Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Summer of Light

I just wanted to recommend a book we are reading right now. For those of you that don't know this little fact, my husband LOVES being read to....which is a nice little fit because I LOVE to read. It has proven to be a great activity for us through our marriage (we read 3 on our honeymoon). We climb in bed and he listens with rapt attention (what girl does not love this?!) and at the end of each chapter, he begs for more. This book, Summer of Light by W. Dale Cramer is Christian fiction and is wonderful. We read laughing OUT LOUD at the author's plots and well described characters. Last night, we read a paragraph that caught my admiration both as a reader and as a wannabe writer. I love the written word. I love one that can write creating such beautiful imagery. I love an author that uses run-on sentences....as if they cannot get it out fast enough. Like a teenager describing her day. Agh...love it. The main character is a self described redneck poet. Here is his beautiful paragraph...
"He liked landscapes. He'd always had a soft spot for old barns and dilapidated houses leaning a few degrees out of plumb, with holes in the roof, gray wood curling up and peeling off--maybe with an old rusty truck parked up against one end, forgotten, tires flat and weeds growing out from under it. There were ghosts in places like that--stories hidden in the shadows and deep in the grain of old boards that real people with callused hands once measured and sawed and nailed together on purpose to make a home, boards that they sat on and leaned against every day for so long that now they were full of memory of laughing and crying, the murmurs of lovers and barking of dogs. Old barns and empty houses, they remembered."

1 comment:

Jared & Jill Marley said...

I should have known you are a wannabe writer...I LOVE reading your blog. You are really an amazing writer...I picture everything you describe perfectly and feel as though most of the time you are standing there talking to me instead of me sitting here reading.

Also, LOVED the last post. As a stay-at-home mom too...any way you can figure out how to save pennies is a good thing.

Keep it up girl.

Love,
Jill