I Read a Christian Romance.

Alright, I’ll level with you.  I have read romance novels before.  I’ve even read some racy ones in my younger years.  Did I like them?  Yes.  A romance novel grabs at your heartstrings until you see yourself as the heroine, desperately loving the hero.  You’re so invested in seeing the two live happily ever after, that you can’t put the book down.  It’s ludicrous, because the romance probably should have never come about in the first place, they’re sinning all along the way, and you know they will end up together at the end.  But, it reels you in.

I gave up on romance novels as quickly as I started reading them.  I concluded that they were a waste of time, they were completely not God-honoring, and they stirred in me desires that an unmarried teenager shouldn’t be messing with.  And I also concluded that they were very poor “literature.”

—

I have also read Christian fiction before.  I will not name what or who, but it was ridiculous.  As un-literary as romance novels were, my experience with Christian fiction just took the cake.  Everything was so contrived!  In an effort to make sure the reader knew that the theme of the book was Jesus, every other line talked about Jesus and the Spirit in a completely unnatural way.  They couldn’t even properly develop the plot because this manufactured religion got in the way.  It was ridiculous.

So, I swore off Christian fiction.

—

This past weekend, a friend lent me a copy of Francine Rivers’ novel, Redeeming Love.  I had heard the author’s name before, and I laughed off any claims at real literary talent due to her association with Christian fiction.  My friend was enthusiastic, however, so I accepted the book.

I knew before I opened to the first page what the point was.  A woman would fall in love, but she would realize that the only true, redeeming love was that of her Savior.  Expecting pages of awkward preaching forced into contrived conversations between ridiculous characters, I sat down to get the whole thing over with.

I was surprised.  I was floored.  I was devastated.  I was blessed.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Christian woman, read this book.  You’ll fall to pieces, and you’ll fall in love with Jesus all over again.

And I Almost Didn’t Read It…

When I heard about the new book chosen for my book club, I did what anyone with an internet connection would do; I Googled.  I had never heard of it, so I typed in, “loving frank nancy horan.”  I must say, I was not terribly impressed with the subject matter.

I doubted whether I should spend the $14.00 as I swiped my card at Barnes and Noble.  (No time to order cheaper.)  I read the first thirty pages, and I was disgusted.

You see, Loving Frank is a novel built around a real-life situation that simply pisses me off.  Long story short, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright left his wife and children for a client’s wife, who also left her husband and children.  The beginning of the book is all about their unfolding love story, complete with sickeningly-sweet nothings and secret, illicit meetings (although, they were not graphic).  Call me naive, call me inexperienced, call me whatever you like, but I have zero tolerance for marital infidelity.  Of course, the involvement of children made it that much worse.  The fact that it was based on a true story made it nearly unbearable.

I wrote on my Facebook page that I would give it another 30 pages before trashing it… and then, I couldn’t put it down.  I can’t really explain it, but I slowly realized that the author was not trying to make me like the mistress or pity her situation.  The author wasn’t taking sides; she was simply telling the story of a horribly mistaken woman and a tragically flawed man.  And it was as compelling as it was infuriating.

My final conclusion is that it was an incredibly well-written novel.  If that’s what you’re looking for, and if you can make it past the beginning, I doubt you’ll regret it.  For all my fighting, I sure don’t.

*If you think you might like to read the book, please don’t look on Wikipedia or elsewhere for the biography of any of the characters.  It’ll ruin the ending of the novel.  Just check after you read the book to confirm, “Oh my goodness!  It’s true!” like I did.

Tortured for Christ

If you know me, or if you’ve been hanging around my blog for any length of time, or if you simply glance to the left and to the right sidebars, you will see that I have a passion for the persecuted Church.  It’s a recently developed passion — the Lord has opened up this world to me only within the last couple of years.  But, I can’t shake it.

The book pictured is one that I read in one day.  It is not a stylistically difficult book to read, but it is difficult for other reasons.  It’s not even very well-written; the author even admits that.  But, as the author states,

This book is written not so much with ink, as with the blood of bleeding hearts. (p. 63)

The author, Richard Wurmbrand, was the founder of Voice of the Martyrs.  A fitting founder indeed, he himself underwent countless tortures for his faith in Communist Russia.  This is a retelling of some of his experiences.  He is not terribly graphic, as it pained him to relive those experiences.  But, it is terribly powerful.

