Our Hearts Are Restless

I haven't written for so long, either here or on Restless Independent, in part because I couldn't figure out where to put the book blogging.  OHAR is going to turn into a lit blog, though.  I like talking about books and so help me I'm not going to stop writing about books just because I'm having writer's block elsewhere. :P One of the really fun bits about being part of the Catholic Writers' Guild is watching new Catholic fiction pop up.  And then, of course, getting to review said new Catholic fiction.  Today's gem is a piece of young adult fiction, Rightfully Ours , by Pennsylvania author Carolyn Astfalk . It's not too many years since I was a voraciously-reading teenager, so YA fiction still holds a special place in my heart.  Add that to the fact that I wrote my thesis on the bildungsroman  (coming-of-age) genre, and you'll know why I get excited over a well-written teen coming-of-age novel. If you've got older teens (or at leas...

Finally, I managed to break the Netflix addiction just enough to pick up a few novels in the past couple of weeks.  A few days' travel to DC helped, because who wants to waste phone battery in an airport when books fit neatly into a purse?  My recent reads are an odd variety of genres, but here goes. I've been in the happy process of reviewing a handful of books, most recently Karina Fabian's Dicovery .   (And I got to interview her !  Yay!)  No spoilers on the other two, but suffice it to say I burned through one of them in a total of two hours.  And discovered again that non-fiction takes me forever to get through unless I have to read for class. On audiobook, I picked up Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth , which was a fascinating start to a series that I only hope I have the stamina to finish.  If I only read this one, though, I think I'll be okay, as it's much more sci-fi and much less fantasy than his other books (not ...

Following up from the review I posted on Tuesday , I have the great pleasure of welcoming to the blog stellar sci-fi author Karina Fabian.  Getting a glimpse into the workings of an author's mind is like opening up the engine of a spaceship.  My challenge was to come up with questions that dig deep into Discovery itself and Karina's own remarkable creativity.  It's possible that I had way too much fun.  Enjoy! By day, Karina is a mild-mannered reviewer of business software and services for Top Ten Reviews . After hours, she’s a psychic intent on saving the world; a snarky dragon who thinks he saves the world all-too regularly; a zombie exterminator who just wants her world clear of undead vermin; and Catholic religious sisters whose callings have taken them off our world. Needless to say, her imagination is vast, her stories legion, and her brain crowded. When she’s not converting her wild tales to stories, she’s enjoying time with her husband, Rob, their fo...

What happens when you put religious sisters in space?  A darn good book, that's what you get, but I suppose a little more elaboration is called for. Karina Fabian's new release from Full Quiver Press,  Discovery , is well-crafted sci-fi with a quirky Catholic edge.  Fabian drops her readers into a believable future Earth, and launches us with a massive and diverse spaceship crew to explore a mysterious alien ship - all the while challenging the minds and hearts of both characters and readers. The official synopsis: Sisters Ann, Tommie and Rita are part of a classified mission to explore an alien ship that has crash landed on an asteroid three billion miles from earth. Humanity's first contact with beings from beyond the solar system is bound to unlock the mystery of life in the universe, but the crew have their own secrets; hidden fears, desires, horrible sins - and a mission to kill. Researchers discover something unique about the third arm of the ship: something ...

Hi y'all!  I've spent the last few weeks working on the launch of Restless Independent , my new blog for young adults.  RI has (or will have) how-tos, notes from the young adult trenches, recipes, lists, resource dumps, infographics, and guest posts.  Check it out! In the meantime, I'm mulling over the fate of Our Hearts Are Restless.  I still have a ton of book blogging I want to do, and I'm not sure that will always fit well at RI.  So OHAR may turn into a lit-focused site, basically an opportunity for book reviews, what-I'm-reading posts, author interviews, and book tours.  Faith might come in a bit too, since I'm trying to keep RI fairly non-denominational.  I just don't know!  If I'm going to keep up two blogs, though, it'd better be pretty straightforward.  So I'll keep working on it.  How does Recusant Books sound as a rebranding title? In the meantime, pop on over to Restless Independent and tell me what you think!

