Faith's comments (member since Jul 04, 2008)

Faith's comments from the Chicks On Lit group.

I am still so amazed at my pen pal request response!!!!! To think that when I first asked for a pen pal I thought maybe I would get 3 or 5 people!!!! But this is AMAZING!!!!! So many new people have joined and so many from the very begining are adding more and more woman to write!!! I LOVE being a woman!!!! We Rock!!!!

so excited this is one of my read every five years books! i love this book! can't wait to get started!

thanks everyone!!!!!! i am amazed how many have lost loved ones to colon cancer! thanks for sharing your stories! and thanks for the thoughts and prayers! i love those! it's always good to get as much love as we can!

i am still so glad that everyone is writing! it is so much fun! i love love love getting letters! and i look forward to going to the mail box now! i am a little behind but i will get there...i'm not worried i am a really good letter writer! i know i can catch up!

i am sorry i have been absent for so long. i have revealed in all the responses to the pen pal request! i could NOT be happier for how well it is going! but remember that the anticipation of a letter is almost as good as the letter itself! the instant gratification of all this electronic technology isn't always the best.

i have been away because of a LOT of personal reasons! i again thank everyone for keeping this thread going strong and keeping up with everyones request to be a part of the pen pal list. i have made sure to write all the newbies and as many of march pen pals as i can. some day i will hopefully have written to all of them.

if you don't know i am the one who started this thread of pen pals. i thought maybe i would get 5 to 8 people who would want to write! i should have known better from my chicks on lit group!

i wrote to holli a little about what has been going on personally for me. i have moved recently but the hardest and most consuming part has been the loss of my brother n law. i found out just a day after my request for a pen pal that my brother n law had colon cancer and that he had only 6 months to live. well. he didn't even make it to six. we were only blessed with 4 weeks and 4 days. i wrote this to holli.....

thanks holli for responding to my blog with true heart about my brother in law. i have known him since i was 9 years old. in a lot of ways he was a sounding board for my understanding about men in my life. which i have to admit in a lot of ways is why i took so long to get married. but...to know him his last weeks of life. that was UNBELIEVABLE. i understand life after death even if only a little but i get it now. all i could feel before was the judgement and all the things i didn't accomplish and all the things i wanted to accomplish. but kevin taught me that there is life after death...which lets be honest i already knew/believed that there was life after we die.....but...what i understand now is that life after death.......is.......love. it is pure.....and........it is simple but still so hard to understand. yet it is love. i have never in my life felt love and peace more proufoundly than when i was around my brother. i have NEVER felt so much love and peace.....we as a family were given the worst news. that kevin would live only six months. well....sadly he only made it to a month. but in that month he touched so many lives. more than...well not more...but more profoundly than his whole 44 years of life. in that 4 1/2 weeks he changed lives, he changed peoples.... very souls. it was amazing!
you have a choice when you are faced with death. and my brother n law and my sister chose peace and love. i guess i am not entirely surprised but still. that is a hard choice to make yet he and my sister made it seem so effortless. it was an honor to be in his presence. something i never would have said before he had cancer. in death is peace and in that peace is love.

so i again am sorry i have been absent so long through this AMAZING crossing of letters! i am back now but know i have been watching the process of all of this with apt attention. the crossing of age and states and even continents has lifted my spirits and humbled me. thanks you woman of lit! it is a real honor getting to know you all!

no worries holli! i know you will write when you can! like i said before this is fun and i have no problem waiting. i know everyone will write when they can! good luck with your surgery! hope all goes good!

you gals are so great! i am so glad the pen pal letters is working out so beautifully! i agree with tera about the april list. just open up a new list for newbies to sign in, keeping the old list. that way we can keep on writing our pen pals and asking new people from the list to be our pen pals!

i love having people to write! i have pen pals from all over the U.S. and all different ages! it is so much fun getting to know everyone and letting them get to know me! i don't mind waiting for the letters! i know everyone will write when they can! i love waiting for letters, never really knowing when one will come! i just got one from wendy and it was a complete surprise! so much fun! my husband had it behind his back with a huge smile to give it to me! he knows how much i love hearing from my pen pals! my new friends!

