Archive by Author | Sherry

Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce

About halfway through Amy Inspired, I had to look at the author blurb to see how autobiographical the novel was. The book is about Amy Gallagher, an almost-30, single, Christian, adjunct professor of English at a small college in Ohio Ms. Pierce is married, but she must have taken some of the characters and scenes in Amy Inspired from her own life as a single person before marriage. True-to-life and yet romantic describes the book perfectly.

Amy Gallagher so reminded me of my own Eldest Daughter and her friends who are also trying to navigate the waters of Christian single-hood. It’s not easy. Christian young women are supposed to be chaste but not frigid, open to marriage but not desperate, intelligent, beautiful, but not intimidating or vain, confident and independent but also submissive and selfless, and it goes on and on until a woman can get lost in all the expectations.

Amy is, frankly, a little lost. She’s a Christian, but she doesn’t know how to approach God except through the expectations that she believes He has for her life and behavior. Amy lives her life in lists–to do lists, grocery lists, lists of the rejection letters she’s received for her writing submissions, lists of former boyfriends lists of her lists–and when she meets Eli the artist who’s more of a free spirit with a checkered past, Amy isn’t sure whether it’s love or fear at first sight.

I don’t know how to convey the sheer goodness of this novel because I’m just not as skilled a writer as Ms. Pierce. It made me laugh out loud a couple of times. I never knew exactly what would happen or how the novel would end. I know some of the characters in the book—Amy’s annoying but lovable Mrs. Malaprop Mom (OK, maybe I AM the mom, a little), her tofu-loving roommate Zoe, the men in her life, self-centered and shallow, but trying to grow up, too. Amy herself reminds me, as I said, not only of Eldest Daughter, but also of several other single young women I know. The novel felt Real in a way that many Christian novels don’t manage to accomplish.

Amy Inspired made it onto my TBR list because it was nominated for the 2011 INSPY Awards in the category of General Fiction. I’m trying to read all of the nominated books that I find of interest, and I hope Amy Inspired makes the shortlist for the INSPY’s. It’s that good.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in July, 2011

Jul31

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. Semicolon review here.
Three Black Swans by Caroline B. Cooney.
Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker.
Stolen by Lucy Christopher.

Adult Fiction
The Daughter’s Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick.
Friends and Lovers by Helen MacInnes.
Angel Sister by Ann H. Gabhart.
The Hardest Thing To Do by Penelope Wilock.Semicolon review here.
The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcock.
The Wounds of God by Penelope Wilcock.
Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce.

Nonfiction:
The Fear by Peter Godwin. Semicolon review here.
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.
The Peacemaker by Ken Sande.
Unplanned by Abby Johnson with Cindy Lambert.

Plus some bookish links:
Minimalist posters inspired by children’s stories.
Five Vacation Spots for Book Lovers. I doubt I could afford any one of these, but it’s fun to dream.
This year’s Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing.

1903: Art and Music

Jul30

“In the Good Old Summertime” was a popular song of 1903, first published in 1902 with music by George Evans and lyrics by Ren Shields. Sheet music, player piano, and even recordings were all ways to buy and enjoy popular music in the early twentieth century. Sousa’s band recorded “In the Good Old Summertime” in 1903.

In the good old summertime, in the good old summertime.
Strolling through the shady lanes with your baby mine.
You hold her hand, and she holds yours,
and that’s a very good sign.
That she’s your tootsie-wootsie,
in the good old summertime.

Artist Paul Gauguin died in Hua Oa, the Marquesas Islands on May 8, 1903. He left France to live in Tahiti, then in the Marquesas, because, he said, “After the disease of civilization, life in this new world is a return to health.” More images of Gauguin’s paintings.

Later in the year, artists American James Whistler (July 17) and Impressionist Camille Pissarro (November 12) also died. The art world was moving from Impressionism to new schools and forms, including Art Nouveau, Fauvism, Cubism,and Die Brucke (The Bridge) in Germany, but the Impressionists were still quite influential.

