The Year of Books: Round Two

          So, it has begun. Again. My second attempt at reading a book a week for an entire year. While the idea of 52 books in 52 weeks doesn't seem tremendously daunting, my first attempt proved that it was definitely easier talked about than carried to fruition. I completed 34 weeks before hitting a wall that simply refused to let me go forward. I think the name of the wall was "Exhaustion" or maybe "Lack of time"...perhaps even "Start of baseball season." Truthfully, I am not quite sure why I stopped 18 weeks short of my goal, but I did, plain and simple. However over the course of those 34 weeks I was able to read some truly wonderful books (Terrorist, The Snake Charmer, The Keep, The Year of Living Biblically...to name a few) that I otherwise never would have encountered. I did also subject myself to some real stinkers (Fear Nothing, The Night Following, The Front), but for the most part, the good far outweighed the bad and helped provide the inspiration I was looking for to keep the words coming for my own book. I also was able to take suggestions from people that had otherwise never offered me a book suggestion in my life. Frankly, there are only a few select people whose opinions on books I value, because the time you spend reading a novel (big or small) is very valuable time and not to be spent lightly. But by reading books suggested by people I had never asked before, I was able to expand my literary world quite a bit and stumbled on some real gems I otherwise would have deemed too "girly" by just looking at the cover (The Secret Life of Bees comes to mind here). So once again I will be seeking the book recommendations of everyone I encounter (even the guy who works in the book section at Hastings) as I make my way through the year. I will also throw in books I have been wanting to read for a while, or that have been sitting on my bookshelf for far too long. Hopefully, this will encourage you to pick up the book that you've been wanting to read, or maybe even one that I recommend. But, even if you decide that my list is terrible, and would never read any of the books mentioned, even under threat of extreme torture, I hope that you will be reading some book, any book. And who knows? Maybe in the not so distant future, you'll find yourself reading mine.


Week 1: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson


The movie version of this book had been highly recommended to me earlier this year, with a warning that it had some very intense and disturbing moments. Now, I will always prefer reading the book version of something over watching the movie, and I didn't have to worry because the movie was a foreign film, Swedish to be exact, which meant it wasn't going to be playing in a theater anywhere near me. So, I got the book for my birthday and finally cracked into it last week. The book contains two main characters: Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist who has just received a jail sentence for libel against a billionaire industrialist as the book opens, and Lisbeth Salander, a hard-edged, tattooed private investigator who works for a security firm and is their best investigator despite her unorthodox ways. After Blomkvist receives his short jail sentence, and before he actually has to go serve time, he is approached by an elderly billionaire named Henrik Vanger. Vanger is the former CEO of Vanger Enterprises and lives, along with much of his extended family, on the Vanger family estate located on the tiny island of Hedeby. Vanger has an assignment for Blomkvist - Spend a year living on the island with the rest of the Vanger clan under the pretext of being there to write the Vanger family history, when actually Henrik Vanger wants Blomkvist to investigate the decades-old mystery of the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger. Meanwhile, Salander is being assigned various investigating jobs while at the same time dealing with a sadistic legal guardian who has a history of mistreating women. As Blomkvist gets deeper into the mystery surrounding Harriet's presumed murder and closer to the truth, he enlists the help of Salander to dig into the Vanger family history and business, where they discover that Harriet's disappearance is simply the tip of the iceberg. This was a tremendously good, suspenseful book with two of the most interesting lead characters I have encountered in a long time. It's a decently sized novel, but the pages start flying once Blomkvist reaches the island. It does contain a few disturbing moments, mostly involving Salander's guardian, but the novel was restrained when many other books would have taken it in a more graphic direction. Overall, it was a great way to start my year of books, and I will certainly be adding the rest of the trilogy (The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) to my list.   
             