i second

the joy luck club
ya ya sisterhood
secret life of bees
pride and prejudice
gone with the wind
jane eyre
the color purple
are you there god its me margaret

and i'd like to nominate to kill a mockingbird! this book is still a defining book about character and strength for me. it shows a young girl who is NOT like other girls who like to wear dresses all in pink...she is a tom boy and very opinionated. a lot like i was as a little girl. it shows what woman who are beaten down can do in a society and what strong woman can do and what a child can alter.

i agree cyn. i think when i write pen to paper i am drawn more into the writing and i am more open about how i am feeling and what i am thinking. i love it! i think it is the main reasons i love letters so much! it is so therapeutic for myself and i love getting them so much!

and yes you write to the person undeerneath and then reply to the letters. it's just like the pen pals we had when we were in grad school. sometimes you will write more letters sometimes they will and sometimes you will both be in sync at the same time.

Finally, i am all caught up on the threads and the messaging! i am sorry i did not mediate better! the day after i wrote my thread my brother n law went into the hospital for a surgery on some cancer they found. and after the surgery they told him that with chemo he would maybe live a year. than the day after that i received a call from my father/mother whom my husband and i are house sitting for that they will be home in 5 days to stay! and they were not supposed to be coming home until the end of september. so by the time i checked the thread three days later there were already 95 responses!

i honestly thought maybe i would get 4 or 5 pen pals! the response has been both uplifting and wonderful! i am so excited about how many letters are flying around! i truelly believe you get to know someone more deeply/differently through letters! i hope some of us will soon have more letters than bills!

thank you everyone! i am more grateful than i can say for the ones who have helped organize this all!

KrisT thank you so much for organizing the list! i REALLY appreciate it! it makes it so much easy to get to know all these great woman!!!

I have NO WORDS! i love you gals! so much!!!!! i have been thinking about this thread for a LONG time! it took me awhile to get the courage to write it! i am BLOWN away by the response! I AM SO SORRY it has taken me so long to respond but i had some MAJOR life changes happen in the last three days since i started this thread that kept me way occupied which my new pen pals will get to hear all about!:)!

i am so thrilled! so excited for this to start! thank you holli and tera and jo and anyone i am missing for taking control and finding a AWESOME solution to this thread! i think the list and writing to everyone along those lines is a GREAT idea! that way we can all get to know each other as only letters can do and at the same time find the people that we really connect with!!!!

and jennifer my handwriting is horrendous too so i also type it for that same reason!

Hello, my chicks on lit! I wanted to see if anyone else out there loves to write and receive letters.

CUZ.....

I love letters! I love to write them, I love to get them! I hate going to the mailbox and all I have is bills, bills, bills! It's depressing! So I am making a giant personal leap and seeing if anyone wants to be my pen pal!

I love everything about letters! I still go every season to buy the new stamps just in the hopes I will get to use them for something other than bills! I love it when i open my mailbox and there is a nice thick letter with my name on it! I have friends who like to talk on the phone, which I do too, and they love to send emails, which I don't love, but they don't like to write letters.

If there is anyone that loves letters too let me know! We can be pen pals!

2. Why do you think Margaret obeyed Miss Winter's summons to come to her estate and talk with her?

i think she was intrigued that someone would summon her. winters stayed within margarets rules and yet winters would stray outside those rules just enough to peak margarets curiosity and interest. keeping her there until the task was done. until it became as much as an obsession to figure out the ending of the story as it was for winters to finish the story.


