BW23: Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee

Queen Elizabeth II: Portraits by Cecil Beaton 

This week is Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee. It's been 60 years since her coronation on June 2, 1953. Last Tuesday I happened to catch on tv The Jubilee Queen with Katie Couric which was actually quite fascinating and made me want to find out more. There are a couple book lists available online  here and here.  Prince Phillip's biographer Philip Eade wrote an article for The Telegraph documenting the best books celebrating Queen Elizabeth's life.   One author who is mentioned several times in various articles is Ben Pimlott, a British historian who wrote 

The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II

Biography.com has a wonderful synopsis about Queen Elizabeth's life along with a gallery of photos from her life.  Plus, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee online store offers a variety of books and dvds about Elizabeth's life.  Have fun learning all about her life like I did. 

Congratulations to her royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II 

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BW 22: The Great Gatsby

Back cover synopsis:   The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

Well... I failed in my quest to read The Great Gatsby last week because it had become buried in my very full shelves and I had to do a bit of searching before I found it.  I started reading it Saturday morning and let's say it's more intriguing than The Brothers Karamazov and fortunately much shorter. 

The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 and many of the events are taking directly from F.Scott Fitzgerald's life.  According to sparknotes: 

"Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.

Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.

The Great Gatsby may be found online here and here.  To whet your taste buds a bit below is an excerpt from Chapter one: 

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction — Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament.”— it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.....

Besides writing The Great Gatsby and several short stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald also wrote the novels This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night and The Beautiful and the Damned.  He died while writing The Love of the Last Tycoon which was finished by his friend Edmund Wilson and published in 1941.

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BW21: Modernism

Hans Hofman "The Gate"

If you've read James Joyce's Portrait of a Young Artist, Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse or other modernist authors you've had the joy of reading stream of consciousness narrative.  It takes a bit of getting used too, being pulled into the mind of characters whose thoughts go from here to there and back again.   It can be amusing, exasperating, mind expanding or make your brain explode, depending on the story.  You definitely have to read a bit more slowly and be in the mood in order to read their books. 

The Literature Network (one of my favorite resources) sums is all up:

In American Literature, the group of writers and thinkers known as the Lost Generation has become synonymous with Modernism. In the wake of the First World War, several American artists chose to live abroad as they pursued their creative impulses. These included the intellectual Gertrude Stein, the novelists Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the painter Waldo Pierce, among others. The term itself refers to the spiritual and existential hangover left by four years of unimaginably destructive warfare. The artists of the Lost Generation struggled to find some meaning in the world in the wake of chaos.

As with much of Modernist literature, this was achieved by turning the mind’s eye inward and attempting to record the workings of consciousness. For Hemingway, this meant the abandonment of all ornamental language. His novels are famous for their extremely spare, blunt, simple sentences and emotions that play out right on the surface of things. There is an irony to this bluntness, however, as his characters often have hidden agendas, hidden sometimes even from themselves, which serve to guide their actions. The Lost Generation, like other “High Modernists,” gave up on the idea that anything was truly knowable. All truth became relative, conditional, and in flux. The War demonstrated that no guiding spirit rules the events of the world, and that absolute destruction was kept in check by only the tiniest of margins.

The novel was by no means immune from the self-conscious, reflective impulses of the new century. Modernism introduced a new kind of narration to the novel, one that would fundamentally change the entire essence of novel writing. The “unreliable” narrator supplanted the omniscient, trustworthy narrator of preceding centuries, and readers were forced to question even the most basic assumptions about how the novel should operate. James Joyce’s Ulysses is the prime example of a novel whose events are really the happenings of the mind, the goal of which is to translate as well as possible the strange pathways of human consciousness. A whole new perspective came into being known as “stream of consciousness.” Rather than looking out into the world, the great novelists of the early twentieth century surveyed the inner space of the human mind. At the same time, the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud had come into mainstream acceptance. These two forces worked together to alter people’s basic understanding of what constituted truth and reality.

Experimentation with genre and form was yet another defining characteristic of Modernist literature. Perhaps the most representative example of this experimental mode is T. S. Eliot’s long poem The Waste Land. Literary critics often single out The Waste Land as the definitive sample of Modernist literature. In it, one is confronted by biblical-sounding verse forms, quasi-conversational interludes, dense and frequent references which frustrate even the most well-read readers, and sections that resemble prose more than poetry. At the same time, Eliot fully displays all the conventions which one expects in Modernist literature. There is the occupation with self and inwardness, the loss of traditional structures to buttress the ego against shocking realities, and a fluid nature to truth and knowledge.

