reading lists

Tomorrow I'm going to begin reading for real. Like when you're 11 and you promise you're not going to trick your gullible friend, and each time you trick him and then promise again, and your friend says, "You said that last time," and you answer, "But this time I mean it." This time I mean it. Tomorrow I'm going to start reading for real. I've uncommittedly begun All the King's Men for my American Novel class next semester, but tomorrow I'm going to dig my heels in the sand and, come tidal wave, come land shark, come Peyton Manning walking down the beach with a come-hither look, I shall read.

I'm also re-reading Entirety by Dana Candler. I read it for the first time over the summer, as I sat in a bedroom in a Salt Lake City mansion that nestled comfortably between the shoulder blades of a wealthy mountain. Those mornings were quiet, and my heart would fill with God's intimate love for me like the room filled with curtain-filtered, golden-yellow early-morning sunlight. I am loving the romance, as Misty Edwards's forward puts it, of leaving all behind in order to cling to Him in greater measure.

Have you ever had a book beckon to you? I have an entire author beckoning to me. Louisa May Alcott is sitting on the edge of my top-most bookshelf, swinging her pantalooned legs and sighing in that "oh, all my words, like eggs, are spoiling in the refrigerator of disregard" sort of way that makes me want to leap to one of her books and consume and ingest as many of her words as possible. Incentive: As soon as I finish All the King's Men, I can read one of L.M.'s novels. In the meantime I'll need earplugs while I sleep so I won't hear her sighs.

I begin this blog on Christmas break, Anno Domini 2009, with the vow to write regularly, ponder often, and avoid getting sugar cookie crumbs in my laptop's keyboard. Amen and Amen.