The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith

To read and enjoy one of Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street novels, one must be in a certain frame of mind. It’s not exactly the same mind set that’s required for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books by the same author. Those books are a little more linear and plot driven, although like the 44 Scotland Street novels, the plot in all of McCall Smith’s books does tend to meander a bit. The appropriate mood isn’t a Wodehousian mood either, even though McCall Smith shares some of P.G. Wodehouse’s sense of humor and appreciation for the quirks of human behavior.

McCall Smith’s books are all about the characters —and the homespun philosophical rabbit trails that the characters’ predicaments inspire in the author and in the reader. The inhabitants of 44 Scotland Street (both the novels and the setting) include:

Bertie is a precocious and endearing six year old with an overbearing mother, his own psychiatrist, a wimpy but loving father, and a desire to join the cub scouts in spite of his mother’s disapproval.

Bertie’s schoolmates, Tofu and Olive, add further confusion to his life as Tofu calls Bertie’s mom names while Olive insists on joining the cub scouts along with the boys.

Irene, Bertie’s mother, finds her fulfillment in maternal smothering of her offspring and in her own weekly visit to the psychiatrist.

Matthew, newly married to Elspeth Harmony. Their honeymoon in Australia is much more adventurous, and dangerous, than either of them could have imagined.

Angus Lordie and his dog, Cyril, both thought to be confirmed bachelors until the six puppies show up on the doorstep, soon find themselves contemplating marriage.

Bruce Anderson, “erstwhile surveyor and persistent narcissist,” undergoes a personal reformation when he realizes that moisturizer may not be enough to stave the ravages of age forever.

And Domenica MacDonald tries to catch a thief, but finds herself inadvertently becoming the very thing she abhors.

There are lots of other “characters” —in every sense of the word: Big Lou and her Jacobite boyfriend; Nick the photographer; Lard O’Connor, owner of a very special painting; Uncle Jack, president of the Cat Society of Singapore; and many more. As the reader meets each one, it is advisable to take them on their own terms, smile gently, and allow each person in the saga his or her own foibles and curious eccentricities. That’s the attitude for 44 Scotland Street: playful, amused tolerance and appreciation for the almost unbearable lightness of life.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones is the fifth book in this particular series, and although it’s not necessary at all to read the books in order or to have read the first four before reading this one, anyone who enjoys The Unbearable Lightness of Scones will want to pick up the others at some point–no hurry, when you’re in the mood.

Awards Time: Newbery and Such

Newbery Award: Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. This book was on the list of nominees for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. About a week ago I finally got it from the library, and it’s in my library basket waiting for me to get around to it. I guess today would be a good day for that.
Honors:
Turtle in Paradise, by Jennifer L. Holm. I loved this one, tried to talk the panel into shortlisting it for the Cybils. Semicolon review here.
Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus. I liked this one, too. Semicolon review here.
Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman.
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. I was the hold-out on this novel because although it told a good story, I thought it had issues. Semicolon review here.

Printz Award for YA literature: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. I have this one on order from the library. Shortlisted for the YA Cybils.
Honors:
Stolen by Lucy Christopher. I also have this novel requested at the library, and it was shortlisted for the Cybils in the YA Fiction category.
Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King.
Revolver by Marcus Segdwick.
Nothing by Janne Teller.

Alex Awards: The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. I haven’t read a single one of these ten, and the only one that’s already on my TBR list is Room. Judging just from the titles, several of them sound interesting. Can you recommend any of the ten Alex Award winners?

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson.
Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray,.
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok.
The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni.
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender.
The Radleys by Matt Haig.
The Reapers Are the Angels: A Novel by Alden Bell.
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue.
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden: A Novel by Helen Grant.

A couple of other award winners that have been reviewed here at Semicolon:
Hush by Eishes Chayill. Finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. Semicolon review here.
Tomie DePaola won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his entire body of work. The award honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children. His work has been featured here at Semicolon several times, including:
Charlie Needs a Cloak.
Francis the Poor Man of Assisi.
The Cloud Book.
The Christmas Pageant.
The Friendly Beasts.
And many more.

The Narnia Code by Michael Ward

Subtitle: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens.
Clive Staples Lewis was an awesomely talented, gifted, subtle, and boisterous genius!