Major modernist writers also includes Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot,  E.E. Cummings, William Faulkner, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and W.B. Yeats to name a few.  

I've had The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald on the shelves for a few years now and for some reason have never gotten around to reading it.  I seem to be stuck at G and H in my A to Z Challenge because there are a few interesting books on my shelves that struck my fancy. And it's also on SWB's list of books to read from the Well Educated Mind. So....  My quest will be to read The Great Gatsby this week. Who wants to join me?

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BW20 - Time for some Linky Love

Book by Fiduz

Happy Mother's day

 A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving

Read all about the history of Mother's Day here.  I intend to relax with a good book and let my guys do all the work today.  It's time for another round of linky love.  

Neil Gaiman's Journal

Meg Cabot

Stephen King

A.J. Jacobs

Karen Marie Moning

Gail Carriger

China Mieville

Check out these authors websites and you just may discover a new author or fun book.

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Author's Birthdays

Stephen R Donaldson  - May 13

Daphne Du Maurier - May 13 

Leanne Banks - May 14

L. Frank Baum - May 15

Debra Dixon - May 16

Susan Wiggs - May 17

Fred Saberhagen - May 18

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BW19: Dean Koontz

I just read my first Dean Koontz called By The Light of the Moon and was totally blown away.  His writing voice is unique and takes a bit of getting used to. It is very visually descriptive and intense and sets the mood for the story.

Chapter one:

Shortly before being knocked unconscious and bound to a chair, before being injected with an unknown substance against his will, and before discovering that the world was deeply mysterious in ways he’d never before imagined, Dylan O’Conner left his motel room and walked across the highway to a brightly lighted fast-food franchise to buy cheeseburgers, French fries, pocket pies with apple filling, and a vanilla milkshake.

The expired day lay buried in the earth, in the asphalt. Unseen but felt, its ghost haunted the Arizona night: a hot spirit rising lazily from every inch of ground that Dylan crossed.

Here at the end of town that served travelers from the nearby interstate, formidable batteries of colorful electric signs warred for customers. In spite of this bright battle, however, an impressive sea of stars gleamed from horizon to horizon, for the air was clear and dry. A westbound moon, as round as a ship’s wheel, plied the starry ocean.

The vastness above appeared clean and full of promise, but the world at ground level looked dusty, weary. Rather than being combed by a single wind, the night was plaited with many breezes, each with an individual quality of whispery speech and a unique scent. Redolent of desert grit, of cactus pollen, of diesel fumes, of hot blacktop, the air curdled as Dylan drew near to the restaurant, thickened with the aroma of long-used deep-fryer oil, with hamburger grease smoking on a griddle, with fried-onion vapors nearly as thick as blackdamp.

Doesn't that really capture your attention, make you think, see, imagine and want to read more.   He writes mainly suspense thrillers with elements of horror, science fiction and mystery.   I love psychological thrillers - the ones that chill you to the bone, make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.  I love to be scared, but not grossed out.   I don't love graphic, blood and gut, chop em up, horror novels.  However I loved Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake Vampire Series so I just maybe able to handle some of Koontz more scarier books.  

Besides numerous stand alone fiction stories, Koontz also written two series.  A reworked Frankenstein in a series starting with Frankenstein: Prodigal Son which I'm kind of iffy about reading but want to. 

Book Description: Every city has secrets. But none as terrible as this. His name is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who’s traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. Detective Carson O’Connor is cool, cynical, and every bit as tough as she looks. Her partner Michael Maddison would back her up all the way to Hell itself–and that just may be where this case ends up. For the no-nonsense O’Connor is suddenly talking about an ages-old conspiracy, a near immortal race of beings, and killers that are more—and less—than human. Soon it will be clear that as crazy as she sounds, the truth is even more ominous. For their quarry isn’t merely a homicidal maniac—but his deranged maker.

The other series is a story about a short order cook by the name of  Odd Thomas who talks to the dead. Or rather they talk to him and he doesn't quite know why.

 Book description:   “The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.” But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it’s a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd’s otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo’s sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it’s different. A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world’s worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd’s deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15.

The ninth book  in the series Odd Apocalypse is due to be released July 2012.

Book description: "The stallion reared over me, silently slashing the air with the hooves of its forelegs, a creature of such immense power that I stumbled backward even though I knew that it was as immaterial as a dream. . . .

