In Steven King’s On Writing, he wrote that The Stand was probably his best work. And so I decided that if I were going to read a representative sample of King’s voluminous body of work, The Stand was the place to start.

I finished last night, finally. It takes a while to get through 1,100+ pages a few paragraphs at a time. But I enjoyed the whole thing. It was filled with great characters that I grew to care about, and I was intrigued by the biblical and universal themes of good and evil.

Of King’s other works, I remember reading Fire Starter, The Body, Insomnia, The Shining, and of course there are all of the movies. And this is what I like about Steven King: he is who I would like to be as a writer. 

A wonderful book that kept me thinking about the characters, about life, about my life, and about poverty and affluence and what we really need. My mind is still chewing on it. An emotionally stirring book. 

It's amazing how clear historical events become when they are re-told as a beast fable. This is a re-read, but as with most books, it was much more easy to read, more interesting, and made more sense than it did in high school. 

By Ned Rozell

From very early on in our lives in Alaska, people have asked me if I am any relation to Ned Rozell. It is an unusual name, and this book had only been out a few years when we arrived in Alaska. I have had to explain many times (again just yesterday, in fact) that no, I am no relation.

Ned Rozell was searching for something and thought he might find it along the Trans-Alaska pipeline that carries oil from the southern tip of Alaska in Valdez to the far northern tip in Prudhoe Bay. Ostensibly looking for who might live along that corridor and why, he was also looking for something unnamable within himself, and sometimes found that unnamable thing in others. And so he hiked, in one summer, from bottom to top, writing weekly columns for the Fairbanks News Miner along the way.

I found it interesting that Ned seemed to focus on those people he met who demonstrated a spirituality that spoke to Ned on some level. The way he wrote about it seemed to indicate his desire to posses the same kind of faith and spirituality that were dynamic and authentic in others.

I have thought a little about the path itself. It is both remote and wild, but also seems very tethered. I didn’t know, but apparently there is a gravel service road along the pipeline’s entirety, and as long as the pipeline is in sight, there is little chance of getting lost.

So many things have been done, so many roads traveled, I applaud Ned for walking the length of the state in one summer. The tales about the people he met are mostly interesting, but it also drags in places. A number of times it occurred to me that this is something I might have written, and an endeavor I might have undertaken. And by that I mean I’d give the trip and the book both a B-.

Herzog by Saul Bellow (I put it down after the first two chapters.)

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (done 10/25/09)

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (Four chapters into it, I gave it up.) 

Journey to the Center of the City by Randy White

The World Made Straight by Ron Rash

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris

Ironweed by William Kennedy

Giant by Edna Ferber

The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales by Forrest Carter

Machine Dreams Jayne Anne Phillips

Suttree by Cormack McCarthy

The Stand by Stephen King (done 12/31/09)

There are a few books that I have resolved to read but for whatever reason I have not read yet. I continue to hold these resolutions, and every time I see these titles on a shelf somewhere I am reminded, with shame, that I haven't crossed them off the list yet. 

Moby Dick by Herman Melville 

Alaska by James Michener

Coming Into the Country by James McPhee

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is no ordinary book about the role of faith in the life of someone living as Jesus taught his disciples to live. The phrase “We’re totally fucked” doesn’t appear in most books on Christian bookstore shelves (I just did a quick internet search for this book on the Family Christian Bookstores catalog, but it was not found, nor were any other Anne Lamott books, which tells me that Christian bookstores probably haven’t changed much in the ten years or so since I last perused one, but that is a subject for another day).

Through a series of essays in which Lamott reflects on episodes from her life, she relates the messy ordinariness, humanity, and holiness, of her daily life. These essays do not seem at first to focus on the life of faith, but looking more closely, Lamott reveals a life thoroughly infused with faith in God, filled with Spirit, and modeled after Jesus. The writing teaches with a experiential, and not didactic, style.

The stories are refreshingly human (in a messy-room, hormonal-imbalance, not-surviving-cancer, finding-joy-and-holiness-in-the-ordinary kind of way). I appreciate her judicious but not gratuitous use of profanity. Far from offensive, it was perfectly descriptive. I once had a poetry professor explain that in poetry, words have fixity, with means that when the right word is used in a line, no other word could possibly be used in its place, not even a synonym. And sometimes, in real life, there is no other word for a situation than shitty.

Leave it to lefty, liberal, menopausal, recovering addict, single mother to leave me feeling convicted about the way I live out my faith in Jesus in my relationships with those around me, and wanting my practice to look more like hers.  

“If you want to change the way you feel about a person, change the way you treat them.” -Anne Lamott

Edgar was born mute but highly sensitive and intelligent, a combination of traits I found fascinating inNorthern Exposure's Flying Man and McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Edgar is a third generation dog breeder of highly intelligent, expertly trained "next dogs," and all is well until his uncle enters the scene and tries to take what doesn't belong. It made me wish I had a dog like these. A great read to start the summer. 

I'm walking through this book again right now as I'm teaching it to my juniors and seniors. I am reminded of what a great book this is, and timely given our current economic situation. It's a sobering tale about how humanity suffers under the inhuman modern world and modern economy, but how humanity ultimately survives through relationships. If you haven't read it yet, you should. 

I really like the way this guy thinks. The book is comprehensive, and it defines what is ultra obvious, which is hard to do. And I like his steadily skeptical tone. 

This is a young person's book that caught me eye for being written by Neil Gaiman, and I had heard a movie was being made. It was okay. As was the movie.