When Your #1 Goal Is to Get Read

One of the news stories we are running in tomorrow's edition of our ezine is "Canada: Hindu Family Healed, Lost Keys Found."

My first thought was to rewrite that headline - is it really news that a guy lost his keys and found them again? Actually it is, and the incongruity that first got my attention, grew on me. I think I'll keep it. Will it make people want to read the article?

I enjoy reading The Guardian newspaper (from the UK) partly because they seem to give editors free rein to come up with the most interesting headlines they can produce. Consider these stories that I felt compelled to click through and read yesterday on the basis of the link text:

Dating Site Expels 5,000 after Festive Weight Gain
Barack Obama Effigy Hanged in Georgia

It does bring up some strategic and perhaps ethical issues, though - writers can persuade readers to do what they want - at least temporarily: to begin reading an article they might not turn to otherwise. If you write compelling and evocative text about something that turns out to be not so interesting after all, though, and you do it often, readers may eventually stop trusting what you have to say. So, do you use all your powers, or not? If so, where do you draw the line?

Magazines do this a lot with their cover copy - such as making a big deal out of some article that turns out be just a little thing buried somewhere in the back of the book, not the feature implied.

The roommate recently picked up a women's magazine of the type that alternates article about expensive beauty products and tempting recipes with advice on saving money and losing weight. Guess that reflects and responds to the conflicting desires so many of us juggle. But a steady diet of such magazines would probably increase one's unhappiness level.

The editor showed some restraint, though, in a human interest story for a column they call "My Hometown." This one featured a family in North Pole, AK. I couldn't help but notice - though the editor restrained herself from commenting - that they named their first-born child, "Nick." Now, that's just wrong. Poor kid.

Read in 2009 - Part 2, Fiction

See also Read in 2009 - Part 1, Nonfiction and 2008 Book Blogging Roundup.

Here's the list (taxonomy mine). Looks like I read more than twice as much fiction (92 volumes) as nonfiction (40 volumes). Probably because it goes faster. If you're interested in what I thought on any of these, copy the titles/authors into the search engine, upper right.

Classics

• Silence, by Shusaku Endo
• Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid
• The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
• Selected Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

Mysteries, More or Less

• The Man in the Brown Suit, by Agatha Christie
• Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie
  
• The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
• The Man in the Queue, by Josephine Tey
• An Anne Perry Christmas: Two Holiday Novels, by Anne Perry
• Buckingham Palace Garden, by Anne Perry
• False Witness: A Sister Agatha Mystery, by Aimee and David Thurlo
• Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear
• Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear
• Pardonable Lies, by Jacqueline Winspear
• Messenger of Truth, by Jacqueline Winspear
• Bruno: Chief of Police, by Martin Walker
• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, by Alexander McCall Smith
• Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, by Alexander McCall Smith
• Corduroy Mansions, by Alexander McCall Smith
• Fatally Flaky, by Diane Mott Davidson
• Eye of Jade, by Diane Wei Liang
• Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil, and Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective, by Donald Thomas
• Dead and Berried, by Karen MacInerney
• The Tale of Hill Top Farm, by Susan Wittig Albert
• The Tale of Hawthorn House, by Susan Wittig Albert
• The Tale of Briar Bank, by Susan Wittig Albert
• Uneasy Relations, by Aaron Elkins
• Tiny Little Teeth, by Aaron Elkins

“Christian” Fiction

• A Matter of Diamonds, by David Manuel
• A Matter of Time, by David Manuel
• Worth A Thousand Words, by Stacy Hawkins Adams
• Shadows of Lancaster County, by Mindy Starns Clark
• Seaside, by Terri Blackstock
• The Listener: What If You Could Hear What God Hears? By Teri Blackstock
• On This Day, by Melody Carlson
• I Heart Bloomberg, by Melody Carlson
• Hannah Grace, by Sharlene MacLaren
• Long Journey Home, by Sharlene MacLaren
• The Moon in the Mango Tree, by Pamela Binnings Ewen
• The God Cookie, by Geoffrey Wood

