I’m looking forward to the Harrisburg Diocesan Women’s Conference, Wrapped in God’s Merciful Love, on Saturday, October 15, 2016 at Bishop McDevitt High School in…
Leave a CommentRelevant Fiction for Body & Soul
Month: September 2016
I’ve been thinking about re-reading Amy Matayo’s The Thirteenth Chance – and that’s saying something because the book only came out yesterday! I breezed through my advance copy, but I find myself wanting to go back and savor it. It got me to thinking about other books I’ve read that involve professional athletes as main characters. I could think of quite a few books with high school and college athletes, but when I tried to think of pro athletes only, I came up with the Becky Wade books below but not much else. I scanned my Goodreads list, and it jogged my memory about two more. But that’s it.
Clearly there’s interest in professional athletes as leading men in romance novels, as evidenced by a glut of mainstream romances and erotica with half-naked athletes on the cover, but they seem to be underrepresented in Christian fiction and clean romance. Huh. Hard to believe no one has fictionalized Tim Tebow. Yet.
While I’ve watched a fair amount of science fiction in movies and on TV, I’ve read very little. Despite the fact that I like science, detailed scientific descriptions in novels tend to make my eyes gloss over.
Even so, I’ve been wanting to read some of Karina Fabian’s work, and Discovery, published by Full Quiver Publishing, provided the perfect opportunity.
I’m not sorry I gave Discovery a shot, and I’m happy to report that my eyes didn’t gloss over once!
Jump ahead for an interview with the author, my review, and an excerpt!
Sisters Ann, Tommie and Rita are part of a classified mission to explore an alien ship that has crash landed on an asteroid three billion miles from earth. Humanity’s first contact with beings from beyond the solar system is bound to unlock the mystery of life in the universe, but the crew have their own secrets; hidden fears, desires, horrible sins – and a mission to kill. Researchers discover something unique about the third arm of the ship: something wonderful, something terrifying. Something holy. This discovery challenges Rita and Ann to confront their own pasts in order to secure the safety of the mission and the very souls of the crew.
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I’m linking up with The Broke and the Bookish (which describes me quite well) for my top ten albums. The broad category is “audio,” and since I couldn’t complete a list of 10 favorite audiobooks (yet) or podcasts (which I don’t often listen to), I’m going with albums. A good song, and even more so a good album, like a good book, should transport you to a unique place in your mind with a feeling, a mood, and characters all its own.
In no particular order and probably omitting a forgotten favorite or two:
- The Rising – Bruce Springsteen (2002)
- Scarecrow – John Cougar Mellencamp (1985)
- All That You Can’t Leave Behind -U2 (2000)
- Woodface – Crowded House (1991)
- Kick – INXS (1987)
- Riser – Dierks Bentley (2014)
- Mercury Falling – Sting (1996)
- Under the Table and Dreaming – Dave Matthews Band (1994)
- Blue Moon Swamp – John Fogerty (1997)
- Mission Bell – Amos Lee (2011)
Your novels fly in the face of the mistaken notion that saint stories are dry, boring, or irrelevant to modern life. They are lively, gritty, and despite the time periods, relatable. How does your storytelling compare to the style of other stories of the saints?
As a mother of eleven, I’ve read an awful lot of books about saints over the years, believe me. I’ve invested more money than I care to admit, always hoping, of course, to find stories that would not only inspire my children to love and imitate these incredible heroes and heroines of God, but, more importantly, make them realize that the saints were true flesh-and-blood human beings who started out with the same struggles, temptations and weaknesses that plague every one of us since Adam bit that stupid apple. But the more books I crammed into our bookshelves, the more apparent it became that the majority of saint novels (often reprints from the 40’s and 50’s) are agonizingly dull. It’s awful to say, but it’s true. I’m sure everyone knows the kind of books I’m talking about – where the author wheels out a cardboard cut-out saint and plops him on the page. There he sits, in perfect holiness, from his first breath. From that point on, things only get worse. Long-winded passages, flowery archaic prose, little action, dead-boring dialogue. Basically a bunch of lifeless characters tripping across the pristine white pages of your newly purchased twenty-dollar book, while you yawn your way through the story waiting for SOMETHING exciting to happen to these people. Sound familiar?
Resumption of Camping Edition
My husband and I began tent camping together before we had children and continued with regularity for years with our young children. We toted babies and toddlers. We relished the outdoors. And then, around the time we had an infant and a toddler in addition to our two older children, it became a bit much. My husband feared an unknown woodsy calamity. I’ll admit, our last excursion, with only three of the children, was a bit challenging. My sole recollection is my toddling 10-month-old stretching out of her Bumbo seat to gather dead leaves from the forest floor to stuff into her mouth while we wrestled with tent setup. So, we took a break. Our youngest is now three, so on Labor Day weekend, we gave camping another shot. Here’s what I learned.
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All Pit Toilets Are Not Created Equal
We’ve camped in state park campgrounds with pit toilets before. Not recently and not often, but we’ve done it. My boy scout has done it fairly often. It’s not a big deal. At least it hadn’t been. The pit toilets at this particular Pennsylvania state park stunk. Sure, you say, pit toilets stink. No, I don’t mean “stink.” I mean eye-watering, gagging, covering-my-mouth-and-nose-with-my-shirt stink. Putrescence. Is that a word? I think that’s a word. Lesson learned: If you’ve smelled one pit toilet, you’ve smelled one pit toilet. (Since we like this park, I was relieved to learn they are installing flush toilets over the winter! Yay!)
A couple of weeks ago, I endured a particularly grueling trip to the grocery store with my two youngest children. It started with the purchase of King Julian yogurt tubes instead of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle yogurt tubes and escalated to a shouting match over who would press the button to close the rear door of the minivan. An attempt was made at choking. An arm was bitten hard enough to leave a bruise. There was much wailing and whining as I slammed shut the vehicle to head for home. All I could think to do was crank up the car stereo. I didn’t care what song was on, only that it would drown out the pandemonium in my car. It happened to be Dustin Lynch’s “That’s Where It’s At.”
The song’s okay. I don’t have much feeling for it one way or another. But I started to pity Dustin Lynch. Someone slaved over that song. Every chord, each lyric, was the product of someone’s creativity. There were writers, performers, producers, and others. The grand sum of countless hours of creativity and work was, for me, finding its fulfillment in suffocating the noise of my children in meltdown mode.
Leave a CommentWelcome to the September 2016 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart AND CatholicMom.com! My husband has been subjecting us to The Fellowship of…
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