1903: Events and Inventions

Jul29

Mach 5, 1903. The Turkish Ottoman Empire and Germany sign an agreement to build the Constantinople-Baghdad Railway. Germany is trying to make an easily accessible way for German trade to the Far East. Britain, Germany’s rival, shows concern about German expansionism.

April 22, 1903. The new New York Stock Exchange building at 18 Broad Street opened to fanfare and festivity. The Exchange building is considered one of architect George B. Postâ€™s masterpieces and is a national landmark.

June 11, 1903. Serbian King Alexander ObrenoviÄ‡ and Queen Draga are assassinated.

June 16, 1903. Henry Ford, along with 12 investors, forms the Ford Motor Company. Their first car, produced in 1903, was the Ford Model A.

July 1, 1903. The Tour de France, the world’s most famous cycling race, begins in Paris.

September, 1903. Turkish troops massacre thousands of Macedonian/Bulgarian rebels and civilians in retaliation for the St. Elijah’s Day Uprising, or Ilinend Uprising.

November 4, 1903. With the encouragement of the United States, Panama proclaims itself independent from Colombia. The U.S. wants Panamanian independence so that we can build a canal through the isthmus of Panama. On November 18, The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the U.S. exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

December, 1903 Pierre and Marie Curie win the Nobel Prize for their work with radium and radioactivity.

December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, NC, Orville and Wilbur Wright pioneered the first successful powered human flight. For all practical purposes, they invented the airplane.

Sometime in 1903: The first box of Crayola crayons was made and sold for five cents. It contained eight colors; brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and black.

For insight into the state of the nation and travel in 1903, watch Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip, a Ken Burns documentary about Horatio Jackson who attempted a cross-country drive From San Franciso to New York City in a cherry-red Winton automobile. (available on Netflix).

54

Jul28

54 is a wonderful number, not quite as interesting as 52, but still a lovely number and a good place to be.

On October 13th in the year 54, the Roman emperor Claudius died, possibly after being poisoned by Agrippina, his wife and niece. He was succeeded by Nero. O.K. that’s not a very beautiful event to remember, but it is interesting. Has anyone read I, Claudius and and Claudius the God, both by Robert Graves? I read both volumes of Graves’ fictionalized biographical novels about Emperor Claudius quite a while ago, and I don’t remember the details; however, I do remember them as quite well-written and fascinating.

54 is a semiperfect number and can be written as the sum of three squares: 49+4+1
27 + 27 = 54 That’s two times three cubed.

A score of 54 in golf is colloquially referred to as a perfect round. This score has never been achieved in competition.

Car 54, Where Are You? was a 1961-63 TV series starring Joe Ross and Fred Gwynne as New York City policemen having comical adventures.

Studio 54 was a highly popular discotheque in the 1970s and early 1980s. Studio 54 was originally a New York City Broadway theatre, then a CBS radio and television studio. In the 1970s it became the legendary nightclub located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan. The club opened on April 26, 1977 and closed in March 1986.

Debby Boone (9/22/1956), Carrie Fisher (10/21/1956), Katie Couric (1/7/1957), LeVar Burton (2/16/1957), Vanna White (2/18/1957), Spike Lee (3/20/1957), Vince Gill (4/12/1957), and Scott Adams (6/8/1957) are all 54 years old right now.
And Osama bin Laden (3/10/1957) was 54 years old when he died.

There are 54 countries in Africa, according to Wikipedia.

NASA has identified 54 potentially habitable, or life-friendly, planets outside our solar system.

54 Wonderful Projects is a post from last week about all the projects I’d like to read about, try out, live vicariously, or at least start. I have lots of lists of 100 (Top 100 Hymns Project), or 50 (50 Favorites) or 52 (52 Ways to Read and Study the Bible in 2011) things on this blog. In fact, one of my favorite things to do is to make lists. Look for more “54” lists this year.

54 is the number of cards in a deck of playing cards, if the two jokers are included. And by all means, I’m at an age to include the jokers. I identify with the jokers.

Psalm 54 sounds like a good prayer for this year. I’m beginning my 55th year of life, and for the past 54 years God has been my help, and the Lord has sustained me. Amen.

