Bookworms: Sharing Stories

I’ll never forget the day my father pulled in to the driveway of our country home—bearing treasure in the bed of that old pickup truck. It was a small pine bookshelf, loaded down with two complete sets of books: the My Book House and A Picturesque Tale of Progress series, both by Olive Beaupre Miller. Just like that our house went from a place of no books, to one of endless stories. I read each volume from cover to cover, poring over words and illustrations. Those books brought a new world into the little hollow where I grew up. I’ll be forever grateful to Ms. Miller for her work.

The start of a new school year always gets me thinking about books. Have you ever noticed that everyone has a book story? I talked to some of my favorite High Calling bookworms about theirs recently. I thought you might enjoy hearing them too. So pull up a chair, settle in. It’s time for some good story-swapping.

Our Senior Editor Marcus Goodyear told me about "spinning stories" and how reading a good one helps.

I don’t remember the first time I read The Things They Carried. Gritty novels about the Vietnam War certainly aren’t typical inspirational reading, but it has definitely been an influential book in my life. Let me explain. Tim O’Brien went to Vietnam. The main character of the book is also named Tim O’Brien. But the book is a work of fiction. He’s playing with the readers, of course. Parts of the story are memoir. Parts are made up. And the reader doesn’t know which parts are which. Tim O’Brien himself may not know. And that’s where the book begins to get under my skin. Isn’t that how memory always works? Every night I spin stories in my head about how the day went, who did what and what it means. Often times this personal story telling happens in the form of prayer. That is usually when I’m creating the healthiest kinds of memories for myself because I do so as an offering to God, deliberately thanking God for certain situations and asking for his help with others. Sometimes, I am a bit more obsessive, circling around and around some experience that bothered me. Coworkers, friends, and family all become actors in my grand personal story, some of them as heroes, some as villains. The Things They Carried helped me realize that story truth is a kind of truth separate from facts. Sometimes story truth can be truer than the facts. But it can go the other way too.

Also, did I mention it is a novel about the Vietnam War? I love a good war story.

Contributing Editor Glynn Young shared about three classics that opened his eyes to the beauty of story.

It was high school that bookended the three books that had a major influence on me.

In 12^th grade, we read David Copperfield…Our class generally hated it because it was so long, but I was mesmerized. I can even remember the main color of the cover, a golden dark yellow. I remember feeling frustrated that David had fallen in love with the wrong girl when it was so obvious who the right girl was.

That same year, we were required to spend one six-week period on a great work from world literature. The teacher chose the work—Don Quixote by Cervantes. She reluctantly agreed to allow the class to read the abridged version, but one other boy and I read the unabridged version. (I don’t know where Jesse Stephenson, the other boy, is now, but the two of us received something that the rest of class missed – the whole story.)

But it was a few years earlier in 9^th grade that things changed for me forever.  We read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. That story of Pip, Estella, Miss Havisham and that convict was my first real introduction to the idea of story, and it was then that I knew that writing was going to be part of my future.

Social Media Editor Dan King told me that his first word was “book” and shared how stories continue to influence him even now.

One book that continues to impact my thinking is The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons. It's based on an old Eastern parable about a monkey who thinks he is saving the life of a fish by pulling it out of the water. The book talks about how we do church and ministry without pulling the fish out of the water. It seems that too often the church looks at the rest of the world around us and thinks that the best solution for fixing their problems is to get them into our world... into the church. And that's not always the case.

The resulting shift in perspective has caused me to reevaluate not only my work in the church, but also in the mission field, and at home and work. Now I think more about how I can serve and minister to people where they're at, rather than telling them that if they would just come to church with me then everything will be all better.

Our Culture Editor Sam Van Eman remembered the gift of humor.

I remember watching my mom read Dave Barry books on the couch during a season when all hell had broken loose in our family. We had left dad and found ourselves recovering in another state. She'd chuckle, then laugh a little more, then a page later she'd laugh hard enough to have to set the book on her lap for a moment. And then she'd laugh so deeply that tears came. All four of us kids--under 12--would say, "What? What is it? Tell us!"

I wondered what could free someone carrying so much weight on her shoulders. I didn't know Dave Barry, but something happened in those pages that turned him into a bringer of good news. It was then that I recognized the healing power of words.

Welcome Editor Dena Dyer told how books helped her find herself.

…I begged my mom to teach me to read at age four. I grew up in the country, and felt very different from most of the people at church and school. Books helped me to cope with my "otherness." Mom would often drop my brother and me off at the local library while she was doing errands in town, and I spent many happy hours browsing the shelves and learning about life from the authors I discovered.

One of my favorite books as a child was Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O' Dell. I must have read it at least a dozen times when I was in sixth grade. The story of a girl orphaned on a deserted island, who survived on her wits and by learning from the creatures she befriended, struck a chord deep inside me. I had longed to be an author before I read the book; but afterwards, I felt positively driven to write stories that would touch people as I'd been touched.

It turns out that Work Editor Bradley J. Moore has always had a competitive edge.

