Consider Your Ways: #1

Jan10

Don Whitney has several suggested questions to ask ourselves as we consider the new year and a new start. I thought I’d go through and answer at least some of them.

Question #1: What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

My enjoyment of God. My enjoyment of God? I’m not sure where or how it happened, but in the past few years I’ve lost a lot of the Joy I used to have. A radio host I listened to several years ago signed off with the catchphrase: “Don’t let anyone steal your joy!”

Unfortunately, I’ve not heeded his words. I’ve let the world, the flesh, and the devil come in and steal my joy, tempting me to despair at times. I looked at this list of fourteen things that can steal your joy from John MacArthur, and I believe my chief joy-stealers are “prayerlessness” and “not understanding God’s sovereignty.” I don’t pray enough. I don’t know how to pray sometimes. I have a particular situation in my family that I want God to fix, and I’ve asked Him to do it, but nothing has happened. And I don’t know where to go from here.

You see, there’s a particular person in my life who has made some decisions that I consider to very destructive and displeasing to God. I want God to to change that person. Do I keep praying to that end? After all, God knows what I want. I know what I want. What good does it do to keep repeating myself? Do I pray about other things and ignore the elephant in the room? All this confusion hinders my prayer life and makes me unsure of what I believe about the sovereignty of God. And that steals my joy.

As for one thing I can do to “increase my enjoyment of God,” I think I need to take a step back and remember my first love. Remember that He first loved me and that I need to trust that He also loves those I hold dear. However, “his ways are not our ways,” and I hope to recover my joy by patiently trusting in His sovereign will even when I don’t understand what He is doing (or not doing). I can learn to pray again. And maybe the discipline of prayer will bring me back into a joyful communion that I’ve been missing for a while.

To the angel[a] of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”
Revelation 2:1-5

12 Tips for New Bloggers, Especially Book Bloggers

Jan8

My sweet reader sister, Judy, just sent me this email:

I have decided to start a blog to review/discuss/recommend books. I have so many of my friends asking me what I am reading and what they should read on a particular subject. I think it could be beneficial for them and maybe others who stumble onto my blog.

I have a request: Could you give me hints and advice on what I should or shouldn’t do on my blog? It will be mostly books by Christian authors and links to blogs that either review books or discuss current events related to the books I read. I know the blog will probably evolve over time, but as for now, I want to share what I read with others and get suggestions from others as well. I would welcome ideas from a “veteran blogger”.

1. Get into a rhythm of regular posting: once a week, twice a week, five days a week, every day. It doesn’t matter how frequently you post, but it does matter that you post regularly so that people get used to checking to see what you have to say today or this week.

2. Focusing on one kind of book, one genre, is good. I don’t do it because I don’t focus my reading that way, but it is a good thing. The more people know what to expect the more likely they are to visit regularly. If you are writing a book blog, people expect most, if not all of your posts to be about books. Again, do as I say, not as I do.( I have my own reasons for posting about whatever I want to write about, and I don’t mind if I lose some readers along the way.)

3. Consider linking to book reviews of the same book by other bloggers. You can find those by using this focused Google Book Blogs Search Engine.
Be sure to list your blog at the Book Blogs Search Engine so that others who use that tool can find your reviews easily.

4. Write personal reviews. What I mean by that is: don’t try to sound like a professional book reviewer. I most enjoy the reviews that tell me what the book meant to the reader/blogger personally. What did the author make you think about? How did the book relate to your own life? What are some quotes that were meaningful to you? What made you laugh or cry? Tell me more than: “this was a great book.” But don’t include spoilers unless you warn me first. I don’t want to know the ending or the plot twists before I read the book.

5. Read other book blogs and comment on other book blogs and link to your favorites. In other words, participate in the book blogging community. Here are some places where you can begin to participate:

Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon
Weekly Geeks
Booking Through Thursday
Reading Challenges (Collected at A Novel Challenge)
The Classics Circuit
Book Blogging Events
Faith and Fiction Saturday at My Friend Amy

Don’t try to do everything. Pick a couple of events or memes or challenges, and do them well. Look around and see what suits you best.

6. Don’t worry about getting “free books” yet. Those will come eventually–if the whole publishing industry doesn’t transform itself into who-knows-what with the advent of e-books and such. Just stick to your original idea: read what you want to read, and share what you love with others in your blog posts. Probably, someone, somewhere will offer you a free book, or a gift book, or an advanced review copy of a book. Be careful what you accept and know what strings are attached. Only agree to review books that you want to read and that you can find time to read and review honestly.