                        GRADE = A                                                 590 pages


Week 2: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins


Week 2 brings about the first real book recommendation of the list. It was highly recommended by both Tarryn and Danielle, who had to use the Stephen King blurb on the back page of the book to convince me to give this "Young Adult" novel a whirl. Frankly, the only thing "YA" about this book is that the heroine is a teenager. Her name is Katniss Everdeen (one of the worst names I have read since the characters from the Left Behind series), a 16 year-old girl who lives in District 12 of the nation of Panem. Panem is post-some-sort-of-apocalypse America, which had been split into 13 districts, but now only consists of 12 (District 13 decided to stage a rebellion against the Capitol...bad idea). Every year, the Capitol hosts an event called The Hunger Games, which takes two teen-aged representatives from each district (one boy, one girl) and then puts the 24 contestants into an enormous arena, where over the course of the next few days they battle to the death on live TV, last one standing wins. Katniss' little sister Prim is selected as the female representative from District 12, but Katniss volunteers herself for the death match to spare her. She and the male representative from her district, Peeta, then travel to the Capitol for a few days of training before the Hunger Games begin, where they are pitted against other teen-agers of various sizes and abilities, some who willingly volunteered to enter.  Two things tried to turn me off right away about this book. First, I found myself legitimately uncomfortable and disturbed with the idea of kids killing kids. Secondly (and this is simply a personal preference), I don't care for books as much when they are written in the first-person present tense, and jumping into that style after reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo kind of threw me off. The author also seems to throw various plot twists into the novel that seem less pre-planned as they do devices thought up at the last second to keep her story interesting and alive. However...., the book absolutely works thanks quite simply to the horribly named Katniss. She is a determined, fiery protagonist who I warmed up to rather quickly, and as she struggled to stay alive in the midst of the battle, I could not put the book down and finished it in a day. It isn't a perfect novel, but like last week's book it is also the first part of a trilogy, which means I am looking forward to seeing where this story takes me. I wouldn't recommend it so much to the "YA" crowd, but anyone else would likely enjoy it. 
         
                      GRADE = B                                                 374 pages 

Death...and Some of His Friends

So, I have been thinking a lot about death lately...and NO (!) not because I have been watching Dexter or listening to my favorite band Coldplay sing "Death and All His Friends". And I haven't even been thinking about my own eventual death necessarily...just death in general I guess. I imagine it is something most people don't like to talk about....let alone even think about, but for me it seems to run through my brain's thought-cycle at least two or three times a day. It's one of life's two unavoidable guarantees right? Death and taxes? Well, I suppose one could find a way to avoid taxes during their life, but not death. It seems to have an uncanny ability for tracking people down.

As a child, whenever I would lay down to sleep at night, I would always avoid laying on my side, because I hated for my ear to be on the pillow. The reason for this odd behavior was that when my ear rested on the pillow, I could actually hear my heart beating. Try it sometime....it sounds like someone is walking through a pile of leaves, slowly, but very purposefully. Well, my mind always imagined it was the Grim Reaper coming to get me. I never knew where he was (except that his location was packed with fallen leaves), but I knew that with his steady pace he would get to me eventually. I would pray that he had started thousands and thousands of miles away so that it would take him forever to find me, but I had no way of knowing whether he had started his walk in Moscow or Miami. So i slept on my back (and still do).

But, the fact remains that even as a child, I understood that eventually my life would come to an end, just like everyone else's. And that thought scares people. To be honest, it weirds me out a little bit too, even now. One second you're there...eating a cheeseburger, driving to the mall, trying to fall asleep on the plane when the person next to you won't shut up...and then, just like that, you're gone. All the appointments you had made, the leftovers in the fridge, the shows you still hadn't watched on the DVR, the vacation you had already planned and paid for... all made pointless in an instant (if they weren't already pointless before). People will be shocked and saddened and will say nice things about you, and then life will go on for everyone else. They will remember you from time to time, see a picture of you and say "Awe..." and then go back to planning their vacations and eating their leftovers.

As for you...well, you'll be somewhere else entirely. As a Christian who completely believes that our life on earth is just the beginning (and if, by chance, you don't believe the same as me, simply imagine that I am actually right for once for the sake of this blog), I know that when the Grim Reaper does finally find me through all the leaf piles, I will find myself standing before God. That has to be quite possibly the wildest one or two seconds in existence. One second - eating cheeseburger, next second - standing in front of the Creator of the universe. This thought used to terrify me greatly. I used to think, "What if God asks me why I should be allowed to get into Heaven, and I can't think of anything to say? Or I say something and the words come out wrong? Or He just doesn't like my answer?" These questions plagued me because I didn't want my eternity hinging on my ability to speak in a high pressure situation. Thankfully, I now know that God won't be standing there waiting for me to slip up so He can banish me to Hell. I know that my eternity hinges not on my words, but on the gift of salvation that God gave me through the blood of His Son. I know that when I do finally stand before Him, I will hear the words "Well done, My child" instead of "Wait, who are you again?"

