Carolyn Astfalk is a wife, mother, and author of contemporary Catholic romances, including her latest, All in Good Time. She formerly worked as a communications director and now works just to keep her head above water. Find her books on Amazon and her other words scattered around the blogosphere and social media.
I’m linking up with The Broke and the Bookish (which describes me quite well) for my top ten books in which the setting acts as a character. I worked backwards from my Goodreads list of books read, selecting those whose setting immediately came to mind due to its role in the story. Here they are in no particular order.
I enjoy reading books by contemporary authors, but now and then I like to pick up a classic. There are so, so many I haven’t read. These are three I had been meaning to read for a while. Interestingly, at the crux of each of these vastly different novels is the sin of adultery. And in each case, its ramifications are played out.
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The depth and grandeur of O Pioneers! didn’t catch up with me until the end. I’d read My Antonia in college and Death Comes for the Archbishop a decade ago, and loved both. O Pioneers! only confirmed my appreciation for Cather’s writing.
I was struck again by the beauty of her prose and imagery.
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As summer vacation winds to hot, muggy close, I’ve lost the ability to create a cohesive theme. This is stuff we’ve been doing, things pulling me in different directions as we try to savor summer.
Our township has been doing these drive-in movies at the park for several summers. Until last week, the timing and the chosen movie never worked for us. Friday night, I took my kids and one of their friends to see The Peanuts Movie (truly a great little movie) at our park. Our arrival was somewhat delayed by our inability to find where my husband hid our camp chairs, but arrive we did. The whole atmosphere was fun. The park at night, the families, the free Twizzlers handed out. Just as the movie was about to begin, the entire screen deflated. It was a full hour and several attempts at re-inflating and restarting the movie until we began. By 9:30 p.m., most of the little kids present were probably ordinarily asleep, but here we were just getting started. All in my party agreed we’d do it again IF it started on time.
Thoughts of A Grace Warrior The Higher Way – In Hindsight, It Was a God-Incident (August 8, 2016) “In hindsight, I realized how blessed we were…
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Do you consider the Word of God as useful in your own daily life? Does it seems strange that an ordinary book on your shelf could be so important to every day decision-making, behavior-choosing, life-happenings?
If I were asked this in 2005, I would have answered with a resounding, “no way, it is just an old book with old guys’ opinions in it.” That was of course before I actually read it;
2 CommentsWelcome to the August 2016 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart AND CatholicMom.com! I was oblivious to the existence of Anne of…
6 CommentsI’m happy to announce that my debut novel Stay With Me was selected as a “Romance” Finalist in the 2016 IAN Book of the Year…
6 CommentsThe beginning of another school year approached, and I was scared. Even with the slowed-down summer schedule, I was not making any headway with my next book. There was virtually no time in which to really write, and when I did get a moment to steal, nothing I wrote worked, because I hadn’t had any time to let the story form in my head so it could flow onto the page. Where on earth was I going to get the time to have a chance at success?
I went to my writing network’s Facebook page and asked for advice.
“Wake up one hour earlier than your kids do.”
Silly me, already waking up two hours before they did.
“Make family creative time a habitual part of your day! Everyone is working on something.”
When the youngest family member’s idea of “creative” is either decorating her walls with nail polish or asking busy people incessant questions?
“Just do whatever works!”
I didn’t type the words, but I wanted to reply, “BUT NOTHING WORKS!”
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