The Delights of Reading

 I confess, I have no idea what my boys and my husband are talking about sometimes. They quote movie lines at me and well, I'm just not a movie person. However, if someone reads a quote from a book I've read I'm likely going to be able to say who said it lickitty split.

Right now I'm exploring the delights of Flavia De Luce in Alan Bradley's mystery series. This precocious young girl has bewitched me with some potion or other that she's concocted in her Uncle Tar's laboratory!

I love books. I devour them. A good thick novel with a great plot and it's a two night festival of tension, suspense, plot thickening ecstasy. When I meet someone who says they don't like to read, the first thing I want to do is convince them how much they're missing!


As far back as I can remember books have been a daily part of my life. From fairy tales to laying in bed with my mom reading The Bobsey Twins and then on to The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew - books have taken me on adventures I could never have dreamed. As a teenager I took a detour through Romance, and in my young adult years I sidelined into Sidney Sheldon and the such, but Lord of the Rings took me into serious fantasy and Brother Cadfael gave me a Morbid Taste for Bones.

When we moved four times in the last four years, my husband remarked that I needed to get rid of some of my books. I told him he would get rid of some of his old DVD's before any book left my possession. When I ran out of bookshelves, it wasn't time to thin my collection out - it was time to buy new bookshelves.

In 2012 I started enjoying the pleasure of rereading some older series of books. I finished Ellis Peter's Cadfael mysteries and then moved on to Anne Perry's Pitt and Monk series. It's like meeting up with old friends and reminiscing about old times. It is a treasure to own books and be able to read them again and again. I've lost count of the number of times I've read my Jane Austen collection.





All of this is to say that without books my desire to write would not have been nurtured, watered and fed. A good writer reads and reads and reads some more. I'm sure many writers reading this post will agree with me that reading was their first love. Writing flowed from that well of creativity brought about by being immersed in another land, another time and place.

I have to be careful, though. Reading can sometimes take the place of writing. I get all tangled up in the mystery and suspense I can't stop. Series are even worse because then you have to have the next one and the next...


Balance. That's the key.






Kathie is a writer who happens 
to be working as a Salvation Army
Officer right now in Richmond, BC.

www.kathiechiu.com

Don't Be Too Cool - Arends

A Word to Those Who Create Stories:

There is a tremendous fascination with the anti-hero in literature and media these days, to the point that noble characters are often dismissed outright as one-dimensionally nostalgic. A word to all you writers out there: Do not grow weary in creating good, or at least in creating protagonists who are capable of redemptive choices. Here is some encouragement from the brilliant novelist Mark Helprin:

A lot of people hate heroes. I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool.

Be truthful about the ruinious effects of Original Sin, by all means. But don't be so cool you miss chances to infuse your work with the shimmering realities of Original Grace. 

May God bless the work of your hands,
Carolyn Arends



www.carolynarends.com
www.feedthelake.com

Death of the Novel - Wright

The Globe and Mail review section reported recently on the poor sales Booker fiction nominees have garnered. For the last few years we’ve been hearing much about ‘the death of the novel’. Could it be true? Probably not, given the phenomenal sales of the Harry Potter series and The Da Vinci Code.

Perhaps the reading public is just weary of ploughing through books trumpeted by literary critics. Readers have told me lately of their disillusionment with many modern novels. When queried further they often point out what caused them to let their current reading projects gather dust. They often turn their guns on ‘literary fiction’.

Many complain of trying to keep track of too many characters. Some writers introduce a plethora of people right in the first few chapters. Other novelists bring in a new character in every chapter, or in alternate chapters. Readers have to keep going back to check on who was who. Confusion results.

Other readers express disillusionment with the prevalence of dark stories. Tales of child abuse and rape. Bullying. Wildly dysfunctional families. Serial killers galore. Small towns hiding terrible secrets. Are there no ‘normal’ people left on planet earth, normal but interesting? True, evil exists. But . . .

In an attempt to gain a following, many of today’s novelists seem to be ever on the search for some novel literary device—as if there was anything new under the sun. Many stories project complicated flashbacks, changes of scene or point of view. Where are the stories of one main protagonist that move from A to Z in a linear progression?

What about unbelievable scenarios? The antagonist with a scheme to blast the earth out of orbit, or threaten the globe with some new pandemic. The discovery of some deadly new weapon or the release of some ghastly animal mutation. Then there are the novelists who posit some revolutionary discovery that proves that Jesus never existed, that the Christian faith is based on a lie or that the Vatican hides deadly secrets. Far fetched plots have become too legion to be novel.

Other readers complain that too many novels have no redemptive element. They are not just looking for the traditional fairy tale ending, but at least some change, some growth in the characters.

Then again, there are all the edgy novels that press the boundaries of good taste. Insisting on reality, these writers pour into their depictions anything that is thought by polite society as gross. Eroticism runs wild. Swearing abounds.

Have I heard readers right? Obviously a great variety of tastes in literature exist. But personally, I believe that the novel is not dead but slumbering awaiting those writers who will give us good old fashioned stories again.