Hi Girls....

I finally figured out how to become a contributor. I hope you will all sign up because I want to hear about books you are reading. Right now I am finishing Eat Pray Love. If you read this book, what did you think about it? I think the author is very funny and it has kept my attention:) An attendant on a plane said that she was bored reading it and thought she'd never finish it! I have decided that I need to spend more time connecting with God in a quiet setting.

Reading talk for NNU women’s group

Sandy asked me to talk a bit about books because she knows I like to read .For some weeks I’ve found myself having an inward journey as to why I like stories. It is true that because there was no Bible exposure for me growing up I found TRUTH about life in literature. Truth is truth and it is encased and embodied in the Bible, but there is truth to be found sprinkled thru literature. For Example reading the required Red Badge of Courage in High School shocked me into pursuing a question: The author wrote via his character:
 

From Amazon.com

If I’m going to be drown,

If I’m going to be drown

Then why in the 7 mad gods of the seas

Was I allowed to contemplate the sand and the trees?

This began my quest at 16 to find meaning in my existence answered at 21 by meeting Jesus Christ.



I also read to know I’m not alone. There are characters who have become my kindred spirits who are actually only a design in the mind of an author. The “Kindred Spirits” phrase of course comes from delightful Anne (with an “e”) of Green Gables series written by Canadian Lucy Maud Montgomery. Another heroine, Jean Padgett in the book A Town like Alice, by Australian Nevil Shute, is about a remarkable woman who was captured by the Japanese Army when Singapore fell in WWII. Surviving that, she goes on to become an Australian wife and entrepreneur of ladies high heel crocodile shoes. My favorite friend is Jane Eyre created by Englishwomen Charlotte Bronte. Jane’s childhood turmoil rang such a clear bell of recognition in me that I have not only read and reread this story but have seen all 5 movies made of it. My favorite being the PBS series with Timothy Dalton as Edward Rochester.

C.E. Montague says “What I mean by reading is not skimming, not being able to say as the world says “Oh yes I’ve read that” but reading again and again, in all sorts of moods, with an increased of delight every time , till the thing read has become a part of your system and goes forth along with you to meet any new experience you may have.”



You must be getting the picture by now that reading British and Common Wealth authors from different times in history is my genre. Oh please tell me you have read Jane Austen. But have you read 20^th century Irish authoress Mauve Binchey or Irishman Frank Mc Court’s History of Ireland( that explains why Irish people tell such grand stories) or Scottish writer Rosamunde Pilcher most famous for The Shell Seekers? Another prolific authoress introduced to me by the wife of the pastor that married Steve and I is Elizabeth Goudge. She is mostly known for Green Dolphin Street about 2 sisters and the suitor that left for Australia in the 1800’s and accidently wrote to the wrong sister to come out and marry him. All of these writers are prolific writers and I’m sure all of their works.

This list would not be complete without my mentioning a very ordinary layman of the Church of England , not especially ‘high ’,nor especially ’low’ nor especially anything else who wrote these words:

"If I find in myself desire which no experience in this life can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.” C S Lewis



Beautiful Moments as we read help us to relax and enter into Joy. By Lewis’s definition it is something so profoundly desired that it feels like pain or grief because we haven’t the power to attain it. How thoroughly pleasing it is to meet up with our better self in reading about faraway places and take a journey of the spirit.

I hope to get a blog spot to have us network about book that we’ve enjoyed. In the meantime, Email me at

kathrena_mountjoy@hotmail.comkathrena_mountjoy@hotmail.com

There are many stories but they are all one. Stories are HIS story.