin’ while trippin’.)

Talk about detours. Back to Amy and Roger. I loved this book right up until Maryland. Amy is a California girl, traveling across the USA in her mom’s red Jeep Liberty, with good looking college guy Roger, designated driver for said Jeep. The two are headed for Connecticut where Amy will deliver the car to mom, and Roger will take a train to spend the summer with his dad in Philly. Of course, the two are destined to fall madly in love and live happily ever after. But there are glitches. Roger has a girlfriend, or maybe an ex-girlfriend. Amy’s just recovering, or maybe not recovering, from some mysterious traumatic event which seems to have something to do with her father’s death a couple of months before the story begins. Amy’s not too perky. Roger’s still hung up on Hadley, the beautiful, rich ex. Roger drinks root beer, and Amy drinks cream soda (until she discovers sweet tea in Kentucky). Roger listens to Dashboard Confessional, Owl City, The Lucksmiths, and many, many others I’ve never heard of. Amy listens to, believe it or not, show tunes.

Roger and May’s Epic Detour Road Trip of Discovery was fun. They discover America’s loneliest highway in Utah. Amy takes pictures of trees. They eat in lots of diners. Roger’s friend, Cheeks, shows them the best of Wichita, Kansas. They picnic on a golf course. They spend the night in a honeymoon suite, the last vacancy in town. They spend another night in the Jeep Liberty in the Walmart parking lot. Unfortunately, when the twosome get to Maryland, they’ve worked through all their psychological problems and previous entanglements , and the only thing left to do is . . . of course, go to bed together. No, the Act is not described explicitly or salaciously. Yes, the very fact of the road trip having to end this way made the book change from a book I wanted to give my sixteen year old daughter with my recommendation into a book that I wished I could have given to my sixteen year old daughter without reservations or hesitation.

I have an entire post composed in draft form about the permutations that have occurred in the old “boy meets girl” plot line. My basic premise is that instead of boy and girl overcoming obstacles and eventually getting married and living happily ever after (or not, as in Romeo and Juliet), now they overcome obstacles and fall into bed together without benefit of clergy or marriage certificate. This change in young adult (and adult) fiction is not an improvement on the old formula, and although it may or may not reflect the culture at large, it’s a sad state of affairs. I aspired to commitment and marriage, and I certainly hope my children do the same.

Obama Prayer by Charles M. Garriott

Feb10

Obama Prayer: Prayers for the 44th President by Charles M. Garriott.

Confession time: I requested this book from the author when I received an email pitch, but then when I got it, I didn’t really want to read it. President Obama is not my favorite politician/leader, and if I read the book I’d probably be convicted about actually spending valuable time praying for the man and his presidency. Did I want to do that? And then, what if I did pray for Mr. Obama, but God didn’t do anything that I recognized as an answer to my prayers? Or, like in the story of Jonah, what if God did bring Mr. Obama and the rest of his administration to repentance and change? Would I believe it? Or would I rather see God’s wrath outpoured on those with whom I disagree both morally and politically?

Ouch. So first I prayed for my own rather faithless and vengeful heart to be changed, and then I read the book.

Each chapter of this brief but powerful book of less than 100 pages attempts to answer in various ways the question, “How then do we pray for Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America?” I was led to pray for Mr Obama’s words and decisions, for his family and the example he sets for the families of our nation, for wisdom for him and for his advisors, for him to pursue and maintain truth, for protection for him personally and for our nation, for him to display both justice and mercy in his actions and in the laws he executes. Each chapter ends with a prepared prayer that the reader can use to place before the Lord in behalf of President Obama, to intercede for him and for his government of our nation.

We are commanded as Christians to pray for our leaders. I prayed often for President George W. Bush and his administration. For President Obama, not so much. I don’t understand prayer very well, and I fail to pray for all the reasons I already confessed to, and also because sometimes I’m just lazy. However, not praying when we are told plainly to do so in the Bible is wrong, and I am determined to obey God whether I totally understand why He asks what He asks or not. So I recommend this little book to you if you are a Christian citizen of the United States who wants to to do what God commands in regard to our government and our president. I’m going to keep this book next to my Bible for the next year or two to remind me that God is in control and to help me to remember to pray for Barack Obama.

“We must keep this in mind when praying for a president. The call to pray for President Barack Obama and his administration is first of all a call to dependency on God. It is a call to respond to the work of grace within our lives. It is a reminder that in the political realm neither we nor the president are ultimately in charge.”

“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” I Timothy 2:1-5

Obama Prayer by Charles Garriott will be available from Amazon and other booksellers on February 15, 2011. You can start praying anytime.

Reading Through Africa: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Feb9

Still reading through south central Africa, today we’re in the country of Malawi. Malawi is another country that borders Zambia, where a group from my church will be traveling this summer to work at Kazembe Orphanage. (If you are interested in participating in this mission trip by donating books to the Kazembe Orphanage, see this post at Semicolon for details.)

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been billed as a story of scientific and technological innovation, but it couldjust as well be advertised as a survival story. Much of the first half of the book tells how William and his family survived a horrendous famine in 2002 brought on partly by natural disaster (drought), but also exacerbated by government ineptitude and apathy. William is unable to attend school past the primary level, since his family can only afford one communal meal per day during the famine. School fees are out of the question.

By the time the famine is over, with William’s family still too poor to send him to school, William borrows a book from the local lending library. The book, Using Energy, tells about windmills, and William sets out to build a windmill for his family to generate electricity using old bicycles, scrap metal, and tractor parts. He calls his invention, “electric wind.”

The story of how William manages to study on his own and then scrounge and save to beg, borrow, and buy the things he needs for his windmill is inspiring but also somewhat sad. Why do I have so much when others have so little? It’s amazing that William Kamkwamba was able to overcome opposition, prejudice, and a lack of education to build something that improved the life of his family. I wonder what I would have been able to make of my life without all of the advantages that I have enjoyed as a citizen of one of the richest nations in the world.

I would suggest you read the book if you’re interested at all in this sort of story; however, you can also read more about Mr. Kamkwamba and his windmill at the following websites:

William Kamkwamba: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Bryan Mealer’s website
Moving Windmills