Switchfoot Video Rocks!
I’ve posted about Switchfoot before. I have to say that this video is great! Keep watching, cause you probably won’t expect what’s coming! Hey, if you like it, pass it on as well.
Switchfoot Video Rocks!
I’ve posted about Switchfoot before. I have to say that this video is great! Keep watching, cause you probably won’t expect what’s coming! Hey, if you like it, pass it on as well.
Monday Mini
Quote of the day:
We’re into microwaving; God, on the other hand, is usually into marinating.
Dutch Sheets, Intercessory Prayer
.
In other news:
It looks like Infuze is down for a week. On their email newsletter, there’s been a teaser about a 3.0 version coming, and that is what is advertised when you go to their URL. It encourages you to check back on April 16, and promises an opportunity to win an iPod. Cool. Mark your calendars then!
Monday Mini
Quote of the day:
We’re into microwaving; God, on the other hand, is usually into marinating.
Dutch Sheets, Intercessory Prayer
.
In other news:
It looks like Infuze is down for a week. On their email newsletter, there’s been a teaser about a 3.0 version coming, and that is what is advertised when you go to their URL. It encourages you to check back on April 16, and promises an opportunity to win an iPod. Cool. Mark your calendars then!
Calling All Nations on God TV
My family and a team from my church were blessed to be able to attend the Calling All Nations worship event in Berlin, Germany last July. If you check my July 2006 archives you can see my posts on the event, as well as links to a few pictures.
I’m excited to tell you about an opportunity to SEE highlights of CAN. God TV is broadcasting highlights of the event all through this weekend. The main listing from their site gives the broadcast times as 12:30 am and 5:00 pm on April 7th (I’m assuming this is Eastern time!). In the email I received from Noel Richards, it can also be seen Sunday April 8, at 7:30 pm and Monday April 9, at 11:00 am. There are other times for God TV for Europe, Britain, and other God TV centers.
God TV can be found on Direct TV channel 365. If you don’t get Direct TV, you can stream it through Windows Media Player from their Watch Now page. This event was a major blessing, and if you get a chance, check it out. If you see a bald guy surrounded by three boys, that might just be me 😛
Calling All Nations on God TV
My family and a team from my church were blessed to be able to attend the Calling All Nations worship event in Berlin, Germany last July. If you check my July 2006 archives you can see my posts on the event, as well as links to a few pictures.
I’m excited to tell you about an opportunity to SEE highlights of CAN. God TV is broadcasting highlights of the event all through this weekend. The main listing from their site gives the broadcast times as 12:30 am and 5:00 pm on April 7th (I’m assuming this is Eastern time!). In the email I received from Noel Richards, it can also be seen Sunday April 8, at 7:30 pm and Monday April 9, at 11:00 am. There are other times for God TV for Europe, Britain, and other God TV centers.
God TV can be found on Direct TV channel 365. If you don’t get Direct TV, you can stream it through Windows Media Player from their Watch Now page. This event was a major blessing, and if you get a chance, check it out. If you see a bald guy surrounded by three boys, that might just be me 😛
Blog Tour – In High Places
This week’s CFBA blog tour feature is In High Places, by Tom Morrisey.
It is always interesting to see the type of books we get for the blog tour. We have gotten a wide variety of choices, and we’ve read a lot of good books. Some weren’t my favorite. If you can tell, I don’t tend to read the romances or “chick-lit” books (either I use the CFBA blurb or have my wife review). Sometimes we get an unexpected gem in all of the books we read.
In High Places is told from the point of view of Patrick Nolan, a teenager who is an only child. He and his father share a very strong bond – a love of rock climbing. The book opens as they are on a climb at Seneca Rocks, a well-known haven for climbers located in West Virginia. Their return home reveals a tragedy that pushes his father to distract himself in possibly destructive ways and threatens to destroy the strong bond that holds them together.
