It's been a terribly long time since my last post. December is an especially busy month and I didn't tackle any books I should have read. However, I have been reading a very long (736 pages) and thorough biography, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences by James R. Mellow. I've only just followed Hemingway home from Milan and into the writing of the Nick Adams stories. As I work my way through the biography, I'll pick up short stories I've missed along the way and perhaps a novel or two (until I get sick of Hemingway and need to read something different). I'll report on those readings here and will be able to add interesting background information I've learned from the biography.

In the meantime, I've gotten involved with a "literary" project of a very different kind (I use the term "literary" very loosely here). A number of writers/friends of mine/my husband and I have embarked on a writing project that is sure to bring Literature down a notch. Beauty and the Mark of the Beast: A Dispensational Thriller (written by committee) is an ongoing, serialized send up of bad End Times novels and the whole dispensational culture. The five of us are taking turns writing chapters with no plan and no knowledge of what the others are writing. Each writer will move the story further and eventually all of our characters will somehow interconnect as they find their way through the Rapture, the Tribulation and a some pretty lame special effects.

It's going to be apocalyptically bad.

The prologue and the first two chapters are up. Mine's the latest, but you'll want to start with the prologue to get the full story so far. Follow Beauty and the Mark of the Beast. You probably won't regret it.