Brandon and I are still up to our eyeballs in History Lives with our deadline now just weeks away. If our only obligation was writing, it would seem a much more feasible deadline, but like everyone else, we have multiple other things on our plates—like a wedding shower I’m throwing next week, Brandon’s course prep for two June courses at Winebrenner plus his role in the upcoming Theological Summit, a couple website jobs he’s doing on the side, etc. Anyway, since you all kindly oblige my whining, thought I’d let you in on the “sneak peak” of this fifth and final volume in our series. You’ll find the details (the exciting ones, like title and who’s to be featured on the cover!) at my series website.

Also, if you’re so inclined, check out our “Fans of History Lives” group on Facebook—members got the “sneak” sneak peak, and when I can say more about the book, I’ll be posting it there first.

Of course, I still have lots of reviews coming and anticipate posting these for you as breaks from the other project. Hope you all are reading some great books. Do leave me your recommendations, cause you better believe once this manuscript is off to the publisher, I’ll be hunkering down with stacks of fun reading!

Elizabeth Strout’s Abide with Me is one of the novels I selected for my pre-Festival reading and my first encounter with Strout, whose previous (and first) novel Amy and Isabelle received positive reviews from many critics. The center of Abide with Me is small-town New England minister Tyler Caskey, a widower with two young daughters. In the face of harsh, unexpected circumstances, and with his increasingly distant and bored congregation beginning to murmur, he struggles to honestly maintain his faith and his family.

Strout tells the minister’s story with compassion and thoughtfulness, in a style that might best be described as understated. She gets full marks for technical execution—relatable characters, not a fast-moving but a believable plot, and beautiful attention to setting—but the sum of these well-turned parts doesn’t feel quite whole to me. It lacks something difficult to identify, passion maybe, whatever edge that gets under the reader’s skin and lingers. There is a loveliness to the quiet telling, but it is just too quiet. Read the rest of this entry »

I am home from Grand Rapids, and divided the day between working on the History Lives manuscript at my writing desk and blowing bubbles in the backyard with two nieces and a nephew. I have more to say about the Festival, but I’m still worn out from the trip—and now that it’s behind me, my HL deadline is looming very large (in fact, only a month away). So tonight I’ll just report on the delivery I got yesterday that perfectly capped off my literary weekend: my copies of Andree Seu’s paperback edition Normal Kingdom Business, featuring a foreword by Mindy Rice Withrow. If you don’t mind my quoting myself, the best reason to pick up this book is that “Being about the business of the kingdom—that word-and-deed proclamation of Christ’s gospel—requires a great deal more spiritual wisdom than most of us earth-bound servants can muster on our own. We need to grasp good counsel where we can get it.” And Andree is good counsel, as I know many of you agree. At the moment, Amazon is showing the title out of stock, but since I’ve got one in my hands, I’m certain at least a few copies will be arriving at their warehouses any day now—so do check it out.

That’s all for now. More soon!

And now we come to the end. Festival 2008 is officially concluded. Retrospective comments will undoubtedly be forthcoming, but this will be my last dispatch from the field. I hope the freshness of these reports has been worth their jumbled telling!

There were no earthquakes last night, unlike Thursday overnight—a detail I forgot to mention yesterday in my sleep-deprived state! (We were so exhausted we didn’t even wake up, so it was inconsequential to my story anyway…) I had intended to begin my last day with Kathleen Norris, but Krista Tippett was speaking at the same time. Darn concurrent sessions! Read the rest of this entry »