1 Save me, O God, by your name;
vindicate me by your might.
2 Hear my prayer, O God;
listen to the words of my mouth.
3 Arrogant foes are attacking me;
ruthless people are trying to kill meâ€”
people without regard for God.
4 Surely God is my help;
the Lord is the one who sustains me.
5 Let evil recoil on those who slander me;
in your faithfulness destroy them.
6 I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;
I will praise your name, LORD, for it is good.
7 You have delivered me from all my troubles,
and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.

1903: Books and Literature

Jul27

Nobel Prize for Literature: BjÃ¸rnstjerne BjÃ¸rnson, Norwegian poet and playwright.

Fiction Bestsellers:
1. Mary Augusta Ward, Lady Rose’s Daughter
2. Thomas Nelson Page, Gordon Keith
3. Frank Norris, The Pit Wheat speculation and the commodities market in Chicago.
4. Alice Hegan Rice, Lovey Mary Orphan girl Lovey Mary runs away to the Cabbage Patch (see #6 below).
5. Owen Wister, The Virginian
6. Alice Hegan Rice, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
7. James Lane Allen, The Mettle of the Pasture Set in Kentucky and written by a Kentucky author who also wrote The Choir Invisible.
8. George Horace Lorimer, Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
9. Thomas Dixon Jr., The One Woman Dixon was a Baptist preacher turned novelist, and this novel in particular was a sermon on the evils of socialism.
10. John Fox Jr., The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come Another book with a Kentucky setting, this book takes place during the Civil War. It was made into a movie in 1961.

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant:
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory
Jack London, Call of the Wild
Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh I have this book on my Kindle, but I haven’t started it yet. Should I?
Henry James, The Ambassadors
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
Erskine Childress, The Riddle of the Sands. I read this book on my Kindle not long ago, and I found it quite confusing. It does indicate the deep mistrust and rivalry that existed in the early twentieth century between the British and the Germans, both trying to build their empires at the expense of the other.

I’m surprised, not at how many of the books I haven’t read, but at how many of the best-selling authors I’ve never even heard of. I don’t know the details of how the list was compiled early in the twentieth century, but it was published in Publishers Weekly after 1912. Before that, it is unclear to me where the lists came from. And, of course, these are the best-sellers in the United States. Who knows what they were reading in other English-speaking countries?

Friday Night Lights: What Comes First?

Jul27

I just finished watching the final episode of the final season of the TV show Friday Night Lights, and I am quite impressed with the quality and thoughtfulness of the entire series. The show’s creators and writers and actors got a lot of things right, and I enjoyed the ride.

First of all, for the most part, they got Texas right. The actors talked and acted like Texans, and it wasn’t overdone or caricatured as it is in so many Texas setting movies and television shows. A lack of Hispanic characters was a weakness in the program, since Texas is 37% Hispanic, but the characters who were there were pure Texan.

They got football right, too. Football really is King in much of Texas, especially small and medium-sized towns in Texas. A few of the situations the writers got themselves into with outlandish behavior by football fans and boosters were over the top, but they showed just how seriously many Texans take their high school football.

I was disappointed, however, by the overall take on sex and Christianity in the program. Christianity was portrayed as a Sunday thing: almost everyone went to church on Sunday, but faith didn’t inform their lives the rest of the week at all. Characters rarely prayed, except in a formulaic way before football games, and Christian moral values were not even considered as characters in the show engaged in promiscuous, casual sex with multiple partners at a young age. In fact, as the series drew to a close, Coach Taylor and his wife Tammy, a guidance counselor at the local high school, were unconcerned that their nineteen year old daughter had sex with her long-time boyfriend, quarterback Matt Saracen (played by actor Zach Gilford, one of the best actors in a series filled with good acting, by the way), but were completely appalled that Julie and Matt wanted to get married at ages nineteen and twenty respectively. “You’re too young!” No one ever mentions that it’s better to marry than burn (as Paul says) or that sex comes after marriage, not before. It’s just not an issue, and everyone is doing it. The “rules” seem to be:

Be sure you’re “ready”, emotionally and mentally prepared.
Use condoms. (One high school student gets pregnant because she and her boyfriend didn’t. Later, her mom lets the boy come back, with the admonition, “Use a condom this time or I’ll kill you!”)
Don’t have an affair with a married man or woman, and if you’re married , don’t commit adultery. It’s the last taboo.
Don’t get too involved or committed because sex is just sex, and marriage is only for old people and has nothing at all to do with sex.

