JACKAROO by Cynthia Voigt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book started out a little slow, but halfway through things started to get interesting, and by the end I discovered that I had absolutely fallen in love with the book! It was thoughtful, vivid, full of unique and interesting characters, realistic and yet hopeful, portraying the hardships of life without at all diminishing the fantastic moments of adventure. And the ending! It was a legitimate, beautiful happy ending, one that leaves you grinning from ear to ear at the end. I highly recommend this book.



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Preparations, Flying Music, and Thunderstorms

My aunt (who's more like a big sister to me, when you consider the age difference) is getting married this weekend.  The whole family is going to be flowing out to Nebraska in waves.  The first wave leaves tomorrow, taking my mom with it.  She's packing now, and as I sit and write this blog post and listen to her bustling about, everything feels a little unnatural.  In just a few short days the second wave will sweep me off to the plains, but for now I sit in the half-uncomfortable eye of the storm. 

My sister and I will get to see if we can stay on top of the dishes by ourselves.  (Dad does dishes only in emergencies.) 

I spent $8 this weekend on the soundtrack for How to Train Your Dragon, and I consider it to be the best purchase I've made in months.  Most soundtracks I am acquainted with have tracks that seem to consist of semi-disconnected notes that aren't really enjoyable to listen to outside a movie theater.  This soundtrack, however, has so many perfectly delightful tracks that I have trouble keeping track (sorry, bad pun) of them all.  The music is upbeat, adventurous, awe-inspiring, and soul-stirring, with a gorgeous celtic theme woven throughout.  Tracks like This is Berk and See You Tomorrow are filled with rollicking yet engaging energy, while Test Drive and Coming Back Around make you feel like you are flying.  In any case, the number of amazing tracks far outpaces the number of dollars you have to lay down to own the mp3 album.  Buy it. 

This week has been full of magnificent thunderstorms, rolling off of the mountains in purple clouds that make your heart beat faster.  For once they've actually paused to pour blessed rain into this dry climate -- sometimes gently, other times hurling it down so hard that water abandons the gutter for the sidewalk and you can see the raindrops bounce off the pavement.  Between the clouds, the moisture, and my new soundtrack, I've been living in my own poet's paradise. 

I'm sorry that I'll have to leave it for a 7-hour drive of glaring yellow flatness.  Pray that the good Lord will send me mental forests to keep my mind off of it. 

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I think that this book did pretty well on what it was trying to do -- namely, be an engaging YA read that someone could get through in a weekend. I enjoyed it in the sense that there were parts where I couldn't put the book down. However, on reflection, the book just seemed rather...unimpressive. Pike has a great base concept, but that seemed to be the only complicated thing about the book. Everything else seemed a little cliche. I felt like there wasn't enough content for it to really be the first book in a trilogy.

Or maybe I've just been spoiled by reading Scott Westerfeld.

In any case, this book is definitely fluff reading -- and since I tend to go for deeper things, I'm not going to spend time on the second or third books in the trilogy.



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Books that are, were, and will be (read by me)

At least it hasn't been a whole month since I last posted.  It's only been 27 days. 

So far I have spent this summer just reading as much as I can.  Now that school's out of the way I can actually get down to learning!  (Or at least, that's what it feels like.)  The problem is that I add about 5 books to me To Be Read list for every book I finish.  There's just not enough time to read everything I want to -- and, to top it off, I've come to the conclusion that I ought to be reading slower than I normally do so that I can absorb things more fully. 

This past week I finished reading The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton and Pretties by Scott Westerfeld.  Both of them were quite good, and both of them kept me in a dreadful amount of suspense.  More complete reviews for both those books are coming shortly. 

There are a couple books that are currently balancing on the top of my currently-reading pile:

Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity, by Michael Card.  This book, recommended to me by a writer friend, comes right on the heels of having read Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle.  While on the outset it looks like the books represent two different voices saying the same thing, I am already finding a number of differences.  After finishing Walking on Water, I couldn't get over the nagging feeling that L'Engle's approach to art was just not Christ-centered enough.  In many ways, she still bought into the age-old cop-out, "Do art for art's sake."  For me, that is a pitiful excuse of an idea.  There has to be a greater reason for doing art -- a reason that leads back to God in the end, as all true ideas do.  And I think Scribbling in the Sand is addressing that.  I'm only three chapters in, but Card's ideas are already shown to be substantially different.  He says that art is an act of worship -- a response to the beautiful nature of God.  That is an answer I can believe in. 

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers.  I can see why this devotional is such a classic -- I have only read five days so far, and yet those five days contained more wisdom and insight than most of the books I have read.  I think I understand why it is in a devotional format: I don't think it would be possible to read the book without taking an entire year to do it.  Needless to say, I'm going to be requesting a copy for my birthday. 

