As I noted in a recent In the Mail, I haven’t read a great deal of Christian fiction. I have read fiction by Christians and about Christians, but nothing that was strictly in this category. When I thought about it, which wasn’t all that often, it seemed to me that “CBA” books were dominated by romance and historical fiction or some combination of the two. I admit I didn’t do much research, but what I saw never really caught my eye.

Recently, I have sought to reassess this situation by reading some of best this category has to offer. To make it easier on myself I asked Dave at Faith in Fiction for some recommendations (more about those books later) and I joined the Christian Fiction Blog Tour.

It took awhile to get on the list and start getting the books, so this week is my first of actual participation. The book covered is Kathryn Mackel’s The Hidden If this book is any indication of the overall quality, I am excited about the rest of the year. The Hidden turned out to be an emotional and suspenseful supernatural thriller. I found myself reading furiously trying to finish. I read on the bus to work this morning, at lunch, and on the way home in order to finish.

The plot focuses on Boston psychiatrist Susan Stone who returns to her childhood home in Colorado to help her injured father run his horse farm. Things get off to a rough start when the birthing of her father’s prize Arabian goes badly. This escalates tensions and brings all kinds of family grudges to the surface. Unable to deal with her feelings Susan heads off into the stormy night on the same horse that threw her father and sent him to the hospital.

Leading the horse up the dangerous mountainside she is thrown from the horse and into a dark crevice. There she finds a young man chained in a cave. In helping this mysterious stranger Susan unleashes events that will change her family, and the sleepy Colorado town they live in, forever.

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I missed this until today, but Chicago Sun-Times book editor Henry Kisor is retiring this Friday:

In retirement I’m going to keep on writing, working on my North Woods mystery novels, revising an old book for a new edition and doing a little historical fiction. I’ll also spend time in the basement workshop, fashioning what I hope will be fine oak furniture in the Arts and Crafts style. You’ll find me at the airfield, too, babying my vintage Cessna two-seater and soaring over the countryside. There is also that growing number of grandchildren for my wife, Deborah, and me to spoil.

In the evenings I’ll sit by the fire with a glass of sherry, the dog warming my feet, reading the latest books as well as the classics. But this time I won’t have to view them with a critical eye — I’ll just plunge into pools of imagination and drift on waves of wonder.

It was a fine, fulfilling time, these last 33 years, and I thank you all for being part of it.

For more on Kisor see my reviews of his Northwoods mysteries Season’s Revenge and A Venture Into Murder as well as my Q&As with the author here and here.

I wish Mr. Kisor the best of luck on his retirement and will look forward to reading more of his fiction.

Richard Lewis, whose young adult novel The Flame Tree was one of my favorites of 2004, has a new novel coming out at the end of the year. THE KILLING SEA: A Novel about the Tsunami that Stunned the World is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster in December. The novel’s film rights have already been bought by Fox 2000 and Scott Free Productions.

Lewis, whose parents were American missionaries to Indonesia, also blogs about surfing and writing from Bali at Novelist in Paradise. Here is how he described how his second novel came to be:

I was a volunteer relief worker in Aceh immediately after the tsunami disaster, and spent a total of about a month there. My agent Scott Miller urged me to write a story, which came naturally out of the dozens and dozens of people I talked to, and the ground I covered in my volunteer work. Because this is primarily for the US market, I introduced a American teenaged girl and her younger brother, traveling on a sailboat that is caught in the disaster. Her story is interwoven with that of a teenaged Acehnese boy, and who meets up with her.

I wrote a couple opening chapters and a synopsis of the rest of the story as I saw it. Simon and Schuster bought it overnight, the quickest turnaround Scott has had.

So check out the blog and look for The Killing Sea at the end of the year.

P.s. Here is a Q&A I did with Lewis last year.

I signed up to participate in the Christian Fiction Blog Tour. I figured it would be a good way to get a sense of what was out there in terms of Christian Fiction and broaden my horizons a little. This is the first week I will be participating. The book in question is Kathryn Mackel’s The Hidden. Here is a brief description:

A dark ravine. A fiery death. An unimaginable secret. Some things are best left hidden.

Grieving her son’s death, psychiatrist Susan Stone returns home to Colorado to help her elderly father manage his horse-breeding business. After the botched delivery of a prized foal, Susan rides wildly into the mountains, seeking release from consuming guilt. Thrown from her horse, she tumbles into a dark ravine and makes a startling discovery–a young man, chained in the darkness.

This novel will forever alter your perception of the darkness of evil and the light of forgiveness and hope.

I am running a little behind - as always - so I haven’t quite finished the book. Hopefully I can put some time in and finish it in time to post a review by Wednesday.

