Tag Archives: Book Review

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Book Reviews | Review: A Year Of Biblical Womanhood – The Gospel Coalition

A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Rachel Held Evans | Review by: Kathy Keller

Rachel Held Evans. A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master.”
Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012.
352 pp.
$15.99.

Rachel Held Evans had at least two stated goals for writing A Year of Biblical Womanhood, according to the promotional material accompanying my advance review copy. Under “Why She Wrote the Book,” Evans says:

I’ve long been frustrated by the inconsistencies with which “biblical womanhood” is taught and applied in my evangelical Christian community. So . . . I set out to follow all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible for a year to show that no woman, no matter how devout, is actually practicing biblical womanhood all the way. My hope is that the book will generate some laughs, as well as a fresh, honest dialogue about . . . biblical interpretation. (emphasis mine)

Evans wants to show that everyone who tries to follow biblical norms does so selectively—“cherry picking” some parts and passing over others. She also says she wants to open a fresh, honest dialogue about biblical interpretation, that is, how to do it rightly and well. Rachel, I tried twice to get in touch with you when you were in New York City on the talk shows but wasn’t able to connect. So here’s what I would have said if we could have gotten the chance to open that dialogue.

Read more…

via Book Reviews | Review: A Year Of Biblical Womanhood – The Gospel Coalition.

 

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101 Books To Read This Summer Instead of ’50 Shades of Grey’ | Upworthy.com

101 Books To Read This Summer Instead of ’50 Shades of Grey’

This epic flowchart goes to great lengths to help you help yourself put down the trashy erotica.

Share it if you know anybody who’s reading “50 Shades” right now

via 101 Books To Read This Summer Instead of ’50 Shades of Grey’.

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REVIEW: A Death in the Family by James Agee

Format:  Audiobook (CD)
Genre:  Autobiographical Novel
ISBN:  0788771647
Published:  2000 (audio)
Setting:  Knoxville TN

Rating:  5 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

Published in 1957, two years after its author’s death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident?a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.

My Thoughts:

This was a well crafted a book as I have ever read.  It is a powerful story of what happens to a family in the immedaite aftermath of an unexpected death, and Agee is as pitch perfect as is possible in giving voice to the various characters in this book.  His choice of words and phrases are such that each individual is entirely believable and authentic, with a unique voice and a complexity of character that leaves nothing wanting.

Agee has a mastery of the language that rivals writing peers, and the resulting prose appears both effortless and flawless in its formation.  He delivers complex experiences and emotions with simplicity, while never relegating himself to simplistic language or condescending construction.  It is an easy read, not because it has light subject matter or rudimentary language, but rather because the story is written with such linguistic beauty that it seems as natural as if the reader him/herself were speaking.

In the end, regardless of the emotional messiness of a family at loose ends, this is a satisfying read in every way.  The story unfolds as it should, naturally, without a manufactured happy ending…just as one would expect in life.  And Agee guides us through all of the emotional upheaval with aa sensitive voice and linguistic ease.

If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it.

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REVIEW: Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard & Florence Atwater

Format:  Hardback
Genre:  Children’s Fiction
ISBN:  0316o58424
Published:  1938
Setting:  Stillwater, US

Rating:  4 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

It was hard enough for Mr. Popper to support himself, Mrs. Popper, Bill and Janie Popper.  The addition of twelve penguins to the family made it impossible to make both ends meet.  Then Mr. Popper had a splendid idea.  The penguins might support the Poppers.  And so they did.

My Thoughts:

**spoiler alert**

This was a very cute book, right up to the end.  I loved that Mr. Popper ultimately tried to do what was best for the penguins, but it annoyed me somewhat that he left his family.  I would have enjoyed the ending more if they had been able to choose whether or not to go, or at the very least, he had been able to discuss it with Mrs. Popper.  I get that it’s a children’s book, but the idea of them discussing everything up to that point regarding the penguins, then having him decide in the split second between learning that Admiral Drake intended for him to go and actually setting sail seemed completely counter to how their relationship worked.  I’m probably putting a lot more thought into the story than kids would, but little details like that make or break good books, and in this case, what otherwise would be a 5-star classic is, instead, somewhat wanting.

