Book Review: C. S. Lewis Letters to Children

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I rediscovered C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, on my bookshelf when I was trying to rearrange the books to make room for more. I had forgotten I even had it and had never read it, so I decided to save it for Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge this month.

The book was published after Lewis’s lifetime: my copy was published in 1985, about 20 years after Lewis’s death, but I am not sure if that is when it was first published. It’s a short book: 114 pages not counting the bibliographies at the back. The book opens with a forward by Doug Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, a brief introduction, and a short overview of Lewis’s childhood. The editors note that the letters are only representative samples: there were way too many to include all, and many of them answer the same questions.

What the editors don’t say is how they obtained the letters. He wrote most of them “in longhand with a dip-pen and ink” (p. 4), telling a correspondent in one of the letters, “You can drive a typewriter, which I could no more drive than a locomotive (I’d sooner drive the locomotive too)” (p. 77) (fascinating article on other reasons why he did not use a typewriter is here). Did he make carbon copies, or did some of the correspondents send their letters back to his estate? We’re not told, but we are told that “Originals or photocopies of the letters in this book are housed in either the Marion E. Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Illinois, or the Bodleian Library, Oxford” (. 7).

When reading the Narnia series, I have often marveled that a man with the education and brainpower Lewis had, and with so little real-life experience with children, could communicate so effectively with them. He’s neither condescending or cloying. In “On Writing to Children,” Lewis said, “The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man.” That same perspective is reflected in his letters.

Many of the children’s letters ask about the Narnia series: questions about specific characters, when the next book would be out, why wasn’t he going to write more than seven, etc. Some of them carried on regular correspondence with him for years (as many as twenty years in one case), sending him pictures they made or bits of their own writing, which he critiqued honestly. Most are very short and to the point. One of the longest and most touching was to the mother of a boy who had written to him because the boy was afraid he loved Aslan more than Jesus.

Sometimes he shares just a glimpse of his home life and responsibilities: when the people he was caring for had problems, when his wife was ill, when he himself was ill. On a sad note, to his goddaughter, a few months after his wife died: “I couldn’t come to the wedding, my dear. I haven’t the pluck. Any wedding, for reasons you know, would turn me inside out now” (p. 94). And a funny one: “I’ve been having a…cyst lanced on the back of my neck: the most serious result is that I can never at present get my whole head & shoulders under water in my bath. (I like getting down like a Hippo with only my nostrils out)” (p. 37).

Assorted notes and quotes:

When one girl wanted to know Aslan’s “other name,” he didn’t tell her directly but gave her several clues.
When one girl questioned why the Pevensie children grow up in Narnia but are still children in our world: “I feel sure I am right to make them grow up in Narnia. Of course they will grow up in this world too. You’ll see. You see, I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12: so I don’t feel it very odd that they grow up in Narnia while they are children in England” (p. 34).
He tells several that the books are not an allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress in which everything represents something. They’re a “supposing” of what it might be like if there was another world with people that needed saving and Jesus came in the form of a lion rather than a man. “Reepiceep and Nick-i-brick don’t, in that sense, represent anyone. But of course anyone who devotes his whole life to seeking Heaven will be like Reepicheep, and anyone who wants some worldly thing so badly that he is ready to use wicked means to get it will be likely to behave like Nick-i-brick” (p. 45).
A bit of humor: “I never saw a picture of a baby shower before. I had to put up my umbrella to look at it” (p. 47).
On what happened to Susan: “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end–in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense'” (p. 67).
“A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it’s idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc) can do the journey on their own!” (p. 72).
“American university teachers have told me that most of their freshmen come from schools where the standard was far too low and therefore think themselves far better than they really are. This means that they lose heart (and their tempers too) when told, as they have to be told, their real level” (p. 84).
“You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort. At present it only encourages you to write prose not so good as your ordinary prose and type it like verse. Sorry to be a pig!” (p. 87).
When asked which of his books he liked best: Till We Have Faces (though he felt it “attracted less attention than any book I ever wrote,” p. 107) and Perelandra (p. 95).
He often closed his notes by asking them to pray for him.

I loved this window into Lewis’s life and thinking.

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Book Review: City of Tranquil Light

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I’ve had City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell on my TBR list for a while now, at least ever since seeing Sherry’s review. When I needed a new audiobook to listen to and had finished my Classics challenge, I was reminded of this book.

