Exercising Your Reading Muscle!

By Stephanie Duncan, Marketing Assistant at Moody Publishers

Welcome back to the new Moody Fiction Blog! Today we are continuing in the final day of our launch contest from Jan. 5-9th, and as our last day, we will be giving away 20 free copies of Latter-Day Cipher (fiction) and The Mormon Mirage (non-fiction) by Latayne C. Scott! Each of 10 winners today will receive a copy of each book. Read on for details...

I once saw award-winning author Mary Gordon speak, and came away challenged by her statement, “Exercise your reading muscle!” While at this time of year, many are implementing new health and fitness programs as New Years resolutions, it may also be a good time to get your literary intake in shape. Here are a few ideas to kick off your reading routine this year!

1) In Living By Fiction, Annie Dillard writes “the writer is interested in knowing the world in order to make honest sense of it.” Challenge yourself to pause and collect the details of God’s glorious world around you in a journal.

2) Finish that book you picked up last spring but only got through the third chapter!

3) Read Scripture with an eye for literary technique, looking for the Divine Author’s use of theme, foreshadowing, and character development. Start with biblical narratives such as Genesis, Esther, the gospels, and Jesus’s parables. Also check out A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards, a masterful storyteller who retells the drama of King David, Saul, and Absolom with devotional insight.

4) Enroll in an elementary education course just so you can teach The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo to a room full of imaginative, impressionable second-graders. Yes, the book is just that good.

5) Read-aloud to your kids. Try old classics like The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgsen Burnett, or The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. And if you really want to be brave this year, give all your characters voices.

6) Spend a day in a library; come with no agenda.

7) Balance your reading list by unearthing old classics and discovering new titles. Follow this advice from C.S. Lewis, “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

8) Check out books on tape or CD from your library, or order them discounted online, to listen to on your commute to work or while you’re cleaning around the house.

9) Use fiction to connect with others: join a book club, read through a novel with your spouse, make a book recommendation to friends. Fiction is not an escape from reality, rather, it teaches us how to live reality better by showing us the interconnectedness of the stories of humanity. As C.S. Lewis said, “We read to know we are not alone.”

10) Try your hand at a piece of creative non-fiction.  Author Vivian Gornick says that to write one's own story is "to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver wisdom." You could start by writing your testimony in a creative narrative account, jotting down an anecdote from family life, or starting a journal.

To enter to win a copy of Latter-Day Cipher (fiction) and The Mormon Mirage (non-fiction), all you have to do is leave your comment below (along with your email--important for us to contact you if you are a winner!) answering the following question or responding to this post, and you will be entered into the contest. Winners will be selected at random and will be notified the day after their comment is posted. 10 winners will each receive their own copy of both titles. Good luck!

Today's Question: What hopes, goals, or challenges do you have for yourself this year regarding reading and writing?

When rebellious Utah socialite Kirsten Young is found murdered in Provo Canyon with strange markings carved into her flesh and a note written in 19th century code, questions arise about the old laws of the Mormon Church. Journalist Selonnah Zee is assigned the story—which quickly takes on a life of its own. Even before the first murder is solved several more victims appear, each one more mysterious than the last.

Adding to a slew of other distractions, Selonnah’s cousin Roger has recently converted and is now a public spokesperson for the Mormon faith. But paradoxically, Roger’s wife, Eliza, is struggling to hold on to the Mormon beliefs of her childhood. If something is really from God, she wonders, why does it need to be constantly revised? And could the murderer be asking the same questions?

In the first edition of The Mormon Mirage, Latayne C. Scott shared her remarkable journey out of Mormonism as she uncovered shocking inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the faith she had loved and lived. Thirty years later, Mormonism and Mormon scholarship have evolved with the times. In this third, revised and updated edition of her well-known book, Scott keeps pace with changes and advances in Mormonism, and reveals formidable new challenges to its claims and teachings. The Mormon Mirage provides fascinating, carefully documented insights into • DNA research’s withering implications for the Book of Mormon • the impact of new “revelations” on Latter-day Saint (LDS) race relations • new findings about Mormon history • increasing publicity about LDS splinter groups, particularly polygamous ones • recent disavowals of long-held doctrines by church leadership • the rise of Mormon apologetics on the Internet