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REVIEW: The Breakdown Lane by Jacqueline Mitchard

Format:  Audio CD
Genre:  General Fiction
ISBN:  0060759275
Published:  2005 (audio)
Setting:  Sheboygan WI

Rating:  4.5 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

Where can a woman turn when her own life threatens to overwhelm her ability to keep her children safe? New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard takes the readers of her newest novel on a wry and moving journey of loss and healing. Giving advice is what Julieanne does for a living — every Sunday she doles it out in a column in her local Wisconsin paper. But when it comes to her personal life, Julie herself seems to have missed some clues. Having worked creatively to keep her twenty-year marriage to Leo fresh and exciting and to be a good mother, she is completely caught off guard when he tells her he needs to go on a “sabbatical” from their life together, leaving Julie and their three children behind. But it soon becomes clear that his leave of absence is meant to be permanent. Things take a turn for the worse when Julie is diagnosed with a serious illness and the children undertake a dangerous journey to find Leo — before it’s too late. As the known world sinks precariously from view, the clan must navigate their way through the shoals of love, guilt, and betrayal. Together, with the help of Leo’s parents and Julie’s best friend, they work their way back to solid ground and a new definition of family. No one illuminates modern love, marriage, and parenting better than Jacquelyn Mitchard. Written with her trademark poignancy, humor, and insight, The Breakdown Lane is her most moving, eloquent, and life-affirming work yet.

My Thoughts:

I wasn’t sure about this book when I started it.  I read another Mitchard book last year, and while I enjoyed it, I wasn’t overwhelmed with its greatness.  And truthfully, the first few chapters of this book were hard going because of my utter lack of connection with any of the characters.  Truth be told, I actually could not stand either Leo or Julieanne.  Both were so utterly shallow and superficial, and Leo especially had such a superiority complex toward Julieanne that it made me want to punch him between the eyes.  That much did not change throughout the book.

However, watching Julianne become more multi-demensional, and actually developing some depth as she traversed the difficulties of multiple slerosis, was a really satisfying reading experience.  I really began to appreciate her as she learned how to live with dignity in the wake of Leo’s duplicity, her disease, and looming financial disaster.  I liked that she stripped her life down to what was important, that she really leaned on those family & friends who proved their worth, and that she took her therapist’s advice to get out and get a life rather than living as a victim.  These are not small things, and to emerge from such a life implosion as a reasonably stable and immeasurably stronger person is good stuff – in fiction or in life.

What was perhaps the most enjoyable (for me) was having her reconnect with a childhood love, and having that reignite for her.  I liked that it happened slowly, and that she recognized that it was a good thing…that he was the real deal…and that she didn’t second guess herself into rejecting him.  Why?  Because sometimes that is exactly how life happens, and it is good to celebrate the good, solid, steady relationships…those that might not have fireworks, but prove their mettle just the same.

All in all, this book was a winner for me.  The storyline was good, the writing was good, and together they were something really special.

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REVIEW: Home to Italy by Peter Pezzelli

Format:  Trade Paperback
Genre:  General Fiction, Italian Lit
ISBN:  0758207689
Published:  September 2004
Setting:  Italy

Rating:  4 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

In this delightful, moving debut novel, Peter Pezzelli brings to life the earthy sensuality of Tuscany—the smell of just-baked bread wafting through the village piazza; the shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalks under the warm, early morning sun; groups of cyclists dotting the mountain roads—and spins a story of May-December romance as sharp and delicious as the olives of Villa San Giuseppe…

After the death of his beloved wife, Anna, Peppi’s family and friends expect him to bury his grief by tending to his gardens and taking long rides on his bike. Instead, Peppi shocks them all with his decision to return to Villa San Giuseppe, the small Italian village where he spent his childhood, and to il mulino, his family’s old mill. But once he’s back, he temporarily moves into an apartment over the candy factory run by his childhood best friend, Luca. It is modest, but livable, with a lovely view of Luca’s neglected gardens and his equally neglected daughter, the fiery Lucrezia.

More a force of nature than a woman, Lucrezia’s legendary temper and workaholic schedule hide the very real pain she feels over her husband’s death years before. At first, she tolerates Peppi as an eccentric annoyance—her father’s strange but handsome American friend who fixes things around the factory and is bringing the gardens back to life. But soon, Lucrezia’s interest in Peppi deepens. Like a high wind, the gossip is flying through Villa San Giuseppe—Lucrezia’s making it to dinner on time. She’s eating olives from a man’s hand. She’s wearing heels. Now, under the warm Tuscan sun, a tentative romance begins to bloom between the grieving pair, yielding to a surprisingly strong passion with the power to heal life’s wounds and promise second chances…

My Thoughts:

After the initial couple of chapters, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  I was afraid at first that it was going to be a struggle to enjoy the story due to some herky-jerky prose in the beginning, but once I got past the first couple of chapters, Pezzelli found his stride and the book sort of took off from there.  It’s a sweet, well-rounded story that is easy to relate to, and it is an easy, enjoyable read.  I am not a romance reader by habit or choice, so this is exactly the kind of light reading that suits me.  It is not a romance per se, but a good story of loss & friendship that is (somewhat predictably) built around a new May-December romance.

