LovinGoodBooks

Courting Trouble by Deeanne Gist

2010-05-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

The year is 1894 and Essie Spreckelmeyer is the epitome of a tomboy. She loves to hunt, fish, catch snakes, and ride her bicycle. The problem is that Essie is thirty years old with no prospects of a husband in sight. Sure, everybody in the town of Corsicana, Texas loves Essie, but no man in his right mind would marry a woman who makes a spectacle of herself, wearing low cut skirts that show ankle and calf just so she can ride a bicycle. Essie has prayed and prayed that the Lord bring her a husband, but she doesn’t have much more time to waste. Before Essie resides herself to being the town spinster, she takes the matter into her own hands and makes a list of the available men in town, making note of their attributes and drawbacks. Picking a name off of the list was the easy part; the hard part is going to be convincing the man that she is the right girl for him.

It was so easy to love Essie and just get mesmerized in her story. I was almost upset about the ending until I learned that there was a sequel. I am excited to be able to keep following Essie on her journey. Deanne Gist created characters in town that really make you wish you could transport though time to that setting. I loved the way the Mrs. Gist tried to stay accurate with her timeline and the events that she wrote about in her book while keeping the story alive and interesting.

Three Key Elements of Spiritual Formation

2010-05-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

In his book, "Living the Resurrection," Eugene H. Peterson provides three steps to help the Christian maintain a close relationship with Jesus Christ. The three steps, resurrection wonder, resurrection meals, and resurrection friends are shown by gospel examples to be essential, in fact, to be the core of our spiritual formation. The author illustrates resurrection wonder through the gospel accounts of how the first eye witnesses to Jesus' resurrection responded: with awe and wonder similar to how a young child views the world. The author then goes on to share the gospel accounts of the meals shared with Jesus Christ after his resurrection and the similarities that each of those meals shared. In his final chapter, the author illustrates, again using the gospels, that friends are an essential part of our spiritual formation. While we will never know all there is to know about God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, we each have something that we can teach one another. Spiritual formation cannot be done individually.
I think that the items that the author discussed in his book are very important in growing and maintaining a relationship with God. One major obstacle in reading this book, which surprised me, was getting passed the complex vocabulary that the author chose to write with. As the author of the Message, an easy to understand paraphrasing bible, I expected to see that same writing style used in this book. My advise is to keep a dictionary handy while reading this book because there are places it will take a little work to understand.
I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commision's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go

2010-04-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

In her book, “Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go,” Lucille O’Neal, mother of Shaquille O’Neal, shares her journey through life. She is very candid in her book sharing not only the good things that happened but also sharing the bad things that happened.

Her parents divorced when she was young and as a result Lucille, her father, brother, and sister all moved from Georgia to New Jersey into her paternal grandparents already overcrowded home. She became pregnant when she was seventeen and was a single mother for two years before getting married. Lucille had three more children with her husband who joined the Army as a way to provide for the growing family. The Army allowed their family to travel to Georgia, Germany and Texas, but to make ends meet Lucille also had to work. The draining demands of being an Army wife (which meant shifting into single parent mode when her husband left for training), being a mother of four and having to work left Lucille emotionally and mentally spent. Lucille soon turned to drinking heavily on the weekends as a way to relax.

Throughout her story, Lucille shares things that she learned. Instead of blaming her parents for the way that she was raised she says, “My motto is, once you turn thirty-five years old, you need to forgive your parents for everything and let it go.” As her children got older, Lucille yearned to become more than just a wife and mother. She says, “As human beings, I really believe we all have a desire on some level to see what we’re made of. We all have that yearning inside to prove to ourselves that we can get by using just the wits and skills we were born with.” Lucille went to college where she earned a bachelor’s degree and then went on to earn her master’s degree. She says, “I’m a living and breathing testament that life begins and flourishes at whatever age you become comfortable in your own skin and whenever it is that you fall in love with what you see when you look in the mirror each morning.

I cannot give this book high enough praise. Lucille’s story is truly inspirational to everyone in all walks of life. Not only did she share her story adding all of the not so pretty details but at the end of the book she also shares forty scriptures from the bible and what she has learned from them. This book was a great read and if she chooses to write more books I will read those too.

The Shunning by Beverly Lewis

2010-03-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

Katie Lapp has always felt like she was different from everyone in her family. Hadn’t her Mammi said as much when she caught Katie humming a tune, “Lord have mercy-you’re like no little girl I ever knowed!” Plus, she was the only person in her whole Amish community who had red hair.

A week before Katie is to get married, an English woman in a black limousine, with the same red hair as Katie’s is seen by some of the Amish folk. The woman, desperate to find her daughter, leaves a letter with the Wise Woman of Hickory Hollow. The letter confirms Katie’s worst fears and greatest dreams all in one day.

