The Book Club that Wasn't

Tuesday I spoke at Norfolk Christian School, both branches of the lower schools. The sweetest thing happened at the end of the second chapel service--the principal called on three students to "pray for Mrs Hunt."

It was humbling and thrilling to listen to three elementary students pray for my family and my work. I was so touched.

I was talking to Dawn, my Nelson rep, later, and she said that somehow the prayers of children seem to go to the heart of God faster than other prayers. And while we know that's technically not so, she was right about the prayers of children having a unique and special quality.

On to the topic at hand:

LOL. Well, last week I experienced a first. For the first time in the two or three years since we’ve been having our neighborhood book club, every single woman backed out. Failed to show up. Didn’t come.

Leaving me with the freedom to finish my daily page quota and watch 24.

The problem? We picked a Pulitzer prize winning novel and out of our dozen women, I think two of us actually finished it. I finished it through sheer force of will on Sunday afternoon, and I skipped every other page in the middle. If I hadn’t been supposed to lead the discussion, I wouldn’t have made the effort.

Don’t get me wrong—we’ve had novels we HATED, but we still finished them. This thing was simply overwritten. It was a good story, but I think it could have been told in one-fourth of the pages. And it’s not that we’re prejudiced against literary novels—we’ve read them, finished them, and liked them.

But this one? I’m still laughing. I think we’re going to avoid Pulitzer books from here on out.

There’s a lesson in this, my friends . . . if you're going to write, leave out the boring parts.

(P.S. No, I'm not going to tell you the title.)

Angie