Though the story is loosely based on the author’s grandparents, it is fiction and incorporates elements from other people’s lives as well. It’s told in the first person from Will’s point of view, interspersed with sections from Katherine’s journal.

Will Kiehn was the son of a Mennonite farmer in Oklahoma in the early 1900s whose only plan was to continue the farming he loved. But when he was twenty-one, a friend of the family who was a missionary to China came through, visiting various churches on furlough. When he preached, Will felt “found out” and could hardly speak at dinner. When their guest, Edward, spoke of China at their table, he “could not look away.” When asked if he might consider going to China, Will’s siblings laughed because he “was the least likely to leave,” not good at public speaking, “quiet and shy” and “not a good student.” He felt he hadn’t “‘any training or gifts of that kind.’ Edward said, ‘The Giver of those gifts may feel otherwise…A torch’s one qualification is that it be fitted to the master’s hand. God’s chosen are often not talented or wise or gifted as the world judges. Our Lord sees what is inside and that is why He calls whom He does.'”

Will wrestled with these truths for a few days and finally surrendered. “Despite the fact that it would mean leaving what I loved most in the world, I felt not the sadness and dread I had expected but a sense of freedom and release. The tightness in me loosened like a cut cord, and I was joyful.”

He was so green that when he set out to return with Edward a few weeks later, he had given no thought at all to finances. His mother foresaw that and gave him traveling funds. There was no deputation: I assume the mission paid missionaries’ salaries.

A few other recruits sailed with Will and Edward, among them Edward’s sister-in-law, Katherine. She only saw Will as a boy, “clumsy,” “awkward,” and “bothersome,” but her brother-in-law’s excitement about him “makes me believe there must be more to this Will than I can see.” On the voyage and then during their first months in China, they began to appreciate qualities about each other, and their love story is tenderly told.

After they marry, they travel to Kuang P’ing Ch’eng— City of Tranquil Light — to start a church. Theirs is not a story of giant super-heroes of the faith, but of quiet, ordinary people faithfully walking with God and working with Him, people with whom most readers could relate. The story of their first convert, his wife’s eventual coming to faith, and the birth and loss of their daughter, are all touchingly told. The beginning and growth of the church, laboring against superstition and anti-foreign sentiment, trials of bandits, famine, civil war, and the influx of Communism draw them close to the people and city they love.

A few standout quotes:

After the loss of their child and during a time her husband is missing, Katherine writes, “My faith feels tattered and threadbare and I am ashamed. What good is it if it does not see me through pain? But a scrap of faith is better than nothing, so I cling to it tightly.”

“I find myself questioning my Lord’s ways; I do not understand why He would place a longing in my heart that He doesn’t plan to fulfill. But whys don’t get me anywhere; they just lead me around in circles. So I pray I can accept this painful lack, and if my prayers are half-hearted, I know they are still heard” (pp. 157-158).

During famine, Will is asked:

“Why do you stay with us here when you could so easily go to your home and eat your fill?”

“My home is here. And if my belly were full but my heart empty, what would I gain?”

“Ah,” he said. “It is a marvel nonetheless for a foreign-born to endure our pain” (p. 166).

In an encounter with an enemy solider:

“You preach the man Jesus, do you not?”

“I do.”

“Are you not aware that what is well suited to you may be ill adapted to others?”

“I am…but it is not a question of what is suited to me. It is a question of obeying my God and passing on what has been given to me. I would be remiss if I kept it to myself.”

“You believe it is your duty to impose that truth on other nations?”

“Not to impose it, sir, like a law. To share it like a gift, freely given” (p. 202).

Though fiction, the book rings true with other missionary stories I’ve read from the era, especially Rosalind Goforth’s Goforth of China and Climbing, even to describing how the curiosity of the people at first led them to wet their fingers and touch the paper windows, making a peephole through which they could observe the foreigners and their strange ways.

Not long ago I came upon the term “quiet fiction” – Jan Karon’s Mitford books would be an example. It’s not that there are no climaxes or suspense or tension or emotions: there are plenty. But the purpose of the story is the relationships, not razzle-dazzle plot twists. I think that term describes this book as well. The audiobook I listened to was nicely read by Bronson Pinchot, who echoed the quietness of the narration. I checked out a hardback copy from the library to reread certain spots.

In trying to find out a little more about the author, I found the Wikipedia article on her maddeningly short. But I found a couple of interviews with her here and here that I greatly enjoyed.

