Jun
30
2009
Letters to Peter

letterWhen I first launched the website for The Fiddler’s Gun one of the things I wanted to do was to find a way to flesh out the world and the story for people even though they hadn’t read the book yet.  What I came up with is a feature I call “Letters to Peter“.  The idea springs from a portion of the book in which the heroine, Fin Button, is away from home and has the opportunity to write letters to her childhood friend, Peter LaMee.

So for the past couple of months I’ve been imagining what those letters might have said.  It’s been a ton of fun for me to be able to write about my characters in a new voice and in a new format.  In addition to letters written to Peter I’ve been keeping it all fresh by creating letters and documents from other people and places that illuminate other aspects of the story.  A mystery of sorts has slowly been revealed and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

If you haven’t yet stumbled onto any of Fin’s letters to Peter, go check them out at The Fiddler’s Gun.  I hope you enjoy reading them half as much as I enjoy writing them.

Jun
28
2009
Mugs!

rrmug1Update: Due to overwhelming demand we’ve officially sold out!  If you missed your chance at owning one, never fear, we plan to have more in the future.  Thanks for supporting Katie Coston and thanks for being a reader.

Per your request, dear Rabbit Room readers, we have mugs available for pre-order. Exactly 20 of them.

They’re handmade by a South Carolina artist named Katie Coston. Visit her website here to see (and hopefully purchase) more of her award-winning work. Then click here to visit the Rabbit Room store and get your very own.

This limited edition mug is perfect for coffee, hot chocolate, tea, and egg nog. It’s also good in a pinch for sweet tea if all your Mason jars are dirty. It has no leaks. It is round. It is handmade, so each mug will look a little different–but they all say “The Rabbit Room” and are signed and numbered by Katie Coston herself.
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Jun
26
2009
“Find the Moral” Contest Winners!

1991-russ-in-12th-grade-portrait-age-18Sorry for not announcing the winner to last week’s “Find the Moral” contest any sooner, but the awards committee has been engaged in a spirited debate (not all of it civil, I’m sorry to report). It’s been tough to choose a winner from so many outstanding entries.
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Jun
25
2009
Rare and Collectible

bookmarkjpegThe FedEx man dropped off a little box last week and I tore into it like a kid on Christmas morning.  Bookmarks!  But wait–what on earth have they done?  They’re printed wrong.  The knuckleheads at the print shop got the front and back image turned in opposite directions so that you have to flip the darned thing over end to end to read the other side.

My first reaction was to call and complain but then I remembered how I declined the option to have a proof sent before the printing.  I bet they did it on purpose.

It’s only a first printing of a hundred and it didn’t cost much so I can’t really complain.  I guarantee I’ll say yes to that proof option next time though.

But all is not lost.  Like anyone who’s ever collected stamps or coins knows, flaws are not always a bad thing, not when they are the fault of the manufacturer.  Yes, that’s right, the print error on these bookmarks has rendered them rare collector’s items.  They will probably be worth hundreds one day, if not millions.  Hundreds and millions of what?  I’m not at liberty to say.

If you want one, send me an email with your mailing address (or you can put it in a comment if you don’t mind everyone knowing where you live).  Guaranteed in mint condition*.

*not liable for folding, crumpling, wetting, chewing or other detriment caused by the postal service or its minions.

Jun
24
2009
Carolyn Arends Asks: Do Songs Matter? (The Answer is YES.)

imagesCarolyn Arends is one of my favorite writers (not to mention one of my favorite people). Here’s a snippet of a great piece she wrote for Christianity Today this month:

“At a concert in Erie, Pennsylvania, I sang a song called “In Good Hands.” Afterward, the church’s custodian stopped by. “When you was singing that song about Jesus’ hands,” he said, “the sun was setting behind you, and it was making them stained glass pictures of Jesus glow. The sound of your buddy’s violin was bouncing off these stone walls, and, well, you was saying more than you was even saying.”

In these tough times, I worry that violins and stained glass and folk songs may become extraneous. Many people are in a state of financial frostbite; just as blood flow to the extremities is restricted to save vital organs in a case of hypothermia, resources for less essential items must be diverted during an economic crisis. Who’s going to buy tickets to a film festival, ballet, or concert when there isn’t enough money for groceries?

What business do I have writing songs when there is practical work that needs doing? Do the arts matter? Are they expendables or essentials?”

Read on and take heart.

