Story: Life

It isn't often that someone loans me a book and I go buy my own copy before I've finished reading the loaner. The exception came with "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by

Cover via Amazon

Donald Miller. I started reading it on a flight home from Denver, got about halfway through it, and went out the next day and bought three copies -- one for myself and two that I plan to give to friends.

Miller wrote "Blue Like Jazz" -- a fine memoir -- and a few other books that I haven't read. But he outdid himself with "A Million Miles." It's a story about story, which, as you might image, is the type of story a writer might enjoy. So I learned something about writing and telling stories, which is good. More than that, Miller picked up on one of my favorite themes: Life as story.

In short, Miller realized he wasn't happy with the story he was living. So as he studied and wrote about story, he helped himself (and thus his readers) see how to live a better story.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing." Miller challenges me to do both.