I wouldn’t agree with every little point in the book theologically, but I think I would on the bigger issues. I loved the story: I loved how it was related: I am going to miss Will, Katherine, Chung Hao, Mo Yun, and Hsiao Lao.

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Book Review: The Methusaleh Project

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Lately I seem to be catching up with books that were popular a year or two ago. Maybe that’s how long it takes for them to go on good sales for the Kindle. 🙂 At any rate, when The Methusaleh Project by Rick Barry came up as Kindle sale last year, I remembered seeing a number of favorable reviews about it, so I got it.

The first part of the book switches between two different story lines. In one, Captain Roger Greene is a US pilot flying on a mission in Nazi Germany in 1943. His plane is shot down and he is captured, but instead of being taken to a POW camp, he is taken to an underground bunker set up like a lab. He and six other captives are subjected to experiments by a Nazi doctor designed to accelerate the body’s healing and prolong life. If successful, the doctor will be able to to pass along this technology to the Nazi powers that be. When an Allied bomb destroys the building, the doctor, and all his research, as well as the six other captives, only Roger and the doctor’s assistant survive. The Nazi regime keeps Roger captive and sets up the doctor’s assistant in a new building to try to figure out what the doctor did to Roger so they can duplicate it.

The alternate story involves Katherine Mueller in Atlanta in 2015. Her parents died long ago and she was raised by her uncle. The major consideration in his life is the Heritage Organization, a secret society “aimed at challenging individuals to higher levels of achievement, improving the world with inventions and positive influences, then passing on a stronger heritage to the next generation.” He wants Katherine to move up the ranks in the organization, which involves excelling in marksmanship and field exercises involving tracking. She doesn’t know exactly what the organization does – only the higher-ups do – and it seems almost cultish to her sometimes. But her Uncle Kurt and both her parents were involved in it, and she trusts her uncle completely, so she wants to carry on the family tradition. Though she loves her uncle, she’s frustrated by his matchmaking involving only men from the organization, none of whom attracts her in any way.

I assumed these story lines would intersect at some point, though they were 70 years apart. And wow, did they ever! I won’t reveal how, but let’s just say this is the fastest I have read any book lately because I kept looking for opportunities to open it.

There were just a few speed bumps in the writing in the first part of the story, but I didn’t even note what they were except that Roger at first seemed beyond the stereotypical brash and breezy WWII American flyboy into something of a cliche in the first chapter or so. But that feeling dissolved pretty quickly, and it wasn’t long before I was totally wrapped up in the story, racing to see how the author would bring various elements together and whether some of my suspicions about some of the characters and the “organization” were accurate.

I’m not sure exactly how you’d classify this book. It’s part sci-fi, part historical fiction, part contemporary fiction, part action and suspense. It is Christian fiction: neither Roger nor Katherine are Christians at the beginning of the book. Roger has faint memories of a former Sunday School teacher encouraging him to pray, and he is given a Bible in captivity that long hours of inaction and desperation drive him to. I thought the author wove the faith element in quite naturally.

Overall – I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

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Book Review: Thin Places

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I don’t remember where or in what context I first heard of Mary DeMuth. I hadn’t read anything by her that I remember, but when I saw her book Thin Places: A Memoir on a Kindle sale, the name registered somehow, and I got it.

The title comes from a Celtic term for “a place where heaven and the physical world collide, one of those serendipitous territories where eternity and the mundane meet.” DeMuth uses it as a metaphor for “moments…when we sense God intersecting our world in tangible, unmistakable ways. They are aha moments, beautiful realizations, when the Son of God bursts through the hazy fog of our monotony and shines on us afresh.” “God woos me from behind the veil through the tragedies, beauties, simplicities, and snatches of my life I might overlook.”

It’s a wonder, with Mary’s upbringing, how she ever turned out with any sense of stability: she was raised by hippie-ish parents who regularly had friends over to get stoned, even passing their marijuana to her, had a series of step-fathers, was raped repeatedly at the age of 5 by neighbor teenage boys while supposedly under the care of a neglectful babysitter, suffered the loss of her father. All of this plus other circumstances made her feel unloved and unworthy and fueled a need for attention and approval and a fear of men.

She came to know Jesus as a teenager, some twenty-four years before the writing of this book, and sank down into His love and acceptance and cleansing. Yet some wounds heal slowly, and it took a long time of getting to know Him and His Word and walking with Him to transform her view of herself and others, a process still ongoing.