Into his testimony, he interweaves hard-hitting words:

A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for. (p. 62)

I tremble because of the sufferings of those persecuted in different lands.  I tremble thinking about the eternal destiny of their torturers.  I tremble for Western Christians who don’t help their persecuted brethren. (p. 88)

When I was beaten on the bottom of the feet, my tongue cried.  Why did my tongue cry?  It was not beaten.  It cried because the tongue and feet are both part of the same body.  And you free Christians are part of the same Body of Christ that is now beaten in prisons in restricted nations, that even now gives martyrs for Christ.  Can you not feel our pain? (p. 150)

The Underground Church represents the deepest need of enslaved people in captive nations.  Help her!  (p. 113)

To the Christian I say, read this book.  You have no excuse; you can get it for free right here.

Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated,
since you yourselves also are in the body.  ~Hebrews 13:3

Bibliophile

Hello, my name is Angela and I am a bibliophile.  It all started when I was a toddler, and, refusing to release a precious book from my hands whilst descending a few stairs, I fell and cut my face open.  The scar I bear today is completely worth it.

Here’s the deal.  Have you checked my “Currently Reading” tab?  It’s out of control.  What’s more out of control is that I just added that top one today!  I’m turning into a regular Katdish with all of these books going at the same time.  I have never done this before!

Granted, one of my books is the Bible.  That will always be there, as I try to read every day.  I purposefully select specific reading plans so that if I don’t read one day, I must catch up the next day (or the day after that).  I try to keep myself accountable this way.  So, that’s non-negotiable and will remain.

Besides the Bible, the book I have been reading for the longest period of time is Heaven.  I say “have been reading” very loosely, as I have not picked this book up since June or July.  That is not because it is bad!  Actually, it’s quite awesome, and I enjoyed it immensely as I was reading it.  But, I got into this book club thing at my school and…

Don Quixote. The Knight of the Rueful Figure has certainly wreaked havoc on my reading life.  That book is never-ending!  I started reading it in JUNE and I’m still not finished!  Sure, part of it is because I haven’t been reading consistently every day.  Could that be because Miguel Cervantes could have plausibly written the book in about 400 fewer pages?  Perhaps.  It’s too much.  It’s good, and it’s hilarious, but I can only take so much.  I’m debating doing what only the uncultured do: replacing it on the bookshelf unfinished.  I know!  It’s blasphemy!  I know.  I haven’t done it.  Yet.

Then there’s Every Young Woman’s Battle.  This is no big because it’s totally an easy read.  It’s not easy content, but the style is easy.  It’s made for busy teenagers and young women, so it has to be.  I enjoy it, and I’m reading it for a girls’ Bible study that I’m participating in.  No complaints.

That brings us to the most recent addition: Loving Frank.  Chosen for our book club, this is a historical novel built around what appears to be an illicit love affair between a married Frank Lloyd Wright and the wife of one of his clients.  I’m not incredibly thrilled about the topic, as I am assuming that every attempt will be made to engender some level of sympathy from me.  Although I have not even begun the book, I am fairly confident that I will in no way sympathize with either participant in this affair.  But, I’m hoping it will be an interesting look at a past culture.

Pray for me that I will actually finish one or two other books as well!  But I have to have the Frank one finished by the end of the month for our meeting!  :/

The Unimaginable

So, I’m reading a new book.  If you pay any attention at all to my reading habits, (and, seriously, who among you doesn’t?), you will recall that I spent an agonizing amount of time reading Pilgrim’s Progress.  I am FINALLY done with it and I have moved on! 

(Author’s note: I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book, which was really a book in itself.  The second half was not nearly as exciting and most of the two months it took me to get through the book was spent on the second half.  Christiana’s journey was just boring because she was weak.  Christian, in the first half, was brave and awesome.) 

Anyway, now I am reading Heaven by Randy Alcorn.  I have been wanting to read it ever since Justin and I started visiting our new church.  As luck (or Providence) would have it, we walked in at the beginning of a new study on Heaven that was based on this presumably awesome book.  I asked my sweet, shopaholic mother-in-law to please be on the lookout for it and she got it for me!  (Yay!)

I am only on page 41 and I am already challenged, convicted, and captivated.  Alcorn reminds me that the eternal state of my being is not something to ignore or to write off as “unimaginable.”  He challenges the modern evangelical tendency to gloss over Heaven as indescribable and Hell as uncomfortable or awkward.  He looks clear, biblical teaching in the face and wonders why I’m not doing the same thing. 

Citing Colossians 3:1, he states:

This is a direct command to set our hearts on Heaven…

What have you been doing daily to set your mind on things above, to seek Heaven?  What should you do differently?¹

What?  Could this be yet another way that sin is holding fast in my life, and I didn’t even know it?  I never thought of it that way.  The fact that I don’t actively pursue heavenly thoughts or daydream with anticipation about Heaven is a problem.  It’s kind of weird to think of it that way, but Alcorn has a serious point with his Scripture. 

