Summer Reading Program
When I was a girl, our village library offered a summer reading program. We were each given a chart with colorful stickers to keep track of all the books we read over the summer. There were prizes for the kid in each age group who read the most books—usually a book, of course. How I loved to see that chart filled with stickers! But I couldn’t cheat—my mother was the librarian, so she knew if I was really reading or just collecting stickers. Nowadays, I don’t just collect stickers, I collect books. As you can see, my shelves are pretty full!
I still think of summertime as reading time and I look forward to long afternoons to just relax and “do nothing” and read. I’ve been very busy these past months, writing and launching “Chasing Shadows” along with a Christmas novella, “Wish Book Christmas,” which will be out this holiday season. So I have fallen behind on reading books for pleasure. But now summer is here, and it’s time to remedy that. Here are some of my favorite places to curl up with a book:
The best place is on our beach on Lake Michigan. I love the warm sand and sunshine and the sound of the waves. This is the best place to read happy, romantic stories that end “happily-ever-after.”
My second favorite is our front porch. It overlooks a bike-and-walking path, so it’s fun to watch people go by with their dogs and kids while I catch up on all my favorite magazines, (which I’ve been neglecting). The porch has rocking chairs and a swing, and is a favorite place to read books to my grandchildren when they visit.
In rainy weather, I sit inside by the front window for the same view of the bike path. This is where I pray and read and have my quiet time year-round.
We are also blessed to have a screened-in back porch with a green, leafy view of trees and the fragrance of newly-mown grass. It’s above our walk-out basement, so I feel like I’m in a treehouse. A ceiling fan adds a breeze on hot, summer nights—and this is my favorite place to read when there’s a thunderstorm.
One last place is beneath the screened porch, down by the backyard. There are lots of comfy chairs and also a hammock if I want to take a little nap. Party lights make it festive after sunset, which comes late here in Michigan in the summertime.
So now I need to take a trip to the library. Do you have any great summer reading recommendations? What are your recent favorites and the places where you like to relax and read them?
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I’ve been thinking about my spiritual journey lately, along with my journey as a writer. The two are closely entwined. And I realized what a powerful, life-changing effect books have had on those journeys. Space doesn’t allow me to list all the books that have influenced me, but four stand out.
The first is “The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie and her family lived uneventful lives in The Netherlands until the Nazis invaded. Then their faith in God and deep love for Christ compelled them to hide Jews in their home, trying to save as many people as possible. Corrie, her sister Betsy, and their father were arrested and sent to prison camps. Only Corrie survived.
I read the second life-changing book shortly after we returned to the United States. “Anointed for Burial” by Todd and DeAnn Burke tells the true story of missionaries to Cambodia in the final, life-threatening years before the nation fell to the Communists. Again, I was impressed by their tremendous faith to endure fiery trials. For months, they lived in such perilous conditions that they needed to hear God speaking on a daily, and sometimes hourly, basis. They developed the habit of reading scripture three times a day, and God miraculously spoke to them through the Bible, offering wisdom and guidance when they needed it most.
The Bible is the third life-changing book. Like Todd and DeAnn Burke, I have found it to be a comfort and a source of wisdom. But best of all, the picture of God and His eternal plan that emerged as I read it, accomplished what I had longed for back in Bogota—to draw closer to Him, to get to know Him, and to strengthen my spiritual walk.
I saw in “The Chosen” an allegory of God’s inexplicable silences. And I realized that through my longing for a child, God had led me to become active in the Right-to-Life movement and to help start two crisis pregnancy centers. Through this novel, I discovered that God speaks powerfully through fiction. And it also created in me a longing to write novels like this from a Christian perspective. Christian fiction as we know it today had yet to be born, but I sensed that this was the calling God had for my life. I signed up for a creative writing course at a local college—and a month later, I learned I was pregnant with our son Benjamin. Twenty months after he arrived, our daughter Maya joined us.
I never liked this book when my daughter was young because it didn’t have a plot. My daughter now understands why I got tired of reading it over and over, and has even resorted to hiding the book from Lyla. Ironically, I could read it to my granddaughter all day!
It’s about a sweet husband who sets off to find a kitten for his wife and, when he can’t make up his mind which one to choose, returns with “hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats.” His astounded wife says, “But we can never feed them all!”
I was never orphaned but my mother did become gravely ill when I was a child and had to be hospitalized. My sisters and I lived with my grandparents until she recovered. I wasn’t wise enough to realize it then, but I think “The Boxcar Children” appealed to me because the children not only survived the trauma but even flourished. And how fun to make over a boxcar! Just like my favorite TV show, 
It’s about the little people who live in the walls of our houses and “borrow” objects from us to furnish their own homes. It explains why so many things go missing, like buttons and spools of thread. The borrowers needed that button for a dinner plate and the spool for a table! Even now, the borrowers provide a handy explanation for all the items I lose. And this book either fed into or created my love for “repurposing” items that others discard. Like a giant-sized “borrower,” I love to scour thrift stores and garage sales searching for treasures to fix and paint and resurrect—like this broken-down bedside table that I turned into a filing cabinet. The plant stand was also a thrift store find.
Peter and his siblings are warned not to go near Farmer McGregor’s garden lest they be caught and made into rabbit pie. The good little bunnies heed the warning and stay home. Peter doesn’t. As a child, I almost always obeyed the rules and was horrified by those who didn’t. I shouldn’t have liked this book—yet I did. Peter gets caught by the farmer and only narrowly escapes. He’s punished for disobeying, which appealed to my sense of justice and fairness. But oh, what an exciting adventure Peter had that day! The story provided a way for me to break the rules and be naughty, risking danger and adventure—and yet remain safe.