New Releases and Book Recommendations,

I recently visited Mobile Booksellers, which is a local new-used bookstore. I stepped in the door and into an ongoing conversation about books. We readers love to talk books, and so I do that with you just now.

Yes, tomorrow is release day for According to Carley Love in e-book format! It will be available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, and Apple iBooks.

I am currently reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art. Some of you might be familiar with L’Engle from her classic novel, A Wrinkle in Time. (Which I have not read but now must.) L’Engle has me thinking deeply about words and language and writing and my beliefs about it all. The book and what L’Engle puts forth is as timely today as it was when first published in 1972, perhaps more so as we can all see what has happened to words and society in the past fifty-one years. I find the book flows, easily readable, captivating, and thought-provoking. Here are a few passages–

“Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.’” ~ Madeleine L’Engle.

She speaks of the necessity of words: “We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle.

And yet we are losing words with every passing decade. Even I, a plain speaker, can tell that. So often I will use a word in conversation, almost always a word I learned from my mother, and will be asked what it means. According to L’Engle, language is always lost in time of war. I have never thought of that. The past century has been one of war.

“We cannot Name or be Named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for the takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles–we cannot think, we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than ‘the way things are.’” ~Madeleine L’Engle.

A dear reader friend, Louise, recently wrote me to recommend Pat Conroy’s A Lowcountry Heart, Reflections on a Writing Life. It is next up on my list. Have you read it?

Are you reading anything that you are especially enjoying? A book that causes your inner being to perk up and dance? Do report! It is such a pleasure to talk over a book with someone who has read it.

And if you do read According to Carley Love and enjoy it, please leave a review on your favorite bookstore, Goodreads, or wherever you hang out online.

Blessings,