*Thanks to Margo Fellows Grant on my Facebook Page for the heads up.

Jun
23
2009
Goodbye Solo: A Movie Review

goodbye_solo_poster_final

There’s a form of human despondency that runs so deep, that a man gives up. Such a level of despair is manifest in many ways but most tellingly, we see it in the eyes.

These eyes view the world lifelessly. Once we may have noticed the acute acid of pain; now we witness only numb existence. Torpid nothingness has become preferable to the smoky sting of life’s heartaches.

Such eyes reveal a petrified heart, a statue without feeling. Such a man unwittingly escapes that which causes his pain by embracing something—anything—that deadens the life within him.


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Jun
20
2009
Emotion for Cons? Not On My Casio Watch!

thisishow-madiamaboutemoticonsarghWe’ve already built an airtight case against Twitter here which some people tried to respond to but all I heard was “Blah, blah, blah I just ate lunch, here’s a picture of it on tinyurl.”

I can safely assume that, by extension, the case has been made against blogs, Facebooking, MySpacing, Youtubing, all so-called “Christian” pseudo-alternatives to these social outlets and anything else people enjoy. (Has some one made a “Christian” knock-off of Twitter yet?)

By the way, there’s a new program for all the people who join Twitter and then don’t come back after one week. It’s called “Quitter” and it’s the fastest growing trend in trendy Twitterland. And that guy who took my name and never uses it is really irritating as well. So is hypocrisy. And ants.

But what about Emoticons? You know…these things:

:) ;) :( :?

Are they to be rejected as we have so scientifically made the case to reject other fun things?
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Jun
18
2009
Rabbit Room Contest: Find the Moral

getwellI’ve been working on a story for my “Education of a Grade-School Pharisee” series but it has me stumped. I’m quite sure it means something: I just can’t figure out what. I thought this might be a good chance to put the collective wisdom of the Rabbit Room to good use. Dear reader, I invite you to write a last paragraph for the story below—the paragraph in which the narrator steps outside the narrative and tells what it all means. Please enter your entry as a comment to this post. I haven’t yet decided what prize the winner will receive, but I’m quite sure it will be small and inexpensive (or perhaps an 8×10 glossy of Russ Ramsey, if I can convince him to part with one). The real prize will be the glory of winning a Rabbit Room contest. Now for the story:

In elementary school I had a friend named Donny—a small, double-jointed fellow who smelled of peanut butter. I remember him as having a fuzz-stache for as long as I knew him, but I’m probably just extrapolating back from junior high. Surely he didn’t have a fuzz-stache in second grade, when this story takes place.

In the fall of that second-grade year, Donny caught a bad case of pneumonia and was hospitalized for a few days. “Pneumonia,” one of my classmates intoned, shaking her head gravely. “Your lungs fill up. You drown from the inside out.”
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Jun
18
2009
Tempted, Part II

350px-the_mouth_of_sauronWe are so used to running from temptation because we are so often unbelieving. We don’t believe in the power of Christ in us, so we cut, run, and hide.

Temptation is opportunity. Without it we would live out our little, comfortable lives doing little religious things to make ourselves feel good. But temptation gives us the necessary opposite circumstance; temptation gives us a real, tangible choice: Am I going to trust God in this tempted moment and reverse it? Or not?

Temptation is the battle cry of the enemy. And we must engage through faith, reliance, trust - or cut and run.
Read the rest of this entry »

Jun
17
2009
It’s a Bird! A Plane! No–it’s Captains Courageous Shirts!

half_length_tee_proofAh, the joy of a nice new cotton t-shirt. The thrill of a fashionable grey color, the perfect complement to jeans, shorts, slacks, dungarees, britches, khakis, cargos, jams, capris, and knickers. The deep-in-your-gut satisfaction that you’re not just wearing a shirt, or supporting a musician you like (love, even?), but that you’re declaring solidarity in the battle against crime and rascality. You’re locking arms with fellow sojourners. You’re girding up your loins. You’re saying to the forces of evil, “I like Andrew Peterson and the Captains Courageous. What of it?”

Clicking here is like starting the slow clap, or crossing the line John Wayne just drew in the sand at the Alamo.