Perhaps I liked it even more than I might have otherwise due to the setting…I mean, it’s hard to dislike as picturesque (and lovestruck) a setting as a small town in Italy.  However, I would venture a guess that Pezzelli has found his niche, and will prove to be an author in the vein of Maeve Binchy, Monica McInerney, and others…authors whose stories are appealing for both their exotic (to some) settings and their universally understood personal dynamics.

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REVIEW: Very Far Away by Maurice Sendak

Format:  Hardback
Genre:  Children’s Lit
ISBN:   0060297239
Published:  November 2005
Setting:  Home (and very far away)

Rating:  5 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

In this story, a young boy with a new baby sibling, must learn to cope with his sudden lack of attention. He goes out searching for ‘very far away’.

My Thoughts:

I loved this book, as I have virtually all Maurice Sendak’s books. This one continues in his typical style…sparsely worded in general, but with great sketched illustrations that enhance the story. It is quite a similar story to Where the Wild Things Are, but in a more conventional setting, and with animals rather than the monster-like wild things. For kids who have issues with monsters and other scary creatures, this book provides the same themes and experiences without the scary elements. I will make this one a part of my permanent library.

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REVIEW: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Format:  Kindle
Genre:  Sci-Fi / Dystopian
ASIN:  B002MQYOFW
Published:  September 2009 (Kindle)
Setting:  Post-Apocalyptic US

Rating:  4.5 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb: 

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

My Thoughts:

I assiduously avoided this series when it first came out, as I am typically not a fan of science fiction, it is not my habit to read a lot of YA fiction, and the dystopian genre that has become so popular is not something that interests me in and of itself.

However…

These books have met with huge success and almost instantaneous popularity.  There again, a reason I tend to shy away until something proves not to be a flash in the pan.  But they continue to be bestsellers – all three in the trilogy – and with such rave reviews, I finally broke down and read The Hunger Games.  And I loved it.  Were it not so widely known to be YA fiction, I would not have immediately recognized it as such.  Certainly the two protagonists are teenagers (which is a huge giveaway), but the story itself is not necessarily YA subject matter.  Couple that with some tightly crafted writing, and it is easy to see why these books have been such hits.

It is not as though post-apocalyptic settings are particularly new.  They’re not.  Neither is it a particularly new twist on the socialist, totalitarian government construct.  What Collins does here is take old, time-tested themes and weave them into a beautifully constructed story of commitment and love in the face of almost certain death.  And it truly is a story of life or death, because the penalty for losing (or being outsmarted) is death…public, (hopefully) gruesome, and brutal.  This is not light subject matter for anyone, let alone young adults, and yet it is gripping, captivating, and utterly moving.  The more I read, the harder I rooted for Katniss.  Collins made me believe she was the angel among demons.  She was the bright spot in the dark.  She was the one to love…and the one to beat.

This story reminded me so much of The Running Man by Stephen King.  A game, set up by a central government, where the penalty is death, and in order to win…to live…cunning and brutality are required.  The difference, of course, is that in The Running Man, the game is “voluntary.”  In The Hunger Games, it is a part of life, a payback required from the government as a reminder of who had power and who didn’t.  I am always amazed, in the dystopian settings, how easily controlled the populations are, but then I am reminded of how most fiction contains elements of truth, and dystopian fiction is no different.  We have only to look back in history a few years to Hitler to see the parallels.

All this to say that this is a book worth reading.  It is thought provoking, infuriating (in ways), mesmerizing, and in the end, rewarding.  I’m looking forward to the second  & third installments.

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REVIEW: I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Format:  Audio CD, 10 disks
Genre:  General Fiction
ISBN:   0061988480
Published:  September 2010 (audio)
Setting:  Washington DC area

Rating:  2.5 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

The acclaimed “New York Times” bestselling author returns with a new stand-alone novel–a powerful and utterly riveting tale that skillfully moves between past and present to explore the lasting effects of crime on a victim’s life.