Every day it seems, my Internet homepage, MSN, is telling me of some celebrity or athlete who has passed away. Sometimes it is expected...old age, cancer, etc....and other times it completely shocks me...overdose, car accident, getting gunned downed outside a club. As a movie lover, it always makes me sad to see movie stars, old or young, pass away. Even though you never met them, you still have that connection with them. But what saddens me most is that without fail, every time I read one of those stories, I think to myself, "Right now, they are standing before God and probably wish they could go back and relive those 75 years of their life so that they could change what they are about to hear in the next few seconds." It hit me hard recently when the actor Dennis Hopper passed away. I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of his (although who didn't love him in Speed?), but as I read through the articles about him and his life, I was hit with a sadness I wasn't expecting. Here was a man, loved by God and family and friends, who is now facing a God he never probably expected to be facing, and will likely hear the words no person would ever truly want to hear. And the saddest part is that it was preventable.

God sent His Son to Earth to take the punish of death for us so that we wouldn't have to suffer the consequences that we deserve for living crummy lives. Let's face it, we all think we are "good people" but each and every one of us knows that deep down "good" is the last word we would use to describe ourselves. We are scum. Well, I am at least...I will admit to it. God knew that, and loved us enough to do something about it. So He did. And all we have to do is believe it - have faith that Jesus was who He claimed to be, that He died on the cross to take the punishment for our mistakes, and that He rose again, giving us the opportunity to spend our eternity with Him after we die. It seems so simple, yet the Bible makes it clear that most people will choose not to put their faith in God. They will find other ways to live their life, other things or people to put their faith in. The road to Hell is wide and many will go down it because it is the easy road...the "do nothing" road, but the road to Heaven is narrow and few of us will find it. It's not because we are better than the rest, but because we recognize that we aren't better than anyone, and that only God can make us right. And when He does, we realize that no matter how bizarre and frightening the idea of death might be sometimes, we no longer have a reason to fear what comes after, and we have even more of a reason to make our lives count for something before the Grim Reaper finally catches up with us.

The Creative Process

MADDENING! ... That's how I would lovingly describe the creative process. Sometimes I think creativity is given to us for the simple reason that it gives God a good laugh seeing us go borderline bonkers. But, truth be told, it may not be the "creative" process itself that drives me to drinking....store brand soda. I would say it's more the "nurturing" process. (that thought just came to me....which is what happens when you just start writing without planning things out and have no real direction in mind) The easiest thing in the world for me to do is think up ideas for new stories, new books...heck, even movies I think should be made. And, without trying to sound arrogant (which is usually only said before someone wears themselves out from self back-patting), the ideas that come to me are generally very good. This is naturally the most exciting part of the whole process - the initial spark and the heat that emanates from it. I bet it's kind of like when a person is stranded on an island and tries to make fire with rocks and sticks for the first time. They sit there for hours and hours trying to make the first spark appear, and when thankfully, gloriously, it appears, the elation that person experiences is unparalleled. Even if it quickly dies off and firmly places the person back at square one of the fire-making process, the energy they received from seeing that tiny spark will ...well, fuel their fire to not give up and to continue until their fire is raging. Or, at least that's the way I think it should work. But I don't think it always does. Perhaps the reason the "creating" aspect of the creative process is so easy is because we have nothing to do with it. Perhaps the initial spark is a gift...God's way of stirring up the dust in our minds to do something marvelously creative in the same way He stirred up a little dust when He decided He wanted us around in the first place. Once He stirs up the dust, He sits back to see if we will make something of it...to see if we nurture it properly. Unfortunately we often don't take the nurturing stage seriously...and by "we" I mean "me"(although "unfortunately me don't take the nurturing stage seriously" is a horribly worded piece of rubbish). If our stranded-on-an-island friend decided to just go for the spark, and quit once he got it, never nurturing it until it become a roaring blaze, his fire would likely die and eventually so would he, unless an Aquafina plane crash-landed onto his island and provided him with a lifetime supply of factory treated tap water. Thomas Edison is credited with the saying "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" and I am often ("often" here means "this is the first time I have ever said this") credited with the saying that "Edison was 100% right." The 1% of inspiration, which I think is from God, is the easy part. The hard part is actually doing something with it, sticking it out until the last word is written, the last note composed, or the last line uttered. The hard part is keeping the ideas alive. This is our fault of course, since we take a great idea and start on it with all the passion in the world, but abandon it because Monday night is softball night, Tuesday night is "Biggest Loser" night, Wednesday night is church night, Thursday night is "Survivor"night, Friday night is...Friday night, and Saturday night is "I am way too tired from my exhausting week to do anything" night. Our ideas are pushed way back into the depths of the "idea refrigerator" in our minds, and by the time we dig them out again, they have molded over and started to smell an awful lot like some of the other ideas that have long since rotted away. Then we try to revive them, get right back to where we were before we stored them away, and then....you guessed it, store them away again. It's a vicious cycle really...kind of like the dog that returns to its vomit (but really not like that at all). I suppose this may not make sense to some people, and to those blessed souls I apologize that you even spent time reading this and give you permission to cease at once. But I also suppose that there are probably a few people nodding along with me, because they are all passengers in the same doomed ship I'm sailing in. The lifeboat has been there waiting for us the whole time, within reach to every person. But, it takes too much time and energy to drop it into the water, because the name of the lifeboat is "Time and Energy." I am one that firmly believes that some of the best ideas the world could have ever known were lost because the people who contemplated them gave up, and got too preoccupied or distracted to return to them. But that's completely understandable, since all day "Seinfeld" marathons don't happen every day. I know you've got some marvelous idea stirring in your head....a song that hasn't been written, a poem that hasn't been put to page. Don't let it die. Work at it. 99% perspiration means it won't be the easiest thing you've ever done. And don't for a second give me the line of "I just don't think it's the right time for me to work on it." If that were the case, it wouldn't be digging into your brain right this second. Time and energy people. Get to work.

