Every Friday I get a gift in the mail. It's a magazine. Okay, it's Entertainment Weekly. Not exactly high brow reading, but hey - it started out as free for a year, and now I only pay $10 annually for 50 issues!
While I'm not entirely enthralled with anything Hollywood, I do love that I can read it in small bursts: waiting for my coffee to brew, for my computer to boot up, for the bus to arrive. It's no big investment in time or money, and I get to casually say, "Oh I knew that a month ago" when my husband comes home and tells me tidbits he heard on the news on the way home, and I can fill my kids in on all kinds of trivia about their favorite movies and music.
AND, best of all, it has a book section. A pathetic, small, inadequate book section tucked in the very last pages. As soon as I get the mail, this is the thing I turn to and read first. I scan the section for debut books and read their reviews first, then go back through the rest. I find out about a ton of great books I would never otherwise have heard of, and occasionally I hear about books months before the media or agents or bloggers "discover" them and they are big. I love being in the know!
And when I go back, over the course of the week, to work my way through the magazine from front to back, I always secretly hope that this week is the one I forgot to check the book section first and when I get to it I will find it all new to me.
It never is. But I can always hope.
*This quote is from Entertainment Weekly Dec 26,2008 issue. It is written by Rick Moody in a tribute to late great author David Foster Wallace.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
A Little Levity
It's not all serious around here, so here's a little Friday fun at the Willis household.
The kids make gingerbread houses every year. They sit, in all their tempting, sugary, smelly glory in plain view of three kids who walk around for an entire month salivating every time they enter the living room. So when it was all over - the holidays - I gave permission for the little mice to nibble just a bit off the edge.
It didn't go well:
It reminded me very much of this house that got hit by a tornado that came through here last spring.
For Christmas, my eight-year-old picked out Lindt chocolate for each person in our family. My husband got a reindeer. I got a Santa. I started at the top. In typical fashion, my husband chose the funnier end. And when we went to wrap them up for another night, he decided it might be fun to mount the reindeer head. On Santa. So this is our new hybrid:
We are not entirely without culture, though. We did spend several days in D.C. doing cultural things, like seeing monuments and the Smithsonian. But even that showed our true colors.
Here's the kids and friends at the Roosevelt Memorial, joining the food lines:
Here's the boy holding up the Washington Monument. He gets his strength from his dad.
This one involves some explanation. The boy got a ski mask for Christmas - it was one of his few requests. His face gets cold at recess, he said. So he wore it around D.C. while the rest of us worried we'd get pulled over for harboring a terrorist. At the Jefferson Memorial he was goofing off with his sister... they were totally laughing and pulling each other on the bench, and I snapped the photo. The one where it looks like my terrorist son is strangling his sister.
Yeah, this one's gonna be used as blackmail at some point.
Just trying to keep it real.
Have a great weekend!
The kids make gingerbread houses every year. They sit, in all their tempting, sugary, smelly glory in plain view of three kids who walk around for an entire month salivating every time they enter the living room. So when it was all over - the holidays - I gave permission for the little mice to nibble just a bit off the edge.
It didn't go well:
It reminded me very much of this house that got hit by a tornado that came through here last spring.
For Christmas, my eight-year-old picked out Lindt chocolate for each person in our family. My husband got a reindeer. I got a Santa. I started at the top. In typical fashion, my husband chose the funnier end. And when we went to wrap them up for another night, he decided it might be fun to mount the reindeer head. On Santa. So this is our new hybrid:
We are not entirely without culture, though. We did spend several days in D.C. doing cultural things, like seeing monuments and the Smithsonian. But even that showed our true colors.
Here's the kids and friends at the Roosevelt Memorial, joining the food lines:
Here's the boy holding up the Washington Monument. He gets his strength from his dad.
This one involves some explanation. The boy got a ski mask for Christmas - it was one of his few requests. His face gets cold at recess, he said. So he wore it around D.C. while the rest of us worried we'd get pulled over for harboring a terrorist. At the Jefferson Memorial he was goofing off with his sister... they were totally laughing and pulling each other on the bench, and I snapped the photo. The one where it looks like my terrorist son is strangling his sister.