She wrote the book for several reasons: to help others feel they are not alone, to magnify God’s grace in saving and healing her, and to convey hope.

In the past I needed all the fragments of my life placed just so, like diamonds set in a tennis bracelet. The older I get, the more I see that Jesus wants me to trust Him for the missing pieces, the broken clasps, the counterfeit baubles–to relax in the unknowing, to be at peace with the tangles, to learn the art of living with mystery. He is more than capable of handling all my questions, and someday He will make things right.

I used to think that if God truly loved me, He’d give me everything I want, not realizing that getting everything I want will give me an idolatrous heart. And a meaningless life.

I would differ from Mary theologically in a few places, particularly in the area of tongues and visions, and a couple of places made me wince just a bit (“The grace of God is my Mary Jane,” a vision of Jesus “dancing like a crazy man” and offering her an invitation to join Him), though I know she didn’t mean them irreverently or disrespectfully.

But even though we would look at a few things in different ways, there is no denying the grace of God in her life and the way He has worked in and through her.

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Book Review: Pioneer Girl

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Before Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her first book in the Little House on the Prairie series, perhaps before she even thought of writing her story in that format, she wrote her family’s history out in a draft called Pioneer Girl on Big Chief tablets by hand. She gave it to her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an established, well-known author at the time, to edit and shape up for publication. They made several attempts to have it published as a non-fiction book for adults, with no success. But that’s just as well, because if it had been published as it was, we likely would not have the Little House series.

Laura could not have known, when her first book was published in 1932, that years later people would diligently seek out information about her family, visit her family homes, try to discern fact from fiction, and have debates over whether she or her daughter wrote most of the books. To deal with some of these issues and bring Laura’s first book to light, Pamela Smith Hill edited and annotated Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, which I am sure will be the definitive source on everything Laura Ingalls Wilder for years to come.

Hill did an amazingly through job. There are footnotes concerning every single person mentioned in the book all the way down to the flowers Laura referred to and the kind of crabs that nipped at Nellie Oleson’s toes. But my favorite notes are the ones that cite correspondence between Laura and Rose about the book or tell how an incident was phrased or expanded upon in the different manuscripts and the Little House books.

I mentioned the debate about authorship: some scholars (both professional and armchair) feel that Laura wrote the text and Rose just edited it for print and used her contacts to get the first book published. Others feel that Rose was basically a ghost-writer for the series, and, though the main story is Laura’s, Rose was the real writer. I’ve always believed it was closer to the former situation myself, and I think this book and the annotations confirm that. Rose was more involved than the average editor, and there was some collaboration, but the voice is definitely Laura’s. In many of their cited letters where there was a difference of opinion about what to include or how to frame a scene, Laura’s reasoning won out most, perhaps all the time.

Hill begins with the history of how Pioneer Girl came to be written, its search for a publisher, Rose’s involvement, and the different manuscripts that developed from it at different times. Then the text of Pioneer Girl itself is presented, with multiple annotations, photos, and maps. Finally, four appendices include a manuscript of “Juvenile Pioneer Girl” that Rose rewrote for children.

There is so much to this book and I have noted so many points of interest, it’s hard to narrow it all down and decide what to share. It’s a large book: 9 1/4″ wide, 10″ long, and 1 18″ thick. It’s a gorgeous book: the front cover is just lovely, and there are numerous photos of Laura’s family and the places and things she writes about. It’s a historic book not just about Laura’s family, but also about the times and culture in which she lived.

But I wouldn’t call it a page turner, except in parts. Obviously the final Little House books are much better because the book went through five different revisions even before being turned into what became the Little House novels, and an incident that may have taken a page or two in Pioneer Girl was often expanded into a chapter in the final novels. Some readers might not want to read every single footnote and annotation. I did want to, because I have read so much about Wilder in the last few years, but I’ll admit sometimes it was a little tedious, and some notes were much more interesting than others. But overall I really did enjoy delving into all the minutia as well as Laura’s first attempts at a book.