Another navel gazing post for those of you scoring at home.

You know one thing I have always seemed to lack? Focus. If I had to name two things that usually result in success, focus and hard work would be up at the top. It seems like in today’s world those who are able to focus and concentrate their efforts are the ones that get ahead.

Me, I just seem to stumble from one thing to the other never really making decisions with any kind of long term vision in mind. Taking blogging for example. Focus and diligence will get you far in the blog world. Natural talent or connections help a lot too, but focus is a big bonus. This, among many other things, has kept me from reaching the fame and fortune that other bloggers have achieved.

I can’t seem to handle the daily grind of writing about the topic du jure day-in-day-out. When the mood strikes I can write passionately about politics, culture, and foreign policy. But I can just as easily lose interest. These days with so many bloggers cranking out opinion on every subject under the sun, I just don’t feel like I have much to add. In the early days blogging felt like a conversation; now it feels like shouting into the wind.

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This must be the week for rather disconnected musings about my life.

I have been thinking about how book blogging has changed my relationship to books.

I used to love to go to bookstores and browse and shop and just hang out. Although, I had quite a few books, if I bought a book I could usually find a way to read it shortly after buying it. Non-fiction was not as easy as I have a tendency to buy serious books on subjects I am interested in (conservatism, the presidency, foreign policy) but end up not having the time or focus for such academic works. On the fiction side, however, I was really free to pick up and read practically anything I wanted. If it interested me I read it. In the early stages of book blogging, I just blogged about whatever I happened to be reading.

One thing changed all of that: free books. Once I realized that publishers would send me books for free it was like opening up a floodgate. Suddenly there was no restriction based on cost or need. The world was open to me. OK, not really, but still it was cool to get free books in the mail. If I saw book that looked interesting I could request a ARC from the publisher. Soon publishers were sending me emails asking if I would like to review their books. I got catalogs and imprint lists. Suddenly, it was like I was a book reviewer.

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I am not an expert on crime fiction nor I am a big reader of classic pulp, but I am an eclectic reader and bargain book buyer. These two things came together recently on a visit to the local Half Price Books. I had noticed that Barnes and Noble and other bargain outlets had a number of reprints of classic mystery novels published by Tess Press which is a imprint of Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers (about which I can find very little online).

One that caught my eye was The Brass Cupcake by John D. McDonald. It just seemed like it would be a fun read. I mean, doesn’t a 1950s hardboiled detective story set in Florida sound like a good summer read?

For those of you as unfamiliar with McDonald as I was, the Wikipedia entry is a good place to start (obviously I can’t vouch for its accuracy):

[W]riting as John D. MacDonald, was an American writer best known for his series of detective novels featuring protagonist Travis McGee. MacDonald was named a grand master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1972 and won the American Book Award in 1980. Stephen King, who praised him as “the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller,” dedicated The Sun Dog (a novella in his Four Past Midnight collection) to MacDonald’s memory; MacDonald had previously provided the foreword to King’s Night Shift.

MacDonald served in the OSS in the Far East during World War II. While still in the military, his literary career began accidentally when he wrote a short story in 1945 and mailed it home for the amusement of his wife. She submitted it to the magazine Story without his knowledge, and it was accepted. In the first four months after his discharge, he put his total concentration into writing short stories, generating some 800,000 words and losing 20 pounds while typing during 14-hour daily sessions seven days a week. It only netted him hundreds of rejection slips, but in the fifth month, a $40 sale to the pulp magazine Dime Detective set his career in motion, and he continued to sell to the detective, mystery, adventure, sports, western and science fiction pulps. As the boom in paperback novels expanded, he successfully made the jump to longer fiction with his first novel, The Brass Cupcake, published in 1950 by Fawcett Publications’ Gold Medal Books.

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I just finished A Perfect Hell by John Nadler. It is yet another popular history of a World War II combat unit, the First Special Service Force, that I have enjoyed. The Force, alternatively known as the Devil’s Brigade or the Black Brigade, was the precursor to the modern Special Forces with a twist – it was comprised of Americans and Canadians.

The Force was organized in 1942 for offensive operations against Nazi-occupied Norway. Following an intensive training period, the men were not sent to combat in the frozen lands of Norway, but to the frozen lands of Alaska and then to Italy. The men fought in what some would say was the harshest fighting environment of World War II – the mountains of Italy. Following a major detour to Anzio and Rome, the men took part in Operation Dragoon – the invasion of southern France – and then fought throughout southern France until their disbanding in late 1944.