I can’t wait to see what else the Bible has to say on this, as I’ve never actively searched out and studied this topic for any length of time.  I’m glad Randy Alcorn took the time and laid it out so conveniently for me!  I’ll keep you updated as God reveals more cool stuff.

¹Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2004) 20, 21.

Taking a Journey

I recently told you that I started reading Pilgrim’s Progress.  I even made a little joke about it being a classic.  You see, I often choose books that I feel I “should” read and then I force myself to trudge through them.  I must say that my experience with this book is quite the opposite thus far.

It has been said that Pilgrim’s Progress is almost the most published book ever, second only to the Bible.  I don’t know if that’s true or not.  But, I do know that I am incredibly surprised to find out that it is not only interesting, but it’s actually captivating!  I can’t put it down.   

[I admit it; it probably helps a lot that I'm reading the book in modern English.  Some would say that's cheating.  It probably is.  I actually would not have purchased this particular version for myself because I always think I should read the book the way the author intended it to be read.  However, that logic only goes so far.  John Bunyan intended for a vast array of readers to easily understand the narrative in the 17th century.  If he hadn't, he would have written it in Latin instead of in the English in use at the time.  AND I have no problem reading the BIBLE in modern English instead of the original KJV (which, by the way, reads almost nothing like the "KJV" Bibles that are sold today).  So, done and done.  I've decided it's okay.]

Overall, I’m struck by the depth layered beneath simplicity.  It really is a very simple story and it’s quite easy to follow.  But, the weightiness of the truths related can make your head hurt.  You could easily spend an hour on each page thinking and meditating.  This book is so utterly saturated with Biblical allusions it’s unbelievable.  But, the thing is, they don’t get in the way of the narrative at all!  It’s so beautifully written.  I love it already!

I’m not done with this book, obviously, but I am going to prematurely recommend it.  I’ve never done that before.  But, I’m having such a great experience journeying along with the pilgrims in the story and I also have hundreds of years full of satisfied readers to back me up.  So, if you haven’t read it, read it!

 

Prudence then asked, “And what is it that makes you want so much to go to Mount Zion?”

“Why, I hope to see alive there the One who hung dead on the Cross,” said Christian, “for to tell you the truth, I love Him because my burden was eased by Him.  And there I hope to get rid of all those things that to this day are in me and that are an annoyance to me, for I’m weary of my inward sickness.  They say there is no death there, and that I’ll dwell there with no such company as I like best; I desire to be where I shall die no more and with the company that shall cry continually, ‘Holy, holy, holy!’” ¹  

 

AMEN!

¹John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress in Modern English, trans. L. Edward Hazelbaker (Gainesville, FL: Bridge-Logos, 1998), 67.

Sunday Survey

Besides the Bible, what is your favorite book ever and why?  (You may only list one book.  That’s the rule.  The other rule is that you cannot say the Bible, but that’s obvious from the question.)

My Secret Life

You know I love books.  I read all types of books.  I generally gravitate toward theology, history, or classic literature.  Sometimes, however, people buy me different books that I might be interested in, but would probably never purchase for myself.  For some reason, I feel this compelling need to only invest my time and money into books that will teach me something or really challenge me.  Usually, I can’t see that type of potential unless it’s non-fiction or at least 100 years old. 

Fortunately, I got the opportunity to read The Secret Life of Bees, which my awesome mother-in-law bought for me.  I really love novels.  Looking at my Facebook book application, most of my “favorites” are novels.  I get really wrapped up in what Amanda calls “book friends” and it’s just like the people are here and now, living out their stories all around me.  I love it.

I always find someone to relate to in every story.  Although every fiction writer seeks to capture the affections of their readers, it is no great task for me as the audience.  Sometimes, it surprises me  how incredibly easy it is.  Occasionally, the protagonist is an adolescent girl with crazy parents who is simply trying to figure out the truth.  Ah – that was me.  The circumstances are different, but the core is the same.

~~~

This happened before with White Oleander.  I saw the movie first and then read the book.  (Don’t ever do it in that order.)  There was so much about Astrid that I identified with.  So very much.  Her reflections on her life with and without her mother were comforting and reassuring. 

No matter how much she had damaged me or how flawed she was, how violently mistaken, my mother loved me, unquestionably.¹ 

Now THAT resonates with me.  No one has ever said it so perfectly.  I believe it to be entirely true of my mother. 

~~~

Obviously, it happened again with The Secret Life of Bees.  I just fell in love with 14-year-old Lily, the kid trying to figure out her life.  Great book. 

Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life.  I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier.  Which one took the most strength to carry around?  It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies.  Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.²

Oh, how I can relate to the brokenness and despair little Lily Owens felt!  Trite, yet searingly accurate: “The truth hurts.”  It sometimes causes entire worlds to splinter under the weight.

~~~

Any other book suggestions, now that you know what I like?  I am starting Pilgrim’s Progress, since I’ve never read it.  See?  Classics. 

 

 

¹Janet Fitch, White Oleander (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), 440.

²Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2002), 255-256.

The Smoking God

I just finished a book that took a ridiculous amount of time to read.  The book itself had little to do with the time frame; I honestly have just been focused on some other things recently.  Anyway, the book is The God Who Smokes by Timothy J. Stoner.  Don’t feel bad for laughing at the irony of the author’s name; he does the same thing himself!

I have few complaints, so I’ll just jump into the good stuff!  There were two major things that stuck out to me more than anything else in the book.  First, he asks some really big questions.  Second, he really does a phenomenal job of helping us to look upward.

~~~~~

If we are artists…, we ask:
Does our work build up or tear down?
Does it provide hope or steal it?
Does it point to joy or to despair?
Does it reflect the world merely as it is or as it is intended?
Does it contain life or death?
Does it evoke a desire for God or a world-weary disillusionment?
Does it sing, or is it simply banal and monochromatic?
Does it call forth a desire for the good?
And this is very big: At heart, is it sacramental?

…

This then is what we must ask: Does the material, the quality, the intention of our art contain and point toward the transcendent: to truth, reality, beauty, to the One who inhabits eternity? Does it indicate, if ever so slightly, the way to true north? Does it evoke longing for our “home”?  Does it reveal some facet of what is substantial, true, beautiful, noble, enriching, and holy?  Does it…exert a gravitational pull upward — does it glorify God?¹

I found this to be one of the most challenging portions of the entire book.  To really ask if my art — my calling, my passion, my life — does all those things?  I can’t even begin to answer.  Wait – that’s a lie.  I’m pretty sure my honest answer would be some very vague variation of “no” with shades of qualifications. 

~~~~~

The last chapter of the book is, in my opinion, the best.  I feel it is the best because it beckons our gazes and our hearts upward, to our true Home.  It reminds us that we should not be surprised or dismayed at our current dissatisfaction; rather, we should realize that it’s because we were meant for something more.

Like Cupid’s arrows, God sends shafts to pierce and to wound us.  God is no sadist.  He is speaking and wooing and reminding.  And He will hurt us if He needs to…

Sometimes He takes away in order to point the way and sometimes He stabs by giving.  Either way He wants us to pine for what is not here but there, in Him. 

…

When these arrows find their mark, your throat and chest constrict and your heart burns and you suddenly want to cry.

What you are feeling is yearning.

It is deeper and richer and larger than the sexual.  It is a craving for something you can’t express, for something you’ve never really known, although it feels almost nostalgic.  Sometimes you confuse it for nostalgia, but it really is not that, or if partly that, it is much more than that.  It is a slow and secret and almost timid desire.  It is a hunger of the heart that is somehow filled with twinges of joy and sorrow all wrapped up together.  You don’t ever want it to end, but you can’t imagine surviving for long if it didn’t.

Oh my Yeshua, thank you for giving this writer a few words that actually begin to describe it!  Beautiful.

~~~~~

Overall, I recommend the book.  I’m a fanatic about grammar and syntax and it appears that the author is not, so that was a pet peeve in this book.  If you read for content like most people, you’ll be fine.  Sometimes, I also got annoyed at a bit of repetition.  But mostly,  I enjoyed his unique perspective and his creative imagery.  Good book. 

~~~~~

¹Timothy J. Stoner, The God Who Smokes (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008), 183-184.

²Ibid., 264-266.

I Thought I Read a Lot…

But, apparently, most of my books don’t make the list!  I’ve read a lot of really awesome ones, too.    

~~~~~

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here, which I think is pretty sad, personally…. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen ()
2 The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien ()
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte ()
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling ()
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible – (X)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte ()
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott ()
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier ()
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger ( )
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot ( )
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck ( X)
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ( )
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy ( )
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens (X )
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis ()
34 Emma – Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen ( )
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis ()
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – ()
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden ( X)
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne ()
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell ()
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (X )
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving ( )
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood ( )
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding ()
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune – Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (X)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck ()
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold ( )
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville ( )
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens ()
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker ( )
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett ()
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses – James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno – Dante (X )
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal – Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession – AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker ( )
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White ()
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom ( )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare ()
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl ( )
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo ( )

~~~~~

What if I read about half of the book? 
Do I get extra points if I read any of them in French? 
And do movies count? 

Thanks, Amanda, for making me feel un-well-read!