Douglas Gresham on Lewis’s genius:

“He was a complete genius. He also was a very fast reader, but he had honed the talent and perfected the strange memory that resulted in never forgetting anything he had read. Now he could, he could ask you to pick any book off of his shelves, and you would pick a page and read him a line and he would quote the rest of the page; in fact, quote the rest of the book until you told him to stop. He had this enormous capacity to remember everything he’d ever read.”

In The Narnia Code by Michael Ward, Dr. Ward, who is also a minister in the Church of England, demonstrates Lewis’s genius by showing how all seven of the Narnia chronicles are linked together by a single unifying motif or plan. Ward’s thesis is that each of the seven Chronicles of Narnia takes as its central underlying imagery and atmosphere one of the seven “planets” of the medieval, classical astrological world. These “planets” are not the eight or nine that we moderns know and memorize but rather the medievals believed that the seven heavenly bodies, each with its own influences and associated imagery, were the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each of these planets is featured in a particular Narnia book in a sort of “code” of symbols and images that Lewis never spelled out for anyone but about which he left clues both in the Chronicles of Narnia themselves and in his other writings.

I found Dr. Ward’s reasoning compelling and fascinating. The Narnia Code is a popular abridgement of a longer, more scholarly dissertation on these ideas, a book called Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis. Despite the somewhat misleading title, The Narnia Code is no DaVinci Code knock-off, associating C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books with some hokey new age interpretation and bad theology. Instead, I found in The Narnia Code a new appreciation for C.S. Lewis’s genius and for his heartfelt desire to communicate the truth of the gospel in a way that would enter deep into the imaginations and souls of both children and adults. No, C.S. Lewis didn’t believe in astrology, the telling of fortunes and of the future by means of the stars. However, Lewis did believe that the ancient mythologies and symbols and worldviews contained God’s truth and had ways of speaking to us that would break through and shake up our modern paradigms.

Psalm 19
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

In Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis said of Psalm 19, it is “the greatest psalm in the psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis apparently left traces of his love for God’s handiwork in the stars and planets and of his delight in the medieval cosmology and the mythology associated with the heavenly bodies. My next reading of The Chronicles of Narnia will be richer because of the ideas and explanations that I read about in The Narnia Code. If you are a Narnia lover, I highly recommend either Planet Narnia or The Narnia Code as an introduction to the use of cosmological symbology in the Narnia books.

