Magic Indeed!

My Man, the children, and I traveled for about 8 hours on the day after Christmas. I had been secretly looking forward to the long drive because of a book I'd been sent to read for review for BlogHer Book Club. I had stolen moments throughout the month of December between baking cookies and wrapping packages to dive eagerly into this book which is entitled The Magic Room. I was eager to have uninterrupted car time in which to finish this well written book.

The book, in the words of its author Jeffrey Zaslow is, "not exactly about weddings, and not exactly about a bridal shop, and not exactly about bridal gowns, its a book about the love we all share with our daughters."

The Magic Room tells the true story of Becker's Bridal Shop, located in the very small town of Fowler, Michigan. Becker's has been owned by three generations of Becker women each operating the store in her own fashion and in her own strengths.

The bridal shop's owners are not the entire story however, as Mr. Zaslow expertly weaves the stories of six brides-to-be as they journey toward the altar with the story of the bridal shop and it's cast of relatable characters. He says that he started each bride's story as she entered the Magic Room and then worked backwards out into her life to tell her story.

Zaslow lays out his purpose for writing this book early in the pages of the introduction saying,

...I came here not just to write about wedding gowns and what they represent. I also wanted to understand the women wearing them, their fears and yearnings. 

I resolved to pay less attention to the brides I met whose motives seemed somewhat frivolous, the one more focused on their dresses than their upcoming marriages. Instead, I wanted to find brides and their families whose paths were not necessarily easy, but who have given great thought to the love that guides and connects them.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and may or may not have been a teensy bit tearful at the end. The book is not at all a sad one, but one of hope and of love. It was also full of interesting statistics about the state of marriage in the world at one point relating that "The annual number of weddings in America, which peaked in 1984 at 2.48 million, has declined every year since then." Also, "For women, the average age of first marriage has risen to twenty-six years old from twenty-one in 1970. For men, it has risen to twenty-eight from twenty-three."

I also loved, loved, loved the way the author handled each bride's story with a special dose of respect and tenderness toward the bride and her family, which he gained perhaps from his own experiences as the father of three daughters. Especially touching was the way Zaslow treated the story Shelley, the current owner of Becker's and her family.

I feel as if I could travel to Fowler, Michigan, enter Becker's Bridal and its Magic Room (the room where brides-to-be are invited to enter when they feel they've found THE DRESS and gaze at themselves in the flattering lighting in a vast array of mirrors) and feel like I knew well, its inhabitants.

The Magic Room is one of those books that will entertain, inform, and enlighten while at the same time leave a mark on your heart. It caused me to care about the brides, their families, and about the Becker's Bridal family in a way that I'd not expected as I opened the pages to begin my journey into The Magic Room. If you'd like to see a few pictures of this beautiful bridal shop, click here to go to Becker's Bridal website.

You may be familiar with author, Jeffrey Zaslow's name as the coauthor of the world wide #1 best selling book, The Last Lecture written with Randy Pausch. He is also the author of The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship, which I plan to read soon!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book in partial exchange for review for BlogHer. My opinions, however, are entirely my own...as usual!

Join me later this week at BlogHer for more discussions about this fabulous book!

Lake of Dreams...Potential Unmet

When I participated in Christmas and Easter plays as a child, I remember the director  continually stressing the importance of the beginning song and the finale. She would say, "We've got to get those two parts down really well because the audience always remembers the first thing they see and the last thing they see." She was right. 

The author of The Lake of Dreams must have had similar training. The prologue and the ending of the book were good. I was captured by the cliffhanger at the end of the prologue as well as the could-be-theme revolving around the appearance Haley's Comet. Similarly, the ending was so neat and tidy that I finished the book almost forgetting how tedious the 300 pages between the “opening act” and the "finale" had been.

The book opens in 1911 on the night Haley's comet is to appear in the town of Lake of Dreams. The narrative discusses the fear of the general populace that the comet would poison the air outside. Rose, the central character of the novel is introduced as she, unafraid of the comet’s potential danger, sneaks out of her house to accompany her brother as he sets off on evening adventure that would ultimately change the course of her life. 

Chapter one brings the reader to present day Japan as the central figure in the modern story is introduced. Lucy Jarrett, the great, great-niece of Rose, is a woman discontented with her life and maybe with her long term love interest. She wavers into and out of a decision to return to her hometown Lake of Dreams to look in on her mother who has broken her arm in a car accident. Lucy eventually decides to return home where she happens to pick a lock in her bedroom and find papers written by her ancestor Rose.

The entire balance of the novel is the story of Lucy’s obsession with her search for information about Rose and about the stained glass windows that become involved in the mystery. While the simplicity of the plot would seem to provide an excellent framework for a tightly woven tale paralleling the lives of two women each on their search for their life’s meaning, such was not the case.

The story is peppered with unnecessary conversations between characters, unnecessary side-trails that lead nowhere, and characters that are given much space to develop in the story and are then left dangling in the midst of nowhere until the end of the tale where they are grafted back in for a grand finish.

I really wanted to like this book, unfortunately, after the prologue, I had to read nearly 300 pages before the story had any appeal to me at all. The storyline had such interesting potential as did the possibility of the development of the many available themes in the book but it simply did not live up to my expectations.

