Dismantling “The Shack”

I had a very good friend in college, I’ll call him “Joe”, who unexpectedly lost his sister to cancer.  One day she was a beautiful, athletic mother of two, and the next she was wasting away as cancer ate at her bones.  Up until that point, my friend was passionately serving the Lord.  He loved [...]

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Out of the Silent Planet

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with the pains of childbirth until now.”  Romans 8:22
C.S. Lewis cannot just write a piece of meaningless fiction.  His works are not the dimestore variety.  You know the kind of worthless trash that you want to just curl up with and not think about?  [...]

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Giving Caspian a Fair Shake

I am one of those who has often said “the movie is never as good as the book”.  It is impossible for screenwriters and directors, no matter how fantastic, to squeeze a 30+ hour book into a two hour movie.  For years, the attempts to capture imaginations on the screen were futile.  Hitchcock could never [...]

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The Scarlet Thread

Have you ever looked back over your life and considered how God really does “cause all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called”? Or, have you ever considered how God allows the things He hates to bring about good in our lives?  Divorce, abandonment, car accidents, long-term [...]

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The Moonstone and others of that Ilk

Before I had even written the word “ilk”, I began to wonder if it was really a word or if it was merely some literary slang that I had come across in my reading somewhere and I was about to use incorrectly.  But, thanks to those great on-line dictionaries like Wikipedia, one never has an [...]

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Redeeming Love

“Well, I’m done with the book.”  I announced to my DH.
“Good” he replied, much relieved.
 ”I’m glad too” I agreed.
 It wasn’t that I didn’t like the book.  On the contrary, I loved it.  I couldn’t put it down, and that was the problem.  Have you ever seen those cartoons where the character puts toothpicks in his [...]

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We’re All Entitled to an Opinion

People’s tastes in literature differ about as much as tastes in music.  Take one DF (dear friend) for instance.  When, I recommended Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy, Black, Red, and White, she just replied that she had tried to read it, but didn’t like it at all.  “I think it was too fast paced for me…or maybe it’s just [...]

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Lots of “Southern Comfort” in Ruskin

My DH and I recently celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area of Florida. As hotel prices seemed to be extraordinarily high in the area, we were delighted to find a comfortable and elegant B&B called Southern Comfort outside of the city in a little town called Ruskin. [...]

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Safely Home

“Is this the day I die?”  I recently read a blog where they were talking about books that make you cry. I have to admit that I’ve had a few moments, when in the middle of a book, I’ve caught a rogue tear running down my face. It rarely happens with fiction, although I won’t [...]

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Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

A friend recently introduced me to this first book in the Amelia Peabody series, knowing my love for history and a good mystery.  This is one of those series that I wish I had heard about a long time ago.  Elizabeth Peters combines her knowledge of Egyptian archaeology and local lore with an exciting drama [...]

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