Jun
16
2009
Trestle

trestle2When I was a boy, an old man told me a story that I’ve always loved in spite of the fact that it was almost certainly a lie. He said he was walking across a long railroad trestle one dark, dark night when he heard a train coming. He had come far enough that he knew he couldn’t turn around and outrun the train to the far end of the trestle. He considered running toward the train in hopes of beating it to the near end, but without knowing how far he was from solid ground, that was awfully risky. He decided his best bet was to crawl over the edge of the trestle and hang there until the train passed by.
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Jun
15
2009
Tempted, Part I

orc-steak-500God’s opportunities are always coming our way. Weekly, daily, hourly, we are being handed situations by which God wants to manifest Himself through us.

What many believers don’t know is that these situations often take the form of a temptation.

Look at Jesus. He was “driven” into the wilderness to be tempted, as Mark says. Satan came to Him and hit Him with the desire for fleshly indulgence, the desire for accolades, and the desire for power. Satan’s basic temptation was “use your power for yourself. Get what you want.”
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Jun
14
2009
Origin of The Fiddler’s Gun

treasure_mapContrary to popular belief (trust me, I’ve polled it), I did not sit down one day and think, “Ah hah!  I shall write an adventure novel of the Revolutionary War and my heroine shall be named Phinea Button!”

The real story, if you choose to believe it, is that some years ago I decided to try something different for Christmas.  Simply buying gifts and handing them out wrapped in plaid paper had grown too ordinary.  That’s when I thought, “Ah hah!  I shall build treasure chests and fill them with gifts and bury them!”

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Jun
12
2009
Happy Birthday, Maurice Sendak

where-the-wild-things-are-print-c10279247Once again, I’m a little late with a birthday post.  Maurice Sendak turned 81 on June 10.  Most popular for the book Where the Wild Things Are, he once explained why he put scary monsters in kids’ lit:

Most frightening to children is to dream their own figures of fear and find no analogue in anything they hear about or read. Children need to see their feelings, particularly the darkest ones, reflected in their stories. Mitigating the darkness of the fairy tale takes away their power to reassure children that they are not alone in their fearful imaginings, that they are shared and can be addressed.

There’s definitely wisdom there.  The fallen world we live in is a frightening reality, and we need to cultivate imaginations in our children that are prepared to deal with it.  Whether it’s giants, goblins, witches, or the Fangs of Dang, stories give us a “safe” atmosphere to find and overcome fear.

Terrible Yellow Eyes is a website with artwork inspired by Maurice Sendak.

Jun
11
2009
An Open Heart

2759179652_fd56994536I was digging through my backpack a few weeks ago when I found a letter someone had evidently handed me after a concert (this happens sometimes, my apologies to previous post-concert letter givers). It was addressed to “The Proprietor”. I was intrigued. Here was someone familiar with the workings of the Rabbit Room. It was written by Janna Barber, and she mentioned her interest in writing the occasional piece for the Rabbit Room. I took her up on the offer and here it is, her first post, about an encounter with the legendary Bill Mallonee of Vigilantes of Love. I hope you enjoy it.

–The Proprietor

It was a warm July evening and the sun was just beginning to set. I opened the front door and wandered outside, just in case. A cool shuffle of air passed over the grass on the front lawn, and that’s when I heard it: Muriah’s soft strokes on the keyboard, mid-chorus and much slower than the version I was familiar with. Bill’s voice filled the entryway as he sang just this little bit.

Holy mother Mary when the wine gives out
and the land is parched, stricken with drought;
I’ve never seen it look quite like this before.
Yes and ask your Son cause I heard He’s strong
He’s got a real good heart and loves everyone.
An open heart is always an open door.

It was just a warm-up, but for me that’s when the show started.
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Jun
10
2009
The Crazy You Get From Too Much Choice

images-1I’ve sometimes wondered if many of the books I read are not just piling up more perceptions in my dusty mind cluttered by too many options. Parenting books are a good example. I’ve got a shelf full, and I’ve learned a lot from them - I think.  But in applying those principles I’ve often fallen short. There are certain scenarios with my children that too often have tripped me up, and occasionally my will seems frozen in place as some old reel-to-reel tape appears on my tongue and spits out its ratta-tat-tat song and dance. A revelation I had awhile back about deep seated fear for my children, and its subsequent healing, went a lot further and deeper into me than any parenting book ever could.
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Jun
9
2009
Mahler’s 6th Symphony and Psalm 88

Okay, seeing as how we have had posts here on the Rabbit Room about westerns, vampires, rock stars, chimps, Michigan, fame, banjo players, apples, poetry, and who knows what else, I figured it was high time for a post about classical music.