Welcome to July's edition of An Open Book linkup!  I've got a lot to share this month. Two other book nerds were aghast when I told them I hadn't read Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo . The reason was that The Three Musketeers had scarred me as a kid, and it took a lot of bibliophilic peer pressure to get me anywhere near another Dumas. I took the plunge, finally - and if CMC didn't hit any other superlatives in my book, it definitely wins the prize of The Book that Took Me Forever to Read. I started the massive tome (okay fine, it was an e-book) in mid-May, thinking to have it done within a week or two. Took me over a month to get through it. Dumas' skill is readily apparent, opium trips and irritating not-quite-heroes aside. He manages a dozen primary characters and several supporting plot lines, successfully wrapping up all the loose threads with neatly bookended scenes. Simultaneously, he manages to create in Edmund Dantes a sort of soci...

Welcome to this month's An Open Book!  While the calendar tells me we have entered June, my brain is not convinced that March has ended yet. Last month's linkup generated quite a discussion about audiobooks, with various recommendations bouncing between blog sites.  While I grew up with beloved memories of my mother reading innumerable classics to me - everything from Little House on the Prairie, to Jules Verne, to Regina Doman's fairy tale retellings - I could never wrap my mind around audiobooks.  Why listen to some unknown person reading a story when I could pick up a hardback and immerse myself, a few pages or a few hours at a time? Then last summer, adulthood hit like a systemic disease, and in three weeks I had bought a car and moved to Michigan, four hours from my parents' house.  I can manage a four-hour drive, but even music gets old after a while, and it doesn't take long for me to get bored and drowsy.  The Overdrive app lets me borrow audiobook...

Welcome back to another round of the Open Book linkup via Carolyn Astfalk !  I'm sorry to say I haven't been reading much this past month - blame it on travel, Netflix, and my current propensity for reading really long novels.  Happily, working a full-time job gives me a nice long lunch break, and I've been using it lately to work through the seventh book in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series . My parents tried for years to get me hooked on these books, so last year I finally picked up most of the set in paperback from the Half Price Books annual clearance sale.  This spring, I spent about two months burning through the first half-dozen. If you're not familiar with Clancy, his novels are typically shelved with "spy thriller" or "military fiction" genres, although the books also take on characteristics of alternative history and political commentary.  Stylistically, Clancy resembles Charles Dickens - he has a remarkable ability to present ...

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. Time for another round of "An Open Book" linkup via Carolyn Astfalk!  I've already made a new acquaintance in the blogging world through this linkup, so I'm looking forward to another round this month. If you didn't guess from the quote, I've returned to an old favorite: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  My copies, a gift from my parents in pre-teen years, are starting to wear.  The paperback covers' plastic layer is peeling at the edges, and the pages are yellowing.  After I first devoured these books, I read them religiously at least once a year until highschool.  Then, new literary discoveries and many musical obligations, followed by a cell phone and college applications, combined to distract me from picking the trilogy up again.  College killed my reading habit until senior ...

If there's one thing I love, it's talking about books.  Most of my friends can't get me to shut up about literature, and I'm notorious for having many, many "all-time favorite authors".  Happiness and joy, Catholic novelist Carolyn Astfalk is starting a new linkup for those who share my addiction! This Lent, I made the decision to give up my tablet as a penance.  It was so delightfully easy to check out new fiction reads from the library, or download old classics from Project Gutenberg !  For the next few weeks, though, instead of being constantly entertained by the internet, games, and ebooks, I'm satiating my need for a good story by working through a giant stack of real, live, paper books. This week, I went on a Gene Stratton-Porter binge.  A late 19th/early 20th century Hoosier author, her books are beautifully gentle and romantic in many senses of the word.  Set sometimes in the context of the botanical paradise of the Limberlost Swamp, ...

How many books are on your "I've been meaning to read that" list?  This one has been at the top of my list for at least a year, and it took me until this week.  Luckily, I'd packed it in my emergency reading kit! The Watson Chronicles by Ann Lewis "Holmes turned the platter, inspecting the plum pudding as he would a cadaver at a crime scene." It's challenge enough for a writer to find his or her own voice; it's even harder for an author to match her voice to another's.  Especially when you get into the nerdy world of Sherlock Holmes fans, which is a cult with an obsession rivaling that of Trekkies. In The Watson Chronicles , sequel to her earlier work Murder in the Vatican , Ann succeeds in matching style and voice to Arthur Conan Doyle's originals, while bringing a fresh perspective to the beloved character of Watson. Perhaps my best part of The Watson Chronicles  is Ann's ability to reach past Sherlock's ven...

