The Patti Lacy Offical Website
PATTI LACY
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." NIV version


American Christian Fiction Writers
American Christian
Fiction Writers

Favorites/Lists

Lists, Lists, Lists

June 2008: Oh, The Places We'll Go!
(Readers' Dream Destinations
)

  • Hawaii, particularly the island of Kauai
  • Austria
  • New Zealand
  • remote Caribbean beaches
  • Denali Park in Alaska
  • Wyoming and Montana parks
  • an Alaskan cruise
  • Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens in Washington State
  • Italy, Greece and France
  • Backpacking across Ireland
  • Jamaica
  • an untouched tropical island
  • mission trips (particularly in Africa)
  • Puerto Rico 
  • A train trip anywhere! 
  • A geneological trip across Ireland, Scotland, England  
  • Israel
  • Helping family in Illinois and Indiana 
  • Cinque Terre in Italy
  • Switzerland's carless villages
  • Wisconsin's bike trails, particularly Sparta with its cool railroad tunnels
  • Santa Fe and the art scene
  • Maine with its lighthouses and loons
  • Grand Canyon
  • Okefenokee Swamp
  • The sea islands off the Georgia coast 
  • May 2008: Get Inspired! (Twenty-six Contest Entries)

  • Isaiah 40:31: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
        They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be
        weary, and they shall walk and not faint.
  • Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
  • The secret of health...is not to mourn the past, worry about the future or
        anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
  • Romans 8:31: If God is for you, who can be against you?
  • You can't change others; you can only change yourself.
  • We are more in need of a vision or a destination and less in need of
        a map...
  • The Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I
        cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
        to know the difference.
  • Zechariah 9:12: If you will be a prisoner of hope, God will restore
        back to you double everything that was stolen.
  • Oh, that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a
        heaven for? Robert Browning
  • Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.
        St. Francis of Assisi
  • This too shall pass.
  • Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ, who
        strengthens me.
  • 2 Timothy 1:7: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of
        power and love and of a sound mind."
  • This too shall pass. 
  • Let go and let God. 
  • Character is how you live your life when no one else is looking!  
  • Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no
        happiness without action. Disraeli
  • Isaiah 41:10: Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed,
        for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you,
        I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
     
  • Each ending is a new beginning.
  • I do not think of all the misery but of all the beauty that
        still remains. Anne Frank
  • John 1:12: Yet to all who received Him, to those who
        believed in His name, He gave the right to become
        children of God.
  • Do the thing you are afraid to do, and the death of fear
        is certain. Ralph Waldo Emerson 
  • Psalm 119:130. The unfolding of your words gives light.
  • The Golden Rule: Do unto others what you would have
        them do unto you.
  • Courage is just a willingness to make a mistake.
  • Proverbs 16:18: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty
        spirit before a fall.
     
  • April 2008: Let's Go to the Movies
    (Twenty-Five Must-See American Films
    Will devote another list to foreign films)
    )

  • The Wizard of Oz
  • Gone With the Wind
  • The Godfather
  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • The Sound of Music
  • Singing in the Rain
  • Casablanca
  • Some Like it Hot
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • Ben Hur
  • Mildred Pierce
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • East of Eden
  • Citizen Kane 
  • All About Eve 
  • Schlinder's List  
  • It's a Wonderful Life
  • Do the Right Thing 
  • Pride and Prejudice
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • Star Wars
  • Dr. Zhivago
  • The English Patient
  • Raisin in the Sun
  • Body Heat 
  •  March 2008: Here's to you, Ireland!
    (Places to Visit on Lovely Erin)

  • The majestic Cliffs of Mohr
  • The City of Galway, with its whimsical shops
  • The Burren, a vast limestone stretch dotted with exotic wildflowers
  • The Burren Perfumery and Tea Room
  • The wild, wonderful climb to Croagh Patrick
  • Skellig Michael, the "most impossible rock in the world" 
  • Strangford Lough 
  • The romantic Aran Islands 
  • A pub in just about any Irish town. Good food and Guinness  
  • The Connemara, including Killary Fjord and Kylemore Abbey
  • Glendalough 
  • Traditional Irish music pub (different from above. Ask the locals) 
  •  February 2008: Valentine's Day Memories

  • Toblerone candy bars arriving from my Swiss brother
  • Cooking a gourmet meal for our young married small group
  • Watching our teenaged son serve the gourmet meal!
  • Homemade Valentines from my babies
  • Yearly phone calls from both my parents (before Dad died) 
  • Our annual ritual--ordering Chinese takeout 
  • Eating above on our china by candlelight 
  • Taking an elderly friend to tea
  • Flowers delivered from an anonymous admirer 
  • Stuffing white paper sacks with store-bought Valentines
  •  January 2008: New Year's Resolutions Which Rocked My Socks Off 

