Tag: faith-based (Page 1 of 3)

Tips for Finding Clean Fiction Part 4: Enjoy the Harvest!

In this series of blog posts, I give strategies for finding “clean reads” that go beyond relying on curated book lists. Please see “Part 1: The Toxic Sea” for a list of resources to help you find books that others think are clean, “Part 2: Know Where to Fish” to learn what types of books will be least likely to contain profanity, graphic sex and violence, and immoral themes, and “Part 3: Sort through the Catch” to find tips for evaluating the books you find. In this post, I’ll tell you how to read widely and wholesomely without going broke.

If you live in the United States, it’ll be easy for you to get free and low-priced books of all different types. The more of those you can find, the more money you’ll have left to spend on the books you’ll be required to pay full price to read. I don’t know how this process works in other countries, but my guess is that there are similarities.

Your harvest will be larger and, at the same time, less expensive if you follow these two practices:

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Tips for Finding Clean Fiction Part 3: Sort through the Catch

In this series of blog posts, I give strategies for finding “clean reads” that go beyond relying on curated book lists. Please see “Part 1: The Toxic Sea” for a list of resources to help you find books that others think are clean and “Part 2: Know Where to Fish” to learn what types of books will be least likely to contain profanity, graphic sex and violence, and immoral themes.

Book cover for Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

Now that you’ve dropped your net into the water and pulled out an abundance of book titles, it’s important to sort through the catch and evaluate each book for specific content. This step takes time, but in the end, it’s time well spent. How often have you begun reading a book and been frustrated three-quarters of the way through it when something pops up that doesn’t meet your standards? That still happens to me sometimes, but it happens less often when I make an effort to do a preliminary evaluation of every book I read. In the long run, I save time and money.

There are several components to this evaluation, and I do them in whatever order seems natural, depending on whether I’m looking into downloading an ebook or standing in a bookstore or library with a book in my hands.

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Tips for Finding Clean Fiction Part 2: Know Where to Fish

In this series of blog posts, I give strategies for finding “clean reads” that go beyond relying on curated book lists. Please see “Part 1: The Toxic Sea” for the introductory post.

As a young married woman in the early 1980s, I was frustrated with the books I was reading. The ones with depth contained profanity, graphic sex and violence, and immoral themes, and the ones that didn’t were so lacking in substance that I always came away from them feeling as if I had wasted my time. I remember saying to my husband in exasperation, “There is nothing to read!” He laughed at me and replied, “How can you say that? You haven’t read anything yet!”

He was right. I had not yet learned to “fish.” Not only that, but I had refused to search for wholesome fiction in the very place that would provide one of the best harvests.

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Tips for Finding Clean Fiction Part 1: The Toxic Sea

I was about twelve years old when I learned that big books written for adults usually contain profanity, graphic sex and violence, and immoral themes. In those days, there weren’t nearly as many books written for teens as there are now, and kids in my junior high school who liked to read devoured adult books and loaned them to their friends.

I understood that there was adult content I shouldn’t read, watch, or listen to, but it was all relative. While I avoided the bigger offenders, I was surrounded by profanity and sex talk every day at school. It was in the PG movies I went to see with my friends, and it was rampant on broadcast TV too, even if it wasn’t always as obvious. Even a lot of the music I listened to on the radio had innuendo.

It was all just a part of my world, and when I encountered unwholesome content in a book, I often read on and didn’t think much about it. I was, in many ways, both innocent and desensitized. The detoxification process took years, and I still struggle at times to keep my media choices at the level of cleanliness I want them to be.

You may be asking, “Why bother? Does it really matter?”

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Day of Liberation is Coming Soon!

Mockup of the first 3 books of the Dominion Over the Earth series by Katherine Padilla, featuring Book 3, Day of Liberation

I’ll be publishing Day of Liberation, the third book in the Dominion Over the Earth series, in 2022. I’m very excited to make this book available to you. It’s my favorite of all the novels I’ve written. I love the story, and I adore the characters. In this novel, I explore themes that astonish and thrill me. Day of Liberation was always meant to be a love story, but it developed into something more—an extraordinary journey of a couple that answers questions I never meant to ask:

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Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, by Lew Wallace (American classic, Biblical)

“In first century Judaea, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur is betrayed by his childhood friend Messala and sentenced to life as a Roman slave. When, during a pirate attack in the Aegean, Ben-Hur saves the life of a galley commander, his fortunes improve and he returns to Galilee a free man. There, his quest for vengeance turns into insurrection, but his life is transformed when he witnesses Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist.”


Movie photo for Ben-Hur, 1959
Ben-Hur 1959

When I was a child, one of the three big television networks in the U.S. ran the film Ben-Hur [1959] every year around Easter. In those days, the only way to watch a motion picture was to see it in a theater when it came out or watch it on network television. There was no streaming. There were no DVDs. There was no cable TV. There weren’t even video cassettes! When one of the networks broadcast a major motion picture like Ben-Hur, it was a big deal. Families like mine made arrangements to watch it, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t get the chance to see it again for another year.

Because of that, the movie Ben-Hur not only became a part of my Easter tradition, it became ingrained in my consciousness. I loved this film as a child, and I still love it as an adult. It should be no surprise, then, that shortly after I became a part of the Great Books Group, I suggested that we read Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Imagine my own surprise at the time when, after reading a good part of the book, I realized that I didn’t care for it enough to even finish it.

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Is Fiction Marketed to Latter-day Saints “Christian Fiction”?

To answer that question, it’s important to understand what Christian fiction is. Depending on who you ask, you may get one of these answers:

  • Fiction with a lot of talk about God
  • Fiction with very little, if any, sexual content, graphic violence, and foul language
  • Fiction that promotes traditional values and practices such as chastity, integrity, and repentance
  • Fiction written by practicing Christians for practicing Christians about practicing Christians
  • Fiction that explores religious themes in a way that testifies of Jesus Christ and glorifies Him
  • Fiction that preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ
  • Stories that would fall apart if the religious element were removed
  • Fiction that contains universal Christian themes and content that will appeal to Christians from a wide variety of denominations
  • A broad genre that contains works from all Christian denominations
  • A narrow genre that only contains books published by specific companies and imprints marketing to a conservative Protestant audience or by independent authors that meet the standards of these companies and imprints

Every single one of these descriptions is accurate. Not every work of Christian fiction, however, can be defined by every single description on this list.

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Fall to Eden is Now in Print!

Book cover for Fall to Eden, by Katherine Padilla, published by Novaun Novels
Fall to Eden

Back in 2003 I launched Novaun Novels with the electronic publication of my fifth novel, Fall to Eden: An Apocalyptic FantasySince I didn’t have a cover for the ebook at that time, I selected the above photo from NASA to represent it on the website. Now, at long last, Fall to Eden is available in print and for direct download to your dedicated reading device or app.

I’ve long called Fall to Eden my “man-eating paradise planet” novel. It is a story I couldn’t tell without acknowledging some of the extraordinary ideas contained in the scriptures used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For that reason, I chose to make the characters of the novel Latter-day Saints. Since I knew I would be publishing it online and understood that it would probably be found and read by a more diverse group of people than its target audience, I made it as inclusive to other religions as I could. Still, if you are not a member of my church and liked the Heirs of Novaun series, be aware that Fall to Eden is significantly different. With its mix of Latter-day Saint practice and thought, apocalyptic plot, and fantastical interpretation of prophecy, it’s something very alien indeed!

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