Wild Weather and Good Books

The weather is supposed to get rough this weekend, beginning later today. Depending on what part of Kansas you happen to be in, you could be getting snow, sleet, rain or thunderstorms.

I come from Michigan originally, where weather forecasting is nowhere near as serious a business as it is in Kansas. Consequently, I’m often amused by the wall-to-wall coverage that most storms receive here in Kansas and neighboring states.

Neal has told me and I have seen for myself how wild the weather can get, but I still usually take a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude toward the dire forecasts of bad weather. I’m not canceling anything, yet, for example (although a snow day from the gallery would be fun!).

But on the way home from the gallery last evening, I did decide to swing past the Newton Public Library and pick up a couple of novels by George MacDonald. The last time I was there, I found half a dozen or more works of fiction by this Scottish writer that I hadn’t previously known existed. With the Father Brown mysteries rapidly growing fewer and fewer as I finish that anthology, it seemed prudent to pick up some new reading material.

Especially if we happen to get snowed in for a week (tongue-in-cheek, of course). One wouldn’t want to be left without sufficient reading material, after all!

But, as with most of the books I read, I will be reading these with ulterior motives. When I first found The Heather Hills of Stonewycke back in the 80s, I picked it up because the back cover blurb sounded like it could almost have described a story I was working on. It turned to be nothing like it, but it proved very motivational. I went through that story quickly and followed it with the other two books in that trilogy AND the follow up trilogy, all of which I own.

That led to the George MacDonald novels, several of which I also own, and the genre of writing that was at once very challenging and very motivating. Bright gems of truth set in places and among people that were memorial and inspiring.

So I’m hoping to revisit that motivation with these new novels.

If you’re interested in exploring either George MacDonald or Michael R. Phillips, who is responsible for editing and republishing many of MacDonald’s works, take some time to visit the web site at http://www.macdonaldphillips.com/.

In the meantime, happy reading and see you on the other side of the storm!

Written by

I've been an avid looker-at of books since I was old enough to sit on Mom's lap and listen to the stories she read. Once I learned to read and discovered the school library, I read every horse story I could find. I must have read Walter Farley's Black Stallion series a dozen times during grade school. I still enjoy reading the adventures of the Black Stallion and Flame and all the rest. But Marguerite Henry, C. W. Anderson, Thomas Hinkle and anyone else who wrote a story about a horse was also on my to-read list. I couldn't get enough of them. Then I found Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and discovered another world; the world of mysteries! More recently Dick Francis has combined my love of horse stories with my love of mysteries with his series of books. Frank E. Peretti, Joel C. Rosenberg and other writers now fire my writing and story telling imagination. I am, as yet, unpublished. I write every day, maintain painting and writing blogs, painting journals, writing journals and a number of other writing endeavors. Along with other members of my church family, I've written devotions for Advent and Lenten devotional booklets. For a time, I wrote a monthly column for the Newton Kansan newspaper. I still enjoy a good horse story but I also enjoy a good mystery or cozy mystery, suspense and a little bit of action here and there, as well as literary works. I hope, Lord willing, to try my hand at each of those genres, but if you pressed me to tell you what my stories are about, I'm most likely to tell you they're usually a mix of political thriller and Old Testament prophecy. The Old Testament prophets had a lot to say to the people of their day. They have a lot to say to us, too. It's impossible to follow the news and read Old Testament prophecies and not make connections. Once a connection is made, a story is likely to take shape. The never ending wellspring of ideas is often delightful, frequently overwhelming and sometimes frightening. After all, I know what followed the prophecies of the Old Testament prophecies. Can we be far behind...?

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