The woman astride the ghostly mount reaches out desperately, the latest spirit to enlist the aid of Odd Thomas, the unassuming young fry cook whose gift—or curse—it is to see the shades of the restless dead, and to help them when he can. This mission of mercy will lead Odd through realms of darkness he has never before encountered, as he probes the long-held secrets of a sinister estate and those who inhabit it......

I've had fun perusing Dean Koontz website the past few days and added a few books to my wishlist including:  The Bad Place, Cold Fire, Ice Bound and  Dark Rivers of the Heart.   He has text and audio excerpts, book trailers and all kinds of neat stuff. Be sure to check it out.

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Authors with birthdays this week

Suzanne Brockmann  - May 6th

Peter Carey - May 7th

Thomas Pynchon - May 8th

 Richard Adams - May 9th

Barbara Taylor Bradford - May 10th

Robin Lee Hatcher - May 10th

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BW18: Japan's Golden Week

The garden of Komyozenji in Dazaifu.

My son loves Japanese monster movies and would love to go to Japan one of these years, tour Toho Studios and visit all the places Godzilla has stomped.  This week just happens to be Golden Week in Japan and they are celebrating 4 national holidays:  

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April 29 is Showa Day celebrating the birthday of the former emperor Showa.

May 3 is Constitution Day. The new post war constitution was put into effect in 1947 replacing the old Meijii Constitution from 1889. Plus girls are celebrated during Girl's Festival in which families wish their daughters happy and successful lives.

May 4 is Greenery Day celebrating the environment and nature because the former Emperor Showa loved plants and nature.

May 5 is Children's Day and boys are celebrated on this day in the aptly called Boys Festival in which families pray for the healthy of future success of their sons and display samurai dolls and carp streamers which all symbolize strength, power and success.

So when or if we ever go to Japan, I'll have to remember not to go during Golden week when the whole country is on holiday.   While perusing the internet for Japan I stumbled across a great list on Goodreads  which of course lists author  Haruki Murakami who wrote "1Q84" and a list of books on Squidoo which give real insight into Japan instead of stereotypes.  Definitely an interesting selection of books and well worth checking out.  Also Benihana's restaurants are celebrating with a Children helping Drawing Contest.  Now if I can just talk my two picky eaters into going out for a Japanese meal.  

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Happy Birthday to Authors 

Robert J. Sawyer - April 29

Larry Niven - April 30

Jacqueline Winspear - April 30

Joel Rosenberg - May 1 

Stephen J. Cannell - May 2

Andy Adams - May 3

Susan Spencer Paul - May 4 

Read one of their books in their honor!

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May is Get Caught Reading Month

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BW 17: Reimagine the Iliad and Odyssey

Homer

On my bucket list of books to read during my life as well as one of the books listed on Susan Wise Bauer's Well Educated Mind, is Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.  The books sit on our shelves gathering dust and one day I'll attempt them.  Maybe a challenge and goal for us for next year - Hmm!   I have a tendency to read more modern books, but also enjoy stories that retell the story.   So I was totally thrilled when my latest Bookmark's magazine came in highlighting stories that re-imagine the Iliad and the Odyssey.  More authors and books to add to my wishlist and now yours.  *grin*

Random by David Malouf

Synopsis: " David Malouf shines new light on Homer’s ILIAD, adding twists and reflections, as well as flashes of earthy humour, to surprise and enchant.In this exquisite gem of a novel, Achilles is maddened by grief at the death of his friend Patroclus. From the walls of Troy, King Priam watches the body of his son, Hector, being dragged behind Achilles’ chariot. There must be a way, he thinks, of reclaiming the body - of pitting compromise against heroics, new ways against the old, and of forcing the hand of fate. Dressed simply and in a cart pulled by a mule, an old man sets off for the Greek camp ...Lyrical, immediate and heartbreaking Malouf’s fable engraves the epic themes of the Trojan war onto a perfect miniature - themes of war and heroics, hubris and humanity, chance and fate, the bonds between soldiers, fathers and sons, all newly burnished and brilliantly recast for our times."

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood’s Foreword to The Penelopiad:   “Homer’s Odyssey is not the only version of the story. Mythic material was originally oral, and also local -- a myth would be told one way in one place and quite differently in another. I have drawn on material other than the Odyssey, especially for the details of Penelope’s parentage, her early life and marriage, and the scandalous rumors circulating about her. I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in the Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself.”