Saturday Review of Books: January 8, 2011

“When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.” ~Blaise Pascal

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. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (A Step from Heaven by An Na)
2. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Her Daughter’s Dream by Francine Rivers)
3. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Read Aloud Thursday–Owls)
4. Janet, Across the Page (Son of Hamas)
5. the Ink Slinger (No Country For Old Men)
6. Hope (Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott))
7. gautami tripathy (Pushing Up Daisies)
8. gautami tripathy (If Walls Could Talk)
9. gautami tripathy (Blood of My Brother)
10. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (A Drink Before the War)
11. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Naughty: 9 Tales of Cjristmas Crime)
12. Bonnie (Heaven Is a Place on Earth)
13. Bonnie (The Summer of the Danes)
14. Bonnie (The Holy Thief)
15. Collateral Bloggage (Massive)
16. Collateral Bloggage (The Gun Seller)
17. The Friendly Book Nook (A Stitch Before Dying)
18. My Friend Amy (Paradise Valley)
19. Donovan @ Where Peen Meets Paper (The Blasphemer))
20. yvonne – fiction books
21. Melody @ Fingers & Prose (Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian)
22. Melody @ Fingers & Prose (2 Graphic Novels)
23. Krakovianka (Blindness)
24. Anne (Island of the World)
25. Fleur Fisher (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers)
26. FleurFisher (The Hand that First Held Mine)
27. FleurFisher (Nimrod’s Shadow)
28. Laura @ I’m Booking It (The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond)
29. Samantha @ Bookworms and Tea Lovers (God’s Spy)
30. Samantha @ Bookworms and Tea Lovers (Luxembourg and the Jenisch Connection)
31. Beckie@ByTheBook (The Wolf of Tebron)
32. Amat Libris (The Interpretation of Murder)
33. Alice@Supratentorial (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter)
34. Alice@Supratentorial(Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter)
35. JHS @ Colloquium (Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand)
36. JHS @ Colloquium (The Opposite of Me)
37. Nicole @ Linus’s Blanket (Disgrace)
38. Nicole @ Linus’s Blanket (American Uprising)
39. Nicole @ Linus’s Blanket (The Girl Who Became A Beatle)
40. Barbara H. (Snow Day)
41. Word Lily (The Word Made Flesh)
42. Farrar @ I Capture the Rowhouse (Keeper)
43. The Introverted Reader (Mistress of the Art of Death)
44. Girl Detective (Fables v. 14: @Witches)
45. Girl Detective (Drinking at the Movies GN)
46. Girl Detective (The Alcoholic GN)
47. The Introverted (At Home)
48. Girl Detective (4 GNs)
49. Girl Detective (Flaubert’s Parrot)
50. Girl Detective (Gemma Bovery GN)
51. The Introverted Reader (The Gendarme)
52. Girl Detective (Cakewalk)
53. melydia (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
54. melydia (Twilight: The Graphic Novel, vol 1)
55. melydia (Cauldron Cooker’s Night)
56. melydia (Alien Ice Cream)
57. melydia (Moominpappa’s Memoirs)
58. melydia (Fairest)
59. melydia (The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide))
60. LaughingLioness (Radical)
61. SmallWorld (Top 10 in 2010 and Books Read)
62. Reading to Know (Living in God’s Two Kingdoms)
63. Amy Reads (A Swamp Full of Dollars)
64. Mindy Withrow (Muriel Barbery’s ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG)
65. Violet (One Thousand Gifts)
66. Cindy @OrdoAmoris
67. Cindy @OrdoAmoris (My Reading Life by Pat Conroy)
68. Lucybird’s Book Blog (West End Girls)
69. Lucybird’s Book Blog (One Day)
70. Cindy @OrdoAmoris(The Year in Review: Books Read)
71. Cindy Swanson (Daisy Chain)
72. Amber Stults (Bark Up the Right Tree)
73. Melissa @ The Betty and Boo Chronicles (Not My Boy!)
74. Melissa @ The Betty and Boo Chronicles (Claude and Camille: A Novel of Monet)
75. Shauna (Almost Heaven)
76. Carol’s Notebook – The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
77. Mystie (Story Craft)
78. Nicola (Birth of a Killer by Darren Shan)
79. Nicola (Babar and the Ghost by Laurent de Brunhoff)
80. Nicola (Gunnerkrigg Court, Vol. 2: Research)
81. Nicola (Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Leader in Troubled Times)
82. Nicola (Free Country by Jeremy Duns)
83. Nicola (The Boy Who Conquered Mt. Everest: The Jordan Romero Story)
84. Nicola (Thunder from the Sea: Adventure Upon the HMS Defender by Jeff Weigel)
85. sonja (A Year in the World)
86. Gina @ Bookscount (Bridge in the Rain)
87. Gina @ Bookscount ( the Scourge)
88. Diary of an Eccentric (The Crimson Rooms)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Poem # 35: Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge (1816)

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Last year I did a poem survey and began posting the top 100 poems from the survey in chronological order. Then life and laziness and Cybils and Christmas intervened, and I only posted the oldest 34 of the 100 projected poems. But I am determined to use Poetry Friday as an excuse to write about the other 66 poems on list. So, today I’m back with Coleridge.

Ice Cavephoto © 2010 Derek Gavey | more info (via: Wylio)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Coleridge was addicted to opium, and he said that this poem came to him in a an opium-induced dream. It’s essentially meaningless, as far as I can tell, even though I’ve read all sorts of interpretations that try to impose meaning on the words. Brown Bear Daughter likes to listen to lots of contemporary songs that remind me of this poem. When I ask her what they mean, she is silent and confounded, but she says the song in question is “catchy.” Kubla Khan is “catchy,” both in imagery and in words. I have pictures in my mind of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome and and of the caves of ice and of the damsel with the dulcimer and of Coleridge the mad Poet. And I have memorized portions of this poem without trying, just because the sound is so memorable.