In an effort to gain some form of her true identity, Katie calls off the wedding and is shunned by her Amish community in the process. Katie has six weeks to come to her senses and perform a kneeling confession or risk loosing her Amish family and friends forever.

This book had some unexpected twists and turns that kept me reading. I didn’t want to put the book down. Even the ending made me want to pick up the second book in this three book series to find out what happens next.

The Immortal by Angela Hunt

2010-03-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

Claudia Fischer is a jury consultant, more affectionately known as a people reader, from New York. Claudia prides herself on her ability to read a person by observing everything about their outward appearance and demeanor. After the verdict is read on her latest case, an organization based in Rome called Global Union hires Claudia to go to Rome and help screen and hire new employees.
Asher Genzano has applied for the position of interpreter and translator. During his interview with Claudia, Asher is read as being truthful in his answers and confident in his abilities. Even so, Claudia feels there is something not quite right because his answers to her questions should make him an old man and yet he looks to be in his thirties. Despite how she feels, Claudia has no concrete evidence against hiring him, so she gives Asher her recommendation.
After he is hired, Claudia’s feelings about Asher are confirmed when he tells her that he is two thousand years old, born the same year as Jesus Christ. Try as she may, through many hours of research in a Roman library, Claudia can’t prove him wrong, but it will take an act of faith to believe him.
I really enjoyed reading this book. While I don’t feel the story is a believable one, I do feel like the author did an amazing job creating realistic characters. Angela has a gift for bringing history to life. She wrote about it in a way that made it possible for you to put yourself there.

Beautiful Things Happen When a Woman Trusts God by Sheila Walsh

2010-03-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

Sheila is very open with her life in this book. She masterfully draws parallels between the lives of biblical characters and her life illustrating that we can do the same and hear a fresh word from God in the process. Her biblical illustrations included stories from the lives of Gideon, Abraham, Samson, Anna, Paul, and others. In each chapter of her book, Sheila writes more of her story and then parallels it to the story of a biblical character and then explains what she learned from that character while at the same time asking the reader a few thought provoking questions to help them glean something from the story as well. At the end of each chapter, she writes a sentence or two to transition into the next chapter. Sheila covers subjects such us “The Beauty of Waiting and Being Present,” in chapter four, “The Beauty of Quiet Trust,” in chapter seven and “The Beauty of Forgiving” in chapter nine.

I am torn on how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it has some very good lessons that are worth learning if you want to have a deeper relationship with God. I loved reading her book in one hand while I had my bible in my other hand so that I could freshen my memory of the bible story she was talking about. On the other hand, I felt that by the time I was in the middle of the book the layout of the book was very predictable, which kind of made it boring. I think this book would be good if it was read as a group because the meetings would stay predictable and flow easily throughout each chapter and I wonder if that was her intention because at the end of the book is a bible study. I don’t think it works well as a book read individually.

The Victory Club by Robin Lee Hatcher

2010-03-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

Set in Idaho in 1943, in the middle of World War II, four women with four very different stories commit to be there for one another. Margo and Dottie King, mother and daughter, Lucy Anderson, and Penny Maxfield create the Victory Club to help other families whose loved ones are also fighting in the war. The women ride the same bus together to their jobs at Gowen Fields, their local military base. They meet for lunch every weekday and then ride the same bus to their perspective homes.

Margo and Dottie live together in a small house. Margo’s husband divorced her and left her to raise two young children by herself. Margo, determined that her children will not make the same mistakes she did when she was young, has raised her son and daughter in a godly home and made sure that they have followed all of God’s laws. Dottie, not yet twenty, has a deep relationship with God, which shows even at a distance. Dottie’s boyfriend, Greg, shares the same kind of relationship with God that Dottie has. They planned to get married right after high school but waited at the insistence of Dottie’s mother, Margo. Before they could get married, Pearl Harbor was bombed and Greg signed up for the military, but not before they succumbed to one night of passion.

Lucy was orphaned at eighteen with no other family to turn to. Like Dottie, Lucy shares a deep relationship with God, visible to all. Lucy met her husband, Richard in her late twenties. They were married two years after their first date and shared one night as husband and wife before Pearl Harbor was bombed. Lucy hasn’t seen her husband in over a year and constantly combats the loneliness of her apartment when she goes home.

Penny doesn’t feel like she has that much in common with the other women. Her husband is at home, not fighting in the war like all of the other men his age. A week before Pearl Harbor was bombed, Stuart Maxfield fell off of the ladder and now lives with constant back pain, or so the doctor tells her. Penny also doesn’t have a relationship with God like the other women. She thinks her husband is lying about his back to get out of serving in the war. Not only does she have to work, to keep food on the table and the medical bills paid, but she also has to go home and be a wife and a mother to two young children. This is not what she thought she would be doing at the young age of twenty-five, she is too young to be tied down.