I think I’ll share some points of interest by way of list:

There is much made of the fact that Laura got dates, names, and even her age at certain times wrong occasionally. But she didn’t start writing this book until she was in her sixties. I’m only in my fifties, and I can’t say for sure I’d know what incident from my childhood happened what year and how old I was at the time. Plus she didn’t have the resources we have now, and many of her family members she would have conferred with had passed on. So that doesn’t bother me.
She did, however, deliberately fictionalize some sections by the time she got to the LH books. Hill cites the reasons why where known. Sometimes it’s because she felt it would make a better story. For instance, during The Long Winter (referred to as the Hard Winter here), there was actually another family living with the Ingalls, a young couple and baby. The man was evidently lazy and selfish, and though Laura wrote about them in this book, she decided to leave them out of the LH books as they would distract from rather than advance the story. Also, in the scene in By the Shores of Silver Lake where Pa takes Laura to see the men working on building the railroad never happened, but framing it through the fictional Laura’s eyes seemed the best way to tell it for young readers.
She left out some parts because they didn’t fit “in the picture I am making of the…family” (p. 95, note 99). Besides, probably no one tells all in an autobiography.
I’m sorry to say I have never liked Rose. Some years ago I picked up a book about her (I forget which one), not knowing anything about her except that she was Laura’s daughter, and found she was quite a different person from her mother. What I read about her here only confirmed my initial impressions. “Lane had built her professional career by fictionalizing what she published as non-fiction…[She] wrote what was presented to her audience as ‘true’ stories, but they were loosely based on interviews and factual material that Lane embellished or re-imagined to heighten their market appeal” (p. xxx). “Henry Ford repudiated the biography Lane wrote about him for its inaccuracies, and [Charlie] Chaplin was apparently so outraged at the literary liberties she had taken…that he threatened to bring legal action” (p. xxxi). “Her aim was to get ‘at the truth rather than at the facts'” – as if you can bring forth truth from falsehood (p. xxxi). Plus she took information from her mother’s material to write her own fictionalized novel, Let the Hurricane Roar – without her mother’s knowledge or consent.
It may seem inconsistent that I’m ok with Laura’s fictionalizing but not Rose’s. But Laura’s were minor for the most part, and she argued with Rose quite a bit about maintaining historical accuracy. And the LH books were presented as fictionalized accounts of her family, whereas PG was non-fiction. Rose took her fictionalizing way too far and presented it as fact..
It’s interesting that though Rose was the “famous author” then, she is nowhere nearly as well known as her mother now, and I think people who do read her now do so because of interest in her mother.
One of the reasons Laura wrote was to preserve her father’s stories (p. 37, note 42). Expanding on the details of how the family lived came after a suggestion from an editor (p. 31, note 26). But also, “As she told the Detroit Book Fair audience in 1937, ‘I realized that I had seen and lived it all–all the successive phases of the frontier, first the frontiersman then the pioneer, then the farmers and the towns. Then I understood that in my own life I represented a whole period of American history'” (p. liv).
Nellie Oleson was based on a composite of three different girls in Laura’s life.
Laura couldn’t spell very well — odd since she was a teacher and even wrote of competing well in spelling bees. Then again, this was a rough draft written by hand. Probably she was just getting the information out there to shape up later.
I’ve often wondered exactly what Laura’s religious beliefs were. I think you could safely say the family was God-fearing in the old sense that they believed in God and the Bible generally, but one can do that and still not have trusted Christ for salvation from one’s own sins. But she had a heightened sense that religion was a private matter, so she doesn’t spell it out: she speaks of someone who testified “at prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It someway offended my sense of privacy. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones [sic] mother. One didn’t go around saying, ‘I love my mother, she has been so good to me.’ One just loved her and did things she liked one to do” (p. 136). These days one might speak of one’s mother in such a way, but maybe it wasn’t done then. I’ve written and mused more about Laura’s faith at Saving Graces: The Inspirational Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
One section that is troubling to modern readers in Little Town on the Prairie is when a group of men, including Pa, dress up in blackface and perform minstrel songs. Hill has a good section explaining how it was viewed at the time, saying that “Before the American Civil War, many abolitionists embraced minstrelsy as a way to reach a broader American audience, and some minstrel troupes performed songs with distinctly abolitionist themes” (p. 254, note 62). It was not considered offensive then, though it is now.
Laura’s a little slow to warm up to Almanzo’s overtures, but I love when she says that after he had been away for three months, “I hadn’t known that I missed him, but it was good to see him again, gave me a homelike feeling” (p. 297).
Laura seemed to share her father’s urge to go West, saying on one trip that they were “going in the direction which always brought the happiest changes” (p. 145). But one of the most touching parts of the book for me came at the end, just after Laura and Almanzo were married, when she concluded: “I was a little awed by my new estate, but I felt very much at home and very happy and among other causes for happiness was the thought that I would not again have to go and live with strangers in their houses. I had a house and a home of my own” (p. 324).