Welcome to this week's Shelf Spotlight!  This is a drastic genre switch from my last few posts, but that means you're getting a good feel of what's on my bookshelves.  (Of which I need more.) This week, I'm working my way through a manga series.  I'm not usually the biggest fan of manga, but if I find one that I like, I'm not opposed to it.  A good friend lent me his complete collector's edition set of Death Note , a mystery-thriller manga that seems to be one of the most popular, at least in the United States.  I'm trying to finish the books before I move, and I'm smack in the middle of one of the most complicated murder-mystery plots I've discovered yet. When an highly intelligent, bored young man receives the power of the death gods...what will it do to him? There are a few drawbacks because as usually happens with manga, Death Note was originally published as a serial or at least as a dozen smaller manga, so the plot structure ge...

Welcome to this week's Shelf Spotlight!  I've had the fun of reading a series by a brand-new British author, Corinna Turner .  Chesterton Press had me proofreading the American editions, which was a lovely privilege.  When she gave me the first one, I meant to finish it by the end of the week deadline.  As it happened, I was a bit of an insomniac that night, couldn't put the book down, and stayed up until 4 in the morning to finish the proof!  The books are somewhat comparable to a Catholic take on the dystopian world of The Hunger Games and a young adult thriller version of Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World .  The characters are compelling and the story gripping; the stream-of-consciousness style is occasionally off-putting but easy to ignore once the plot begins to move quickly.  I have to admit, I've always had a love for the Elizabethan Catholic recusants.  Corinna's books draw heavily on that heritage, and do so well.  ...

It's rare to find a book that makes me cry.  The last page of Stephanie Landsem's The Well  succeeded. I picked up the book at the Catholic Writers' Conference last week, and decided on a whim to read it in the car as we left New Jersey.  I finished it before we arrived back in Indianapolis! The Well  is Biblical historical fiction, focusing on the stories and challenges of a few who come to believe in Christ.  How often do you think about the fact that every single person in the story of our salvation has his or her own story, and lived her own life? Landsem's novel is a window into the life of the Samaritan woman at the well, from the fourth chapter of John's Gospel, through the eyes of Nava's daughter, Mara.  Mara tries throughout the book to save her mother, who is gripped by sin and despair.  Mara captivates the young, well-educated Shem, whose fiery hatred of injustice must be directed away from his guilt and desire for revenge.  Th...

Greetings!  I'm the kind of person who will spend the last $5 of a paycheck on a book, who goes book shopping on a regular basis, and who plans to have a literary-themed wedding.  So when someone says 99-cent ebook, I perk up, especially when it's from one of my all-time favorite modern authors, Erin McCole-Cupp.  Yes, indeed -  Don't You Forget About Me  is on sale on Kindle soon, very soon.  In fact, tomorrow, through May 1. Quite honestly, dear readers, you should check this out.  Read my review here if you need more convincing! Erin McCole Cupp is a wife, mom, and lay Dominican who lives with her family of vertebrates in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania. Her writing has appeared in Canticle Magazine, Parents, The Catholic Standard and Times, and The Philadelphia City Paper, and she is a regular contributor to CatholicMom.com . Her other professional experiences include acting, costuming, youth ministry, international scholar advising, and waiting tables.  Her influ...

          Erin McCole Cupp blessed me by giving me a copy of her new book, Don't You Forget About Me , from Full Quiver.  I love the power of the written word, and it's a joy to find a new gem of literary quality.  I have to admit, I approach modern (post-Inkling) novels with trepidation.  I've been burned too many times.  Erin's book, however, did more than provide a pleasant antidote to the crap on my local public library's shelves.  It riveted me, forced me to stay up into the wee hours and wake up earlier than normal to finish it. Trust me, I am a college student and do not take the importance of sleep lightly! As a brief synopsis,  Don't You Forget About Me  is a mystery centered around a Catholic grade school and the class of 87's strange "curse".  Mary Catherine Whelihan, a children's writer with endometriosis, must return to her hometown and face the present conflict, and her past sufferings.   DYFAM  includes murder and martyrdom, bir...