My Thoughts:

It was an interesting enough book, but I honestly could not stand any of the characters. Every single one had some trait that made me want to punch them between the eyes, including the main character. Elizabeth/Eliza was so ridiculously bland, so easily manipulated by others, and ultimately so infuriatingly weak that I could not stand her, and she was the one that was supposed to be likable. I am sure that Laura Lippman meant to create a story where the truth and the right thing were not always straightforward, where the reasons & motivations behind Walter Bowman’s actions would somehow mitigate how evil they were, and where Elizabeth/Eliza’s actions were understandable and sympathetic. Unfortunately, what she did instead was to create a bunch of characters too flawed to like. I wanted someone to root for, and even in the end when Elizabeth/Eliza actually did do the right thing, I was relieved not because of my investment in the story, but rather because I was thankful I didn’t feel like throwing the book against the wall and screaming.

I don’t know if this means I will read something else by Lippman or not, but I can say without reservation that this one was not for me, and I hope it is not representative of her work, because that would just make me sad for her.

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REVIEW: The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan

Format:  Audio CD, 10 disks
Genre:  General Fiction, Asian/Am Lit
ISBN:  1597770760
Published:  January 2006 (audio)
Setting:  San Francisco CA / China

Rating:  4.5 of 5 stars

Back of the Book Blurb:

Ruth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship. Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known. . . . In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LiuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the bonesetter. When headstrong LuLing rejects the marriage proposal of the coffinmaker, a shocking series of events are set in motion — all of which lead back to Ruth and LuLing in modern San Francisco. The truth that Ruth learns from her mother’s past will forever change her perception of family, love, and forgiveness.

My Thoughts:

There are so many things about this book to love – the setting (China, in particular); the vast scope of the story; the deft way that the author ties together the present and the past; the commitment and love between LuLing and Ruth, LuLing and GaoLing, LuLing and Precious Auntie; how Tan’s writing style and word choices seem to exude the culture she is writing about, including a subtle but still noticeable shift in tone in section two (LuLing’s story).

I connected with the story immediately, and particularly with Ruth.  I related to her inability to feel confident, to believe that she actually had something to say, to think that anyone would be interested in her words.  I got how she allowed herself to “disappear” in her relationship, never seeming to require anything concrete or real from Art, not even sure he really loves her, yet continuing on in a sort of hazy mediocrity.  I understood her choice to do the work she did – behind the scenes, anonymous or very nearly so (even if, in the end, she tended to resent the lack of credit), and risk free, meaning any criticism of the work would be directed to the author of record, not her (a “ghostwriter,” but in reality the actual author of all the books she worked on).

Perhaps more than any of the above, I had a visceral and immediate connection to her relationship with her mother.  Their conflicted, competitive, critical and volatile relationship was as familiar to me as the back of my hand.  I was transported time and again back to my own experiences as a child, an adolescent, and a young woman as I read the arguments & struggles between Ruth &  LuLing.  I found LuLing controlling, irrational, hypercritical, and impervious to reason.  I felt the frustration that Ruth felt right along with her, and when time & again she allowed herself and her own desires to be eclipsed by her mother, I wanted to shake her out of her lethargy.

And then came Section 2.

Once again, I felt like shaking someone and screaming “Wake UP!”  But this time, it was LuLing herself.  As I progressed through this middle section, I began to understand LuLing in a completely different way, and while I still didn’t (and don’t) understand the necessity of incessantly criticizing and insulting one’s daughter, I did ultimately comprehend the enormous suffering that LuLing endured & overcame.  I understood how it shaped her and hurt her, how it gutted her and made her strong.  She was so much more than Ruth’s experiences, GaoLing’s interactions or Precious Auntie’s recollections.  It was clear that Ruth needed to know her mother’s history and understand where she came from in order to appreciate her strengths, weaknesses & eccentricities.  She needed to know those things to also heal herself, to recognize that despite herself she had a good partner, and to allow herself the luxury of committing fully to the relationship, loving with reserve, and being likewise loved in return.

Amy Tan weaves this exotic, timultuous, and ultimately cathartic story in such a way that it leaves you wanting more…to continue on with the story, to find out what happens next with the characters you’ve come to love.  That’s good writing…really good writing, and it’s worthy of a place on everyone’s bookshelf.