I read a lot of glowing reviews before I was able to dig into this book. It took a little effort to really get into it, but I encourage readers to stick with it. He spends a lot of time describing the scenes of rock climbing, carefully discussing equipment and technique. It is a foreign activity to me, and although it was interesting, I wasn’t engaged at first.
There is some excitement in the climbing scenes that occurs early on, but this isn’t an adventure novel. It is a novel of the heart, and it takes the person of Rachel Ransom, a young woman Patrick meets about 100 pages into the book. This dynamic transforms the book and made it a delightful read for me. I’ve seen other books with characters like Rachel in them (I don’t want to describe her too much, I hate reviews that give the story away), but I don’t get tired of them. There’s something magical in the way Morrisey treats the new twist that brings the novel home. I guess it is the threshold of the novel for me.
The writing is carefully crafted. I corresponded with Morrisey a little after reading the book, and he said he was striving for a different style from what he had written before. I haven’t read any of his adventure/suspense works that preceded this, but I would hazard a guess that he is successful in his attempt. The book reminds me of another coming-of-age tale, Bad Ground by Dale Cramer. That book was widely acclaimed in circles I run in, so it is a compliment.
One other literary trick from the book deserves mention. Note the intro of each chapter – he gives a brief description of climbing equipment or technique which becomes symbolic of the flow for the chapter.
Overall this is a highly enjoyable book to read. The slow start is not a negative in my mind; the story is kind of a slow burn, not hurrying to its destination. But if you find yourself stymied at all, persevere, because the book is a reward at the end of it all.
Blog Tour – In High Places
This week’s CFBA blog tour feature is In High Places, by Tom Morrisey.
It is always interesting to see the type of books we get for the blog tour. We have gotten a wide variety of choices, and we’ve read a lot of good books. Some weren’t my favorite. If you can tell, I don’t tend to read the romances or “chick-lit” books (either I use the CFBA blurb or have my wife review). Sometimes we get an unexpected gem in all of the books we read.
In High Places is told from the point of view of Patrick Nolan, a teenager who is an only child. He and his father share a very strong bond – a love of rock climbing. The book opens as they are on a climb at Seneca Rocks, a well-known haven for climbers located in West Virginia. Their return home reveals a tragedy that pushes his father to distract himself in possibly destructive ways and threatens to destroy the strong bond that holds them together.
I read a lot of glowing reviews before I was able to dig into this book. It took a little effort to really get into it, but I encourage readers to stick with it. He spends a lot of time describing the scenes of rock climbing, carefully discussing equipment and technique. It is a foreign activity to me, and although it was interesting, I wasn’t engaged at first.
There is some excitement in the climbing scenes that occurs early on, but this isn’t an adventure novel. It is a novel of the heart, and it takes the person of Rachel Ransom, a young woman Patrick meets about 100 pages into the book. This dynamic transforms the book and made it a delightful read for me. I’ve seen other books with characters like Rachel in them (I don’t want to describe her too much, I hate reviews that give the story away), but I don’t get tired of them. There’s something magical in the way Morrisey treats the new twist that brings the novel home. I guess it is the threshold of the novel for me.
The writing is carefully crafted. I corresponded with Morrisey a little after reading the book, and he said he was striving for a different style from what he had written before. I haven’t read any of his adventure/suspense works that preceded this, but I would hazard a guess that he is successful in his attempt. The book reminds me of another coming-of-age tale, Bad Ground by Dale Cramer. That book was widely acclaimed in circles I run in, so it is a compliment.
One other literary trick from the book deserves mention. Note the intro of each chapter – he gives a brief description of climbing equipment or technique which becomes symbolic of the flow for the chapter.
Overall this is a highly enjoyable book to read. The slow start is not a negative in my mind; the story is kind of a slow burn, not hurrying to its destination. But if you find yourself stymied at all, persevere, because the book is a reward at the end of it all.
Thresholds
I’m currently reading Coral Moon by Brandilyn Collins. I have hit the point of the book that I decided to call “the threshold”. I am at the place where I want to finish the book. I am looking for time to squeeze some reading into my day. I could plop into a chair (with the lights on, BC ain’t for chickens, lemme tell ya) and push through to the end.
