A Single Layer

...I work very hard to collect pins I care about. I'm referring to Pinterest, of course. I've been on there for quite a while now (has it been years?), and have developed over the course of time an internal filter as to what I will and will not pin. If something interests or amuses me that doesn't quite fit the internal standard I've set for my boards, I may file it away among my "likes," but it will not join my carefully curated collection. (Unless, as recently with the Boromir/Samwise pic "One does not simply walk into Mordor"... unless I just can't help myself.) So it's a little odd to me that in this last week, while I've been especially artful and moved by the images I've come across (and thusly pinned), that one pin of mine in particular seems to be getting an absurd degree of attention. Here are some of the pictures I've found in the last few days ( please follow the links , as they are even more amazing when viewed in th...

I was just thinking the other day how bored I am by today's celebrities, how they all seem to look the same, and how the few actors and actresses who actually do work worth caring about are just too few. This also says a lot about the movies that are out there, but there are legions of mediocre films because we watch them in spades. This is why a film like The Artist is such a breath of unbelievably fresh air, and yet it's just the sort of air that we must be told and told and told again to go breathe. If you have heard that you should see The Artist and yet have not, please do it. It is breathtaking, not just in beauty, but in whatever-it-is that makes a person sit taut in their seat with their fingers to their parted lips and their eyes wide and unblinking toward the motion picture. It's also lovely, and charming, and a number of other words that don't quite come close. I hope it wins all the awards that are awarded to films of any nature. *Regarding the leads -...

A friend requested I pin some book suggestions earlier today, so I started a new Pinterest board for book recommendations. Generally I don't like to recommend a book unless I know you and know what sort of books you might like, but I've had more repins and likes on this board in the last hour than any other I've made pretty much ever. So here's the link if you care to check it out, though it's nothing new to anyone who knows me on Goodreads.

I am participating in a writer's workshop at my church in a few weeks. Last week I had to draft my submission, and it was not very easy. We had the option of non-fiction (which I don't really do) and fiction (which, with a 2000 word limit, is a bit difficult) as well as poetry. I chose poetry because it is easy in terms of word count and writing time, but I almost pulled a submission out from my archives (that's what I did last time), simply because I couldn't write anything. I haven't written much poetry in a while, and when I look back at what I used to write, I get discouraged. Not that the poetry isn't good to write, but there's a difference between poetry as an act of self-expression, discovery, or even meditation and the poetry that ought to be read by other people. So I sat down with a little notebook and a Bible and a prayer book and another Bible, one with illustrations by Chagall (maybe you've seen it before), and a book of fairy tales by Geo...

When I was a kid, I lived for three years on a small missions base in the southern Philippines. When I or one of my friends got a new book, it was a big deal. We ordered books from Scholastic, but when there are no bookstores and the school library hasn't been restocked in forty years, those Scholastic orders were pretty much the life and breath of our literary discoveries. I remember when Scholastic sent my friend Colleen a complimentary copy of Dealing With Dragons , and we thought "this is not our kind of book," but then we read it, sitting next to each other on her covered porch, and then we shared it one by one with all of our friends. We did that with The Ordinary Princess , by M. M. Kaye, and a number of others as well. A book was never just ours. It circulated. Looking back, it occurs to me that that was the first book club I'd ever been a part of. We all read the same things, and then we incorporated them into our conversations, our classes, our play (we m...

I know I've mentioned this before somewhere or other, but OmmWriter is rocking my socks in a zen sort of way. If you find yourself with some writer's block, try it out. You may not write what you need to (you may, in fact, find yourself writing some bad poetry, or expostulations on the nature of the sun slanting through the window), but you will at least write something.

Having alluded to the "other" blog, I suppose now is the time to mention that it actually has a home. Follow the link to read up on certain books I'm reading, hoping to read, etc. What you won't find there are my thoughts on non-fiction, essays, interior design, theology, or winter trips to Arkansas. Well... probably not, anyway. The best blogs often have themes, and I think it's about time I distilled my posts of a certain theme to a singular location. Here's to 2012.

One of the things I'm working on doing for 2012 is separating my book blogging from my "here's my life do what you will with it" blogging. I've toyed with doing this several times over the past few years, but this is the year. Being, of course, the year the calendar quits, I guess that means this is the year to live like there's no tomorrow? I've been reading a lot of resolutions online, but few of them have that sense of urgency, that impulse to live like you mean to now, or else. Regardless of the Mayans and whatnot (fears in which I put little stock), it would be good to approach your resolutions with that kind of energy. It is already the second day of the year, and I am still not sure of what I particularly resolve. I resolve to be resolved?