Yeah, this one's gonna be used as blackmail at some point.Just trying to keep it real.
Have a great weekend!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Shack
I don't do book reviews often. Rarely, actually. And never a fiction book. Not that I don't love reading other's opinions of a book, but I hate to draw judgments on writing that is so completely subjective. What I may dislike, obviously someone liked and saw not only redeeming value in but also "loved it," "connected with it," or whatever it is that agents and publishers need to take on an author's work.
But this isn't really a book review. It's about a book I read.
I'd heard of The Shack for months. Every time I turned around, it seemed, someone was asking if I'd read it. During an email exchange, one of my fantastic critique partners offered to mail me her copy. It arrived the day Jean died. When I pulled it out of the envelope, the German airmail postage stamped days before when she was alive and well, I knew it would be a different book than had I read it two weeks before.
And it was.
I think this is what I learned about books this week: a book so often is not just what the author writes, but what you as a reader bring to it. Passages that would have meant nothing to me weeks ago were heavy with meaning, passages I read over and over, sometimes trying to figure out in my head, and sometimes causing me to say "Yes! That's exactly what I think too!"
The Shack, if you haven't heard about it, is a book about a man whose daughter is brutally murdered. Weighed by depression, he receives an invitation in the mail from God to meet him at the very shack where his daughter was killed. The vast majority of this book is this meeting of the main character and God, and working through the questions all people face at some point in life: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? How can we trust - even love - a God who allows the innocent to suffer?
This book is sold as fiction. It is fiction. But much of it actually reads as theology. It took me much longer to read through this 248 page book than most fiction books, mainly because of the stretches of theological conversations that range from the way the trinity works to forgiveness. There is an entire Bible packed into this book, in a very non-conventional way. And if you want to get something out of it, or even "get it," you need to take your time wading through it. Take time to ponder, to dwell in the ideas and siphon them through your own biases and experiences.
It may not be the book for someone not interested in spiritual issues, but for anyone who has wrestled with faith, with God, with the idea of church and religion as an institution, this book may make you take a new look at it all. And spark controversy.
When God shows up as a large black lady and says, "I'm not too fond of religion," you know there will be outrage among some readers. But it's this very kind of twist on the world view of Christianity that makes this book alive and something unique. And all without really leaving the truth of the Bible, even if it does eschew tradition.
But like I said, this book is as much about what you bring to it as what it brings to you. In the face of recent tragedy, I found myself dwelling on certain parts of conversations more than others, like this one:
"Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors."
Two weeks ago, would I have stopped over that line and reread it? Would I have marked the page, come back to it days later?
Maybe if I read the book again, in a few months, it will mean something else to me, will flow with the something elses that are going on in my life. But I will have to keep wondering, because now it's time to pass it on to the next writer in my critique group. That was the deal.
A Writer Reads A Writer's Speech
I came across the neatest speech while hunting for a quote and just wanted to link it here, since it's the kind of thing any writer should read, but most won't ever know about.
It's a speech given by Connie Willis, a many-times honored science fiction writer, given when she was the 2006 Worldcon Guest of Honor. It is about how she came to love reading, and eventually writing, and the specific books that influenced her and, in many ways, changed her life.
Many of the things she talks about are probably common to most writers, but one thing in particular connected with me, and with where I am in my life at this very moment. Here is a good chunk of what she says:
When I was 12, my mother died suddenly and shatteringly, and my world fell completely apart, and I had nobody to turn to but books.
what I needed,
what I wanted,
what I loved
in books
when I couldn't find it anywhere else.
Before even reading this speech I have been thinking of this very thing. When my friend died this past month, I heard those sentiments - "There is a reason for this" - and I thought that was baloney. God can make something good come out of this, but there isn't anything in the Bible that says he causes it for some reason. Allowing some 17 year old the free will to choose to do right or wrong and allowed him to pull out a gun and shoot doesn't mean he wanted Jean to die, or intended her to die. It doesn't mean he isn't in control. It just means he allows people to choose what path they will take in life, and because of that, there are consequences. Sometimes terrible ones.
I'm not saying I understand why, but I think that's the point, too. We don't understand. And maybe it doesn't make sense.
