Loitering with Intent by Stuart Woods

My

reviewrating: 3 of 5 stars
Stuart Woods continues to have a very readable writing style. In each new book, however, the clever, flippant, catchy dialog has become even more clever, flippant, and catchy. His sex scenes have become cruder with each new book published as well. Neither of these developments are improvements.

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Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King

The Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King

rating: 4 of 5 stars

The strength of this book is in the character development. There is negligible plot; and a number of dead-end avenues open up many possibilities but little resolution. Fifty pages into the book I started to skim-read in preparation for abandoning the book. However, a couple of the characters had begun to intrigue me, and I continued to read to see what would happen in their lives. By the end of the book, I had become so involved with the SSGs that I finished the reading and regretfully closed the book leaving these new friends behind.


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Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
I tried hard to find this book interesting -- after all it WAS a bestseller! I trudged on for a couple of days, finally skip-read highlights every few pages, then gave up and put it in the bag to take back to the used book store. The style was just very tedius, too much detail, too much description, too much angst, too much.... Not enough action, not enough interesting characters, not enough story....


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Fathers Day 2009

This Fathers Day I am especially thankful for:

1. My father. I do not take for granted the wonderful life-boost I received just because I was born of such a loving, responsible, respected and respectable, fun-loving, family-committed, Christian man.2. My childrens' father. A mother loves her children and tries to bring them up to be resourceful, responsible, content and contributing members of society, but it is not easily a one-person job. The success of the effort is doubled and certainly made more enjoyable by the support of a firmly-committed partner. I have had such a partner.

3. My grandchildrens' fathers. I am blessed with an outstanding son who learned his fathering skills at the feet of the masters, his father and grandfather. I am blessed with a son-in-law whose family-centered lifestyle was taught by loving Christian parents. These two outstanding young Christian fathers are passing along strong Christian values and raising 6 of our future world leaders.

4. The fathers of my nieces and nephews. Thank you Gil, Terry, Ron, Gregg, Chuck, and David! What a roll-call of virtues that list presents! These six men are at least half responsible for the outstanding generation of twenty-somethings (and some amazing thirty- and forty-somethings) in our family!

5. The fathers of my grandnieces and grandnephews. Gil Jr, Jack, Steven, and Josh - thanks to you another generation continues to develop. As your job continues, I hope, and pray, that you will find inspiration and guidance from the fathers who have gone before you - many of the greatest of whom are mentioned above! Those wonderful children you have sired deserve the very best efforts you can make to pass along life values that will help them be secure and successful.

6..... Lots of other fathers who have been the kind of men who can be admired and emulated. I think of .....several coaches who have showed children in our family the importance of practice and teamwork....several pastors and church youth directors who have helped guide young people to develop into moral citizens with unshakable principles....neighbors whose example have inspired children to be their best....cousins, fathers-of-friends, uncles.......

Our family has been blessed with more than its share of good, strong, Christian examples of masculinity!!

__._,_.___

More Good Reading

I have struck gold! Last month I mined out and read eight or ten of the best pieces of fiction that I have read in years. The two books I have read this week are right in the same vein.

I just finished Elizabeth Berg's Never Change and Leif Enger's Peace Like a River.

Never Change was on the NY Times Bestseller list in 2001; that's how it ended up in my reading pile last time I visited the bookstore. In this novel, Ms Berg drew some enduringly memorable characters. Again (as I noted about my recent reading in my last post) the theme revolved around love. The range of related emotions experienced by the reader as he/she identified with the well-drawn characters was immense. Sadness, Joy, Fear, Hope, Despair -- all of these are inextricably incorporated into the greater emotion of love; and the the reader is drawn into all of these as he/she experiences "second-chance" love with the main character, Myra.

This book is a highly emotional journey depicting how memory, background, societal expectations and learned responses impact relationships throughout a lifetime. The human need for vital connections with those around us has seldom been more clearly showcased as in this novel.

