Gladys Hunt - Honey for a Womans Heart: Growing Your World through Reading Great Books

Honey for a Childs Heart

Honey for a Teens Heart (with Barbara Hampton)

ZONDERVAN

Honey for a Womans Heart

Copyright 2002 by Gladys Hunt

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

ePub Edition January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-310-87266-5

Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunt, Gladys M.

Honey for a womans heart: growing your world through reading great books /Gladys Hunt.

p. cm.

ISBN-10: 0-310-23846-3 (softcover)

ISBN-13: 978-0-310-23846-1 (softcover)

1. WomenBooks and reading. 2. Books and readingReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

Z1039.W65 H86 2001

028.9-dc21

2001045576

CIP

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

To my friendstraveling in the same company with me, booklovers all, generous in sharing, enriching my life and yours with their contributions in this book. Come, best books, and lead us on

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.

MARK TWAIN

R eading is about words! I feel a sense of awe about words. I guess you could say that I am caught up in the wonder of words and all that words bring to our lives. In fact, Im probably a bit in love with language, which is another way of saying that I like to read. I am not primarily an evangelist about reading, however; my hope is in something far more eternal than books. Yet words are connected to my real evangel, for words are a way to express truth; words are a gift from God. When words are put together in the right way they summon a wideness in our lives that pleases him.

My best hopes for this book involve you: First, Id wish for you some new awareness of the way words go together and their potential in your life. Words are unique to human beings; using language is part of being made in the image of God. He speaks to us with words; we speak to him with words; we reveal ourselves with language. What

color language brings to our lives! What a boon to be able to communicate and to read! Yet we often treat this incredible gift rather casually showing how little we value it. We can read! Take responsibility for your giftedness. And we have books to read. Feel glad about that!

Second, I hope you begin to see what books can do for you as a reader. Books primarily tell stories. There is really only one Great Story in the universe. All other stories come from that one story. Our lives are stories; we tell stories, using our imagination to create narratives about people and events. Jesus was a master storyteller; he put his stamp of approval on fiction by doing this.

Stories tell us truths about the way the world isabout human longing, fears, and choices. We get inside the lives of others and contemplate the consequence of their actions and decisions. Stories are great teachers; we learn best from them because truth takes us unaware, sneaking up on us through our involvement in the storys characters and actions.

Third, Id like to encourage you to read widely. Book ideas are spread throughout the pages of this bookall kinds of books. Indeed, I hope the chapters of this book sing out Robert Louis Stevensons words,

The world is so full of a number of things,

Im sure we should all be as happy as kings.

My All-Time Favorites

The Narnia Chronicles by C. S. Lewis

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

A Childs Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating

RECOMMENDED BY MARILYN BAKER, COMMUNITY LEADER AND READER

Book readers can go places without phoning a travel agent or starting the car. You can meet fascinating people in your own living room, people you would never know any other way. New ideas and concepts roll out of the pages of books into your own life, not because you have enrolled in school, but because you are reading. You can go on adventures you would never dare plan. Add to this the depth of feeling and beauty that comes from the right words in the right placesaah, who wouldnt want to be a reader! Reading enables us to see the world as richly colored rather than black and white.

Fourth, expect books to become ministers to your life, to say to you what you need to hear. Its amazing how the right book comes to rescue us when we are trapped by attitudes or habits. Books can give us the courage to root out some weeds so that we can get on with the real stuff of life. Relationships, often so tenuous, need insight and truth to make them flourish. The books recommended in the chapter on spiritual growth and the ideas for taking the Bible seriously could start a personal revolution.

Its risky, this business of recommending books. My great books may not end up being your great books. When someone borrows one of my books or reads one that is high on my list of wonderful things, I make myself somewhat vulnerable as I wait for his or her response. Anatole Broyard in his essay Lending Books describes his experience in sharing books with others: I look for agony or ecstasy, for tears, transfiguration, trembling hands, a broken voicebut what the reader usually says is, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed itas if that were what books were for! When the book has left you all awash in strong feelings, anothers placid response may be a letdown.

Im not a literary expert. I am a learner, like you. Ive written this book because I believe we are word-blessed people and our stewardship of that gift is important. The world is so much with us, getting and gaining, besides being very noisy and distracting. Everyone, including me, needs encouragement to take a look at what we read and how we read, to say nothing of whether we read!

I hope this book inspires you to become a reader of all things goodor at the very least to read more than you presently do. Im a realist. Some book lovers will gobble up the latest authors and have read a dozen new books before others get around to finding the library. Because of this book, you may be one who will read three books this year instead of none. Either way, its a start on guarding your literacy. Reading is not an escape from life; it is an exercise in living. Enjoy!

First Lines That Hooked Me

The first sentence is so well crafted, so precise, so intriguing it sticks in your memory long after youve read it. Recall the first line, and the whole book unfolds all over again.

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez

On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nassar got up at five-thirty in the , morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on.