There seems to be a tipping point in a novel where a reader is sufficiently invested that they really want to get to the end. I know there are different types of readers. When my wife picks up a book on Saturday, I may as well head off to do something else, because she’s the type that sits down and reads until she’s done. Maybe this type of reader doesn’t have a threshold. However, I definitely am the other type.
I find I can put down a book if I get busy or distracted and lose track of it if I haven’t hit the tipping point. It’s not a burning priority, but if I cross the threshold, then it is something I won’t let go of until I finish.
A lot of this has to do with book structure. The classic “3 act” framework draws you in for the 1st act, builds tension in the 2nd, and races to the climax in the 3rd, ideally. It probably is natural to have the momentum to finish in the 3rd act, and I bet a lot of times that is when I hit that threshold.
It seems to me that drawing people to that threshold point is a key to writing compelling fiction. There certainly is a different “threshold” at the beginning of a novel, where you either engage the reader or they give up reading it. To me, the point I am talking about is the spot when I realize the biggest enjoyment out of the novel. I can think of novels like Relentless, Germ, Orphans of Chaos, In High Places (on the docket for tomorrow’s blog tour!) that I could really tell I hit that point, and I wasn’t ready to put them down. Then there’s a book like Qi that I really wanted to like, but lost me. I read less than 100 pages and recently packed it away, disappointed in wasted money.
Of course, the best books will draw you past the threshold from the get-go, and is the most desirable for an author to aspire to. I can think of two in the last year that did that for me: Scoop and Abiding Darkness. No coincidence that Scoop was my top book for ’06, and Abiding is leading the pack for ’07. I wish I knew the magic formula for creating such a threshold. It boils down to great writing at the end of the day. I will be watching for this “threshold” in other books from now on, seeing if I can get a handle on this aspect.
Thresholds
I’m currently reading Coral Moon by Brandilyn Collins. I have hit the point of the book that I decided to call “the threshold”. I am at the place where I want to finish the book. I am looking for time to squeeze some reading into my day. I could plop into a chair (with the lights on, BC ain’t for chickens, lemme tell ya) and push through to the end.
There seems to be a tipping point in a novel where a reader is sufficiently invested that they really want to get to the end. I know there are different types of readers. When my wife picks up a book on Saturday, I may as well head off to do something else, because she’s the type that sits down and reads until she’s done. Maybe this type of reader doesn’t have a threshold. However, I definitely am the other type.
I find I can put down a book if I get busy or distracted and lose track of it if I haven’t hit the tipping point. It’s not a burning priority, but if I cross the threshold, then it is something I won’t let go of until I finish.
A lot of this has to do with book structure. The classic “3 act” framework draws you in for the 1st act, builds tension in the 2nd, and races to the climax in the 3rd, ideally. It probably is natural to have the momentum to finish in the 3rd act, and I bet a lot of times that is when I hit that threshold.
It seems to me that drawing people to that threshold point is a key to writing compelling fiction. There certainly is a different “threshold” at the beginning of a novel, where you either engage the reader or they give up reading it. To me, the point I am talking about is the spot when I realize the biggest enjoyment out of the novel. I can think of novels like Relentless, Germ, Orphans of Chaos, In High Places (on the docket for tomorrow’s blog tour!) that I could really tell I hit that point, and I wasn’t ready to put them down. Then there’s a book like Qi that I really wanted to like, but lost me. I read less than 100 pages and recently packed it away, disappointed in wasted money.
Of course, the best books will draw you past the threshold from the get-go, and is the most desirable for an author to aspire to. I can think of two in the last year that did that for me: Scoop and Abiding Darkness. No coincidence that Scoop was my top book for ’06, and Abiding is leading the pack for ’07. I wish I knew the magic formula for creating such a threshold. It boils down to great writing at the end of the day. I will be watching for this “threshold” in other books from now on, seeing if I can get a handle on this aspect.