This book was such a great story, I wish the author had written more and continued the story. A former military wife myself, I felt like I could really relate with the characters and the feelings they dealt with. This story was a great illustration of what it means to trust God. It is easy to trust God when things are going your way but when things are unpredictable especially the lives of your loved ones, it becomes harder to trust that God is in control. I would recommend this book to everybody.

The Proposal by Lori Wick

2010-03-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Proposal is the first book in a series of three books called The English Garden Series. The story takes place in England in 1810 where three children ages twelve, ten, and six are suddenly orphaned by their father. The custom of the time is that the children are to be sent to the closest living relative who happens to be William Jennings, a well to do bachelor who is used to having his own way. When the children first arrive, Jennings is forced to put their needs ahead of his own. He is quickly taken with the two boys but hires a nanny to take care of the girl he would rather have nothing to do with. But his focus quickly changes when Jennings discovers that the children have ran away because the boys have learned that their sister’s nanny has been abusive towards her.

Jennings finds the children and then seeks the help of his estranged sister. Lydia Palmer has been praying for her brother ever since he decided he didn’t want to have anything to with her and her family on account of their faith in Jesus Christ. After seven years, God has answered her prayers and brought Jennings back into her life.

The longer the Jennings is around his sister the more he learns to be open with his feelings towards people, especially the children and Lydia’s best friend, Marianne. Lydia and Marianne have been helping Jennings with the children and the more time Jennings spends around Marianne, the more intense his feelings for her become.

Marianne loves the children but will not consider a relationship with anyone who does not share her faith in Christ. Jennings needs to overcome his prideful ways and submit his life to Christ in order to open his heart and love Marianne the way that she deserves to be loved.

This book was a very predictable book with very little conflict. There really wasn’t much left to discover about the story than what was already written on the back cover. It is quite possible that since this is the first book in the series the author’s main focus was just to introduce us to the characters before going any deeper.

The Jewel of Gresham Green by Lawana Blackwell

2010-03-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

Jewel Libby is a widow left to raise her four-year-old daughter, Becky. Jewel works hard from sun up to sun down in a sewing factory in Birmingham, England in 1884 making barley enough to feed her daughter. Jewel in forced to leave Becky in the care of an older woman in her building who watches several children, including babies. Jewel, released from work early, walks home one day to find Becky outside holding hands with a man who has a reputation for “paying too much attention to little girls.” Jewel does everything she can to get away from the man stocking her daughter, including moving to the other side of town and finding a new job. When the man finds them, Jewel is forced to leave the only city she has known under the cover of night and move to a small town where everybody knows everybody.

The Vicar of her old church in Birmingham is a friend of Vicar Andrews of Gresham Green. When Vicar Andrews hears Jewel’s story, he quickly agrees to take her in and help her any way he can. But before Jewel arrives in Gresham Green, Vicar Andrews becomes sick so his stepdaughter, Aleda Hollis, takes Jewel in.

Aleda lives in a cottage on the outskirts of town that affords her the privacy she seeks as she pursues her writing career. Aleda has been known to lock herself in her cottage for days, even weeks, without visiting with anyone to concentrate on writing her stories. What Aleda didn’t count on was how much she begins to rely on and enjoy Jewel and Becky. What Jewel didn’t count on was that good and evil can exist anywhere, even in small towns.

I read this book without realizing that there are three books that can precede it. The author wrote three books known as The Chronicles of Gresham Green. While I enjoyed this book immensely, I think I would have enjoyed it more had I started with The Chronicles of Gresham Green first.

Catching Katie by Robin Lee Hatcher

2010-03-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

Catching Katie takes place in 1916 focusing on Katie Jones, who is a strong spirited young woman who knows what she wants to do with her life. Katie graduated from Vassar College and then started working on behalf of the women’s suffrage in Washington D.C. She hasn’t been home to Idaho in seven years and decides to move back and help women learn to think for themselves. Staying true to herself, Katie foregoes the option of taking the train home and opts instead to drive her Model T, that she had named The Susan B., after Susan B. Anthony who Katie models her life after.
Ben Rafferty, Katie’s best friend while growing up, is now the owner and editor of the Homestead Herald in Idaho. Ben puts out a weekly edition single handedly, writing all of the articles himself. Ben allows Katie to write a column for the newspaper that focuses on teaching women to think for themselves and ultimately stirs up conflict within families and amongst the townspeople.
Katie has told Ben that she plans to never marry because she believes that marriage and a political career are not possible. In spite of knowing this, Ben has fallen in love with Katie and try as she may to fight it; Katie has fallen in love with Ben. Can they really make a marriage work when Katie’s job demands so much of her in a time where the belief is that a women’s job is at home taking care of the family? Katie has to learn to listen to God and believe that He knows the purpose of her life.
If you like to read historical fiction, then you will like this book. The issues were real issues that people faced back then. I loved the story because it had just the right amount of fact and fiction to make it believable. You really got to know the characters and understand their feelings about women being able to vote.