7. Don’t make your reviews too long, and use pictures. Some reviewers can get away with long reviews, mostly because they’re better writers than I am. And they have a lot of good stuff to say. When I try to write long book reviews, I usually end up repeating myself. (This book was really, really good. Really.) Keep it medium short, longer than Twitter tweets and shorter than the novel itself or even a chapter of the novel. And use some kind of picture to break up the text. I use a lot of book covers from Amazon. That’s the main reason I’m an Amazon affiliate. (And if you link to Amazon, and get a few cents back, or any other sales scheme, you’re supposed to tell everyone that you do all the time as if they couldn’t figure it out.)

8. Title your book reviews with the title of the book and the author. This tip may seem self-evident, but it’s tempting to try to come up with catchy titles for books reviews. However, when someone searches for a review of X book on Google, they won’t be as likely to hit your blog if you called your review “A Look at the Newest Great American Novel” instead of X book by Z author.

9. Ask questions in your posts, and answer questions posed by your readers in the comments.

10. Always link to blog posts that you mention, bloggers who gave you ideas, bloggers who pointed out something interesting to you, bloggers who made you laugh, authors’ homepages, etc. Link-love is kind, encouraging, helpful to your readers, and it brings people back to your blog.

11. If you get nasty comments or spam comments, ignore/delete. Do not respond to people who say unkind things on your blog. Delete them, and go on. Life is too short.

12. Enjoy blogging. If you aren’t enjoying it, something is wrong. Figure out what’s wrong, and fix it. Or quit blogging. Don’t let anyone or anything steal your joy.

My sister’s brand, spanking new blog is called Carpe Libris: Seize the Book. Please do me a favor and go by and leave her a comment and a big welcome to the Blogosphere of Books and Readers.

Thanks.

Bloggiesta Ole!

Jan8

It’s the first day of Bloggiesta, and our mascot is PEDRO:

Plan. Edit. Develop. Review. Organize.

For my Bloggiesta tasks, I’d like to:

Plan.
1. Write author birthday posts for January, February, and March, and set them to publish on the appropriate days.
2. Since I plan to take a Lenten break from blogging again this year, I’d like to grab some of the best of the posts in my archives and have them ready to post during Lent while I’m away.

Edit.
3. I’d really like to check my blog archives for dead links.

Develop.
4. Develop relationships by participating in Mother Reader’s Comment Challenge.
5. Finish writing a post directed to new bloggers in answer to a question mysister sent me last week. My baby sister is going to birth a brand new book blog, and she’s asking me for advice!

Review.
6. Finish my reviews and follow-up posts left over from my Cybils judging for 2009. I still have books to review and some thoughts on the general direction and quality of the middle grade fiction books I read for the Cybils.
7. Update reviews to Library Things Early Reviewers so that I can get back on their good list.

Organize.
8. Work on adding links to all the reviews posted at the Saturday Review to the index pages. I can’t imagine finding enough time to do all of these, but I’d like to at least work on it.

I may come up with some other projects over the course of the weekend, may start some of these and not finish, may only get one or two projects done. That’s O.K. The main idea is have fun working on my blog along with others who are doing the same.

Bloggiesta is sponsored by Natasha at Maw Books. Thanks, Natasha.

Abortion: A Justice Issue

Jan7

From now until the 18th of January, I’m keeping this video at the top of the blog. I believe abortion is an issue of justice: justice for the unborn and justice for those mothers who are made to feel that getting an abortion is the easy way out, instead of being shown how they can choose life for their unborn child.

How dare they come to my hometown and build The Second Biggest Abortuary in the WORLD! Planned Parenthood is certainly not building this death trap in hopes of turning it into an adoption and prenatal care center. No, as Abby Johnson, who until recently worked for Planned Parenthood, has said, “One of their goals was to make money, and the way they make money is to increase the number of abortions.”

Houston (USA), we have a problem.

Semicolon’s Top 12 Young Adult Books Published in 2009

Jan7

Catching Fire by Suzane Collins. Sequel to The Hunger Games. Semicolon review of The Hunger Games here. Suffice it to say that Catching Fire was a worthy successor to the first book,and I’m looking forward to the next book from Ms. Collins due out in August.

Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins. Semicolon review here.

If the Witness Lied by Caroline Cooney. Semicolon review here.

The Homeschool Liberation League by Lucy Frank. Semicolon review here.

After by Amy Efaw. Intense and heart-rending. Semicolon review here.

Don’t Judge a Girl By Her Cover by Ally Carter. The third book in the Gallagher Girls series about a girl who attends a secret school for spies. Pure fun.

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George. Semicolon review here.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork. Semicolon review here.

Ice Shock by M.G. Harris. Semicolon review here.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Fire by Kristin Cashore. Semicolon review here.