Lavinia by Ursula LeGuin

Book Synopsis: "Troy has fallen. Rome is a tiny village by the seven hills... At the end of Vergil’s epic poem The Aeneid, the Trojan hero Aeneas, following his destiny, is about to marry the Italian girl Lavinia. But in the poem, she has played only the slightest part, and has never spoken a word.  Daughter of a local king, Lavinia has lived in peace and freedom, till suitors came seeking her hand, and a foreign fleet sailed up the Tiber. Now her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus, but strange omens, prophecies spoken by the voices of the sacred trees and springs, foretell that she must marry a stranger. And that she will be the cause of a bitter war. And that her husband will not live long. Lavinia is determined to follow her own destiny. And when she talks with the spirit of the poet in the sacred grove, she begins to see that destiny. So she gains her own voice, learning how to tell the story Vergil left untold — her story, her life, and the love of her life.

Helen of Troy by Margaret George

 Author Description: "Margaret George breathes new life into the great Homeric tale by having Helen narrate her own story. Through her eyes and in her voice, we experience the young Helen’s discovery of her divine origin and her terrifying beauty. While hardly more than a girl, Helen married the remote Spartan king Menelaus and bore him a daughter. By the age of twenty, the world’s most beautiful woman was resigned to a passionless marriage—until she encountered the handsome Trojan prince Paris. And once the lovers flee to Troy, war, murder, and tragedy become inevitable."

Please share some authors and/or books you've discovered that tell the story in a different way or bring to life the characters of old.

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Happy Birthday to Authors

Janet Evanovich - April 22

Sue Grafton - April 24 

Deborah Chester - April 25 

Lisa Unger - April 26 

Rebecca York - April 27

Harper Lee - April 28

Alistair MacLean - April 28

Terry Pratchett - April 28

Ian Rankin - April 28 

  Violet Winspear - April 28


Read one of their books in their honor!

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If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW16: Judge a Book by the Cover

A couple years back I joined a challenge in which one of the tasks was to pick a book by its cover. The hard part, not to read the blurb and find out what it is about beforehand.  Easier said than done. The temptation is just a bit too much.  Especially in person - however it is a bit easy to do when on line.  Since then have chosen books a few times using that method.  Usually end up with something excellent.    I perused Amazon yesterday, wandered about and discovered a few covers by new to me authors  that really intrigued me and made me want to know more about the book. 

What do you think?  Which one should I read?  I dare you to try picking out a book based on its cover alone and see what you end up with.   Of course, you have to share.

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The Winner of the Frank Peretti Illusion Giveaway is 

Kiki

Congratulations, Kiki and thanks to everybody for entering.  

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If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW15: National Poetry Month

I was never a real big fan of poetry growing up. However, I've learned to appreciate it as grown older and have even tried my hand at writing a few haiku and written poems as clues for characters in my stories. Actually had a lot of fun coming up with a sinister poem,  which if my female lead can figure it out, will lead to a kidnapped woman. *grin*

There are so many different forms poetry can take from acrostic to ballads to dirge to sonnets to name a few.  The Academy of American Poets at Poetry.org have come up with some fun ways to celebrate poetry this month including 30 poets, 30 Days in which one poet a day will post an array of words and images on Tumblr before passing it on to the next person.  Be sure to check it out. You may get lost for a while like I did once I came across it.   They have also declared April 26th to be Poem in your Pocket day in which you select a favorite poem or write one yourself and share it with everyone online and off. 

Celebrations around the blogosphere include Serena of Savvy Verse and Wit who is hosting a poetry blog tour with various bloggers talking about poetry. Gerald Poetic Justice Press is hosting the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly with crime writers talking about and sharing poems.  

I also discovered Bill Moyer's Fooling with Words  where he explores the world of American poetry and has clips from the 1998 Dodge poetry festival.  Be sure to check it out. 

Want to inspire the young poets in your life.  Check out Scholastic.com.

A Road Less Traveled 

by

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

Ask Frank (Peretti) Blog Tour and Giveaway

Hey Gang,

I have a special middle of the week guest and giveaway!