When I was 10 years old, my mother announced a contest for me and my 3 siblings at the beginning of summer break: whoever read the most books over summer vacation would win! Off we went to the library, and I attacked that contest—determined to win (funny, I forget what the prize was!). I devoured something like 50 books in those 12 weeks, and won hands down. In the process, I became absolutely enthralled with some of the stories I found, and to this day I remember the magical feeling of getting lost in these books: The Diamond in the Window, Half Magic, and just about every Hardy Boys mystery there was.

The next year I decided to write my own mystery novel, so I went to my father's typewriter every day after school for a month and pounded out a full-fledged 12-chapter mystery book, a la Hardy Boys. I was so delighted with it, though I am sure it was quite childish. The following year, I developed and wrote (by hand this time) an adventure-fantasy story involving three brothers (not unlike my own) moving to a new house (which we had done) and discovering a small  treasure chest in their basement with a magic stone that took them back in time to something like the Arabian nights. I never finished that one, but recall getting into trouble reading it aloud to them late into the night while we were supposed to be quiet sleeping.

Content Editor Charity Singleton shared about the transition from reader to writer.

From the first few words I learned to read at age four, I developed a passion for reading that kept me long in the school library, left me spending my allowance on Scholastic Book orders, and drew me deeper and deeper into building plots and unexpected climaxes. Reading was pleasure to me, a hobby I would never outgrow.

When I found myself with a growing amount of "assigned" reading in high school, however, my passion wavered…The joy returned only when I began to write about what I was reading. It started with a Romeo and Juliet project in my freshman literature class, but continued through my sophomore research paper and on into the response papers of my senior classics course. Learning how to meticulously record quotes with their citations, growing in my ability to weave my own thoughts with those an actual author, and discovering that my interpretations could actually enhance someone else's enjoyment of reading brought my love of reading full circle.

No longer was I just a consumer of literary material. Now I was a creator as well.

Contributing Editor Ann Voskamp gave a story of how to grow passion

The year I was four, my mama rationed Kraft Dinner boxes to serve two meals for two adults and two children, and we woke up to snow on our blankets, the old house gaping open in too many places to winter howling everywhere. 

But my mama, she made books out of trashed calendars and cardboard boxes, wrote stories out in pencil and tied the cardboard pages together with blue yarn. She just used what she had. She used her words. She made books. 

Every afternoon after lunch, she'd read those homemade books to my brother and I, us under quilts and coats, right up close to the fire. 

When Nor-westers moan in, I remember then.

How a woman can warm the cold with words.   

Newsletter Editor David Rupert kept late night company with words (can’t you just see him with his head under the covers, flashlight in hand?)

As a boy, I was a reader. And it was the Hardy Boys that did it for me. I loved the mystery, the teamwork and the storyline. Countless times Mom would come in the bedroom unannounced and see the covers over my head with the glow of a flashlight silhouetting my figure. How can you get mad at a kid for reading? And those early clandestine habits have carried into my adult life. I do read a mystery now and then, as well as biographies, non-fiction, and inspirational. And my favorite place to read is still in bed— a bookmark to my day—and an escape from a world gone crazy. But now, I don't have to hide under the covers.

Contributing Editor Deidra Riggs recalled learning to read.

My mom taught me to read while I sat on a glider on the front porch of my grandmother's row house. It was summer, and the cicadas sang a song as I read about Dick, Jane and Sally and their dog, Spot. The truth is, my mom had been teaching me to read for months. First, the alphabet and the different sound each letter made. She taught me that vowels and consonants had different sounds, and almost every word in our language is mostly consonants, with at least one vowel. I'd been paying attention. But it was this day on the porch, with the green glider squeaking as my mom used her foot to push it back and forth, that it all started to come together. Those letters made sounds and when they all got together, they made words, and when those words got together, they made stories. And right there, I realized everybody has a story. And everyone has access to all the words. And everyone can string those words together to tell their very own story in their very own way. And there will never be time enough to read all the stories there are to read or to figure out all the ways to string those words together so that people hear your voice when they read your words on the page on their own front porch while cicadas sing in the trees.

In this post, Leadership Editor Christine A. Scheller, shared how books help us remember. She described how, on the two year anniversary of her son’s death, she came across a book that carried special memories.

I’ve been carrying this book around the house like it’s my blankie. Jeff asked me if it’s my new bedtime reading. “No,” I said, “I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about it.” The truth is, I do want to hug it to myself and never let it go, or at least stick it under my mattress so it’s always close, because it reminds of a time when life made a little bit of sense. When my baby was mentally and emotionally healthy. When he took the idea of a long life for granted. (Read the whole story here).

In this story, Jennifer Dukes Lee, Contributing Editor, told me how she eats words for dinner and our Family Editor, Ann Kroeker talks about discovering herself through writing (and reading).

I desperately wanted to understand myself and unearth who I was meant to become, she says. And deep down, I wanted to write. (Read the whole story here).

Everyone has a book story. Would you like to share yours? Leave us a comment or link up to a post at your blog with your special story.

Image by Rick Harris. Used wth permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Laura J. Boggess.

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