That’s actually eleven. I’m saving the last space since I’m in the process of reading the finalists for the YA Cybils Award. I can’t believe none of my top eleven made the finalist list. Those must be some seriously good books. Maybe one of the finalists will be my final “best YA book of 2009.”

(I was mistaken. One of my books, Chains, is on the Middle Grade Fiction finalist list, a list I helped choose, even though I think Chains is more suited to young adults. And another of the books I chose, Fire, is on the Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction finalist list.)

Links and Thinks

Jan6

I like this idea: free music. You just have to watch a short ad, and the company whose ad you view pays for the song. Essentially, they’re paying you to watch, and I think that’s fair and beneficial for all concerned.

40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2009. Can you believe people actually said these things in public? Seriously? As I said before, it was the year of sublimely ridiculous.

Mother Reader is sponsoring the Kidlitosphere Comment Challenge, January 8 -28. It’s a good opportunity to increase your participation in the blog world and give and receive some comment encouragement.

And Elizabeth Bird at Fuse#8, the same blogger who brought us the incredible Top 100 Picture Books Poll last year, is doing it again. Only this time she’s taking votes for the Best 100 Children’s FIctional Chapter books of all time. You get to vote for your top ten, and Ms. Bird will compile the results into a list of the Top 100, to be revealed on her blog starting in February. Votes must be in by January 31st, so start thinking about your list now and as soon as you get it compiled, send it to Betsy.

Wisdom from The Common Room: “There is just something about working on some shared project that somehow loosens the tongue and the thoughts and oils the gears of communication.”
This bit of homespun advice is something I need to remember, both in fostering communication with the young adult members of my family and in advising them in their relationshops.

Here’s a weird LOST promo picture. I’m honestly not sure what to make of it. Why are there 13 “disciples”?

Toddler Shakespeare (HT to Kathryn at Suitable for Mixed Company):

Quotes of the Week

Jan6

David Brooks: The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.
My retort: Whut she sed.

Britt Hume to Tiger Woods: “He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, “Tiger, turn your faith—turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”
My reaction: Actually, I agree with Mr. Hume, and I hope Tiger Woods and all of us sinners can come to acccept the forgiveness that Jesus Christ offers. Buddhism says, “Reform yourself —or pay for your own sins in your next life.” Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Mr. Woods could use some rest, and forgiveness, about now.
Peter Wehner at NRO: Hume’s Gentle Witness.

Nancy Pelosi on the health care bill: “There has never been a more open process for any legislation.”
Amazing. Orwellian.

Chris Matthews on the Tea Party movement: “And they’re monochromatic, right?… Meaning they’re all white. All of them — every single one of them — is white.”

Uhhh. Yeah. I think it’s wonderful that Mr. Matthews is so colorblind that he can look at the Tea Parties and not even see racial differences. Or maybe not, if everyone looks white to him. Now if he’d just quit talking about it.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Jan6

Graceling was Kristin Cashore’s first novel, published in 2008, and it received quite a bit of acclaim. (Semicolon thoughts on Graceling.)The follow-up to that book is Fire, not a sequel but a “companion to Graceling.” Fire takes place in the same world as Graceling, but in a separate and distinct country, the Dells, that has little or no communication with or knowledge of the seven kingdoms of the first book. Instead of gracelings, people with special talents and abilities, the Dells has monsters, people who are especially attractive and have special abilities. Actually, our heroine, the eponymous Fire, is the last of the monsters, and she’s determined to keep it that way. No monster, or half-monster, babies for her even though she longs for a child to love and nurture. However, not only are Fire’s abilities to influence and read thoughts much too dangerous to pass on to another generation, Fire is much too busy saving the kingdom from monster raptors and assorted rebels and bad guys to get married or care for a child.

If that last sentence sounds condescending or scornful, I didn’t mean it to be. Fire is a fantasy romance, and it’s a good one. Even though it was obvious who ends up with whom from the beginning of the novel, I found myself rooting for Fire and her romantic interest even as the age old boy-meets-girl, boy-and-girl-misunderstand-each-other, true-love-wins-out, plot wound its way through the fantastical elements of princes and powers and magical thinking and monster kittens and giant raptors.

In fact, I liked Fire even better than I liked Graceling. Fire was a more intriguing character than Katsa, whose main issue is figuring out how to use her grace without being controlled by other people. Fire’s focus is self-control and how and when to use her special mind control abilities for good without taking away the freedom of others. I was glad to see that Fire, unlike Katsa, wasn’t afraid of love and commitment, only worried that she might not be able to live with the man she loved and communicate freely and openly.