Kid Lit

• Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis
• The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis
• A Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter
• Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room, by Lemony Snicket
• Emily Climbs, by L.M. Montgomery
• The Lightening Thief, by Rick Riordan
• The Titan’s Curse, by Rick Riordan
• The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan
• The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda, by Christianna Brand
• Freddy and the Space Ship, by Walter Brooks
• The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron
• Bloomability, by Sharon Creech
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
• The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
• Ozma of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
• Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
• Small Steps, by Louis Sachar
• The Neddiad, by Daniel Pinkwater
• The More the Merrier, by Lenora Mattingly Weber

Science Fiction

• Remake, by Connie Willis
• DA, by Connie Willis
• Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
• Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
• Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
• Dragonsinger, by Anne McCaffrey
• Dragondrums, by Anne McCaffrey

Other Novels

• Honolulu: A Novel, by Alan Brennert
• Mischievous Maid Faynie, by Laura Jean Libbey
• The Bird Catcher, by Laura Jacobs
• Unveiling: a Novel, by Suzanne M. Wolfe
• The Fiction Class, by Susan Breen
• My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
• Forest of the Pygmies, by Isabel Allende
• Jane Austen’s Charlotte, by Julia Barrett
• Mansfield Park Revisited: A Jane Austen Entertainment, by Joan Aiken
• The House of Bilquis, by Azhar Abidi
• What Is the What, by Dave Eggers
• Digging to America, by Anne Tyler
• All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well, by Tod Wodicka
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom
• The Pink Rose, by Ellspeth Woodward
• Mr. Darwin's Shooter, by Roger McDonald
• Lincoln's Dreams, by Connie Willis
• Patriot Games, by Tom Clancy
• Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin
• Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
• A Live Coal in the Sea, by Madeleine L'Engle

December Reading: A Dozen Novels?! Yeah, But Mostly Short Ones

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis.

Read these for book club. While many non-Christians love these books too, most of the believers I talk to about them treasure their characterization of God, as reflected in Aslan. In “Silver Chair,” it’s particularly noticeable in Aslan’s knowing but gracious response to human foolishness and failure. Maybe you remember Jill’s encounter at the stream, with its parallels to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. But I also liked this one, at the story’s end:

“The Lion drew them to him with his eyes and bent down and touched their pale faces with his tongue, and said, ‘Think of that no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia.’”

A Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter.

My great aunt Grace introduced me to this author and we read all her stuff as kids. Dad says this volume had a big influence on her sister, my grandmother, as well: that it gave her gumption she might not have had otherwise. For all I like it, too. The novel, though charming and kind of inspiring, does have some significant flaws, and it is quite dated. Consider this passage:

“All his vows of love and fidelity made to me before the Almighty forgotten in a few months, and a dance and a Light Woman so alluring he had to lie and sneak for them… I know men and women. An honorable man is an honorable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. … If he lived six months more I should have known him for what he was born to be. It was the blood of him. His father and grandfather before him were fiddling, dancing people…”

Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Read this and skimmed several of her other books the day before the roommate and I and some friends went to see “Little House on the Prairie: The Musical” downtown. Reading this again, it strikes me that Laura lived in a different world with different, though distinctively American, values. Her parents’ wanderlust, independence, and insistence on lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps (seeing people outside their own family as a corrupting threat) seems so weird to me. I wonder if anyone has ever done much analysis of these books and the people behind them? Laura was writing for children and seems careful about what she doesn’t include. Does it say something about me that I want to hear the “dirt”?

The Man in the Brown Suit and Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie.

"Brown Suit" has got to be one of her best. Pick it up for a rollicking adventure next time you are traveling, perhaps. One of the frivolous goals I’ve considered pursuing, hobby-like, is to systematically read through all of Christie’s book. Such a good writer. But on the other hand I don’t know if I could take such a marathon of murders, however “cozy.” Better to spread it out over time, perhaps.

An Anne Perry Christmas: Two Holiday Novels, by Anne Perry.

The last Anne Perry novel I picked up was dark enough that I didn’t know if I’d care for this. But, Dickens-like, she’s adept at the lighter-touch story as well, and these two have some great content about human nature, as well. For example, the second of the novellas in this collection includes a character, perhaps the one “whodunit,” who lives in what the author calls a “self-made prison” of resentment toward the murdered man.

“The longer you persist in blaming others, the more difficult it becomes to retreat, until finally your whole edifice of belief rests on the lie, and to dismantle it would be self destruction.”