PFbutton

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: The Movie

We just went to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, finally. It was a good movie. We saw it in 3-D, the first movie I’ve seen that way, and the action really does jump out at you and make you feel more involved. There was lots of good action, thrills and chills, and the dragon was well done and believable. There was a character named Eustace who was supposed to be annoying and somewhat comical at the same time, and the actor who played him was great. The actress who played Lucy also did a good job of playing a confused young teenage girl, and Edmund and Caspian were O.K. as rivals/friends, if somewhat wooden at times. My theory is that the Edmund and Caspian characters couldn’t figure out whether they were supposed to be best buddies or contenders for the same throne, so they got mixed up sometimes. The plot moved along at a good pace, and there were a few lines that elicited a chuckle from me and from my girls.

Unfortunately, almost the entire movie, including the characters’ names, the title, and parts of the plot, was plagiarized from a book by an Oxford don named C.S. Lewis. The book was published about fifty years ago, and the screenplay writers obviously borrowed freely from Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In fact, the best parts of the movie came straight from Lewis’s book, and the worst parts–evil green mist, magical vibrating swords, a totally out of place stowaway–were invented by whomever it was that wrote this brand new story ripped from the pages of C.S. Lewis’s classic novel.

Z-baby and I are in the process of reading The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis now, and although I hope it and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader are made into movies someday, I do hope that the people who made the movie we saw tonight don’t get hold of The Silver Chair. The silver chair would become a magic golden throne in a cave of green serpents with Eustace and Jill fighting duels with one another instead of arguing about the signs. Then, Aslan would appear and tell them to just believe in themselves and all would be magically resolved. Prince Rilian might get a bit part, and Puddleglum would be a complete clown.

If you haven’t seen The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, just re-name this movie in your head: call it Edmund and the Sea Serpent or something of the sort and enjoy it for what it is. Then, read or re-read all of the Narnia Chronicles and enjoy them for the wonderful, meaningful stories that they are.

Murder Your Darlings by J.J. Murphy

Well, Dorothy Parker and her coterie at the Algonquin Round Table are the kind of people who are fun to read about, but I wouldn’t want to spend much time with them in person.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Roumania. ~Dorothy Parker

In this first in a new series of famous-people-solve-mysteries, Dorothy Parker and close friend Robert Benchley find themselves at the center of a murder investigation since the corpse was found under the famous Algonquin Round Table. Other “bright young things”–Alexander Woolcott, Robert Sherwood, Frank Adams, Heywood Broun–make their appearances, strut and fret their hour upon the stage. The writers and hangers-on at the Algonquin are much more concerned with appearances and wit than with whodunnit, and the murder mystery plot serves mostly as vehicle for the famous and fabulous celebrities to display their sparkling repartee and tell their latest jokes.

I was most interested in finding out how much of the story was based on fact. It turns out that a lot of the talk is true or true to life but not much of the action really happened. Dorothy Parker and the others certainly existed and lunched together at the Algonquin. And they were known for their literary expertise and their clever conversation. And William “Billy” Faulkner, who shows up visiting New York City from down South just in time to become the prime suspect in the murder, did actually spend some time in NYC in the early 20’s, but probably didn’t meet the Algonquin set at that time. Much of the dialogue in the book is based on quotations or purported quotations from Mrs. Parker and her friends. And, the group known as the Algonquin Round Table did drink copious amounts of alcohol, despite the difficulties associated with Prohibition.

However, no murder, and some of the timeline of Dorothy Parker’s life is moved around to accommodate the necessities of fiction. As the author J.J. Murphy says, “The members of the Algonquin Round Table didn’t usually let the facts get in the way of a good story.” I doubt they’d object to Ms. Murphy’s portrayal of their fictional selves in this romp.

“Everything I’ve ever said will be credited to Dorothy Parker.”
George S. Kaufman

I must say that by the end of the book I was heartily tired of all the sophisticates and self-conscious critics in the story who were oh-so-superior and oh-so-drunk and oh-so-witty at one another’s expense that it was hard to feel much sympathy for any of them. Faulkner comes across as a droopy, alcoholic genius (which he may have been), and Mrs. Parker is a lush with a crush on her friend Benchley, who unfortunately has a wife and children in the suburbs but spends most of his time gallivanting with Dorothy and her circle. Even Dorothy Parker herself became somewhat contemptuous of her younger self and of the so-called Vicious Circle, saying:

These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days–Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them…. There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn’t have to be any truth…

So, if you’re a fan of the times or of Ms. Parker herself, Murder Your Darlings is a decent enough tribute. The plot is a little creaky and so are the jokes, but that’s the material Murphy had to work with. I enjoyed it for the most part right up until the denouement, which turned out to be rather nasty, and as I said, I was weary of empty wit by then.

