Reading...ever hated that a book ended because you have come to love the characters?

I really am addicted to reading. I can no more not read than I can not breathe. If someone wanted to punish me for a crime, all they would have to do is take away every book I have on my shelves and not allow me to read anything for a month...I would be dead, extremely well punished, and probably "mad as a hatter" after those 30 days. 

I found these photos - see below (which I know are really ads). They seemed to picture how real the characters can become to me. Some of the characters in books I have loved have felt so real to me that when the book ended, a best friend had died and I cried at a happy ending for the sheer joy and pain of having known the character. 

What am I reading now...just finished I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson. Great writing, and then hearing it on audiobooks (while I drive to and from work 5 days a week) was brilliant with the Welsh, British and American accents. It is the story of a group of girls who "adored" David Cassidy, the teen idol in 1970-1974 or so. How they contrived to go to his concert in White City, outside of London, England, where a girl in the crowd was crushed to death. How they entered a contest to meet their idol...and then 30 years later find out that they actually won the contest, and how it changes their lives....again. Brilliant story. 

On to The Tin Horse by Janice Steinburg in the car....sounds promising. Waiting for me on my bedside table is the hard copy of the latest Henning Mankell mystery, A Treacherous Paradise. Mankell is famous for his Kurt Wallander series, a Swedish detective whose angst continues brilliantly through a series of 10 mysteries (police procedure, not gore). If you are into mysteries, read the Wallander series in succession. You will not be disappointed.

 

Until next time, curl up on these rainy days with a cup of tea, a warm dog at your side, and a new friend in pages that will take you away.....

Chasing Francis...Someone send me to Italy, please.

A sort of review of Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron

Fiction wisdom literature is an interesting genre in Christian publishing, and it has been revived in recent years. This genre had mostly been used for self-help or even new age authors trying to pass on a story with underlying morals, principles, and yes....wisdom. I generally stay away from Christian fiction, because I am an English Literature major, which means I am a snob about good writing, and except for the exceptions like Madeline L'Engle or C.S.Lewis who are in a category of their own, the fiction I read is generally not published by Zondervan.

Think of when The Shack exploded onto the market a few years ago. When I read The Shack, I knew it was fiction and read it as such. People were recommending it as a must-read but they all refused to give you any details. "You have to read it for yourself," they said. I heard preachers praising it or condemning it because some thought it was being portrayed as an actual experience and that scared them, and some thought it had some new and interesting thoughts and that excited them. What I took from reading it was that God was awfully fond of me, and I like the idea of God having a good sense of humor. While I take my faith very seriously, the novel introduced me to the possibility of a sense of playfulness in my relationship with God.

Reading a blog recently that praised a new book, I went to the website of Ian Morgan Cron and saw the chance to download two chapters of his new book, Chasing Francis. Reading those two chapters made me laugh and made me cry....and I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. When it arrived, I was disappointed to discover that the book was a work of fiction...wisdom literature it was called. Don't get me wrong....I am a fiction junkie. I often read 100+ books a year, and over half of those would be fiction. But those two chapters had led me into believing this was someone's real life account of their experience, and I was hooked.

I wanted to vicariously follow this stumbling pastor who had lost his way and see what he saw on his pilgrimage in Italy. I wanted him to be a real human being that I could relate to, and not just use his story as a fictional escape from my own life.  Like The Shack, The Celestine Prophecy, and many others, Chasing Francis has a fabulous idea, and pulls you into a story that keeps you going.....until the third last chapter or so....every one of those authors seems to have a little schmaltzy lag in the story line around that part of the book, which in this case, revives again, even with a fairly predictable ending. Chasing Francis has its' lag when the hard-luck, clumsy but beautiful single woman from his congregation chases him to Italy.

The pastor has this perfect (and much coveted by me) opportunity to find himself in Italy. He conveniently has an uncle who is an Italian Franciscan monk who takes him on a pilgrimage, following the life work of St. Francis of Assisi. I learned a great deal about the saint's life that I never knew before, and it made me want to read more about this rich kid who turns his world upside down and restores the faith and the church of a community in rural Italy (Francis would be considered a bit of a celeb today, maybe even a bit of a nutcase, but loveable and very admirable in his faith). In the process of his pilgrimage, the pastor meets with the wise hermit who can give wisdom just by his presence, the jovial friar, and the clumsy woman who wins his heart. All the characters help him in his inner pilgrimage to "restore the joy of his salvation".

It is different when an actual autobiography or even memoir where the author tells a story of what actually happened, but when you are making it appear to be a memoir, and it lapses into schmaltzy, even if for a chapter or two, it is deflating for the reader because you want so badly for this to be a true actual real story. I REALLY DID!!

I did greatly enjoy the book, and would hope that Mr. Cron would not take offense at the word schmaltzy, as his writing has moments of brilliance and despite the one chapter, the reader is left with a connection (with the pastor's struggles), a sense of wonder (at the life and work of Francis of Assisi) and longing (I too would love to take the same pilgrimage). If only I had an uncle who was a Franciscan monk and would invite me to Italy.....alas, none of my uncles would ever qualify as monks.




 

Friday means I get to read all weekend....Books, love them, gotta have them, can't live without them....

I grew up reading. 

Reading is like breathing to me. I cannot live without reading. People at the library always know me no whatever where I live because I am there at least every week or so. 

My parents did not get a TV into our house until I had left home, so even though I am a Baby Boomer, I did not see many of the tv shows that my fellow boomers grew up on. Many tv shows I saw for the first time when they were re-runs after I was married. When my husband and I were newly married, I fell in love with James T. Kirk and watched all the re-running episodes of Star Trek that came on every day at 5:00 pm when I came home from work. That would have been in the mid-70's. 

So instead of TV, I read. In the long winter evenings in the frozen north, we read out loud to each other. Classics like Old Yeller and Little Women came alive as my mother read a chapter to us every night before we went to bed, and we often could hardly wait until the next evening for the next installment. My younger sister and brother are big readers too. 

On Friday afternoons I came home from school, elementary and high school to a spotless house. Friday was my mom's cleaning day and she kept a very clean house. I would grab an apple and whatever book I was reading, and sit in my little corner in the living room where the sun was shining and I would revel in the experience. Bliss.......

My parents would say that if they could not find me, they only had to look for a book and my nose would be in it. My maternal grandparents lived only a block away and I was grandpa's favorite. When I went to the library I would pick out travel books that we could read together, and we pored over many a book about Mexico (his favorite) or Africa (my favorite). I sat with him at his handmade rolltop desk top, and we would look through the pictures of exotic places and talk about how we would like to visit those places. 

Luckily I married a reader. My husband reads differently than me, but we enjoy many of the same books, especially about travel. I also love mysteries - not the blood and gore kind, but the police procedural novels that talk more about how the detectives solve the mystery than how the crime was committed. Henning Mankell is a great writer, and got me hooked on Swedish and then Scandanavian mystery writers - that was after I had read all of the Inspector Wexford novels by Ruth Rendell, and the Inspector Morse and on and on.... My big love are the books that tell another person's travel experience. So many writers excite me about the places they have been and give me a little hollow feeling inside that can only be filled by planning another adventure. 

I have about 6 books just waiting for me on my beside table. I can hardly wait.

This should be fun.....more on reading to come.