Tuesday, August 22, 2006

When Crickets Cry & Crunchy Cons

I'm so excited! We're moving, probably sometimes in October, definitely before the snow flies. We're moving into Jesse's grandmother's house. She moved into the nursing home a year ago and is thriving there, so she won't be coming home. The house is small, about the size of what we have, but it was built by Jesse's grandfather, so there is love built into every wall and floor. No more bugs or holes in the floor, no more drafts blowing through the windows. Even keeping the kids in the school district was easy. The Lord has His hand in this, and I am so grateful!

When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin is another masterpiece by one of the finest authors of our time. When Reese Mitch buys a cup of lemonade from fragile Annie, neither of them understands that their lives will never be the same. Martin writes with a deep love of the river, and the book flows along unhurriedly, with beautiful phrasing and pacing. Every character is rich with detail and background and is someone you want to know. There’s almost a Faulkner-esque quality to Martin’s writing. His is a world where men fall in love with women for life, and the world is full of the beauty of God’s creation. It’s a world not often visited in fiction anymore. If Martin were a secular writer, the book clubs would be falling all over themselves to feature his books, and he would have multiple awards on his bookshelves. Instead, because he writes with God firmly at the center of his writing, most non-Christian readers have never heard of him. That’s a true shame, because every one of his books is amazing. I stayed up until 3 am to finish this book; don’t pass it up!

Crunchy Cons: Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America (or at least the Republican Party) by Ron Dreher is about a new kind of conservative. The kind that don’t necessarily like Pat Buchanan or believe that all Democrats are part of a Communist conspiracy. While much of the book comes across as Dreher defending his life, it sounds like a good life; one definitely worth living and analyzing. Dreher and his wife are traditional Catholics. She’s a stay-at-home, home-schooling mom. They buy organically grown food and try to live in a way that does the least amount of harm to their environment. He makes strong arguments for buying healthier food for the family and home-schooling. This is a whole new view of conservatives, and if you have a hard time agreeing with the big business policies of the Republican party, but agree with many of their platforms about the right to life, you’ll find yourself nodding your head in agreement with Dreher. This is another book I plan on adding to my bookshelf permanently.

I'm reading The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde. As much as I like his writing, I keep wishing that it was a Thursday Next book instead of a Nursery Crime. I have a ton of paperwork to fill out for work today, so I'd better run!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Christy,
I love your writing! Keep it up and I'll keep reading :)

Pam