A Finger in the Water

A few years ago, I myspaced a blog expanding on a quote I heard during a sermon by the great Pastor Charlie Martin, and for whatever reason that quote has come traipsing back into my brain over the past week or so. The quote came during his final sermon at Indian Rocks after decades of faithful service and ministry to the people there. At the time, a lot of people were a little weirded out by the fact that after 30-something years of listening and learning from Pastor Charlie, a new face would soon be taking his place. To many of the church-goers, Pastor Charlie was simply irreplaceable. And, to be fair, it likely would have been very easy for Pastor Charlie to feel that way as well; being in one place for that long would make anyone feel like the walls would come crashing down the second they left. But during his final sermon, he said something I haven't since forgotten. He said (loosely quoted) "If you ever want to know how important you are, get a big glass of water and stick your finger in it. You can leave it there for as long as you want, but when you take it out, check and see how big of a hole you left behind. That's how important and irreplaceable you are."

It's so easy to develop feelings of importance in life, especially in the area of service and ministry. We get involved in projects, lead various causes, and when we see great success, thoughts like "Man, how did this thing even survive before I got here?" start creeping in. The longer we are involved in these ministries, the more likely we are, whether consciously or not, to feel this way and project that attitude out to where others can pick up on it as well. This attitude, whether consciously harbored or not, firmly places the success of ministry into the hands of people who truthfully have little, if anything, to do with whether or not a certain endeavour succeeds. It's a prideful stance that can do more harm than good, and can seriously damage the way an outsider may view that ministry.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I have been in a place where I thought I was important, or thought that things couldn't go on without me. I have been sure that things would fall apart the second I left because I was no longer there to hold them together. I am sure this is a very human reaction, one that comes without much effort. Pride is an easy thing to fall victim to, often because you don't even recognize it for what it is. But, for me, all it took was one little quote, one "finger in the water", to open my eyes and see my pride for what it really was, and how it robbed credit from the only One who deserved it.

Once my eyes had been opened, I was able to see the beauty of life, the beauty of how God works through us. He doesn't need us to do His work for Him, not for one second. With one whisper, He could accomplish everything that every human has ever tried to do. We are privileged with every single moment that we have to be used by Him, and ought never to be prideful for what He chooses to accomplish through us. It's humbling, really, when you stop and consider that the Guy behind it all lets us get in on His plan, lets us participate in fulfilling His will, even if it's for just a short time. It's even more humbling when we stop and consider that the moment we leave or are called away, He has someone to step in and replace us.

It also emphasized to me how important it is to be who God wants you to be, and to be doing what He wants you to do while you are that "finger in the water", wherever you may be. None of us know when we will be called away to something else, or called away for good, and should make the most of every opportunity we have while in the water to faithfully do what He has called us to do. I know there have been numerous occasions where I have been in the water and made little or no impact on those around me, but I also know that any impact my life has on others in the place I am now is completely 100% reliant on God, and what He chooses to do through me. And finding yourself in a position where God chooses to work through you is a humbling one to say the least. The thing we can be sure of is that, as Christians, He wants to use all of us to further His kingdom and fulfill His will in our lives and the lives of those around us. We simply have to humble ourselves and get into a place where we realize that everything He accomplishes through us is entirely His doing. He gets the glory....and frankly deserves all of it anyway. And if we humble ourselves and allow God to use us and work through us, the people around us will notice this change in our attitude, the humility that comes from knowing it's not about us, and will maybe be spurred on to examine this area in their own lives.

My mind has been trying to wrap itself around all of the different directions that one little quote took it in, but there is no way I can get it all out right now. So, for the time being, just remember that life goes on, the hole in the water fills up again, and God's plan never skips a beat.