I take it back: at the beginning, the first couple of season, FNL did “get religion”, at least to some extent. Then, I think the writers thought it became too limiting to the dramatic necessities of the show to have Christian characters trying to live their convictions, even though they were shown failing and trying again. This clip from the pilot episode shows that promising beginning:

Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile. We are all vulnerable, and we will all, at some point in our lives… fall. We will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts… that what we have is special. That it can be taken from us, and when it is taken from us, we will be tested.ï»¿ We will be tested to our very souls. We will now all be tested. It is these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.

Mary DeMuth says Friday Night Lights taught her about community and the need for close relationships.

1902: Music and Art

Jul26

Florodora was the most popular and longest running show on Broadway in 1902. It was a musical comedy featuring proper young ladies (chorus girls) who became engaged to very proper young men with the help of a mysterious perfume invented in the exotic Philippine Islands. The hit song from the musical was called Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Are There Any More at Home Like You?).

In November 1902, sales of Italian tenor Enrico Caruso’s first record reached one million copies.

On April 20, 1902 a major art show opened in Paris featuring what the French called Art Nouveau. Some of the artists working this style were Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, RenÃ© Lalique, Antoni GaudÃ and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Here’s an example of Art Nouveau Tiffany glass:

'N84.74' photo (c) 2009, Catherine - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

1902: Events and Inventions

Jul26

January, 1902. The Chinese imperial court returns to Peking from X’ian where they had gone during the Boxer Rebellion. Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi continues to rule along with the Emperor Guanghzu.

February 22, 1902. Major Walter Reed and Dr. James Carroll of the United States Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba publish a scientific report revealing that their research indicates that the disease is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

May, 1902. Cuba gains its official independence from Spain, and American interim government and troops withdraw from the new republic. Tomas Estrada Palma becomes the first president of Cuba.

May 8, 1902. 30,000 inhabitants of St. Pierre, Martinique die when the volcano Mt. Pelee erupts suddenly and unexpectedly.

May 31, 1902. The Treaty of Vereeniging is signed, ending the Boer War in South Africa. The British won the war and take over the administration of South Africa and its valuable diamond and gold mining industry. The Boers (Dutch colonizers) remain in South Africa under British rule.

June, 1902. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy renew their Triple Alliance for another twelve years.

July 17, 1902. Willis H. Carrier designs the first system to control temperature and humidity, inventing modern air conditioning.

October, 1902. A cholera epidemic in Egypt ends after killing more than 30,000 people.

December 10, 1902. THe Aswan dam is completed on the Nile River in Egypt. THe purpose of the mile and a quarter long, 130 foot high dam is to control the annual flooding of the Nile and release the water in a way that will make agriculture in Egypt more widespread and more profitable.

December, 1902. The British and German ambassadors request repayment from Venezuela for the losses suffered by their people during the Venezuelan coup of 1899. The Venezuelans refuse to recognize any debt, and so the British and Germans seize the entire Venezuelan navy, four ships. The ongoing disagreement has resulted in arrests of British and German subjects in Caracas and acts of war against Venezuela by Great Britain and Germany.

A lady dressed in the costume of 1902.

Apparent Danger to The Shooting Salvationist

Jul25

Odd. This book, Apparent Danger, about Fort Worth Baptist preacher J. Frank Norris, has apparently been re-published under a different title, The Shooting Salvationist, with more publicity. I read the book last year, and I thought it was quite good, good enough that I included it in my Top Eight Nonfiction Reads of 2010.

Everything old (2010) is new again. Does this sort of thing happen often, a book being re-published (maybe re-edited?) under a different title?