Back in the late 80's I happened to be perusing the shelves at my local christian book store and stumbled up a new novel -  This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. The premise of angels and demons battling over the possession of the inhabitants of a small town intrigued me. Have you ever read a novel that was so visually stunning, it creates a visceral reaction that sticks with you forever.  Frank Peretti knows how to verbally paint a picture and has continued to do so in all his novels from his very first This Present Darkness to Tilly to Visitation.  So when he released his latest book after a long seven years, I immediately ordered it and read it.  Illusions is one of those stories that makes you hold your breath wondering what's going to happen next. 

So imagine my surprise and delight when I received an email asking if I wanted to be part of the ASK FRANK Blog tour. I am the last stop on the tour of 9 bloggers made up of nine pastors, authors and book reviewers who had the pleasure of asking Frank all about Illusions, his writing process, his ideas behind the story and more.  Be sure to check out the other chats with Frank. 

 Can you tell us about the story behind Illusion?

As with all of my stories, there is no single source or spark of inspiration.  Every story comes together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spilled out on a table. Lots of little ideas float around looking for partners, and then they connect, and then they find other pieces, and ideas lead to other ideas, and before long I start to see a story appearing. 

I suppose the love story in Illusion reflects my own marriage, my own love story in how love can endure, deepen, and take on such a transcendent meaning over time. I guess the love that Barbara and I have for each other can only be expressed by writing a story.

 

Why did you choose to use magic and Illusion as a framework for this book?

I chose magic and illusion for two reasons:

Obviously, magic would be interesting and highly visual, and would also afford plenty of opportunity for mystery.

Secondly, Mandy’s sudden, unexplainable ability to create and perform such mysterious effects works right into the whole inter-dimensional, time bending element, the “sci-fi bad guy” intrigue of the story.

What is the main idea you want people to take home after they read Illusion?

I guess you’re asking me, what is the story’s central theme? I would call this story a celebration, a depiction of love, marriage, honor, and commitment such as God purposed them to be, and on a deeper level, a parable about Christ’s love for his bride and how his bride longs to be with Him in intimate relationship.

And guys, this is not a “chick” book.  It’s a story for everybody.  We could use a few more Mandy's with tenacious devotion to their man and a few more Danes who give themselves for their woman as Christ gave Himself for His church. 

Of all the characters you’ve created, which is your favorite and why? 

 As always, I’ll speak from my present day point of reference and say that Mandy (from Illusion) is my favorite character, and that is because she is, in the final view, a true hero and bearer of faith, hope, and love. 

What's next for you? 

That is the million dollar question right now. Barbara and I both feel that the Lord is bringing about a change in our lives, a new season, but He has so far withheld any details. I do anticipate writing some more novels since that seems to be what I do best, and I’m sure that these novels will arise from whatever it is the Lord is working in our lives right now.

Thank you, Mr. Peretti for joining us today and I for one look forward to reading your future novels.  I am giving away one copy of Illusions  and the giveaway is open to readers of both My Two Blessings and Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks through April 7th (U.S. residents only.)   Please leave a comment letting me know which Frank Peretti book is your favorite along with your email address.

Be sure to check out Frank's Facebook page tonight April 4th (9 p.m. eastern) and join in The Last Hurrah Party where he will be giving away more copies of Illusion. 

Thank you to Howard Books (imprint of Simon and Schuster) for providing me with a giveaway copy,  Mark of C. Grant and Company for organizing the tour, and Frank Peretti for writing such wonderful characters and stories.

BW14: Read a Russian Author Month

I declare April to be Read a Russian Author Month.  I am reading "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevysky (translation by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky.)   I've spent the past 4 days at the Left Coast Crime mystery conference mixing it up with mystery writers which means I will have a few more new to me authors to talk about. 

We are also honored this week to be one of the 9 bloggers to host Frank Peretti for his ASK FRANK blog tour.  He will be visiting on April 4th so be sure to stop by and give him a big welcome, say hi, ask him a question or two and check out his new book Illusion which I highlighted in week 9.   We will be doing a giveaway here and on my blog My Two Blessings in order to give all my readers a chance to participate. Woot! Woot! 

I'll leave you with an excerpt of the first chapter from The Brothers Karamazov:

Part I.
Book I: The History of a Family
Chapter 1: Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this "landowner" -- for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate -- was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity -- the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough -- but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.


He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miusovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain.

I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia.

Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom.

She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another.

To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses.

Immediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to twenty five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her forever.

The little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity.

 But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband's hands.

Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

"One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation.

 Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

My challenge to you is to read a Russian author this month. I've already read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and was absolutely blown away by how good it was.  If you haven't read it yet, be sure to check it out.

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