You Are Part of God’s Perfect Plan
by Emily Matthews

God planned the smallest detail on the day He formed the earth,
And just as carefully, He planned each detail of your birth -
He knew the color of your eyes, the texture of your hair,
The circumstances of your days, each how and when and where.
And God has a perfect plan from all eternity
To touch the lives of others through the lives of you and me -
He blesses us and fills us with a joy beyond all measure,
For he considers each of us a rare and priceless treasure.

God has a wonderful plan for your life - unique and special as you -
For using the talents and gifts you’ve received as only you’re able to do.
And so as you praise Him, reflecting His goodness, and celebrate all that He’s done,
May he bring fulfillment and joy to your heart making each day a beautiful one.
Happy Birthday

Dear Veronica,
What a great person and daughter you are! We wish you a Happy Birthday with all our hearts. Thank you for all your years of being a loving daughter, mother, and sister-in-Christ. To say you have enriched our lives would be a gross understatement. You have made us fabulously wealthy in the things that count longest and most!
Love, Mom and Dad

Can my parents do a birthday card or what?

You find yourself saying, “I’m going to shop at Meijer because their double-seated grocery carts have a better turning radius.”

When we do long drives, especially at night, we listen to audiobooks. Sometimes it is the only thing that makes the car hours bearable. When I was still nursing, I also put audiobooks on my ipod for middle of the night feedings. It kept me awake and gave me some brain stimulation. Nursing is the most boring activity on earth.

Anyway, all our car time lately has made me think about my favorite audiobooks, and I thought I would recommend a few for you. Most of these are not recent publications, but your library might carry them, or there’s always Ebay.

Stockard Channing reading an abridgement of Shining Through by Susan Isaacs. If you saw the movie with Melanie Griffith, forget it. Only barely similar. This is a spy story set in WWII. A German-fluent secretary in New York goes undercover in Nazi Germany. There’s a love story too. There are a couple of steamy scenes you would not want to listen to in front of kids, but nothing too embarrassing for me to listen to in front of the husband. What makes this book so enjoyable is Channing’s perfect reading. She is wry, sarcastic, awestruck and self-effacing in all the right places. I laughed, I hated, I swooned, and I listened to this reading many times. A definite favorite.

Stockard Channing reading Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books. I don’t know much about Channing’s screen work, but the way she reads these children’s novels convinced me she is an amazing actress. She manages every voice just the way I’d always imagined it. If you are a fan of Ramona, or if you’re not, these audiobooks are a joy. And completely safe to listen to in front of anyone, child or mother-in-law.

Jay Leno Leading with My Chin. This is Leno’s reading of his autobiography. Most celebrity autobiographies are lousy, and this may be in print too, but it is laugh-out-loud funny when Leno reads it. Although it is packaged as an autobiography, it is really more a charming depiction of Leno’s parents, a tough, hardworking Italian father and a shy and funny Scottish mother. His love for them is clear in every line, and by the time the book is over, you love them too. Not all of it is appropriate for children, but it is a delightful listen.

Patrick Stewart’s one-man show of Charles Dickens’s “Christmas Carol.” One of the best productions of this Christmas classic I’ve ever heard. The only down-side is that the edition I have on CD does not track every few minutes; the whole performance is on one track. So use the pause button.

Julia Sweeney’s God Said Ha. This isn’t technically a book. It is her one-woman show, which you can listen to on CD or watch on video. But since she basically tells stories, I’m including it. She describes the events in her life as her brother was dying of cancer and her family moved in with her to care for him. She ends up having cancer too, but survives. It is heartbreaking but also made me laugh more than anything I’ve listened to. If you have never tried any audiobook, try this. You will not regret it. I think it’s out of print (is that what you call it when its a recording?), but your library may have a copy (ours does).

Lisette Lecat reading Alexander McCall Smith’s No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and subsequent novels in the series. This novel has been hugely popular, and rightly so. But Lecat’s reading, in a rich Botswanan accent, adds a level of enjoyment to this book not to be missed. This is the only series in which I want to hear the audiobook before I read the print book.

There are other audio performaces which are not books but worth listening too. Garrison Keillor’s older stuff is good, but lately he wanders pointlessly too much. My favorites are his first collection News from Lake Wobegone (Truckstop is the best), Gospel Birds, and his Stories collection of essays he published primarily in the New Yorker. David Sedaris is always funny, though I can only take soulless sneering in small doses. The husband refuses to listen to him because of his speaking voice, so he is strictly an earphones listen for me. Old radio programs are worth considering. I usually dig the melodramatic detective shows.

I am a big audiobook fan, and I hope I can persuade a few of you to be too. Let me know if you try any of these.

I did one of those “100 things about me you didn’t really want to know” lists. Oh vanity, thy name is blogger.

There are people who buy books the way others collect salt and pepper shakers. They view a book as something to have, not something to read. I don’t want to throw around the word appalling because it is so overused, but well, I’m a little appalled by this. Collecting books without reading them makes about as much sense to me as celibate marriage. And thank God that practice died out. (There. Now my smart ass readers can say, “Except at my house.”)

So I was delighted with the kind of bookcollecting described in a recent read. A few weeks ago I finished reading Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins. Collins is a booklover and collector who moved with his family to Hay-on-Wye in Wales, a little town with an overabundance of bookshops. Collins is my kind of reader. Throughout Sixpence House he gives little tidbits from old books he has read, usually books no one will ever find again. For example, he says,

There is a wonderful old travelogue on Britain that the American journalist J.M. Bailey published in 1879, England Through the Back Door. It’s long forgotten now, but I’m fond of it, and not simply because it concludes with a full paragraph transcription of the author barfing on the Channel ferry .

How can you read that paragraph and not want to find that book? Collins’s reading charms me, and not just because he seems to prefer literature before 1900. His tastes are eclectic and unpredictable and rarely trendy. A kindred spirit.

Sixpence House is meandering but chronological. The narrative is structured like wandering through a used bookshop. You walk in full of hope and possiblities. You browse the shelves, probably with no discerning order, get lost in books, lose track of time, and eventually wander out again a little tired and ready to go home, but with a new friend or two tucked under your arm. The next time I read this book, I plan to do it with a pen and paper in hand, so I can write down all the intriguing old books he mentions and see if our library has them.

Collins also contrasts British and American culture. His parents are English, but he grew up in the US and is an American citizen. He has affection and exasperation for both cultures. I shared his shock and horror when the American realtor told him he would have to move his books out before he showed his house because, “Home buyers don’t like books.” But the part that got the biggest laugh from me (apologies to any British readers who may feel slighted) was this:

…there is no point in taking showers in Britain. In the United States, water pressure presses; in Britain, water pressure sucks. Every shower in Britain has some sort of Heath Robinson mechanism - he is their equivalent of Rube Goldberg, only Robinson had to work with metric wrenches and 220 current - and he devised for all British showers a cheap plastic box with tubes that go nowhere and buttons that do nothing, except for one that will scald you (footnote: American patent law requires that inventions demonstrate utility; British patent law does not. This fact may be the Rosetta stone to understanding British household appliances.) Apparently it is some kind of filtration system for removing any pleasure one might have in washing. When I was a little boy in America, the pounding water pressure would allow me to stand with my eyes closed in the shower and imagine I was flying a wounded P-57 back to base, with rain whipping into the cockpit; or to pretend that I was getting heroically smashed against a brick wall by a water cannon wielded by riot police. But I’m not sure what British boys can imagine in their showers. Perhaps they pretend that they are standing under a rusted and leaking pipe in an unlit boiler room. Or that someone is weeing on them from a great height.

Oh, I’m sorry. I’m laughing again. Goodbye.