I’m very thankful to Pamela Smith Hill and the South Dakota State Historical Society for publishing this book with all of the historical information it contains. It is truly a treasure.

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Book Review: They Almost Always Come Home

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I picked up They Almost Always Come Home by Cynthia Ruchti when it came up on a Kindle sale because I had seen some favorable reviews for some of her books. I couldn’t remember if this was one I had seen reviewed, but I did remember Ruchti’s name being mentioned favorably.

Libby’s husband, Greg, has been on a solo two-week wilderness trek. He does these often, roughing it in the Canadian wilderness, canoeing, camping, fishing. But this is the first time he has gone completely alone. And now he’s late.

As Libby takes the initial steps to call Greg’s dad and notify the authorities, she also wrestles with her own heart. She had actually planned to leave Greg. Their marriage had been fairly empty since their young daughter died some time before, with Libby holding Greg responsible for what happened to her. In fact, she wonders if perhaps he took this opportunity to leave her.

As Libby, her best friend Jen, and Greg’s father, Frank, embark on a trip of their own to look for Greg, Libby faces her own assumptions and realizes she might just be wrong in a few areas.

A little over half-way through, the point of view shifted from Libby’s first person to Greg’s third person. I was a little jarred at first, but after I finished the book, I agreed that was probably the best way to unfold the story of what happened to him.

There were a few too many…I don’t know whether to call them object lessons or simile moments or what:

[After wiping crumbs off the counter] How long will it take me to figure out what to do with the crumbs of my life?

I pick up my wide-toothed comb and tackle the tangles in my hair. Working at them little by little, from the bottom up, the knots soon turn to wet but smooth silk. Where can I find a wide-toothed comb for marital tangles?

[After putting her backpack on] How clumsy I am with all those pounds on my back. Like the weight of grief, it makes me stumble on simple motions.

[When biting ants attacked her father-in-law] A tiny intruder can create a great deal of turmoil. Under the microscope, the small choices in my marriage might have seemed insignificant, too.

I just encountered a lot of this in another recent book: Please, please tell me this is not a new trend!

The Kindle formatting is worse than I have seen in other books – first words in sentences not capitalized, words smushed together or unrecognizable.

But overall I really enjoyed the book. There were a number of humorous moments as well as heart-grabbing ones. I was touched by the faith journey each character took.I read that this is the author’s first faith-based novel. I was just a touch disappointed in the ending: I don’t require that every little thing be wrapped up in a tidy bow to be satisfied, but I felt a couple of areas were unresolved. I almost wondered if a sequel was planned, but it doesn’t appear so. Maybe the idea was that once the characters got their hearts right, the circumstances didn’t matter as much because then they could get through anything.

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Book Review: Great British Short Stories: A Vintage Collection of Classic Tales

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I’m not a big fan of short stories, so when I saw a book of short stories listed as one of the options for the Back to the Classics Challenge, I perused a few sources, didn’t see anything that interested me, and decided I’d skip that one. But then I finished all the other options for the challenge and didn’t want to leave that one undone. I finally found an audiobook of Great British Short Stories: A Vintage Collection of Classic Tales, with tales from familiar names like Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert Louis Stevenson as well as unfamiliar ones like Barry Pain, James McGovan, and William J. Locke.

There are ten stories in all:

“The Dog” by Arnold Bennett: A man from one class of a family takes out a girl from another class, and, as luck would have it, they have an accident in a very public place, causing trouble in both families. The title and description of the man man throughout as a dog confused me – I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time and whether it was good or bad. The young man seems to think it’s good; the story itself seems to indicate otherwise.

“Not On The Passenger List” by Barry Pain: A widow on a ship to meet the man she is going to marry keeps seeing her dead jealous former husband on the ship.

“The Old Man’s Tale About The Queer Client” by Charles Dickens: The wife and son of a man in debtor’s prison die, and he vows revenge on the man responsible for putting him there and contributing to their deaths. Not my favorite from Dickens, who didn’t end this on a note of hope and optimism as he usually does, but I was surprised by the twist in who the responsible party was.

“The Half Brothers” by Elizabeth Gaskell: A man marries a widow with a small son; they have another son; the wife dies shortly thereafter; the man blames his step-son. Though the story ends in a tragedy, it brings resolution. A little predictable, at least by today’s standards, but nicely told.

