What I’m Into (March 2015)

Birthday Trip out of the house

Remember March? I know, I know, I’m so late for this What I’m Into. It may be a record. March is totally, y’know, so last month.
Nevertheless, I’m stopping by to share the delights of this feisty month. Here’s what I was into:
Birthday: I had a birthday this month, and aged another year. It was the perfect birthday: a lunch out with Jon, followed by a brief push-walk by the sea, and collecting my boy from school for the first time ever. I could smell cut grass, sea spray, warm wind: the scents of Spring.

The sun, at the point of greatest eclipse

Eclipse excitement: Like the rest of the country, I realised at the eleventh hour that I wanted to witness a meteorological phenomenon – the partial (80/90%?) eclipse of the sun. An amazing friend stepped in and somehow got us all special eclipse glasses (on the black market?), so we could watch the sun together, coloured in pencil-crayon orange against a black sky, being slowly munched by the moon. Bizarrely, without the glasses, the sun looked exactly the same, maybe a little paler (see photo above). With the glasses, it was a mere slit of light, occluded by the moon.
It was the first time I had seen an eclipse, and it was an amazing experience, all the more surreal for having two exuberant children running around the front lawn while we told them to sit down and watch a once-in-twenty-years event.

I may have got a little excited about the solar eclipse.

Books
On writing:

• Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg – I have been going through this book with friends as a book club, reading a few of the ultra-short chapters each time, and doing creative exercises together. It is perfect for writers. She is my very favourite author for the craft of writing; whenever my writing is sluggish or uninspired, she gets me going again. If you’re going to get any book by Goldberg, I would start with Wild Mind, but this is an excellent follow-up. Highly recommended. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

Christian books:

• Searching for Sunday – Rachel Held Evans. I loved this book – see my full review here. Highly recommended. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

• Outside In – Cindy Brandt. I thoroughly enjoyed this intelligent, thoughtful book on the voices that are so often excluded from church for being ‘too doubtful, too sad, too old, or too disabled etc’ . It was a wonderful surprise to see my own name quoted in the chapter for on disability, and the whole book is full of great quotes and insight. It’s a nice length: about 90 pages, very readable, and best of all it’s FREE on her website. Don’t think that just because it’s free it’s lower quality than paid books, it’s incredibly well-written, and a fantastic voice for the church. I interviewed Cindy here, and you can sign up for her book FREE here. Highly recommended. To buy it, get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

• Lineage of grace – Francine Rivers. I keep looking for well-written retellings of the Bible stories, and she is the bestselling and most well-known author in this genre. This book retells the stories of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary, mother of Jesus. There’s lots to love in this book: she has a real knack of bringing the Bible world to life, with interesting cultural and contextual details that you miss when you read the Bible story. I absolutely loved her retelling of Tamar’s story, which brings out the drama and cruelty of Judah’s actions. However, I wasn’t wholly convinced of her interpretation of the other characters’ stories: they tend towards trying to crowbar in a love story where there isn’t one, and she attempts to make Bathsheba complicit and guilty in what is essentially David’s sin, which made me feel quite uncomfortable. Read it for the good storytelling and well-imagined Biblical culture, but be aware that her retellings feel quite anti-feminist. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

Fiction:

• Run – Ann Patchett. I am becoming Ann Patchett’s biggest fan, and am a little concerned that I’m running out of her books left to read. This one was about two families – one rich, one poor – thrown together via a car accident, discovering they are more closely connected than they originally thought. Like all her books, she paints the internal world of all her characters so well, and I devoured this book in a few days, because her writing is just so delicious. Highly recommended. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

• The Three Musketeers – still making my way through this beast, still enjoying it.

• America’s IOM panel finally came back with their recommended name and diagnostic criteria for ME – I hope to write more on this soon.
• I love this website – literary gifts for writers 

• The Dangerous Women series on She Loves Magazine is unmissable.
• Junia Project now has Feminist Friday – and the whole site is well worth checking out.
• New website – the angry women blog – is taking submissions: a safe place for women to express their anger. There’s some really important and interesting posts up there.

I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer for her magnificent What I’m Into Linkup.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means if you click through to Amazon from this site and buy absolutely anything in the world, you help this site, at no extra cost to you. 
Over to you: 

• What were you into in March? (All that time ago)