Murder Your Darlings should be available in bookstores and online starting today, January 4, 2011.

Semicolon’s 12 Books to Look Forward To in 2011

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs. Oxford University Press, US, June, 2011. Mr. Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College. I’ve heard him speak on Mars Hill Audio, and he’s an expert on C.S. Lewis, among other English/theology/literary topics. I expect to enjoy this book on the joys of my favorite pastime.

The Opposite of Art by Athol Dickson. Spring or fall, 2011. “A poor woman in a shabby Los Angeles apartment receives an original oil painting by one of modern art’s great masters, easily worth half a million dollars. Although the artist has been dead for a quarter century, the painting appears to have been recently completed. When the world’s foremost authority on the artist’s work pronounces it authentic, three lives are destined to collide: the sketch artist and roustabout at a traveling Mexican circus who longs to paint the face of God, the daughter the sketch artist does not know he has, and the man who plans to kill them both.”

The Coffeehouse Chronicles by Josh McDowell and Dave Sterrett. January, 2011. This title is actually a series of novelettes (?) addressing Christian apologetics for college students. I already read the first in the series, Is the Bible True, Really?, in a very poorly formatted PDF on my new Kindle, and I still thought it was great, despite the lack of capital letters and the funky page breaks and paragraphing. The other two books in the series are: Did the Resurrection Happen, Really? and Who Is Jesus, Really? I’m looking forward to reading the entire set in a properly formatted book.

The Chasm by Randy Alcorn. February, 2011. “Along his journey, the traveler meets two other characters, a crusty old mentor and a very appealing figure who offers advice and leadership (but proves to be a deceiving shape shifter).”

Strings Attached by Judy Blundell. Scholastic, March 1, 2011. “From National Book Award winner Judy Blundell, the tale of a sixteen-year-old girl caught in a mix of love, mystery, Broadway glamour, and Mob retribution in 1950 New York.”

Ashtown by N.D. Wilson. First book in a new series, Ashtown Burials. Random House, August 2011.

Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter. Sequel to Heist Society. June 21, 2011.

Gospel Wakefulness by Jared Wilson Crossway, October 2011. We may know the gospel. We may believe it—even proclaim it. But we also may assume the gospel and become lethargic. In this book Jared Wilson seeks to answer the central question, how do we experience and present the gospel in a fresh, non-routine way in order to prevent ourselves and others from becoming numb? His answer may be surprising: “by routinely presenting the unchanging gospel in a way that does justice to its earth-shaking announcement.” We don’t excite and awaken people to the glorious truths of the gospel by spicing up our worship services or through cutting-edge, dramatic rhetoric, but by passionately and faithfully proclaiming the same truths we have already been given in Scripture.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker. July 19, 2011. Lacey Anne Byer is a perennial good girl and lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment, the Evangelical church in her small town. With her driver’s license in hand and the chance to try out for a lead role in Hell House, her church’s annual haunted house of sin, Lacey’s junior year is looking promising. But when a cute new stranger comes to town, something begins to stir inside her. Ty Davis doesn’t know the sweet, shy Lacey Anne Byer everyone else does. With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself. As her feelings for Ty make Lacey test her boundaries, events surrounding Hell House make her question her religion.

Doc by Mary Doria Russell, Random House (chronicles of the lives of Doc Holliday and his girlfriend Kate in Dodge City, Kansas, during one memorable summer), May 2011. Ms. Russell’s The Sparrow was one of the very best books I read in 2009, so I’m willing to try out anything she writes, even a novel with a western setting.

The Attenbury Emeralds By Jill Paton Walsh. Minotaur, January 2011. New Dorothy Sayers-inspired mystery, which revisits Lord Peter Wimsey’s first case; set in 1951. I’ve read at least one of Jill Paton Walsh’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, the first called Thrones, Dominations, and I thought she did a good job of following in the footsteps of a master mystery writer, Dorothy Sayers.

