"Come on, move!"

...she commanded the books on her table, prodding them impatiently. "I love too many books. If you don't hurry up and get yourselves sold to some customers, how am I going to add more books to this freakishly packed table? I ask you. Yes, I know it's only been two days, but already I've had to remove The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, Till We Have Faces, Stories from the Growing Years, and The War of the Flowers to make room for Twilight, The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, and The Challenge of Jesus. And The Princess and the Goblin and The Hundred and One Dalmatians should be coming soon. At least one of you needs to sell. Show me you're trying."

I have a table!

But not just any table. Oh, no. I have a lovely, shiny, book table! That is to say, I got my own table of picks at work. I'm very excited about it, because I'm a nerd that way. In fact, I'm so excited and such a nerd, that I even took a picture! Well, several actually. Not only that, but I'm going to blog them, too. ::hangs head at the nerdiness of it all::



The sign, I'll admit, isn't strictly true of all of them. Some of them I read first, and then bought... some were given to me... there are even some (gasp) that I don't own yet! I do plan to buy them someday, really I do! But meanwhile I'll uh... just buy them for the store, should these copies sell. Yeah.







































The first picture is good, when you click on it for the larger size, but it's hard to see the back row, plus there was some glare on some of them. So obviously the other pictures were necessary. Anyway, don't consider this as a definitive list of my favorite books ever -- the store doesn't have all my favorite books. But these are pretty much all books I really enjoyed. A lot. Hopefully they'll sell well, and I'll have an excuse to order more excellent new (as opposed to used, not old) books for the store, and put them on my table. Yay!

Correction/Completion

That song I mentioned a couple posts ago? The one I couldn't remember fully? It was "Real Good Thing" by the Newsboys (lyrics by Steve Taylor [figures] and Peter Furler), to be found on the "Going Public" album. I guess I might as well quote it in full now, not just the chorus. Since I have the insert right here... Thanks to Melanie and Ron for calling me with the right lyrics, and to Ron for telling me it was the Newsboys. I listened to it in between your calls, but since it was on my iPod Shuffle, which doesn't have a screen, I was still thinking it was DC Talk. Silly me. And I'd been too lazy to go look yet.

"when we don't get what we deserve
that's a real good thing (a real good thing)
when we get what we don't deserve
that's a real good thing (a real good thing)

born to sin
and then get caught
all our good deeds
don't mean squat

sell the Volvo
shred the Visa
send the cash to Ma Teresa
great idea
the only catch is you don't get saved on merit badges

when we don't get what we deserve...

doctor's coming
looking grim
'Do you have a favorite hymn?'

check your balance through the years
all accounts are in arrears
guilt is bitter
grace is sweet
park it here
on the mercy seat

when we don't get what we deserve..."

Snow Photos!

I put pretty much all the pictures I haven't deleted from our Christmas trip to Wheaton up on my google album.

Christmas 2007 in Wheaton

I encourage John's family (I'd say your last name, but then my full name would be connected with this blog, and that's no fun) to look at it too, because I've edited some of the pictures a bit since giving them to you. I also updated deviantart, but was much more selective with my choices. My comments are different on each.

Thank God life isn't fair...

...or, perhaps I should say, that the Kingdom of God isn't fair. The sermon this morning was on Matthew 20:1-16, the "Laborers in the Vineyard." For any random strangers who happen across my blog (I wish?), in this passage Jesus relates a story of a man who needed workers in his vineyard, who went out and hired people. First he hired people early in the morning, telling them he'd give them a denarius for their day's work. Many Bibles have a footnote here saying that a denarius is equal to about a day's pay, but according to our pastor, it was the day's pay for a Roman soldier, so it was really doing pretty good for a day laborer. Anyway, then he goes out again at the third hour (halfway between sunrise and noon) and hires more workers. He asks them why they're standing there, they say that no one has hired them yet, and so he hires them, says he'll pay them what's fair. He does this again at noon, halfway between noon and sunset, and at the eleventh hour, which is five-ish -- an "hour," or, in those times, a twelfth of the day, before sunset. Then he pays them. To make a point, he pays the last people first. He gives them each a denarius, which gets the first people excited, since he should be paying them more, right? But he doesn't. He pays everyone a denarius. They complain that it's not fair, he says it's what they agreed to, and why should they complain because he's generous with his money?

As I listened there were several images and phrases sort of stuck in my head, and I figured I could get them out by writing them down. Getting Things Done points out that you shouldn't bother thinking about the same things over several times, trying to remember them, when you can write them down and use your brain to think of new things. I've noticed this with working on stories, too -- no matter how long I think about a story, I come up with much more once I start writing it down, because otherwise I seem to unconsciously be struggling to remember what I have so far rather than creating more. So.

First, I kept thinking of customers at the used bookstore. If there are two copies of the same book in the same condition at two different prices, say, $5 and $8, and the customer wants both for some reason, almost without fail he or she will assume that they should get both of them for $5. It doesn't occur to anyone that maybe the mistake was on the $5 book, and they're actually getting a pretty good deal already, without any arguing.

Unfairness in a postive direction...