4. My own question I had while reading the book was...... "Do you think it is harder to keep a secret or confess the complete truth"?

i agree with holli. i think it is WAY harder to confess the complete truth. i also hold back the complete truth to keep my self safe.-emotional self-

6. What do you feel is Vida Winter's "thirteenth tale"?

i think it was her life after the fire. i think her mind, her emotions, her ideas, her vitality, came to life when the fire blazed. she was a shell living someone elses life (two someones) until that fire burned/blazed it all away! then she emerged alive and alert to her own wants and needs.(but of course her full story had to be told in order to understand)

5. Were you satisfied with the way the story ended for the characters?

Yes and No. i felt that the author really did tie up everything and everyone. i just wanted to see margarets 13th tale a little more. (meaning seeing her out from under the shadow of not feeling whole....i felt margarets personality was 2 dimensional if not sometimes invisible as winters had been before the fire. i think that is why we didn't love her character that much. it felt flat and unemotional. i felt that this telling by vida was her in way helping margaret stop being the ghost child and start being herself. come alive and find out who she wanted to be, who she was inside.)

what i like about the sad endings of his books is that he gives purpose to the deaths. i feel sad that they don't end happily ever after but i also feel so much more for the characters and their struggle for that happiness. it feels more real to me the way they end. and i love that they find peace in themselves. not just from each other....they seem to open up a part of their true selves to each other even if it is dark, scared, fearful, childlike, artistic, young, old...and the most important is that, that person has to trust another person with that part of their soul....and that character embraces that true self and lets that keep them alive and happy and at peace with what happens. even though life goes on and they no longer have that person in their life.

i also like how ordinary most of his characters are. they have their faults, their prejudice, their ordinary thoughts and lives...for me i feel like i can relate to the characters more even if i am nothing like them just because i believe that they could actually exist somewhere out there.

i am with maria on question #1. i too felt it was 18th-19th century. then the computer was mentioned and recording device was mentioned and then i felt the cab and train ride were modern esque. so i too became confused and never felt i was able to deduct the time.

#2 a classic gothic novel....i have no idea...except maybe for the mystery that surrounds the "main character" and winters and how the mystery intensifies throughout the entire novel until you don't know what is up or what is going on.

#3 margaret although i don't feel as if her mystery was REALLY solved.

#4 it echos jane eyer in it's sadness. it's mystery right up to the end. figuring out what makes the "main character", winters so dark, so sad, so different from happiness/from everyone else. and how margaret is drawn into that life thinking that her salvation has come but in reality her doom had just begun.

#5 oh my! the places are a reflection on their characters! the mansion is big, myseterious, cold, warm, intimate, and intimidating like winters....where the other house is warm, cold, organized to the extreme, in it's place, open to possibilities if only one is willing to open them, and full of lifeless/colorless/intrigue and expectancy/suspense all at the same time.

i am with marsha, heidi and kat! hands down no contest on any planet i am aware or not aware of the worst book i read this year was the fourth book in the twilight series. i will never get any of those hours back in my life and it angered me! it's my fault i read the books based on nephew peer pressure! first time i ever succumbed to reading a book i didn't like based off of pressure from someone else! but i was fascinated, my nephew had never read a book in his life and he loved this book! so i read it for him and those hours are gone never to be retrieved again in this life time!

wow! thanks everyone! that is some amazingly insightful web cruisen!

can't wait to discuss this book with everyone! i can't wait to read it again!!!!!

well without a doubt goodreads is my all time favorite! i am of the generation on the cusp of the internet world wide web phenomenon! email was first introduced to me in college and not until i came back from 2 years in brazil did i even step into www.com's. i just discovered youtube this year! i have to say i log in and i go to goodreads then my bank then i log out! sometimes on the weekends i will youtube it where i get lost for HOURS and i mean HOURS in the collage of cyber information!!!

i was wondering what all you amazing "chicks" go onto when you are online! here is my list....

pandora.com for background music
itunes.com for my ipod
goodreads.com for every emotion under the sun!
youtube.com for every video extravaganza!
hulu.com for saturday night live!
apple.com for movie trailers
craigslist.com for info and to see stuff around the world!
my bank......
80stees.com for cool shirts and childhood memories!
msn and yahoo for email

and that is it! i really don't visit anymore but i do go to the cities websites just to see what the city is like ie...portland.com....parkcity.com....aspen.com...etc..

adele i think is a pretty name! don't worry! and don't worry about naive questions you'd be surprised at how many people will have the same one!