Peace Like a River was also a national bestseller in 2001. It was fabulous escape - one from which I reluctantly returned to daily life. Andrew Roe, of the San Francisco Chronicle, said that "Peace Like a River serves as a reminder of why we read fiction to begin with." Indeed. Not only did the story present a wonderful world in which to live for a time, it also told that story in a vivid language with a beauty of its own. To a lover of language, the style of the writing was poetry. The frequent literary references (to the Old Testament, to the Gospels, to the Old West, to earlier literature) enriched the story.

In addition to being a story of love, this novel is a story of redemption and faith. It is a story of miracles, family, and the miracle of family. This book deserves the over-used adjectives "poignant" and "significant."

Looking for Love

My reading during the past month seems to have revolved around a central theme. This was not planned. When I go to the used book store, I buy books that I know have been bestsellers or books by authors that I know to be good – or books that just look interesting. My last trip to the bookstore just happened to result in these selections – among others:

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, a bestseller in 2000
The Shack by Wm Paul Young, a bestseller in 2007
Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos, published in 2005
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, a best seller in 2005
Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult, published in 1995
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult, a Best seller in 04

All of these books have appealed to a large audience, in part I believe, because people identify so strongly with the human need for love and affirmation. Of course, the search for love is a common thread in all forms of literature; but it is an especially-strong thread running through each of these recently-read books.

The Secret Life of Bees was a very strange book that held my attention most of the time (but, in my opinion, would have been improved by shortening its length by half.) The effectively-drawn characters and storyline drew a poignant picture of children’s indisputable yearning for the guidance and love of a parent. The reader comes away feeling warmed by the knowledge that family is built by loving actions rather than just heredity and physical relationship. The role of “Mother” in a child’s life is shown to be vital to development, happiness, and productive adulthood. Regardless of the reader’s feelings about his/her own mother, that message revives childhood memories and thoughts about one’s own development into adulthood.

The Shack was also a very unusual book about love. In its unusual context, it clearly illustrated the universal human search for the love and acceptance of God. Readers relate to this author’s portrayal of a character who wants to know and enjoy the love of God even though that love has often been misrepresented to him through society and tradition. Knowing God and basking in his love comes from relationship. The reader comes to see that God’s love is not found in following religious traditions but in being in relationship with God throughout life.

Love Walked In – a simple love story in many ways – also gained its readership because of its multi-faceted approach to the portrayal of the ‘search for love’. While one of the viewpoint characters searches for and finds romantic and creative love, she also, at the same time, finds parental and familial love. As her life intertwines with that of the other viewpoint character, a child who feels deprived of nurturing, each finds fulfillment as she provides for the needs of the other. One of the big attractions of this book for readers is the message that true and unselfish friendship is usually the seed from which other forms of love grow.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards was a best seller in 2005. Recovery from rejection, the long-term consequences of building a life on lies, and other issues related to feeling unloved and misunderstood in life’s significant relationships – readers identify with characters who are dealing with these issues.

Both of Jodi Picoult’s books that I have read this month deal with the search for love too. The plots of Picture Perfect and My Sister's Keeper revolve around controversial societal issues, but the theme of both is that every individual has an inborn need to be affirmed and loved for his/her individual personality. Characters who seemingly have every reason to be happy with their lives are willing to sacrifice their very way of life in order to ascertain for themselves that their “significant others” truly love them in spite of and because of their particular strengths and weaknesses. The need for affirmation and love is the driving force in their lives – as it is in the lives of the readers who have made these books bestsellers.

Happy People

We all claim to want to be happy; but some folks seem to work hard at being unhappy. I recently read a book on the secrets of happy people. This particular hint made sense to me:

Don't accept television's picture of the world.

Aint it the truth!? Judging from what one sees on the screen, a viewer would come to the conclusion that everybody in the world is very wealthy. Society as a whole is now living in frustration because people believe that they are being denied the almost universal wealth that seems to be the domain of everybody else. Much of the unhappiness that we see around us is the result of people not being able to separate what they see on TV from what they know to be real. Happy people base expectations on reality, not on the fiction presented on TV. According to Social Indicators Research ("Separating People's Satisfaction with Life and Public Perceptions of the Quality of Life in the Environment" by Jeffres and Dobbs in 1995)

"Television changes our view of the world and can encourage us to develop highly unrealistic and often damaging conclusiions that serve to reduce our life satisfaction by up to 50%."