Closing Thoughts: Walking on Water

# of pages: 198
Pages read so far: 3,409
Avg pages/book: 309.91

For all the stat-heads out there.

Anyway, Walking on Water is a book I'll recommend to pretty much any Christian who fancies themselves to be a writer or an artist of any sort. It's not particularly earth-shattering or sun-stopping, but it is a strong, enjoyable, insightful, and meditative look at both faith and art and the believer artist's responsibility to each. I won't say I always agreed (and if you always agree with any one person's personal philosophy of art, I wonder if something may be wrong), but I definitely believe she's on the right track more often than not.

See, Madeleine L'Engle is one of those people who make me hesitant to refer to myself as either "writer" or "artist." She's so dedicated to and passionate about her craft that there are times when I just don't think I should be aloud to count myself as one of "them." What's good about this is that Walking on Water has served as a personal challenge to my own writing (and I've come to realize recently how much impact my daily blog has had on my overall writing and storytelling) and art as well as my faith. Which, ultimately, is probably what a book like this SHOULD be doing.

The down side about that, however, is that I was up until three getting some words on paper toward my next play.

Anyway, the book itself: very good. Lots of things I wish I'd taken note of and written down somewhere so I could quote them here (and elsewhere as I found the quotes applicable later in life), but I never did, and I'm not sure where they were. I'm sure I'll give this one a re-read some day, and I'll pay closer attention then. I think L'Engle occasionally belabors her points just a tad, but I can forgive that. Her voice is clever, entertaining, and engaging, and it's interesting to see the some of the trends she notes as bad for literature and, as a result, bad for society as a whole, and how they have developed since the book's publishing. (Hm, wonder what Madam L'Engle would have to say about text messaging?)

Worth a read, if you like books on theory and theology that don't hit you over the head on either side while still giving you plenty to chew on.

My next book is an interesting change of pace from this one...