When God Writes Your Love Story, by Eric and Leslie Ludy.  For those of us who want to do romance differently than this culture, this is a call to trust God with everything in your life, especially your future marriage.  I've read other books about 'waiting' and 'courtship' before, but this one is a classic, and it emphasizes that romance ought to be about God first and foremost. 

And now, the books on my TBR list for the rest of this summer:

1. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.  (I've watched three movie versions of the story but never read the book.  I know, it's silly.)
2. Blink of an Eye, by Ted Dekker.
3. Specials, by Scott Westerfeld. 
4. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. 
5. Animal Farm, by George Orwell.
6. The Face of a Stranger, by Anne Perry.
7. Looking for the King, by David C. Downing.
8. Saint Thomas Aquinas, by G.K. Chesterton.
9. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.
10. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Orson Scott Card.
11. Phantastes, by George MacDonald.
12. Dismantling America, by Thomas Sowell

Of course, knowing my ADD self, I'll probably finish only half of these, along with half a dozen other books that I don't yet know about. 

OH, and on the topic of books, I have a site that you absolutely must check out: The Escapism Project, a collage of thoughts on reading and writing by a group of teenage bookworms and bookwriters, all in pursuit of a more complete idea of what make a 'live-in' book.  Yes, I am a contributor.  :) 

Summerliness

We went to the mall with my aunt today.  I haven't been in a mall in a while, and it seems that each visit is worse than the last.  Our culture is not a passive culture -- it's a jump-on-you-and-beat-you-up-with-a-club culture.  All the stores sell all the same clothes, all the clothes cover less than they show, and all the songs are about sex and are played way too loud.  And all the pictures?  They all say the same thing: you have to look like this.  You're a failure if you don't look like this.  If you can't fit into these clothes, there's something wrong with you.  If you do have a nice body, you should show it off.  It's abominable.  The culture appears set on making the 95% of us who don't look like models feel absolutely miserable (and disgusted).

On the plus side, though...cute new shoes!  (It's been a while since I had any of those.)

I'm going to start reading Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle.  I'm very interested to see what it's like, since I've been a fan of her books for years and happen to be a writer (and a Christian) myself.

Peeking into The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron again has given me a revelation.  The reason this break from writing has lasted forever is because I don't need just a break: a need a full-scale recovery operation.  I need to go back to basics, ditching all my lofty goals and plans in order to simply rehabilitate my creative side.  In other words, I need to play.   So that's what I've been doing this week, and I've discovered something interesting: my creative self is still there.  It just afraid of things like "Oh, that doesn't count.  You didn't even finish it," or, "Goodness, you will look like a complete numbskull if you write the story that way."

So right now, me and my creative self are mostly hanging out in coffee shops that don't exist and giving cute imaginary cats names like Lord Ivywood.

Oh, and apparently I made several people very happy by inventing the word snickergiggles. 

Anyone attempting to claim that my brain is in any way ordinary shall be tossed out on their ear for obstinately ignoring the obvious. 

The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I wish I understood more of what I thought about this book so that I could communicate it properly. It was a fun book, and there were many scenes and characters that I enjoyed quite a bit. Chesterton did make some great points throughout the book. However, I did not agree with the way the book glorified drinking. Also, Chesterton takes little more than a single page to wrap up the entire book, and that one page was so vague and confusing that I'm still trying to figure out what happened. So there you have it. This is definitely more of an "enjoy the journey" book than anything else.



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Review of The Art of Fiction, by Ayn Rand

The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I believe this may be the most insightful book about writing that I have ever read. Ayn Rand is not about to accept any of the common cop-out explanations for writing: "Well, it just turned out that way." "I felt like doing it like that." "It seemed right." She declares that everything you write is because of some premise you hold in your head, whether you realize it or not, and that the key to good writing is to learn how to identify and shape those premises as you wish.

Her understanding of plot is more distinct and complete than that of any other writer I've heard explain the issue. For Rand, plot is all about definite purpose. This extends even to her descriptions, where every sentence is evaluated for how well it advances the (sometimes many) purposes of its paragraph. Rand draws a distinction between Romantic writing and Naturalistic writing. Romantic writing, she says, examines the underlying motives of human decisions, while Naturalistic writing claims to set down things 'as they are' but makes no value judgments. I found this insight helpful, as it explains why some books called classics are engaging and memorable, while others seem to wander without a point.

Some may find Rand's philosophy hard to get past. She certainly isn't shy about communicating it to you. Some may also find Rand's self-aggrandizing to be a distraction. (As she openly says early in the book, she believed herself to be the best writer of her time.) However, in my opinion, the clear advice she offers is too valuable to pass by. The fundamentals of good fiction are all here in this slender volume.

Note: Because of my own self-censoring, I skipped most of Chapter Eight, which dealt with love scenes. Readers who wish to guard their hearts from such things (and those under 15) will probably want to do the same.



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