About Those 10 Books

There was a thing last week, I think somewhere on Substack, about “10 books that changed my life.” I tried to find the specific article again, but Google produced an abundance of listings about 10 books, 37 books, 100 books, 20 books, 23 books, 77 books, 25 books, 40 books, well, you get the picture. 

I asked myself the question. Could I identify 10 books that had changed my life?

 

My answer was no, I couldn’t, at least, not in the sense of some transformational change from what I was before reading the book and what I was after reading the book. But I could identify 10 that had influenced me, in some cases profoundly.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest. 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Sorry, not sorry: Sincere apologies required a shared set of values – Jacob Phillips at The Critic Magazine.

 

Remembering H.L. Mencken – Ben Boychuk at Chronicles.

 

“When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted,” poem by Rudyard Kipling – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Interview with Wombwell Rainbow

I was interviewed by Wombwell Rainbow, a U.K.-based site that features interviews with local, regional, national, and international writers. The discussion ranged from reading and writing poetry to work ethics, writing, and favorite authors.

You can read the entire interview at Wombwell Rainbow.

The Authors Who Enchant Me

You’re in a bookstore, just browsing, and you spot a book by an author you know, an author you love. It’s a new book, just published, and you buy it without even reading the dust jacket, summary, back cover praises or anything else. The author’s name is sufficient.

There are a few authors I trust implicitly. They generally fall into the literary fiction and mystery/suspense categories. Some are Christians; some are not. All are good writers. Some are no longer living, but I will reread them. And I’ve never been disappointed.

Simply put, they’ve enchanted me to the point where I’ve internalized their writing.

Among the deceased writers are Flannery O’Connor, John Mortimer (Rumpole!), Dashiell Hammett and S.S. Van Dine (the Philo Vance mysteries of the 1920s and 1930s), Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams.

Among the living literary writers are Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Fred Chappell, Scott Cairns and Frederick Buechner.

Some of the mystery/suspense writers are Elizabeth George, Arturo Perez-Reverte Travis, Thrasher and Mike Dellosso. For many people, you can say the words “Stephen King” and watch them get a dreamy look in their eyes.

And Athol Dickson and Dale Cramer. Athol Dickson keeps writing extraordinary novel after extraordinary novel. Dale Cramer even persuaded me to read what I thought I would never read – an Amish romance.

I ask myself, what is it about these writers that so enchants me? Why will I not even think twice to buy a book by them I haven’t read, or immediately read an article they’ve written in a magazine or online journal?

It’s more than good writing. There’s lots of good writing out there, across all publishing genres and across the web, for that matter. It’s not just good writing. Good writing is a given.

Guy Kawasaki, in Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, unintentionally answers my question. He’s writing primarily about enchanting causes, products and ideas, but what he says applies to writers as well. It’s about trust, and what makes them trustworthy to read. To paraphrase and build upon what Kawasaki says, this is how I answer my question.

They write with joy. That doesn’t mean they write about joyful things. It means what it says – they all write with joy, the joy of writing.

They write unexpectedly. None of these writers is formulaic or predictable. In their stories, they keep pushing themselves and their readers.

They write with generosity. They’re conscious of their readers, and while their goal may not be necessarily to please their readers, they don’t hold anything of themelves, or their stories, back.

They write with transcendence. Their stories transcend the printed (or electronic) page, wrapping themselves around our hearts to the point where the reader becomes one with the story.

And that’s how they enchant me.


Over at The High Calling, we’ve been discussing Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment. This week’s discussion focuses on Chapter 7, “How to Make Enchantment Endure,” and chapter 8, “How to Use Push Technology.” To see more posts on the discussion, please visit The High Calling.

Christian Horror/Suspense

In the past several months, I've been expanding my reading of Christian fiction. During the Christmas holidays, I spent two hours at a local Christian bookstore, poring over the fiction titles (and occasionally stealing away to listen to samples of contemporary Christian music -- I found Brandon Heath while doing this). I bought a pile of books and consumed them -- authors like Dale Cramer, Charles Martin, Taylor Field, Nancy Moser, Elizabeth Musser and Annette Smith.

A number of these novelists write in the "women's fiction" genre, which, I'm told, is where I'm doing a lot of my own writing. In addition to these, I discovered a genre I was generally unaware of because I simply hadn't been interested in it -- Christian horror and suspense. There are some big names here (like Ted Dekker) but also lesser known authors who are equally good, writers like Mike Dellosso. I liked Dellosso's The Hunted, but I loved his most recent one, Scream. I wrote reviews of both on Amazon. If you like a scary good read, either one (or both) of these will more than satisfy the itch.