Paradise Valley by Dale Cramer, Bethany House, January 2011. In 1921, a new Ohio law forces the Amish to attend public schools. I’ve read several other novels by Mr. Cramer, and I think he’s quite a good writer.
.

Many Happy Returns . . . January 3rd

JRR Tolkien, b.1892.

Semicolon: Lost in Middle Earth.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Tolkien! and Happy Birthday, Professor Tolkien!

Thoughts on The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: A Literary Friendship and Rivalry by Ethan Gilsdorf. “I had vowed to take Dead Man’s Walk. To sneak into Gothic-trimmed courtyards. To wander beside the shadow of J. R. R. Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy, and listen for remnants of his voice.”

The Lord of the Rings and its prequel, The Hobbit, are probably tied with Les Miserables for my favorite books of all time. I owe a great debt to the hard work and imagination of Professor Tolkien, and today, his birthday, is as good a time as any to express my gratitude for the Lord’s gifting in him.

The Many Faces of Homeschooling in Cybils Middle Grade Fiction

The Ignorant Abusive Religious Zealot Homeschoolers: Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth by Sandra Dutton. The “Christian” mother in the story threatens to homeschool Mary Mae if Mary doesn’t forget about fossils and quit asking so many questions about the Bible. Then Mama slaps Mary Mae for being sassy. That was the last straw for me. Homeschooling is not a threat or a penalty, folks.

The Negligent Irresponsible Homeschoolers: I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson. Semicolon review here. Donatella decides that Emma isn’t fitting at school, and she needs help in the bead shop. So mom gives her an old math book and puts Emma behind the counter to mind the shop. Not my favorite image of homeschooling and not fair.

The Overprotective Smothering Homeschoolers: How To Survive Middle School by Donna Gephart.
A secondary character in the book is David’s new friend, Sophie, whose mom has serious smother mother issues. Sophie has been homeschooled before the beginning of the story, and now she’s “escaped.” Her mother just needs to find something to occupy her time other than Sophie’s life and education.

The Happy Nomad Homeschoolers: Travels With Gannon and Wyatt by Patti Wheeler and Keith Hemstreet.

“A home, most of us think, is where we have our stuff–our bed and clothes and books and games–but I don’t really agree. My home is wherever I happen to go to bed that night, be it a hotel in Hong Kong or a sailboat off the coast of Fiji.
My brother and I have been home schooled most of our lives. Lucky for us, my mother is an amazing teacher. So is my dad, for that matter.”

The Simple Life Homeschoolers: Nuts by Kacy Cook.

“I wasn’t always homeschooled. When I was in first grade, we lived in a big city and I went to a big school. But Mom and Dad wanted to ‘simplify’ our lives, so we moved to this small town, Meadowlake, Ohio. Mom began working from home and learned about homeschooling. I haven’t gone to regular school since. My brothers have never been.
There is a lot I like about being homeschooled–especially that we get to travel and I can spend more time playing the piano, reading, or poking around on the computer–but at that moment I loved being homeschooled. There wouldn’t be any way to raise a baby squirrel if I went to regular school all day.”

Of course, I prefer the impression that the last title on the list gives of homeschooling. The adventure scenario isn’t too bad either, although most of us don’t get to go to Africa on safari.

I must say that the other three are stereotypes that I really don’t see too often, if at all. I’ve never met a homeschool mom as ignorant as Mary Mae’s mother in Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth. I don’t know any homeschooled families who use their kids as free child laborers and throw them outdated textbooks as a pretense of educating them the way Emma Freke’s mother does. And if some of the homeschool parents I know are a little over-protective by my standards, so are many of the moms and dads who have their children in public and private schools. I’m sort of a free-range kids advocate myself with a lot of spiritual (Christian) training thrown into the mix.

Have you noticed homeschooling becoming more mainstream in children’s and YA fiction? If so, is it being depicted faithfully or stereotypically? I did notice that the only Christian (so-called) homeschooler in this bunch was Mary Mae’s mom, and of course she’s the one who slaps her daughter for being sassy. Whereas most of the homeschoolers I know are approaching education from a Christian perspective, no slapping involved, and only a healthy minority are non-religious.