Dwelling in His Presence: 30 Days of Intimacy with God

2010-02-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

In her book, Dwelling in His Presence, Cynthia Heald shares thirty commands from God, found in the bible, in an effort to help you draw closer to God. The thirty commands, one for each day, help you to be in the Word everyday and they give you something to meditate on for the rest of the day. At the end of every chapter, Cynthia provides questions to help you apply each command to your life. There is also a prayer section where she provides ideas of what to talk to God about, a quote that ties into the subject matter as well as a prayer that you could use if words elude you.

Cynthia Heald’s book was wonderfully written. The chapters are short enough that the book would work well for even the busiest woman. The subjects that she chose to talk about bring up issues that many of us women have today. She provided real stories about real people that made me feel like I was not alone in how I felt or thought. The stories provided wonderful examples of how God’s Word is alive and can be applied to your life today even though the bible was written long ago. God wants to have daily quality time with us and Cynthia’s book provides everything that you would need to accomplish that.

2010-01-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

W. Dale Cramer's Sutter's Cross is a novel about trusting God. Sutter's Cross is a tourist town set in the Appalachian Mountains where the town natives like everybody to be the same. Have the same ideas and the same attitude, unpredictability is unwelcome....until Harley comes to town. Harley has long hair is unshaven and is wearing threadbare clothing. He has peaceful eyes able to see into one's soul and ears that are able to hear God's Voice. Though their first impressions of Harley are to stay away, with the help of a respected old lady named Ms. Agnes, the town folk soon change their minds and start to listen to Harley. He teaches them two lessons that ultimately change the lives of everybody in town. First, "where you end, that's where God starts. All you got to do is ask." Second, all you have to do is "let go."
This book was a great read. Harley and the similarities to Jesus Christ captivated me right from the beginning. The children saw those similarities right away while the adults just couldn't put their fingers on what it was that seemed to draw them to him. I was reminded of the passage in the Bible where Jesus says, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." A great present day illustration of what Jesus could be like if He were walking the earth today.

Buried Alive

2010-01-29T07:51:00.000-08:00

Buried Alive, written by Roy Hallums with the help of Audrey Hudson, is a book about Roy’s 311 days in captivity by a group of Iraqi insurgents. Roy was working for the Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Company in their offices in Baghdad when he was kidnapped. Roy recounts how his captures put a ski mask over is head, bound his hands and feet and ultimately buried him alive in a small-unventilated concrete hole under a small room in a house. Statements from Roy’s family, mainly from his ex-wife and one of his daughters, about what they were going through while he was in captivity are also included throughout the book.

Buried Alive is a great story in the making. I say in the making because even though I was captivated while reading it, the story lacked feeling and detail. It was published by Thomas Nelson, so even before I started reading the book I was expecting to hear a little more about how his faith in God gave Roy the hope he needed to survive his ordeal. When he talks about praying for various things it is only in passing and then he is off to another subject. I praise God that Roy was rescued and is able to share his experiences and teach others survival techniques, but I really feel that this book should have been a rough draft not a final copy ready for print.

The Noticer by Andy Andrews

2010-01-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

The Noticer by Andy Andrews is about an old man named Jones, not Mr. Jones, just Jones. Jones calls himself a noticer, somebody who notices things that the ordinary person doesn’t take the time to see. He calls it a gift and uses his gift to help other people gain a little perspective on their current situation. Jones is described as an old man of average height with long white hair and crystal blue eyes. He wears jeans, a white T-shirt and leather flip-flops. Nobody knows where Jones is from but everybody knows him and likes him. He helps a homeless young man get back on his feet, a married couple headed for divorce save their marriage and an old widow realize that her life still has purpose and meaning, just to name a few.
The book is packed with advice for all different life situations that help the person gain a little perspective on their own life. While I enjoyed the book because there was really a lot that you could learn from it, it didn’t really excite me. There were some feel good moments when the people that Jones helped actually turned their lives around; however, it was easy to put down because it read more like a bunch of short stories with Jones being the common link that all of the stories shared. I would not recommend this book as one where you could loose yourself in the story. I would however recommend reading it to gain a little perspective on life.