At the funeral the priest said not to question why it happened because that could only lead to doubt and despair. I disagree. I think that there probably wasn't one person in that church looking at the caskets of Jim and Jean Smith not wondering why God allowed them to be murdered in their own home in broad daylight. And we were all bound together, many of us strangers to each other, in that feeling. Yet, in the intensity of the moment, we can't put into words what our heart is feeling, and conversation is awkward.
Then I come home and read a book, and there is someone who shares my feelings, who experiences that pain, who deals with similar situations and comes out the other side. I have found someone who lets me cry without trying to make me feel better, and yet who does all the same. There is a character who speaks with the grace I can't, and the wisdom I want. There is communion and catharsis.
I felt very strongly when I wrote my last book that the main character's faith be that kind of strong. On the surface, when facing the death of her child, her church thinks her faith is weak, because she doesn't believe God will heal Ashley. But in reality, her faith is the opposite. God is not at our whim, to do what we think is right. And sometimes, even though we don't understand why, he allows bad things to happen. He doesn't cause them. But he lets them come into our lives. And it's then he begins to work in our hearts.
This is all not really what the speech is about. It's about books, and how important they are, not just to entertain and provide escape but to shape us, to speak to us. And in her words, Connie Willis spoke to me, if only to give voice to those things in my heart I couldn't find the way to say.
It's a speech given by Connie Willis, a many-times honored science fiction writer, given when she was the 2006 Worldcon Guest of Honor. It is about how she came to love reading, and eventually writing, and the specific books that influenced her and, in many ways, changed her life.
Many of the things she talks about are probably common to most writers, but one thing in particular connected with me, and with where I am in my life at this very moment. Here is a good chunk of what she says:
When I was 12, my mother died suddenly and shatteringly, and my world fell completely apart, and I had nobody to turn to but books.
And they saved my life.
I know what you're thinking, that books provided an escape for me.
And it's certainly true books can offer refuge from worries and despair--
... But it wasn't escape I needed when my mother died.
It was the truth.
And I couldn't get anyone to tell it to me.
Instead, they said things like:
"There's a reason this happened,"Lies, all lies.
and "You'll get over this,"
and "God never sends us more than we can bear."
I remember an aunt saying sagely, "The good die young," not exactly a motivation to behave yourself.
And more than one person telling me, "It's all part of God's plan," I remember thinking, even at age 12, What kind of moron is God? I could come up with a better plan than this.
And the worst lie of all, "It's for the best."
Everybody lied--relatives, clergymen, friends.
So it was a good thing I'd reached the D's because I had- James Agee's A Death in the Family
and Peter Beagle's A Fine and Private Place
and Peter DeVries' The Blood of the Lamb to tell me the truth.
And Margery Allingham said, "Mourning is not forgetting. It is an undoing. Every minute has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the past."
When I discovered science fiction a year later, Robert Sheckley said, "Never try to explain to yourselves why some things happen and why other things don't happen. Don't ask and don't imagine that an explanation exists. Get it?"
And Bob Shaw's "The Light of Other Days"
and John Crowley's "Snow"
and Tom Godwin
taught me everything there is to know about death
and memory
and the cold equations.
But there were also hopeful messages in those books.
"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead," Thornton Wilder said, "and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."I found what I was looking for,And Dorothy, in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, said, "Never give up. You never know what's going to happen next."
"If you look for truth," C.S. Lewis wrote, "You may find comfort in the end. If you look for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
what I needed,
what I wanted,
what I loved
in books
when I couldn't find it anywhere else.
Francie and the public library and books saved my life.
And taught me the most important lesson books have to teach.
"You think your pains and your heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world," James Baldwin says, "but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me where the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive."
Before even reading this speech I have been thinking of this very thing. When my friend died this past month, I heard those sentiments - "There is a reason for this" - and I thought that was baloney. God can make something good come out of this, but there isn't anything in the Bible that says he causes it for some reason. Allowing some 17 year old the free will to choose to do right or wrong and allowed him to pull out a gun and shoot doesn't mean he wanted Jean to die, or intended her to die. It doesn't mean he isn't in control. It just means he allows people to choose what path they will take in life, and because of that, there are consequences. Sometimes terrible ones.
