Back: Word Shop Newsletter June 2008
I bounced around the country most of June--Texas, Seattle, Oakhurst--all the while accompanied by persistent ear trouble that kept me in a wooly echo chamber dominated by the sound of my own voice. Yurg! Delighted to be back home, I lay in bed all morning--left ear down--and stared at my bookcase. Lots of good books there. I could happily spend the rest of the summer rereading them.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. - Samuel Johnson
Prowling airport bookstores I discovered that Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River has a new novel out. Peace Like a River was a lovely tale of a father, daughter and son in search of an older brother who had run afoul of the law. It is told from the younger son's point of view and we passed it around with much acclaim. I was excited to read the next novel called So Brave, Young and Handsome.It's about a best selling author who is having trouble writing his second novel. Yup. Having trouble is what he had. Has. Is still having. Sigh. Maybe novel #3 will be better.
Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
Meanwhile back at the Ranch, the home team was hard at work. New pictures now grace the walls. Susan and Barry have been working on Kateri's sign with much advice from various hangers-on. Krista organized the food cubbies while Anne tried to make sense out of our several History sections. Justin commandeered the Classics: First he got rid of the books that were old, but not classics. Then he jettisoned the biographies and letters of literary folk I had put there. I argued that The Diary of Anne Frank is a classic. I suppose my theory is that if English teachers assign it in high school it must be a classic. I admit that some of the more contemporary folk like Hemingway, Galsworthy, Hamilton, Simenon, Remarque, Richter, Knowles, Grass, Williams, Waugh, Stone, Penn Warren, Porter, Mitchell, O’Hara, Vidal, Styron, Drury, Lee aren't exactly classics yet, but where else can I put these literary folk? I'm sure they are happy to be cozying up next to Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, Thackeray, Swift, Hardy, Dickens, Cervantes, Bronte, Lamb, Alcott, London, James, Lawrence, Stern. Yes, I know Socrates isn't exactly classic literature, but we don't have a Greek philosopher section....
What we need is a geek philosophy section.
Fact of the matter is that books around here keep leaping across boundaries, or sending runners like strawberry plants and starting a whole new sections. For example, we have a Christian Biography shelf that is quite long and full of all sorts of saints. We have another Biography shelf that's mostly current celebrities. I suppose we could call it the Sinners section. Then we have a mid-list Biography shelf that has notable people from past eras--but you don't want to confuse that with the history shelves--and who can blame Anne for moving Hermon Wok's War and Remembrances or Carl Sandberg's books on Lincoln into the classics?
We are all faced with magnificent opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.- Charles R. Swindell
Most of us tend to read in certain sections. I am usually in fiction, prayer, healing, leadership. I like mysteries more than romances, but not what I call "guysey mysteries," which we just got two more boxes of. I rarely read history, although I like autobiographies and memoirs. I never read from our Millennial Panic shelf, but have read much of our general Christian non-fiction section. It would be really cool if people who read widely in a certain ilk would take-over that shelf at the store. Are you interested? You could come in once a month or so and price, shelve, organize and even dust. Then we could sneak books into each other's sections in the dark of night: "Hey! Who put this exercise book in my Prayer section????"
I do not understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us. - Anne Lamott
Now that I've found myself back home, I'm remembering that we were going to have a Six-week Summer Symposium on Ministry. It begins on Tuesday July 22 at 4:00. Tea time. I just read Henri Nouwen's Creative Ministry, which is right on topic. You can read it next if you like. I'll get us rolling on the 22nd. On July 29, we'll have Mariposa who leads Women of Vision, and Carol who does speech therapy share some of their joys & difficulties in ministry. I'm really excited about this opportunity to schmooze around leadership and ministry issues. I hope you will come and join us.
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing. - Dale Carnegie
Carolyn made cool magnetic cloth bookmarks and offered to sell them for 50ç each at Family Camp--proceeds to The Word Shop. I announced that they were worth much more than that and we would offer them for a donation of any amount. Shawn interrupted me to ask if these were different from the bookmarks which he made that we always give away for free. Once we got everyone thoroughly confused, I said the sponsors from camp had covered the price of the books I brought, so people could just take what they wanted from the book table. High finance at The Word Shop is downright ethereal. Thanks be to God for our sponsors--past, present and future.
One artist to a block is more than enough. Elizabeth Bishop
Ann Patchett author of Bel Canto has a new novel out entitled Run. Marilynne Robinson's new novel, Home, is due out in soon. I sent Miracle in Darien off to one of the Faith Alive bunch I met in Texas, and thought it would be interesting to read that again. One of the OSL folk, Anne Prescott, sent me a copy of her book, Imagining Fame; an introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer's The House of Fame. I still haven't finished bill bryson's the mother tongue; english and how it got that way (no caps on the book cover either). Susan gave me the story of a priest with cancer,My Life and My Death by Jeffrey T. Simmons. Obviously I need to take the summer off to catch-up on my reading.
Recent studies show that authors who spend time writing have more chance of being published than those who spend the same amount of time just thinking about writing.
Now that's worth thinking about.
Blessings,
Alliee +
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