Contrast that with the characteristics of the “victim”:

“Judah had had faults. He could be overconfident, impatient with those slower of thought than himself. He was omnivorous in his hunger for knowledge, untidy, and he occasionally overshadowed others without realizing it. But he was utterly honest, and as quick to see his own mistakes as anyone else’s, and never failed to apologize and amend.”

Which characterization would others use for each of us?

False Witness: A Sister Agatha Mystery, by Aimee and David Thurlo.

Sister Agatha is a nun in New Mexico, and seems to get sucked in to solving mysteries on the side. (She’d formerly been a journalist, and the police chief is an old friend…). One thing I appreciated about this one is the side plot about another middle-aged nun who is obviously rather troubled, and nobody knows why. Turns out she’s struggling with the implications of never being able to have children, something I find troubling as well. But, like this sister, perhaps I need to allow myself both a chance to grieve it and to open my eyes to the family that God mercifully provides through other believers.

I Heart Bloomberg and On This Day, by Melody Carlson.

Carlson’s work is rather obviously flawed and formulaic: she’s writing for a market. But somehow she seems to overcome these limitations. I like her. I find her novels engaging and relaxing. The nice thing about this sort of Christian chick lit is that it’s a fast read, not too challenging, but often still thought-provoking, and generally wholesome. All of which adds up to good bedtime reading.

Honolulu: A Novel, by Alan Brennert.

This one’s a bulky but fascinating historical novel, probably based on a great deal of research. It’s the tale of a Korean girl around the turn of the century, living a very restricted life, but seizing opportunities to learn to read, and to leave the country as a “picture bride” for a member of the Korean community that had developed around the plantations in Hawaii. Lots of interesting cultural information about the evolutions of both the Korean and Hawaiian societies. I’d recommend it.

December Reading: Sociological Adventures with Malcolm Gladwell

What the Dog Saw, and Other Adventures, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell is such a good writer; I am a little in love with him. Each of these smart essays was originally published in The New Yorker (remind me to subscribe someday!) Typically he takes a story from one field of endeavor, identifies a principle illustrated, and then applies it to one or more other fields in order to explore or explain the limits and applications of that principle. The effect is that you feel you’re learning something you could really use. He writes really artfully, and in such a way that makes me think: could I do that? (could I write those kind of stories, I mean, could I write that way? Not could I train dogs, or market kitchen gadgets, or any of the other dozens of activities he is describing. But could I explain their worlds half as well?) Many of the nonfiction books I like best reflect the work of something I don’t have, a research assistant. Alas.

One article, “The Talent Myth: Are Smart People Overrated?” shows what happens when you take the principle “our best asset is our people” to extreme lengths (result: Enron).

“Late Bloomers: Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity?” talks about the significant number of creatives who don’t seem to show much promise at first, but in supportive situations will create masterpieces. Gladwell calls them experimental innovators. They do their best work many, many years after beginning, rather than shining early and then petering out like other artists. How many more great artists might we have who never had anyone believing in them long enough to get them to that point? (I am probably not a late-blooming genius, but I think I probably am an 'experimental innovator'!)

“Most Likely to Succeed: How Do We Hire When We Can’t Tell Who’s Right for the Job?” starts off with what Gladwell works up to identifying as “the quarterback problem."

"There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired.” Did you know that being a college quarterback is almost nothing like quarterbacking in the pros? The best scouts and analysts haven’t been able to figure out how to overcome that limitation, to figure out how to hire the best guys to be NFL quarterbacks. You just have to take your chances. That’s why some of the most promising picks never amount to much, while others perform beautifully. It’s a case in which there seems no way to know until you try.

Here's the thing, though. Gladwell says teaching children suffers the same limitation. The training, selection, and compensation structures we use for teachers in America result in an education system that is slightly below average, globally. Nothing matters, in education, more than good teachers. Really effective teachers can teach kids about a year and a half of material in one year, and really ineffective teachers get through about half a year’s worth. That’s a huge difference. So what can we do to get (or make) better teachers for our kids?

Consider another industry that has found a good way to respond to the quarterback problem: financial service. “No one knows beforehand what makes a high-performing financial adviser different from a low-performing one, so the field throws the door wide open.” One HR guy Gladwell interviewed says that the previous year his firm interviewed 1000 people, found 49 it liked, send these candidates to a four-month training camp, offered apprenticeships to 23, and expected about 10 of them to get to the point, within a few years, of being really effective financial advisers. The NFL might not go to such extremes to respond to their quarterback problem, but how about trying out three or four quarterbacks before gambling on who is worth the big salary? Getting more effective teachers, same thing. Lower the standards: give more people a try. Then evaluate how they do on the job.