I'm not saying I understand why, but I think that's the point, too. We don't understand. And maybe it doesn't make sense.
At the funeral the priest said not to question why it happened because that could only lead to doubt and despair. I disagree. I think that there probably wasn't one person in that church looking at the caskets of Jim and Jean Smith not wondering why God allowed them to be murdered in their own home in broad daylight. And we were all bound together, many of us strangers to each other, in that feeling. Yet, in the intensity of the moment, we can't put into words what our heart is feeling, and conversation is awkward.
Then I come home and read a book, and there is someone who shares my feelings, who experiences that pain, who deals with similar situations and comes out the other side. I have found someone who lets me cry without trying to make me feel better, and yet who does all the same. There is a character who speaks with the grace I can't, and the wisdom I want. There is communion and catharsis.
I felt very strongly when I wrote my last book that the main character's faith be that kind of strong. On the surface, when facing the death of her child, her church thinks her faith is weak, because she doesn't believe God will heal Ashley. But in reality, her faith is the opposite. God is not at our whim, to do what we think is right. And sometimes, even though we don't understand why, he allows bad things to happen. He doesn't cause them. But he lets them come into our lives. And it's then he begins to work in our hearts.
This is all not really what the speech is about. It's about books, and how important they are, not just to entertain and provide escape but to shape us, to speak to us. And in her words, Connie Willis spoke to me, if only to give voice to those things in my heart I couldn't find the way to say.
Monday, January 5, 2009
I Heart Your Blog Nominees
Before Christmas break I was honored with the I Heart Your Blog award. I should have immediately shot out this post. Instead, I waited, and now nearly every blog I read has the award. It's a small blogosphere!
I wanted to award all writers, the way Kimberly Derting did when she gave this badge of honor to me, but most of my favorite author blogs already have the stamp of love. (Sadly, despite my husband's belief that I am blogging allllllll the time, I actually only have a few very passionate reads daily, some of whom are personal friends with more personal interest blogs). This will be a more eclectic list, I'm afraid.
So, here are the “official” rules:
1) Add the logo of your award to your blog.
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog.
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.
Numbers 1 and 2: Done. Number 3 I am breaking, although not for lack of trying to find seven great, uninitiated blogs. There are a few personal friends I read that I'm not tagging here, mostly because I don't think they'd want to go through this process and find seven new ones of their own. (I still think you're great though! I do heart your blogs!!)
So with no further ado, here are my choices:
Miss Snark's First Victim Not one particular writer, but a collection of them... a veritable community of writers whose personalities are as big as their talents. They critique, they contest, they share, they write awesome Christmas songs.... and best of all - anyone can join in!
2009 Debutantes (A Feast of Awesome) Kimberly Derting turned me on to this great blog of debut authors. I love that they are both just a step away from where I am, and yet on the other side of a great big chasm. This is a new blog for me, but I've already loved getting to know these awesome debutantes.
Patricia Wood Aboard SV Orion I actually read Pat's book Lottery before I read her blog, which made it all the more amazing that she was so real and human and wonderful! If you comment, she replies. If you email, she emails back. She has a terrific sense of humor, and some awesome photography on her blog (hey, she lives on a boat in Hawaii... she better post photos!). And she has a very interesting cat...
Moose In the Kitchen Moose is the only one on my list not clamoring to get published, but her blog is publish-worthy. She writes about her life, the day in and day out, with incredible honesty and a fantastic sense of very wry humor.
Sue Seeger - Sue, like me, is a writer without an agent yet, with high hopes for a great 2009, a fun-looking family, and cool insights into a variety of topics. I first got to know Sue by her regular commenting on my other friend blogs. I hope, this year, to get to be her friend, too.
So there you have it. I'm off to let them know. And the rest of you - if I could give you two awards I would!
Sunday, January 4, 2009
I'm baaaaaaa-aaaack!
I should have thrown up my snowman out-of-office shingle last week and just admitted I wouldn't blog over the break. Instead, I thought I'd manage to get out a few posts here and there between company and Christmas and a funeral and all that holiday cheer. Unfortunately, I sunk into a bit of a funk during the holidays and staring at the blank screen on the computer was about all the accomplishment I could muster. That, and a few lackluster games of Pathwords and Word Twist on facebook.