Kicking off their 2009 concert series earlier this year, the Nashville Symphony performed Gustav Mahler’s Sixth symphony (and being the Mahler freak that I am, I attended all three performances). Mahler wrote nine symphonies in all - and started a tenth before he died - and after hearing them, it becomes difficult to try to put his genius into words. Of course, one could say that one reason art exists at all, the reason we have symphonies and paintings and jazz and dance, is to express that which we cannot put into words. So maybe it is better to say the same thing about the creators - the sub-creators, as C.S. Lewis called them - and not try to reduce their work to the written word. Still, at times, we search for ways to describe to others the effect art has on us, to explain, to ourselves as much as to our friends, why we were so moved, why we found tears in our eyes or felt our deepest secrets were laid out in the open or saw laid out before us the way we should go.
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Jun
8
2009
From a Hunk of Metal to a Sword, Part II

images-4Adam, in his original state, was not a sword but just an untempered hunk of metal. He had to be hammered out in the fire and on the anvil of his wrong choices, like Moses, like Abraham, like Paul.

Is it my will that my children make wrong choices? No. In my father-feelings I want them to make right choices and undergo no suffering. If this feeling is given its head it is called “spoiling my children.” I will either let them off the hook or be a drill sergeant and make their choices for them. In such a case they stay like Adam and Eve, pre-Fall, as babies, expecting everything, learning nothing. But suffering induced through consequences for actions produces a good harvest in the end. Now, I’d rather my children always made right choices. But quite often some of the greatest pastors were some of the worst sinners.
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Jun
8
2009
The Gospel as Tragedy

bookI’m currently making my way through Frederick Buechner’s masterwork Telling the Truth. The subheading is “The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.” Upon a friend’s recommendation, I found the book online for cheap and set a course once received.

I was only a few pages in before audible gasps and sighs were heard by my wife trying to sleep. It’s no secret ’round these parts that Buechner’s abilities are wonderfully poetic - a salve in my currently dry reading time (most books lately have left me wanting). In the midst of this piece, I found something particularly moving for me as a pastor and something I thought would resonate with the Rabbit Room audience no matter the vocation.


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  • New in the RR store: MUGS! Shirts!
    Jun/28/2009

    half_length_tee_proofdsc00202

  • New in the Rabbit Room Store: Andrew Peterson’s Appendix C: Live with the Captains Courageous
    Jun/5/2009

    appendixc

  • New in the Store: Jason Gray’s Acoustic Storytime and the Square Peg Alliance Compilation 2009
    May/6/2009

    2364_86b1667f4c004d36ddc10b530a387348spacover

Recent Comments:

  • Goodbye Solo: A Movie Review (9)
    • Janna: Curt, Did you see ‘The Visitor’ last year? It seems to have a few parallels with this movie, although I haven’t seen G.S....
  • Carolyn Arends Asks: Do Songs Matter? (The Answer is YES.) (15)
    • Brian Roberts: Tony, My thoughts exactly! Especially that “What I do to feed my family” is not a utilitarian concept.
    • Tony Heringer: Brian, Thanks for the follow up. This is a good food for thought. Like I said, there is a lot to unpack. There are folks who take...
    • Brian Roberts: Tony, Be careful not to confuse “God’s Calling” with “What you do to feed your family”. I think our...
    • Tony Heringer: Brian, Whew! That is sure to draw some comments. I appreciate your sentiment and want to add my perspective as a non-artist type who...
    • Brian Roberts: I think making money off of art is expendable, but the creation of art is vital. The mistake many of us ‘professional’...
  • Andrew Peterson
    singer, songwriter, storyteller
    bio | posts
  • Pete Peterson
    writer, boatwright
    bio | posts
  • Jason Gray
    singer, songwriter
    bio | posts
  • Eric Peters
    singer, songwriter
    bio | posts
  • Evie Coates
    visual artist, writer
    bio | posts
  • Randall Goodgame
    singer, songwriter
    bio | posts
  • Matt Conner
    pastor, writer
    bio | posts
  • Curt McLey
    writer
    bio | posts
  • Russ Ramsey
    pastor
    bio | posts
  • Jonathan Rogers
    writer
    bio | posts
  • Ron Block
    musician, singer, writer
    bio | posts
  • Will There Really Be a Morning

    2736629475_23a9445164-300x2951Heaven knows why it has taken me so long to write a little something about this album, the newest EP from friend and soul sister, Julie Lee. Julie and I met several years ago at a friend’s house and found immediate ease in conversation and a unique connection; sparks of light and magic hung lightly in the air around our collision. It was one of those instances where you know for sure that the God of the Universe meant for you to meet this one particular human being out of the millions that He created. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but I like drama (the good kind only, please) and am grateful when I find it happening in my little life.