Get the book, or read these complete articles and many more, here.

December Reading: Getting a Life with Donald Miller

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, by Donald Miller.

The charmingly narcissistic GenXer who wrote Blue Like Jazz is approached about making a film of that book, and in the process of working with the screenwriters (and exploring the world of story in general) he starts to see the shortcomings in his own life. Who is "Don"? What's his motivation? Where is the plot going? How is his character developing?

Miller decides that sitting around writing about the things in his daydreams is not enough, compared to the real life that’s passing him by (somewhat). “Million Miles” is both fun and thought-provoking. I read it fast sitting in a comfy chair at my favorite bookstore, but look forward to re-reading it more slowly.

For a taste of all this, check out Friday's post on Don's blog: Living a Good Story, An Alternative to New Year's Resolutions.

December Reading: Learning at the Speed of Life with Steve Moore

While You Were Micro-Sleeping: Fresh Insights on the Changing Face of North American Missions, by Steve Moore.

As with the Adeney book, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on a copy if I didn’t purchase it, but what the heck: why not ask the publisher for a free one? They hemmed and hawed a bit but said yes. Steve is brilliant, innovative, well-informed, and a good communicator. But this is a self-published, print-on-demand book, based on transcripts from material delivered orally. The result is not bad, but a more traditional publishing method would probably have handled fonts, margins, paper choice, etc. in a more pleasing way, and provided a more thorough copy-editing.

However, the author wanted to provide inexpensive access, on paper, to the helpful ideas he had previously communicated in his very thoughtful video blog, and this does the trick. It looks at global trends and asks the questions about how they might affect missions today and for the years to come. It’s so easy to just keep doing things the ways we’ve always done them (yeah, like traditional publishing!), and as Christians, to hide behind spiritual language justifying it. Mission leaders need a like-minded ally to come alongside them and help them ask hard questions about their ministries. Steve is good at that.

One thing I noticed reading this one is how much it draws from secular business and leadership ideas and sources of which I am instinctively wary. After all that my ministry has gone through in the last decade – being pulled one way and then another under rapidly changing influences – I am still struggling with what to keep and what to throw out. I feel a bit jerked around; still uncertain what or whom to trust. But I trust Steve and Dave and The Mission Exchange, so I’ll keep tuning in to them.

The question, “How much do we want to run our mission agencies like businesses?” can be a difficult one. Having become a part of an agency that has a lot of tolerance for apparently “unprofitable” behaviors (including my own), I am not sure whether to be glad, or afraid. Yet the agency continues to grow about 10% a year, has a very good reputation, and is doing much better, financially, than many others. So I guess the marketing/management/finance types are getting their way in the right times and places, effectively freeing up the rest of us!

In looking over this post I realize I haven't told you that much about the book. Oops... I did come at it (a bit) more directly in An Experiment with Grand Silence and quoted an article in the series which came out after those for the book were selected, in Steve Moore, on Motivation to Change.

December Reading: Miriam Adeney's Survey of Global Christianity

Note: Before I give you the rest of my 2009 roundup I thought I'd post my December book notes. Was going to publish them in one post. But when I reached 2000 words, realized it might be more helpful to publish in smaller pieces. So here’s the first. Come back soon for more. Well, if you're interested.

Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity, by Miriam Adeney – I’d been lusting after this book ever since I heard about it, but purchasing it would have been a work-related expense and my account with Pioneers is in the red. So I hoped it would sort of come to me and I wouldn’t have to buy it! Then one day, to my delight, Mike, who works for the other agency in our building, stopped me coming up the stairs: “Can you take a look at this book and let us know if it’s something we should carry in our bookstore?” Sure, I’ll review it for you!

It isn’t something they should carry, probably – while it contains some great material about East Asia, Mike's criteria said it had to be 50% or more. Whereas this book has just as much about Africa and Latin America.

Adeney paints a picture of what Christianity looks like in contexts all over the world, and includes lots of well-told stories (with fact-checking and footnotes!) It's well done.