Want a quick, entertaining way to get a solid feel for what it was like to be in Roman-occupied Palestine? That’s what Gary Burge offers in A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion. In this window into the world of the first century, we look through the eyes of Appius, a tough-minded, pragmatic Centurion. The story is enriched as we get to know his household, his familia. Livia, his companion, knows the power of her allure. Tullus is a captured slave with skill as a scribe who rises to a place of trust. Gaius is the manager of Appius’s affairs, organized and completely loyal to his lord.
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Author: Andy Le Peau
I've been an editor and writer for over forty years. I am passionate about ideas and how we can express them clearly, beautifully, and persuasively. I love reading good books, talking about them, and recommending them. I thoroughly enjoy my family who help me continue on the path of a lifelong learner.
The Publishing Experience (2)
Does a fifty-year-old book on publishing have anything to offer the radically different publishing environment today? Cass Canfield’s The Publishing Experience, on his career at Harper from 1924 to 1986, is such a book. While his brief vignettes of many prominent authors are most fascinating and worthwhile quite on their own, along the way he also offers some precepts that guided his work, which still ring true decades later.
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The Publishing Experience (1)
What will publishing be like in fifty years? Will we be reading books from our brain implants? Will people still love print books but be printing and binding them in their home or office? Will reading increase because people will have more time as they travel in self-piloted personal drones?
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Grace and Truth
After decades of sending quarterly newsletters to authors, I sent my last one last week. I received many encouraging responses to it. So I thought I would post it here for the rest of you.
Dear IVP Author:
Not Last, Maybe Least
I began my first post at Andy Unedited with these words: “To write a blog, you need to have an interesting personality or provocative opinions. I have neither.”
Nine years and over four hundred blogs later, it’s still true. My kids nicknamed me Eeyore. I reckon I have the emotional range of a turnip. And I am at my most passionate when it comes to commas.
Although February 12, 2016,
is my last day at IVP after over forty years as a full-time employee and thousands of IVP books published, by the good graces of folks here at IVP, I shall continue Andy Unedited. I will, however, now don the guise of a guest blogger.
I have enjoyed the opportunity to inflict such opinions as I have on an unsuspecting public. So if there are topics you think I should address, continue to let me know. Books, ideas, publishing, writing, history, editing, leadership, scholarship–all these and more continue to be important to me, and I think important to society.
But blogging needs one other element–fun. And as long as that lasts, so shall Andy Unedited.
Photo credit: Cindy Bunch. My IVP office before I packed up my library of 2,500 IVP books and shipped them off to Christian students and seminary libraries in the Majority World.
The Future of Editing 3: Flexibility
Tech savvy, design savvy, globally savvy, multiethnically savvy, networking savvy and professionally savvy–in my previous post that’s what I said editors will need to be in the future.
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The Future of Editing 2: Who Editors Need to Be
For me, editing has always been about loving words and loving ideas. Learning and thinking will always be important. Yet in a technology-saturated world with an ever-accelerating rate of change, we don’t know exactly what books and reading will be like in the future. We have a better idea, however, of who editors need to be in the future.
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The Future of Editing 1: Everyone Needs an Editor
Jim Sire, my predecessor at IVP as editorial director, loved to tell the story of a book review he had drafted. He showed it to Paul to look over before he sent it off to a journal.
Paul told him, “Here you say the book has merit but wasn’t evocative enough. What you actually write, however, is, ‘The book isn’t suggestive enough.’ That actually has a very different meaning than the one I think you intend! I doubt you mean that the book fails to contain adequate sexual innuendo.”
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Books That Can Change Lives
On November 3, I was honored at the annual InterVarsity Fall Leadership Meetings in recognition of my 42 years with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and my upcoming retirement in February. About seventy key people from across the country in InterVarsity attended. After hearing some generous comments from Interim President Jim Lundgren and IVP Publisher Bob Fryling, they let me offer a few words. Here is what I said.
Getting a Job in Publishing
A college senior told a friend of mine, “I think I’d like to work in publishing.”
So the friend asked me, “Do you have any suggestions I could offer her?” Here’s what I said.
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