The fact is, Jean's death struck pretty hard, and despite trying to keep busy and make Christmas something special for my family, that event seemed to follow me. No matter where my body was, my mind was in that house, imagining what had happened. In the middle of conversations, my voice trailed off and without knowing it, I suddenly was thinking about it. It was everywhere.
Where we ate on Christmas Eve, I found myself facing a window overlooking the restaurant Jean and I last ate at, staring at the parking lot where we last hugged goodbye and promised to get together again after the new year.
On the radio, Billy Joel came on, the song she used to sing all the time around me - used to write around our pictures in the yearbook: Only the Good Die Young.
In a box in my storage closet while digging around for photos to scan, I found a pile of letters she wrote to me when I was at college... I didn't even remember her even writing me while I was there.
It all became overwhelming, this everywhere-I-turn thing. And busy didn't help.
Until New Years Eve, when I was preparing for company, and filling the time with all the things I thought needed to get done. Cleaning, new sheets, food prep, laundry... busy busy busy...
until the winds blew out a power line and we found ourselves with no electricity. No water. No way to clean, or cook, or shower or vacuum. And the house quickly got very, very cold. So all five us dug out a bunch of blankets and snuggled down on two couches downstairs and read. Two blissful hours of reading guilt free.
It was, for lack of a better description, soul-soothing. It was the start of healing for me.
Later this week, I'll write about that book I read, along with another author's reflections on how reading saved her life when her mother died.
I'll also post my I Heart Your Blog Awards, two weeks late (some things about me never change). I have great plans for a New Years Resolution post (which I promise will not mention a word of dieting or losing weight but will involve books.... lots of books), some more reflections on Jean and faith, updates on queries and my publishing progress, possible stories about guitar hero and falling down the stairs. And if you are really lucky, a photo or two of what happens when a gingerbread house meets Wizard-of-Oz-like winds (or Hansel and Gretel.. you decide!) You won't want to miss a word.
Goodbye 2008. No offense or anything, but I'm glad to be moving on.
The fact is, Jean's death struck pretty hard, and despite trying to keep busy and make Christmas something special for my family, that event seemed to follow me. No matter where my body was, my mind was in that house, imagining what had happened. In the middle of conversations, my voice trailed off and without knowing it, I suddenly was thinking about it. It was everywhere.
Where we ate on Christmas Eve, I found myself facing a window overlooking the restaurant Jean and I last ate at, staring at the parking lot where we last hugged goodbye and promised to get together again after the new year.
On the radio, Billy Joel came on, the song she used to sing all the time around me - used to write around our pictures in the yearbook: Only the Good Die Young.
In a box in my storage closet while digging around for photos to scan, I found a pile of letters she wrote to me when I was at college... I didn't even remember her even writing me while I was there.
It all became overwhelming, this everywhere-I-turn thing. And busy didn't help.
Until New Years Eve, when I was preparing for company, and filling the time with all the things I thought needed to get done. Cleaning, new sheets, food prep, laundry... busy busy busy...
until the winds blew out a power line and we found ourselves with no electricity. No water. No way to clean, or cook, or shower or vacuum. And the house quickly got very, very cold. So all five us dug out a bunch of blankets and snuggled down on two couches downstairs and read. Two blissful hours of reading guilt free.
It was, for lack of a better description, soul-soothing. It was the start of healing for me.
Later this week, I'll write about that book I read, along with another author's reflections on how reading saved her life when her mother died.
I'll also post my I Heart Your Blog Awards, two weeks late (some things about me never change). I have great plans for a New Years Resolution post (which I promise will not mention a word of dieting or losing weight but will involve books.... lots of books), some more reflections on Jean and faith, updates on queries and my publishing progress, possible stories about guitar hero and falling down the stairs. And if you are really lucky, a photo or two of what happens when a gingerbread house meets Wizard-of-Oz-like winds (or Hansel and Gretel.. you decide!) You won't want to miss a word.
Goodbye 2008. No offense or anything, but I'm glad to be moving on.
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