  • Quit manipulating my teenagers
  • Lose eight pounds
  • Eat dark chocolate daily
  • Drink coffee with every meal
  • Train for and complete a marathon
  • Run a 5K, a 10K, and a half-marathon on the same weekend   
  • Clean my husband's closet
  • Read the Bible daily
  • Take up jogging...and enjoy it! 
  • Daily work the newspaper's crossword puzzle 
  • Do quality research to determine the best presidential candidate
  • Laugh more and frown less
  • Quit being snippy to my in-laws
  • Read every classic title in my local library
  • Find the mind of God (winning entry)
  • Expect God to work miracles in ME
  • Lower bad cholesterol, raise good cholesterol 
  • December 2007: Most Popular Christmas Reads
    Readers' Choice

    (Listed in order of votes received)

  • Christmas Carol, Dickens
  • A Christmas Memory, Capote
  • Twas the Night, Moore & Birmingham
  • How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Seuss
  • The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Robinson
  • Christmas Day in the Morning, Buck and Buehner  
  • Gift of the Magi, Henry and Zwerger
  • The Christmas Box, Evans
  • The Polar Express, Van Allsburg 
  • The Candymaker's Gift: The Legend of the Candy Cane, Haidel
  • The Crippled Lamb, Lucado
  • Away in a Manger, Kinkade
  • Unwrapping Christmas, Copeland
  • Jacob's Gift, Lucado
  • The Christmas Shoes, VanLiere 
  • Alabaster's Song: Christmas Through the Eyes of an Angel, Lucado
  • An Unexpected Christmas: The Story of Johnny Cornflakes, George
  • The Mitford novels
  •  October/November 2007: Favorite Fall Memories 

    • Crunching through fall leaves
    • Buying new school supplies
    • Starting a new Bible study 
    • Bundling up for a high school or college football game
    • Making potato and tortilla soups by scratch
    • Hearing the rattle of seed pods on native grass plants
    • Watching the geese return to our very underrated Midwestern blue skies

    September 2007: Places Which Inspire You                        

    • Turkey Run State Park, Indiana
    • San Juan Island, Washington State   
    • The Empire Builder route, Amtrak, U.S.A.
    • Kiawah Island, South Carolina
    • Na Pali Coast, Kauai, Hawaii
    • Kalupapa Peninsula, Molokai, Hawaii
    • Grindelwald, Switzerland
    • Custer State Park, South Dakota
    • Okefenokee Swamp, Florida
    • Green Lake Conference Center, Green Lake, Wisconsin
    • Maxwell Park, Normal, Illinois
    • Acadia National Park, Maine
    • Crested Butte, Colorado, and a fifty-mile circle around it
    • The Old Taos Highway, New Mexico 
    • Clare County, Ireland

    August 2007: Old friends

  • The Children's Bible, Golden Press
  • Little Women, Alcott
  • Fairy Tales of the Orient, Buck
  • Cowboy Andy, Chandler
  • The Nancy Drew series, Keene
  • Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren
  • Beautiful Joe, Saunders
  • Five Little Peppers and How they Grew, Sidney
  • Booker T. Washington, Stevenson
  • A Child's Garden of Verses, Stevenson 
  • July 2007: Summer loves!
    Scour your favorite bookstores! Poll your friends!
    Come up with at least five scintillating summer reads! 
    Winner receives a $15 gift certificate to Borders Books & Music!
    Please e-mail your selections to patti@pattilacy.com or
    select "Contact Me" on this website and enter your list in the "Message" box.

    Patti's Summer Loves 2007
    (*Reviewed on the site button entitled Reviews)

  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver
  • Confessions of an Amateur Believer, Kirk
  • Confessions of St. Augustine (Ryan, translator)
  • *Dispatches From the Edge, Cooper
  • *My Father's Secret War, Franks
  • Suite Francaise, Nemirovsky  
  • *The Big House, Colt
  • *The Invisible Wall, Bernstein
  • The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Mendelsohn
  • *The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Edwards
  • *The Oak Leaves, Lang
  • The Road, McCarthy
  • *Watching the Tree Limbs, DeMuth
  • West With The Night, Markham
  • *When Crickets Cry, Martin
  • Mine was an odd childhood, living in an athletic dormitory with two hundred sometime brothers, my father, the dorm director, and Mother. In May, after the sometimes brothers had ripped sheets from their bed, stuffed satchels and trunks with smelly clothes, and headed home for another summer, loneliness swept in like a Texas thunderstorm.

    That first summer they all left, I was four years old, and Mother somehow knew how hard it would be for me to tell my sometime brothers good-bye. After all, there were no kids to play with on a college campus, and my full-time brothers hadn't been born yet.