If you liked Graceling, read Fire. If you haven’t read Graceling, read Fire first. It’s the better book. If you didn’t like Graceling, you might enjoy Fire anyway.

What other bloggers are saying:
Steph Su Reads: “When an author’s second novel far surpasses her already critically acclaimed debut novel, you know there’s something special going on. Kristin Cashore is such an author, and FIRE is such a book. Not since Robin McKinley has an author written so convincingly of a politically charged fantasy world.”
Persnickety Snark: “Fire could quite easily become an unsympathetic character as she’s irresistibly attractive, princes and lords falling over themselves in love with her and the power of persuasion. Instead Cashore has created a character who’s consistently struggling with the direction of her moral compass in terms of her ability to manipulate others whether with good intentions or not.”
S. Krishna’s Books: “Kristin Cashore has really matured as a writer in this book. Though the world has already been established in Graceling, Cashore doesn’t assume her readers have read that book. Additionally, the parts of the world the two books take place in are extremely different – even readers of Graceling will be introduced to something completely new.”

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Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Jan5

Two of my favorite books from this past year are narrated by young men with autism: Anything But Typical by Nora Leigh Baskin and this one, for an older audience, about Marcelo Sandoval who describes his condition thus:

“The primary characteristics of AS, which is what Asperger’s syndrome is is called for short, occur in the areas of communication and social interaction, and usually there is some kind of pervasive interest. The AS person is different than most people in these areas.”

Marcelo’s “pervasive interest” is “religion. What humankind has experienced and said and thought about God.” He says, ” I like to read and think about that.”

What this interest means for Marcelo in practical terms is that he meets frequently with a Jewish rabbi to discuss God and religion. He also goes to mass regularly and prays the rosary. And he has memorized large chunks of Scripture, from the Old and New Testaments and from the sacred books and prayers of other religions.

Although the religion thing is a fascinating sub-theme (if you can have a subplot, why not a subtheme?), the book is mostly about coping in the real world while remaining true to oneself and about father/son relationships. Marcelo’s father, Arturo, is a high-powered lawyer who denies that there’s anything really different about or wrong with Marcelo and who wants his son to eventually attend college and become a lawyer like him. As far as intelligence goes, Marcelo is certainly capable of following in his father’s footsteps. However, Marcelo is different. He thinks differently from most people, and his social skills and ability to understand complicated social interactions are limited. When Arturo insists that Marcelo spend his summer working in the mailroom at Arturo’s law firm, everyone involved learns something about the “real world.”

I like these books about autistic children and young adults because they take some of our basic assumptions about the world and how it works and shake them upside down and reorganize them into new ways of thinking about people and about our expectations of them. Some of us just got through watching most of the first three seasons of the TV show Bones, and I see Temperance Brennan and her assistant Zach doing much the same thing. Both of them are probably “on the spectrum,” especially Zach, and both characters are quite intelligent, literal-minded, and find it difficult to pick up on jokes and figures of speech and double meanings. They see the world in a different way from the rest of us, and what books like Marcelo in the Real World and Anything But Typical show is that although the autistic person’s way of seeing the world may be limiting in some ways, it may also free the autistic person to see things that the rest of us miss.

I highly recommend Marcelo in the Real World for mature readers. As do the characters in the Bones TV series, the narrator of Marcelo speaks quite frankly about sex and sexual matters in an innocent, almost childlike, way. I didn’t find anything in the book offensive, but some people might.

Other blog reviews of Marcelo in the Real World:
Becky’s Book Reviews: “Meet Marcelo Sandoval. Read his story. Witness first-hand the transition from dream world to real world.”
Confessions of a Bibliovore: “But the real world is full of traps and pitfalls even for the people who spend all their time in it. Before the summer is out, Marcelo will discover that the good and evil exist together in ways that all his religious studying has never prepared him for, and that the only way to find the right path is by discovering where his own faltering steps lead him.”
Reviewer X: “This book is almost a study on humans through the mind of a guy who is the pinnacle of “socially awkward“. Marcelo’s precise, but for obvious reasons clueless, lacking completely in street smarts.”

Other books featuring children and young adults “on the autism spectrum”:
London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd. Semicolon review here.
Rules by Cynthia Lord. Semicolon review here.
Anything But Typical by Nora Leigh Baskin. Semicolon review here.
Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko. Semicolon review here.
Emma Jean Lazurus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis. Semicolon review by Brown Bear Daughter here.
The Very Ordered Existence of Marilee Marvelous by Suzanne Crowley.:
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. Semicolon review here.
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. Semicolon review here.
Daniel Isn’t Talking by Marti Leimbach.
A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards by Ann Bauer.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Cybils YA Fiction

Jan4

I’ve read eighty some-odd of the books nominated for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Award, and although I enjoyed the experience immensely, I’m ready to move on to fiction about and for some other age group. So I’ve been sampling the nominees on the YA fiction list and some other YA fiction published in 2009.