There were a few positive elements in The Lake of Dreams--I learned bits and pieces of the history of the Women's Suffrage Movement in the US, and I enjoyed the description of the stained glass windows throughout which depicted pivotal moments in the lives women in the Bible. I appreciated the tightly wrapped, if sentimental, ending as well, however, on the whole it is not a book I can recommend as one that readers should invest the time it takes to read the 400 pages.


If you'd like to learn a bit more about this book and its author, click here to go to the BlogHer Bookclub page where The Lake of Dreams is featured.

{This was a paid book review for BlogHer Book Club, my opinions, however, are entirely my own!}

I'm a Bit Nervous About This Book...

For a long while I've been following a very interesting, very touching, very challenging blog called A Holy Experience. It is written lovingly and humbly by Ann Voskamp. And what a writer she is! This dear woman can craft a sentence that will take you on journey after journey into her heart, the heart of our Father, and into your very own heart.  The photos on the blog are breathtaking and awe inspiring, pointing you to the Creator, Himself.  

Ann introduces herself and her blog like this:

"I’m Ann Voskamp, a plain Ann without even the fanciful “e”,

wife to The Farmer,  mama to six,

determined laundress,  chief bottle washer, desperate Grace-clinger.

In the dark hours, I pray more and write. 

This place is about finding the beauty and quiet,

slowing to see the sacred in the chaos, the Cross in the clothespin, the flame in the bush…

Just to listen – laundry, liturgy, life, — holy ground. 

A holy experience — because all of life flames with God.

Honestly, I’m a bit of a mess. It’s okay, really. Grace is the most amazing of all. I had a full-tuition scholarship to university and never finished. I married a Farmer instead & came home to gravel road & cornfields. I had babies. Half a dozen beautiful babies. My laundry basket is never empty. I lose library books. I homeschool our six exuberant kids and most days I feel just a tad bit overwhelmed and very crazy. When the kids and the washing machine sleep, I wash my real dirt down with words and The Word."

I look to this blog often for encouragement as a mom, as a wife, as a home-educator, and as a fellow Christ-follower who struggles on her own journey now and then.  The beautiful music that plays in the background as you visit A Holy Experience is a favorite of Megan's. "I just love the calm sound of it," she tells me as I'm reading.

While much of what I read and experience as a result of visiting the site is calming and encouraging, I did read a blog there that troubled my "getting ready for Christmas" heart last month and I turned away from it. I do stuff like that. I don't read books that will tug at my heart, if a movie might make me cry I'm not watching it. I've attempted to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" upon the recommendation of an awesome friend who even loaned it to me for encouragement, but when it took a poignant turn I bailed. I'm such a wimp! Gimme a predictable Disney ending! Don't make me sad, there's enough in real life that's sad and must be dealt with, why expose my heart to someone else's pain that I have no way to fix?

I clicked away from A Holy Experience that day knowing that the next day there would be something new and fresh and hopefully less troubling to me.  I was correct, and the next day the beauty was back. Ann Voskamp and I have since continued our virtual relationship (me reading anonymously and her writing beautifully).

Last week, on January 17, Ann's book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are was released.  I had been eagerly awaiting this date for a few months and, though I'd already decided that this was a book that I wanted to hold in my hands and read (as opposed to reading it on my Nook), I quickly downloaded the free first chapter excerpt onto my Nook.  I began reading and then I stopped...again. Would you believe that the first chapter of the book WAS THE VERY blog post that had bothered me so a few weeks earlier? So, away I clicked...again.  I was bummed.

Then I got a text message from my youngest sis a few days later saying that she was in chapter three of the book (that I had told her about) and that she was loving it.  Stinker. I don't like difficult books, BUT I WILL NOT BE OUT READ! So I ordered the book.
 "Have you watched the video about it?" she texted. No, I had not, so I did. It's wonderful...

AND a Christian community of women called (in)courage is hosting an online book club with this book as the selection.  The book club is called Bloom and you can join up too if you like. Click {here} to go to the Bloom website. Though, I'm still not sure about this book, the reviews are using words like "life changing", "will change the way you see the world","the sort of book you dog-ear and re-read for the sheer joy of cherishing the words and experiencing the depth of the heart that wrote it." My sis says, "loving it! It takes some energy to digest but has a big impact."  It is climbing up the best seller charts this weekend and is #12 on Amazon.com's list of best sellers.

I've asked my middle sister, Becky to join me in the book club. She actually belongs to a real life book club, (and does karate, and bakes beautiful cakes, and knits, and is making my dining room and bathroom curtains...er, she was before I posted this picture of her anyway...) and is quite a level-headed kind of gal, so I'm eager to hear her thoughts on this book too.

 (I've got a post brewing about her...)

My copy should arrive Monday or Tuesday from Amazon.com.

It is also available on the Kindle and the Nook. So here's to a bit of discomfort to stretch me and maybe you too? Happy reading and growing!  ~Gretchen

{Drop a note to me in the comments or email me at TheWrightPlaceEmail@gmail.com if you decide to read One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are too, I'd enjoy your company very much.}