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I have a couple of book reviews in the works for the next couple of days but wanted to give you something to chew on in the mean time. Here are some links to hold you over until the much anticipated reviews (in my own mind at least) are posted:

- John Nadler over at Contemporary Nomad discusses Phillip Roth’s longevity:

Roth has soldiered on, and his books are likely to survive him. Why? He is inordinately talented, possessing a mastery of the craft that Uris, Ruark, and Michener lacked. The theme of many Roth novels has been the American Jewish experience, which in turn explores themes (prejudice, the clash of Old World with the New, the isolation of modern urban man) that are identical to the broader American immigrant experience, and clearly strikes a chord among Jews and Gentiles alike. Roth, different from Michener say, chose the moment as the topic of his literature, from the comedic Portnoy’s Complaint, which captured the rebellion of the 1960s, to the Zuckerman trilogy of the 1970s that depicted the moral compromises the ’70s was beginning to demand of the ’60s generation.

I left this question for John and I will repeat it here: I haven’t read any Roth, if you had to pick one Roth book to recommend what would it be?

- Do you find book specific blogs interesting? Do you think they are good marketing tools?
–> Slate in many ways pioneered this tactic with their book club. This week they have one on a book in my TBR pile, Politics Lost by Joel Klein.

–> NRO has one on John Podhoretz’s anti-Hillary tome Can She Be Stopped.

–> Stepping away from politics, Harper Collins has a blog for the book Fly By Night. Here is how it is described:

In which acclaimed author Frances Hardinge and her editor Michael Stearns (henceforth our heroes) undertake a breathless, breakneck tour across the continent and back—visiting seven cities, seventeen schools, eight libraries and bookstores, and one enormous (and rather interesting) gathering of national booksellers. A thrilling adventure filled with moments of high danger, humor, and courageous acts.

- Speaking of an “one enormous (and rather interesting) gathering of national booksellers,” I won’t be attending BEA. I was very tempted to attend as it sounds like a lot of fun and I have friends in DC. But the timing just wasn’t right as my wife’s birthday is Saturday and it would have been too much trouble to find a sitter for the dogs and family vacation. Plus, I am not sure she would have wanted me to slip off to a book convention while we were on vacation!

But other bloggers will be in attendance and you can read their accounts. So check out Ed, Sarah and Ron, and any other bloggers who are lucky enough to be attending.

–> The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders

From Publishers Weekly:

The shift of target to Iraq War–era America proves problematic for major 1990s satirist Saunders (Pastoralia), who here checks in with an allegorical novella centered on the tiny imaginary nations of Inner and Outer Horner. The citizens of Inner Horner, live-and-let-livers who have a lot of unproductive discussions, are countable on two hands, and they are not-quite-human: one man’s torso is simply a tuna fish can and a belt. (There are 15 b&w illustrations scattered throughout.) When their nation suddenly shrinks, the group spills into Outer Horner, and a border dispute results. It paves the way for the rise of an everyman Outer Horner dictator named Phil—a jingoistic, brute-force bully.

The eventual fortuitous military intervention by Greater Keller, a neighboring technocapitalist nation of latte drinkers, comes after much lingering over the mechanics of Phil’s coup. (There are multiple references to the “spasming rack” from which Phil’s brain periodically slides.) Despite press-chat comparisons to Animal Farm, the book lacks Orwell’s willingness to follow his nightmare vision all the way out to the end. Saunders delivers some very funny exchanges and imaginative set-pieces, but literally has to call in a deus ex machina to effect Outer Horner’s final undoing. It’s entertaining, but politics and war don’t really work that way, allegorically or otherwise.

I am always on the lookout for short and unique works. This seemed to qualify. The book got a lot of good press and I wanted to see for myself if it was based on general anti-Bush and anti-war sentiment or Saunder’s skill. The PW review above further piqued my interest. It also presents an interesting challenge to me given my support for the war. Can I see and enjoy the satire even though I might disagree with the motivating - or at least informing - politics? I will of course let you know what I think when I finish it.

Be sure to check on Saunder’s essay about why he wrote the book.

–> Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan

Amazon.com

Ben Hogan’s premise in this 1957 classic is driven home in bold letters: “THE AVERAGE GOLFER IS ENTIRELY CAPABLE OF BUILDING A REPEATING SWING AND BREAKING 80.” Religions are founded on less, and Hogan’s detailed analyses and illustrated demonstrations of grip, stance, posture, and the two basic components of the swing make up a sacred book. Though its very simplicity seems dated, this is the tome of technique that should serve as the foundation of every golf library.

For some odd reason, I carry in my heart a secret belief that one day I will again have the time to play golf and to actually improve my game. In particular, I dream of the day when my daughter and I can play the game together. I bought this book in the furtherance of those dreams. Am I kidding myself about the near future prospects? Perhaps, but - not to be sacrilegious - “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

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