“The Veiled Portrait” by James McGovan: A physician treating an older woman asks to see the painting that she has veiled in her room. It’s a portrait of her wayward son when he was an innocent child. The doctor, who really wanted to be an artist but couldn’t make a living at it, wants to borrow the painting and copy it, or at least make a sketch of it, but she refuses all requests concerning it. He happens to hear of a skilled thief and decides to have him steal the portrait long enough for him to copy and then return it, but things go in a very unexpected way. This was one of my favorite stories in the book.

“Markheim” by Robert Louis Stevenson: The title character kills a man in order to get to money he has hidden in his business and then is unexpectedly confronted by what he thinks is a demon offering to help him. Shocked, thinking he hasn’t fallen that far, he refuses its help and promises this will be the last bad thing he ever does. Though the first part of the story took much longer than needed to tell, what’s interesting in this one is the moral argument: the being shoots down all of Markheim’s arguments, resolutions, self-deceptions one by one. But there is a surprising twist at the end.

“The Bottle Imp” by Robert Louis Stevenson: A man tries to sell a bottle containing, not a genie, but an imp. The imp will help it’s owner in any way requested, with two caveats: if the bottle isn’t sold before the owner dies, the owner will go to hell, and it must be sold for less than it was bought for.

“The Adventures Of The Kind Mr. Smith” by William J. Locke: A case of mistaken identity lands an ex-French teacher in the middle of a plan to commit fraud. He keeps up pretenses until the person he is supposed to be shows up. But from there on out, the plot takes continuous surprising turns. Loved this one!

“The Man Of Mystery” by Barry Pain: a butler who keeps his own confidences is dismissed by his employer, until she realizes she wrongly accused him and tries to rectify the situation. Would have liked this one except for someone getting away with and profiting from doing wrong.

“The Brazilian Cat” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A man in financial straits seeks out the help of a cousin who is married to an unfriendly Brazilian woman and keeps a large puma-like Brazilian cat. This was the first non-Sherlock Holmes story I’ve read by Doyle, and it was easily the most suspenseful and exciting in the book.

So, though I am still not likely to seek out short stories in general, this was not an unpleasant excursion. I listened to the audiobook, though there is a print version that can be found through used book sellers. The narrator’s voice and style was a little grating at first, but before long I got used to it and it didn’t bother me any more.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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Mount TBR Reading Challenge Checkpoint #2

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Barbara Harper

The Mount TBR Reading Challenge (to read books one already owned) has checkpoints every quarter where we can report how we’re doing. I read 9 books for this challenge during the first quarter of the year (listed at the last checkpoint here). So far this quarter I have read (each title links back to my review of it):

A Slender Thread by Tracie Peterson
The Reunion by Dan Walsh
True Woman 201: Interior Design: Ten Elements of Biblical Womanhood by Mary Kassian and Nancy Leigh DeMoss
What Follows After by Dan Walsh
The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard by Kara Tippetts
Beyond Stateliest Marble: The Passionate Femininity of Anne Bradstreet by Douglas Wilson
One Perfect Spring by Irene Hannon
Pride, Prejudice, and Cheese Grits by Mary Jane Hathaway
The Renewing of the Mind Project by Barb Raveling
Don’t Let the Goats Eat the Loquat Trees: The Adventures of an American Surgeon in Nepal by Thomas Hale
Chateau of Secrets by Melanie Dobson
Eight Twenty Eight: When Love Didn’t Give Up by Ian and Larissa Murphy

That’s 21 books so far, taking me up to Mont Blanc, the second of Bev’s challenge levels. Four of them (True Woman, Stateliest Marble, P&P & Cheese Grits, and Renewing the Mind) are from my original list of goals for the challenge. Only two more from that list to go!

I had only signed up for the first level, but I think I’ll probably pretty easily make the third by the end of the year.

Bev also lists some fun questions for this checkpoint. We’re not required to do all of them – but I did because I thought they were fun:

A. Choose two titles from the books you’ve read so far that have a common link. Chateau of Secrets and Searching for Eternity are both set during WWII in both France and America.

B. Tell us about a book on the list that was new to you in some way–new author, about a place you’ve never been, a genre you don’t usually read…etc. Irene Hannon and Thomas Hale (this quarter) and Marilynne Robinson, Chad Williams, and Chris Fabry (last quarter) were all new-to-me authors. I didn’t like Robinson’s Gilead as much as I had expected to but still want to try some of her other books. I love Chris Fabry’s Not In the Heart and have already read another book by him and bought one or two more.