Living on Impulse by Cara Haycak. Mia’s impulsive nature leads her to shoplift, go clubbing, try out alcohol, and generally make a mess of her life. The book sees to imply that all teens have to go through a stupid decisions phase before they can become truly mature, but I’m not sure I believe that. Mia is also the child of an alcoholic mother and an unknown father, and those liabilities factor into her poor decision-making skills. Still, Ms. Hayak tells a good story, and Mia is an interesting character.
Other reviews: Liz at Tea Cozy, Serenehours.

After the Moment by Garrett Freyman-Weyr. Female author tries to tell the story of a young man’s first love form the male point of view. I think she does a fairly good job, but then, what would I know about it? Leigh is seventeen, and he’s a people-pleaser. Maia is sixteen, and she’s a “cutter, self-mutilator, anorexic, crazy, anxious, drunk girl.” They fall in love. Something bad happens to Maia, and Leigh does the wrong thing in response to her crisis.
I don’t know if it’s because they’re part of the Eastern prep school tradition or just that they’re out of my cultural milieu, but Maia, and especially Leigh, think and act in ways that just felt odd to me. Small example: “For the first time, zoning out with soccer failed him, forcing Leigh to turn his attention back to the war.” What? The only possible things to occupy Leigh’s attention are soccer and the Iraq War? The author made a big deal about how the war doesn’t really touch Leigh’s life, how he is insulated by background and privileged status from the war, and yet the only thing he can find to occupy his attention is Iraq? Just one example, but these people didn’t feel real to me. I couldn’t figure out why they acted as they acted. Still, I kept trying because the author did make me care what would happen to them.
Other reviews: Harmony Book Reviews, A Striped Armchair, Bart’s Bookshelf, Steph Su Reads.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray. I only made it through about 200 pages of this 480 page surreal adventure about a self-centered jerk named Cameron who has mad cow disease and goes on a road trip to save the world and find a cure. I gave up around the time we got to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I take it back; I kept reading and actually liked the part about the Happiness Cult. Then, when I got through rooting for one of the guys (Cameron picks up a sidekick midget named Gonzo) to take down the Happiness Cult, all I had left was the simulation of a bad acid trip with Cameron and Gonzo. And Gonzo is only a little less jerky than Cameron. So, I gave up and turned to the last chapter. WARNING: I write spoilers for books I don’t like so that you don’t have to suffer through them: Cameron dies. I think.
All the other bloggers who loved, loved , loved this book: Em’s Bookshelf, The Book Reader, A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy, Mrs. Magoo Reads, Juicilicious. I could keep linking, but you get the idea. I’m the odd man out, and you can all go bovine together if you want. If it comes in parts, as my daddy used to say, you can leave mine out.

Comfort by Joyce Hostetter. This sequel to Hostetter’s Blue, about a girl who is recovering from polio in the aftermath of World War II, suffered from the opposite problem from Going Bovine. Everyone in the novel, especially the young heroine, was so-o-o sincere, and patient, and understanding, and Good. The protagonist, Ann Fay, spends some time at Warm Springs Foundation in Georgia, and that section of the book felt like a fictional advertisement for the polio rehabilitation center. All of the “polios” are good, and happy, and dedicated to working hard to be rehabilitated. And I sound really snarky and condescending. Actually, I liked the book, and the part about Ann Fay’s daddy’s experiences with post -traumatic stress from the war was interesting and more believable. But overall the book was just a little too sweet and serious and humorless.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. This one was great —until I got to the end, which wasn’t an ending at all, just a “To be continued” cliff-hanger kind of ending. Chapters that end in cliff-hangers are O.K. I get the point which is to keep the pages turning. Books that end with lines like the following are annoying, even though I will read the sequel, published this year and entitled The Ask and the Answer. The ending of The Knife of Never Letting Go:

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to her. “I’m so sorry.”
We’ve run right into a trap.
We’ve run right off the end of the world.
“Welcome,” says the Mayor, “to New Prentisstown.”

End of Book One.

You can read more about the book (which was exciting and absorbing and quite violent) at: Becky’s Book Reviews, Presenting Lenore, Lazygal, Bib-Laura-graphy, or Things Mean a Lot.

So, this post turned out to be about the YA books that I thought were O.K., so-so, or really bad. I did find a couple of gems. Reviews of the really good ones coming soon.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.