  • Acedia & Me: A Book Review

    norris-book.jpgBrowsing the shelves of wicked-cool used bookstore here in Nashville, McKay Books, I happened upon Kathleen Norris’s (The Cloister Walk, Dakota, Amazing Grace) latest, Acedia & Me. Though I had no idea she had a new book out, the cheap sticker price for a primo first edition (Note: you will recall from a previous post that I have a more than slight affinity for used bookstores and, especially, first editions) was an easy decision. The title itself was mildly intriguing since I was vaguely familiar with the word, “acedia”, but of which I knew very little. The subtitle, “A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life”, though hardly an enticing, round-em-up, gather-em-in slogan, is true to Ms. Norris’ midwestern style, neither flamboyant nor melodramatic.

    Acedia, coined the “noonday demon” by the early monastics, is the absence of care when life becomes overly challenging, repetitious and boring, while engagement with other people is too demanding. In short, it is spiritual apathy, and is described as a weariness of soul. Though it is not readily a part of the modern scientific lexicon, acedia, in today’s culture, is generally lumped in with depression and the sin of sloth, one of the supposed seven deadly sins. We treat it with medication, just like everything else. But, as Norris continually illuminates, acedia possesses spiritual roots, and, thus, can ultimately only be treated with spiritual attention and resolve.

  • Telling the Story: The Jesus Storybook Bible

    storybook-bible.jpgI’ve been hearing about this children’s Bible called The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones for a year or so now, first from Ben Shive, then from a smattering of others whose opinions I respect on such matters.  One night last week Jamie and I were putting our sweet Skye to bed (she’s 6 now), and we were talking to her about Christmas.  I’d been gearing up to leave for tour and with the first Sunday of Advent fast approaching we wanted to find out what she thought.  Jamie asked her who was born on Christmas morning, and Skye answered, “Um…Noah?”

  • A Few Reviews for Resurrection Letters, Vol. II

    peterson-resurrection-letters-vol-2.jpgRuss Bremeier at Christianity Today:

    “One track he’s an evocative poet, the next a storyteller, and before long he’s singing praise to the Lord—all within the same album. Though he resides in the same folk-pop vein throughout, he varies his scope from song to song (like Mullins) and thus more fully articulates Christian living than most of today’s …

  • What’s the Use in Receiving?

    Is there a qualitative difference between learning a song from your Grandfather and downloading a song from iTunes, from getting a recipe online and pulling out the yellowing paper of an old, family recipe? Ken Myers answers in the affirmative, channeling C.S. Lewis when he discusses the need for thoughtful Christians to consider not only content in what we appreciate in art, but also how we receive it.
    Myers, in his excellent book All God’s Children and Blue-Suede Shoes, points out that while Christians have been very sensitive to the content of movies, music and other art forms, we have been less discriminating about how art comes to us and what that process can help us become. We have counted the references to the name of Jesus in music (at rough estimation, repeated about 9,000 times in many Praise and Worship songs) and we have checked for how many so-called “curse words” there are in films, but we have failed to recognize our increasing tendency to fracture and disconnect from our own history and community in how we receive art. Often we see art only as a vehicle for moralism and this has issued in some pretty crummy results. And by art I mean music, painting, drawing, writing, etc. Myers (and Lewis) argue that we need to receive art in a different way than we are being trained to by our culture (increasingly autonomous in the modern era) and I think he is right.

  • West Coast Diaries Volume 2 - Charlie Peacock

    peacock-west-coast-diaries-volume-2.jpgThe other night my wife and I had the opportunity to see Charlie Peacock in concert.  The Art*Music*Justice tour, featuring Sarah Groves, Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, Brandon Heath and Charlie, had an off day in Kansas City.  So Charlie set up a house show with just him and his piano in the upstairs art gallery of the world’s most perfect Christian bookstore, Signs of Life, in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.  (No kidding.  Not a Scripture mint to be found, but huge sections on art, history, classics and local writers.  There’s one wall devoted to the puritans, and another to Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and the like.  Dangerous.)