Marcus once says in Babylon 5 something like this (I'm not looking it up to get the exact wording...), "It used to bother me how unfair the world is. Then I thought how awful it would be if everything bad that happened to us actually happened to us because we deserve it, and now I take great comfort in the general unfairness of the world."

There's a song... when I first heard these lines they caught me and I kept thinking about them. Now I can't remember them as well, or which song it is, or who sings it (DC Talk?), but I remember that I thought about it once and the general sense of it. Something like, "[...?] we get what we don't deserve. [...?] we don't get what we deserve."

At the end of the sermon J.T. used an illustration that I liked. He compared God to the night sky, full of stars. No matter how much you look at it and enjoy it, you can't lessen someone else's enjoyment of it. It's still always there, in its boundless beauty.

And in the end, all of us are like those laborers hired at the eleventh hour, no matter when we become Christians. None of us get what we deserve. We all get what we don't deserve. Unfairness in the positive direction; amazing, overflowing mercy and grace. That's the Kingdom of God.

Tears of the Giraffe

Tears of the Giraffe (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2) by Alexander McCall Smith
Read: 2/2/08-2/3/08
Librarything tags: Mystery, Africa, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)

I liked this even better than the first one. There was more about Mma Precious Ramotswe's personal life in it, and I think that's why. Besides just being wonderful, this made the book feel more connected, and less like a collection of stories. Tears of the Giraffe is good and right, like a friendly chat over tea. It's the sort of book that first interested me in other cultures, and in not just going to exotic lands, but getting to know the people, becoming a part of the land, knowing it.

And now that I've written these reviews, I can return the books to the library and get more. ::anticipatory chuckle::

Princess in the Spotlight

Princess in the Spotlight (The Princess Diaries #2) by Meg Cabot
Read: 1/16/08-1/18/08
Librarything tags: YA, Romance, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)

This is basically more of the same. It becomes even more obvious a longish series is intended, and it doesn't have the advantage of the initial good idea to feed off of anymore. I mean, well, it has it, it's still there to develop, but it has to be develpoed, it's not as novel in a second book. Still, for anyone who had seen the movie, the novelty (such as it was) had mostly worn off anyway. So basically more of the same. Fun though, and I plan to get the next one from the library at some point.

The Princess Diaries

The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries #1) by Meg Cabot
Read: 1/10/08-1/11/08
Librarything tags: YA, Romance, Movie Inspiration

Fun, light, fast easy read. It's well done for what it tries to do, which is very slightly more than the movie. The feel is very similar, just with more fun details and a slightly more idiosyncratic style (as far as I remember -- it's been quite a while since I've seen it). Some plot points were changed in the movie, some of them to make it more Disney-esque. For example, her parents never married. And her father doesn't die (or at least he hasn't yet, maybe later in the series), he just finds out he's sterile, which prompts telling Mia she's a princess. Before, he just planned to have more children, so the bastard child didn't need to be told (although it would have been a good idea, for the sake of honest relationships). Her grandmother seems evil, although she may improve later. Even when she does things that get her on Mia's good side, thus far they're things that aren't good for Mia, things her parents were opposed to.

Mia herself is probably the biggest reason I didn't like The Princess Diaries more. She's fun to read about, but she isn't half as cool as Bella in Twilight. She's very, very, very much a teen. I might enjoy this if I were a teen, or if I'd ever been a typical teen. As it is, I find myself comparing her to the children in E. Nesbit's books. She seems younger. She's also very left-wing. That's not so bad, by itself. I have friends and sisters much more liberal than I am, and it doesn't make me love them any less. It's just... the combination with the extreme youthfulness... ai. For example, at one point she's explaining why she doesn't go to church, and says something about a God who allows the destruction of the rain forests. Um. I can understand being against rain forest destruction. But that's the worst thing you can think of?! What about the death squads in Brazil, killing the street children? What about the young girls I-forget-where who are kidnapped and forced into prostitution? What about the child soldiers also-I forget-where? Or, or, or...?! But she's a teenager, and rather likeable overall. So mostly I just smile indulgently and keep reading.

A Certain Slant of Light

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
Read: 1/15/08-1/16/08
Librarything tags: YA, Ghosts, Ghost's POV, Romance

The first line of this book reads, "Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead." It easily hooked me, as did the first page... the first chapter... etc. I was a goner. I can remember some movies in which the main character is a ghost, but the only other book I can think of like that is The Ghosts Who Went to School, and that was an entirely different sort of book. A Certain Slant of Light is not comedy, nor is it a children's book. It's barely YA. It's suspenseful, romantic, and deep. My only doubt was her portrayal of Christians -- but that was quickly put to rest. I didn't get the impression that she's trying to say all Christians are like that. Just some -- and I have met some of them myself. Her portrayal is very human, very true. This world of the Quick and the Light would be interesting on its own; but there isn't just fun speculation, there's the healing of old wounds. Excellent.

Life is Good

This evening I've had my sweet husband's company, as well as that of good tea (from India), a good book (Tears of the Giraffe), and good music (most notably an orchestral piece performed with the guitarist John Williams, the name of which I cannot remember). God is very generous.

Beth's Pictures

Of England and Scotland. Pretty. Sometimes funny. (She's my sister-in-law, for those who don't know.)