    "Let's find some summer loves!" Mother exclaimed, wiping my tears away as we waved to the last sometime brother.

    "What are summer loves?" I asked.

    "The best kind!" When she lifted her eyebrows in that funny way she had, her face took on the look of a circus clown's, and I knew fun was on its way. "They take you around the world, then bring you back. They never mess with your stuff, and they don't cost a dime!"

    I didn't understand what was going on until we walked across campus, climbed the library steps, and tiptoed into the lobby, which back then was hush-hush even when all the students were around. That day, it was empty as Christ's tomb.

    "Books?" I asked Mother, more than slightly disappointed. They child of two educators, I'd been knee deep in books for my whole life. They'd propped up the gimpy leg on my baby bed, been jerryrigged into a coffee table of sorts, preserved and pressed Mother's favorite flowers...but most of all, we read them, talked about them...lived them.

    "Special ones. The ones that aren't assigned in school." She patted my head. "Of course, you don't know about that yet." Mother lowered her voice when the crabby librarian eyed her. "The ones you'd pay money for."

    My breath caught in my throat. While my parents coveted books like others coveted gold, they'd sworn off buying them until Daddy's dissertation was finished. Our books were borrowed, gifted, traded, and perhaps even obtained under less admirable circumstances. "For real?" I asked.

    Another look from Mrs. Crab didn't faze Mother. "For real," she insisted. She took my arm and led me to the study carrel under which I'd played solitaire while Daddy did research. "If they're yours, you can memorize your favorite parts, write in the margins, and read them over and over. They'll make you laugh...and cry, when you realize you're on the last chapter."

    As the years went by, I learned just what Mother meant. I sampled Green Eggs and Ham with Seuss, survived a dreadful house fire with Beautiful Joe, solved mysteries with the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew, and visited London and Paris and Narnia, which was such a wonderful place, I never wanted to come home...

    Now I'm fifty-two, and I still eagerly reenact the summertime ritual my mother began back in Martin Hall even though now I go to Borders or Barnes & Noble or Berean and buy books instead of checking them out of the library, mainly so I can write in the margins of my summer friends' pages, like my parents loved to do. For weeks, sometimes months, I query my friends and read online reviews, compiling a semifinalist list. To choose the finalists, I scour the bookstores, scooping up an armful of the top ten or twenty, and let them spill onto one of those minuscule tables in the quietest corner of the bookstore's coffee bar, or in the case of Berean, the back corner of the store, by the bathrooms. Some are pretty young things, hot off the presses; others are so old, their authors are cold in their graves and have been for centuries. Be forewarned: just like in real-life relationships, some summer loves just don't work out. But I'll follow my Grandmother Hazel's advice on this type of matter: I won't talk about them if they won't talk about me. And if one summer love doesn't work out, I'll carefully replace it on the store's bookshelf and pull down another and another and another.  

                                                                   June's genre: Christian fiction!


    Up, Up, and Away--Twenty-Three Fiction Reads

  • Deadline, Alcorn
  • Dominion, Alcorn
  • All She Ever Wanted (Austin)
  • A Light to My Path (Refiner's Fire series), Austin
  • Candle in the Darkness (RF series), Austin
  • Fire by Night (RF series), Austin  
  • Eve's Daughters, Austin
  • Blink, Dekker
  • When Heaven Weeps, Dekker
  • They Shall See God, Dickson
  • Joshua, Girzone
  • The Note, Hunt
  • The Yada Yada Prayer Group, Jackson
  • Sisterchicks on the Loose, Jones
  • The Mitford series, Karon
  • Saving Alice, Lewis
  • The Atonement Child, Rivers
  • Leota's Garden, Rivers
  • When the Shofar Blew, Rivers
  • God Made Little Apples, Sheridan
  • The Amber Photograph, Stokes
  • The Galway Chronicles, Thoene & Thoene 
  • Brigid of Ireland, Thomson
  •                                                                   May's Genre: Christian Nonfiction
    Tried and Trusted Old Friends: 20 Favorite Books of Christian Nonfiction

  • The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer
  • My Utmost for His Highest, Chambers
  • Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, Cymbala
  • These Strange Ashes, Elliot
  • Passion and Purity, Elliot
  • The Savage, My Kinsman, Elliot  
  • Mere Christianity, Lewis
  • Blue Like Jazz, Miller
  • Absolute Surrender, Murray
  • The Cloister Walk, Norris
  • Bruchko, Olsen
  • 101 Hymn Stories, Osbeck 
  • Knowing God, Packer
  • Desiring God, Piper
  • Following Christ, Stowell
  • The Case for Christ, Strobel
  • The Best of A.W. Tozer, Tozer
  • The Purpose-Driven Life, Warren
  • The Jesus I Never Knew, Yancy
  • What's So Amazing About Grace? Yancy 
  •