    Now you need to know for those formative years bridging high school and college, Charlie provided the soundtrack for my life.  So there’s my bias.  There was one record in particular which made me want to write, sing and play guitar.  In fact, it planted in me a desire to make art and live artistically during that window of life when I was considering, in many ways for the first time, what I wanted to do and become.

  • Learning to See - Annie Dillard

    dillard-the-living-1ts-ed.jpg

    Back in 1994 I was living as a student in Jerusalem.  A roommate of mine had this book called “The Living.”  He was just finishing when I first saw him reading it.  I asked him if it was any good.  In a non sequitur kind of way, he said, “Look at this picture on the cover.”  It was an old plate picture of a family of loggers in the American northwest, circa 1900 or so.  I couldn’t stop studying that image with fascination.  It seemed to capture an era we’ll only imagine– men and children with axes and saws beside a clapboad shack beside fallen redwoods with trunks six feet thick.

    I judged the book by its cover.  And while Annie Dillard didn’t take the picture, write about the picture or probably even select the picture, that photo of a world that seemed to be teeming with a secret knowledge of how hard life is brought me into Dillard’s world, which carries that same secret, along with a secret knowledge of how glorious life is at the same time.

  • Donal Grant: The Obedience of Faith

    donalgrant.gifMystery. Intrigue. Drugs, dark secrets, the decay of the will, and the transforming power of God’s love sown by a single man to a harvest of redemption.

    That’s Donal Grant. George MacDonald has an uncanny gift for unzipping a reader’s heart, dropping in all kinds of mind-expanding and life-altering thoughts, and then zipping it all right back up.

  • The Year Of Living Biblically

    bc_0743291476.jpgMy favorite book I’ve read this year was initially only a curiosity piece I perused while killing time in a Barnes & Noble. I had recently bought Unchristian – a book that offers an insightful look at how outsiders of the faith view the church – by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, but decided I needed a mental break and started looking for something a little lighter. I’m not inclined to reach for humor books, but the cover of a book featuring a man dressed in Old Testament garb and looking earnestly heavenward with the ten commandments in one hand and a Starbucks cup in the other proved irresistible. I picked it up, thumbed through the pages and found myself laughing out loud in the aisle at Barnes & Noble – another uncharacteristic behavior for me.

    Who knows? Maybe it was my tour induced exhaustion, or maybe it was the Vietnamese food I’d just had for lunch with a few friends, but for whatever reason I left the store with a hardcover of The Year Of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow The Bible As Literally As Possible by A.J. Jacobs tucked under my arm (after paying for it, of course - thou shalt not steal, you know).

    A.J. Jacobs is the editor of Esquire Magazine and the author of Know It All: One Man’s Humble Attempt To Become The Smartest Man In The World, a book he wrote chronicling his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. He is also a self-proclaimed agnostic who decided the only worthy book to follow the Encyclopedia Britannica project would be the book of all books: the Good Book.

  • THE YELLOW LEAVES: Some Thoughts On Buechner

    27809421.jpgThe Yellow Leaves: A Miscellany, the new book from my favorite author, Frederick Buechner, was released on June 16th. I added it to my Amazon shopping cart when I first heard about it from the Proprietor and Eric Peters, after they heard Buechner read a couple excerpts during the grand opening of the Frederick Buechner Institute back in January (which also featured a concert by Michael Card, with AP opening for him).

    The blurb on the back of The Yellow Leaves from John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture, perfectly describes it: “Heartbreaking, sardonic, whimsical, elegiac, crazy-funny: this is a book to be sipped like a rare wine, the last bottle of a fabled vintage, brought up from the cellar for our delectation.” 

  • Shive Arrives: A Song by Song Commentary on The Ill-Tempered Klavier

    benshivecover.jpg

    One listen to Ben Shive’s debut The Ill-Tempered Klavier will provide obvious evidence of why this young man has secured the respect of peers and colleagues on the inside of the Nashville music community. With The Ill-Tempered Klavier, Shive’s skills are now planted in the public garden.

    Heretofore, there have been unsubtle hints: Andrew Osenga pronouncing Shive as his favorite songwriter, Andrew Peterson naming him as producer of The Far Country, his ubiquitous presence as a studio piano ace on a wide range of mainstream CCM records, Sara Groves choosing him to produce her next record, and the majestic arranging of the strings for Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ. Like a fast growing wildflower, Shive seems to pop up everywhere, though always in the background. Now, the secret is out. Raise the curtain on Ben Shive.

  • Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories

    flannery-oconnor.jpg

    I just stumbled on a copy of O’Connor’s complete short stories at a used bookstore here in Nashville and listed it in the Rabbit Room store. Years ago a friend bought me this same edition and I read it with a sense of creepy amazement; it was like nothing I’d ever read. I knew Chris Slaten was a big fan of her work so I asked him to write a recommendation for the book. We only have one copy, so if you click here and can’t find it, someone beat you to the punch.

    ———————-

    This collection is essential to both long time fans and first time readers interested in the work of Flannery O’Connor. My first time to read a handful of her short stories I was helpless to interpret them. One would expect that reading the 1950’s work of a female “Christ-centered” southern fiction writer would be a simple, modest or at least predictable experience.

  • Saint Julian: A Novel

    12330194.jpgWalt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.

    Several people in the last few weeks have commented to me about how glad they are that they discovered Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow here in the Rabbit Room. It really is a remarkable book, and I still can’t recommend it highly enough. It won the prestigious National Book Award when it was first published in 1978, and was only the beginning of Wangerin’s career.

    I just stumbled on his most recent novel, Saint Julian, and was so captured by it that it bumped aside the other four books I’m reading. Last Sunday afternoon–a perfect Spring day–I sat on my front porch swing and read the last half of the book, savoring the careful prose, the pastoral tone, and even the look and feel of the book itself. The cover illustration fits the epic, vivid quality of the story perfectly, and the fonts (I’m a sucker for a great font) added just the right atmosphere.

  • On Andy & Jill

    446540706_l.jpgThe musical bumper sticker on my car during the ol’ college years would have definitely read “I’d Rather Be Listening To Acoustic Music.” Therein was my initial foray into the early careers of Square Peg artists like our own Proprietor. I found great enjoyment in the Texan college worship scene (early Crowder, Robbie Seay, Justin Barnard, anyone?). And the great unknown (acoustic) rock over which I stumbled came in the form of Jill Phillips.

  • RELEASE DAY REVIEW: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness

    on-the-edge-cover.jpgJanner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea.

    But once a year the Sea Dragons sing just off the coast of Glipwood. With their song, life reasserts itself in the hearts of Skreeans who have long since learned to numb themselves:

  • The Killer Angels

    The Killer AngelsI am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons).

  • Arkadelphia from Randall Goodgame: Music in Motion

    arkadelphia.jpgA Randall Goodgame song is like a great independent movie. Characters deliver lines like they were lifted from a break room, a truck stop, or a downtown diner. Seemingly incongruent scenes are juxtaposed and plot isn’t obvious; in fact, narrative–a good story–is often more evident than linear plot lines. An indie movie, like a Randall Goodgame song, seems to tell itself. Rather than being rudely yanked by a chain through a sequence of contrived events, with a Randall Goodgame song, I have the sense that I’m being allowed a willing, but vicarious sneak peak into the real lives of his real characters.

  • Nervous Laughter—Andy Gullahorn’s “Reinventing the Wheel”

    gullahorn-reinventing-the-wheel.jpgAndy Gullahorn is funny, but he’s also one of the more serious lyricists I’ve come to enjoy in a while. Listening to Reinventing the Wheel, you come to understand that he is more than a good songwriter. He is a craftsman. He knows what he’s doing, where he’s going, and where he’s taking his hearers.But as I said, people say Andy Gullahorn is funny. They say that, I think, because he makes them laugh. But as for me, I’m calling it nervous laughter.

  • The Book of the Dun Cow, Walt Wangerin

    The Book of the Dun Cow

    Walt Wangerin is a name I’ve seen in print many times. My dad had Ragman and Other Cries of Faith lying about at home for years and I remember thumbing through it at Christmas or Thanksgiving, reading bits here and there, and being intrigued by the style of writing; the words on the page had a canter to them, and a sparseness that gave them strength.

  • The Trumpet Child, Over the Rhine

    trumpetchild.jpg

    “When it comes to wanting what’s real,
    There’s no such thing as greed.”

    So sings Karin Bergquist in the first track of Over the Rhine’s 2007 CD, The Trumpet Child. She sings it in a voice so sultry it makes me blush a little just listening to her.

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