espionage, passion, and betrayal

I picked up Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal from the library recently. I like reading about World War II. Generally, I stick to stories of the Holocaust when picking my WWII books. However, I was browsing through the library and saw this one. The cover intrigued me, as did the blurb they released. Here is what they give you for this book:

when the hero is...the bad guy?

Yes, I happen to like Ted Dekker. You can't say that I like all his books, because I don't always like them. For example, his Martyr's Song series isn't one that I particularly enjoy.

However, as he's been writing, he has steadily gotten better. To date, his best novel is The Priest's Graveyard. In this book, it's extremely difficult to tell who the good guy is. Our two main characters, Danny and Renee, don't seem to be heroes. They are extremely flawed individuals who have depth, purpose, and more than a little bit of flawed reasoning behind their actions. No character pops out as the villain. The plot is intriguing, drawing you into their lives as you chase them along, both repulsed by their actions and yet unable to turn away. Expect the unexpected in this book. Page after page will whistle by as you frantically flip pages to find out what will happen next. I finished this book in 3 hours - and the book is approximately 360 pages long. This is a mind-blower.

As in Immanuel's Veins, Dekker started using the first person interspersed with third person narrative. However, unlike in Immanuel's Veins, the character using first person was a woman. This is something new for Dekker, as the only time he's ever used first person narrative style with a woman was when he co-authored with a woman. This book was a work he did on his own and with a woman in first-person narrative. However, for the story, it works very well. Once again, this is something that he's not used before Immanuel's Veins, but it works quite well and doesn't detract from the story in any way. In fact, I rather think it adds to the story.

Many times as I've read Dekker's books, I've come to a question: is Dekker Catholic? There are times it seems he is - he certainly seems to have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of Catholic teachings and whatnot, as is portrayed in The Priest's Graveyard. But some of the things he says makes me question whether or not he is Catholic, or has just researched extensively. This is just a curiosity that I've found and would dearly love to know the answer to.

For The Priest's Graveyard, I offer two thumbs up! Go find this book and either listen to it or read it. It will blow your mind and make you think twice about what you do. Definitely Dekker's best work to date - and he has a lot of them. Nor is this just my opinion. Go find a copy of this book. You won't regret it.

-enna

Immanuel's Veins - an intoxicating read

On the book - Immanuel's Veins was released on September 7, 2010. It's the latest book by Ted Dekker. Visit the link to read what the official book description is. I have here my review. :)

Just Once

another book...this one is fairly short...only 55 pages...no one edited this one. i wrote it and published it. it's called Just Once. it's very different from anything else i've written for publication so far.

description: Just one decision makes all the difference...





-enna

i suppose....

i've noticed that when most other people write blog posts, they don't go here, there, and everywhere in the post. not that i'm normal, but i suppose that if i kinda kept stuff in a logical order, then it would make it easier for all you readers. am i right? i probably am. so... in this blog, i'm gonna talk about a few things: brisingr, my swim meet on saturday, nerts after the meet, dogs, and group 1 crew's new cd. so there. i'm organized. (kinda)

so, for brisingr. i really liked it. however, i did not like the way that paolini made roran a darker character. as has been mentioned on one of my friend's blogs (http://phinwetalks.blogspot.com), roran went from someone who was fanatically obsessed with saving his girlfriend to little more than a hired mercenary. and i didn't like the way paolini made arya soften up towards eragon. it's kinda nice, but is it really necessary to have romance take such a prominent place in fantasy literature? don't get me wrong: i love fantasy; i love this book; and i enjoy romance. but...it seems to be in every single book! UGH. i'm committed to remaining single for a very long time (at least until i'm 20 or 21) and as far as i'm concerned, most of the male race is messed up in the head. (MOST not all) so it can get annoying to keep reading about romance romance romance. does that make any sense?

end of book review. on to weekend review!

i had a swim meet on saturday. it was a home meet (GO GATORS!) and there were about 200 swimmers there. warmups were at 11, and the meet actually started at noon. we were done at about 5, so that isn't bad... only five hours of sitting around in-between events. that averages out to approximately 20 events an hour... which isn't bad at ALL. i've been to meets that start at 10 in the morning and don't end until 6... with a smaller number of events. but anyway, for those of you who don't speak the lingo, a medley relay is composed of four legs... backstroke (on the back), breaststroke (think frog), butterfly (michael phelps' signature), and freestyle (front crawl), in that order. IM stands for individual medley, which is those same strokes, but a different order (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle). here's the events that i swam and the amount of time i dropped (or added :P) to my time (not counting relays):

4x50 yd medley relay (i swam the breaststroke leg)
200 yd IM -- dropped something like 3 or 4 seconds
50 yd freestyle -- dropped half a second
500 yd freestyle -- dropped 12 seconds (yay!)
200 yd breaststroke -- added 8 seconds (ugh)
4x50 yd freestyle relay

for those who have never been to a swim meet, they are long and cold and boring and chaotic. swimmers are all over the place, all of them freezing cold and eating junk food and not resting like they are supposed to be doing (i must admit that i don't do that much either). they are interesting, to say the least. no two are ever the same.

then right after the swim meet, i rushed home for the NERTS olympics. i didn't place, but it's a blast. lemme explain it this way... a swim meet is, for me, the equivalent of drinking about 3 or 4 energy drinks. NERTS is equivalent to about 2 of the same, plus a 2 liter of mountain dew (r). so i was rather hyper. (that's the understatement of the century.) but NERTS is a lot of fun. very high energy, lots of friends, cards, and food... what more do you need? ;)

so i crashed when i went to bed.. and i still wasn't done the next day! a friend of the family came over after church sunday. she's blind, and has a guide dog named adena. she's retiring adena on january 31, and we are adopting her after that. so she brought adena over to just spend a relaxing afternoon at our house, getting used to ur house, jesse and oliver (our cats), zinn (our dog), and all of us (i've got four younger sisters, from 13 to 4, and then my parents). so that was a slow afternoon.

so there's my crazy weekend from last week. now... group 1 crew. their new cd is absolutely AWESOME!! you know how some cds have your favorite tracks, and then the rest are bleh, and you don't really like them? well, on this cd, i do have my favorite tracks (keys to the kingdome, gimme that funk, tonight, our time, icontact, critical emergency, live out loud, living the life), but then the rest of the songs are also fantastic, and i love listening to them too. my only question is... when's the next cd? ;)

that's all for tonight!

-Enna