C. Which book (read so far) has been on your TBR mountain the longest? Was it worth the wait? Or is it possible you should have tackled it back when you first put it on the pile? Or tossed it off the edge without reading it all? Of what I’ve read so far, that would be The Reunion by Dan Walsh, bought in October of 2012. It’s one of my favorites of his books, and I wish I had read it sooner!

My Life According to Books

1. My Ex is/was Our Mutual Friend (by Charles Dickens)
2. My best friend is a True Woman (by Mary Kassian and Nancy Leigh DeMoss)
3. Lately, at work [I’ve been waiting for] What Follows After (by Dan Walsh)
4. If I won the lottery, I’d have One Perfect Spring (by Irene Hannon)
5. My fashion sense [hangs by] A Slender Thread (by Tracie Peterson

6. My next ride [will take me to the] Chateau of Secrets (by Melanie Dobson)
7. The one I love is [inspires] Big Love: The Practice of Loving Beyond Your Limits (by Kara Tippetts)
8. If I ruled the world, everyone would [be] (Searching for Eternity by Elizabeth Musser)
9. When I look out my window, I see The Goats Eat the Loquat Trees (by Thomas Hale)
10. The best things in life are Beyond Stateliest Marble (by Douglas Wilson)

Thanks, Bev, for the spur to get into some of the books that I have been wanting to read (for years in some cases!)

Book Review: Eight Twenty Eight: When Love Didn’t Give Up

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Ian and Larissa were like many college-age young couples, getting to know each other as friends, moving on to dating seriously, heading toward probable engagement. But then the unforeseen and unthinkable happened: Ian was in a car accident, receiving various injuries, but worst of all, damage to his brain. Larissa details their story from first meeting to eventual marriage, with the accident and all that it involved inbetween. Ian has come a long way but is still not fully recovered, so Larissa had to face whether her love was enough to handle being the wife of a man with serious needs. She’s fairly transparent about the struggle and difficulties involved, but both she and Ian have experienced God’s grace in their relationships with Him and each other.

I think I first became aware of their story through an article on the Desiring God Web site. and saw this video:

Just a few quotes from the book:

It’s good to have hope as long as we build the foundation correctly. This was a delicate balance for my young heart to make, believing that God could heal Ian, but knowing it wasn’t guaranteed. But I needed to learn God’s promises, trust that He would remain faithful, without knowing what His faithfulness would exactly look like. And I had to learn these things quickly, because fear was chasing closely behind e and constantly nipping at my heels.

I tried to dig myself into the Bible on my good days, and bury myself in Spurgeon on the bad ones. Because on the bad days, I simply couldn’t understand a God who was okay with shunts and feeding tubes, so I read the words of those who had Him more figured out than I did.

Yet I let myself focus on the giving up, the sacrificing, and didn’t see that Gd was caring for me as well. He had storehouses of riches at His feet if only I would see them, if only I would reach out and touch His garment. He wasn’t asking me to keep giving and giving and choosing the uncomfortable life of vulnerability without prefacing it with grace.

While waiting, we know, is a good thing — like the nine-month anticipation God creates inside the womb — the living of it is long and impatient. We were each being forced to learn that it’s inside the womb of waiting where beauty and character grows.

Isn’t this what I have been called to? This life of dependency on the One who made me? This life that doesn’t make me comfortable, because the discomfort is exactly what I need to make heaven more irresistible?

The title Eight Twenty Eight comes from three factors: Ian’s father, who developed a brain tumor and passed away during this time, had a birthday on 8/28; their wedding was on 8/28, and Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Besides letting God’s grace shine through their journey, another aspect of the book that Larissa might not have had in mind is giving us a window inside the mind of a person whose loved one is severely injured. For instance, she wanted to be with Ian as much as possible, even moving in with his family to be part of his therapy. When she went anywhere else, her thoughts and heart were back with him. She writes of attending a conference after his injury that they had previously attended together, and how hard it was to be in such a setting without him. Her world basically shrunk to his room and whoever else was there. I think these things help us when we have friends going through similar trials, to understand some of what they’re thinking and to avoid well-meant but glib advice.

All in all, my heart was encouraged and blessed reading the truth and grace they experienced on this journey.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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What’s On Your Nightstand: June 2016

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Barbara Harper

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the last Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.