My
reading method drives some people, many of them in my family, crazy. I read 20
to 30 books at the same time. Many are literally “page a day” books. When I have
a read a page from each of my books each day, I choose the one that I need to
think about some more on that particular day as my “rest of the day” book.
I
would probably do this just as a reader, because it’s the way my brain works,
but it’s fruitful for me as a writer to keep a conversation going in my brain
among not just many writers but many areas of thinking.
At
the moment I am reading:
FICTION:
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
The Four Stages of
Cruelty, Keith
Hollihan
The Husband, Dean Koontz
The Lincoln Myth, Steve Berry
Death in Nostalgia
City, Mark
S. Bacon
Fear Nothing, Lisa Gardner
NON-FICTION
The Opening
Kickoff, Dave
Revsine
Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber
The Journal of
John Wesley
Stories that Have
Shaped My Life & Ministry, John Killinger
Outsider Baseball,
Scott
Simkus
The World Until
Yesterday, Jared
Diamond
A Generous
Orthodoxy, Brian
McLaren
The Future of the
Mind, Michio
Kaku
The Making of the
Atomic Bomb. Richard
Rhodes
POETRY
Aimless Love, Billy Collins
The Pocket Book of
American Poems, Louis
Untermeyer, Editor
RECENTLY
COMPLETED
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
Seven for a
Secret, Lindsay
Faye
The Boson at the
End of the Universe, Sean
Carroll
The Elegance of
the Hedgehog, Muriel
Burbery
The Truth about
the Harry Quebert Affair
Dubliners, James Joyce
Hummers,
Knucklers, & Slow Curves edited by Don Johnson
Run, Andrew Grant
My
replacement method, when I have finished a book, is simple. I choose another of
the same genre, or whatever my wife and daughters gave me most recently for
Christmas or birthday or Father’s Day.
Try
it; you’ll like it. Or maybe not.
John Robert McFarland
Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be
published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.
My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.
I
tweet as yooper1721.
I
also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for
the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/
MY
OTHER BOOKS:
NOW THAT I HAVE
CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and
Those Who Love Them
[AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K.
Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for
cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”
AN ORDINARY MAN
[HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent
with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for
killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full
circle…
THE STRANGE
CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a
preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really
a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know,
I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of
questioning the call.
WHEN FATHER RODE
THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0
If
you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml
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