2023 - First Quarterly Review

To assist my blog readers, I summarize my reading four times a year, providing a brief description, the page count, and a grading scale (💖5 thumbs up - highly recommend, 4 thumbs up - enjoyed, 3 thumbs up - good, 2 thumbs up - meh, and 1 thumb down - regret, wishing I could get back the time invested). I read the following books during the first quarter of 2023 (links to full reviews can be found in the side-bar, or after 2023, found through the search bar at the right):

Jingle All the Way by Debbie Macomber - Yet another simple, clean Christmas travel romance, this covering a vacation cruise down the Amazon. 272 pages (I listened in audio form, 5 CDs, 5-1/2 hours), 👍👍👍

Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by Lisa Genova - I think this book's primary goal is to set minds at ease by differentiating between normal memory lapses and dementia-indicating memory lapses. 246 pages, 👍👍👍

Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva - A fictional retelling of how Charles Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol. 271 pages, 👍👍👍👍

Down the Hatch by M. C. Beaton - Can Agatha Raisin identify the killer of a much-despised man who worked as a gardener at a bowling club? 240 pages (I listened in audio form, 6 CDs, 7 hours), 👍👍-1/2

Intermittent Fasting for Women Over 60: The Ultimate Guide to Lose Weight, Boost Metabolism, and Increase Energy by Lauren Grant - A quick guide (not "ultimate," though) to intermittent fasting and keto diet approach to weight loss and rejuvenation. Helpful resources available with purchase. 205 pages, 👍👍👍

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance - A book my book club read and I'm only getting to now. Rife with foul language, expected from hillbillies, but an articulate and insightful read. 288 pages (I listened in audio form, 6 CDs, 6-3/4 hours), 👍👍👍👍

Diana, William, and Harry: The Most Heartbreaking Story of Our Time - Diana's Life as a Princess and a Mother by James Patterson and Chris Mooney - Feels like fiction, but sadly tells the true story of Diana's triumphs and trials. 448 pages (I listened in audio form, 9 CDs, 10-1/2 hours), 👍👍👍 

The Littlest Library by Poppy Alexander - Delightful little tale of a woman who acquires a cottage with a defunct red telephone box that, as the books she places inside, opens up a whole new world to her. 318 pages, 👍👍👍👍

12 Weeks to a Sharper You: A Guided Program - Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Dr. Sanjay Gupta -  A weekly approach to establishing better habits for brain health. 208 pages (I listened in audio form, 4 CDs, 4-1/3 hours), 👍👍👍👍

Heaven Rules: Take Courage. Take Comfort. Our God is in Control by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth - Focusing on the book of Daniel, this author outlines how these two pithy words, "heaven rules," can address every temptation to worry that we face. - 256 pages, 👍👍👍-1/2

Never Forget You by Fiona Lucas - After a spontaneous, romantic day together, Lili and Ben agree to meet one year later. Five years after Lili fails to show, a woman stumbles into his village with amnesia, wearing a necklace he recognizes. 400 pages, 👍👍👍-1/2

Indiana Winter by Susan Neville - A collection of semi-true, semi-fictional essays about Indiana and its people. 249 pages, 👍👍👍

Inciting Joy: Essays by Ross Gay - An Indiana University writing professor and poet addresses the way both sorrows and pleasures of life incite joy. Beautiful writing, even if I do not share many of his perspectives on life and politics. 245 pages (I listened in audio form, 7 CDs, 8-1/2 hours), 👍👍👍👍

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer by C. S. Lewis - In a series of letters to a friend, Lewis covers the topic of prayer with intellectual curiosity and conversational ruminations. 124 pages, 👍👍👍👍

My Jesus: From Heartache to Hope by Anne Wilson - A Christian recording artist shares her testimony of God's grace in the midst of grief. 194 pages, 👍👍👍

Book Review: My Jesus

I struggle with change. My experience with this book highlights an example. I happily added my name to the hold list when my library shared about this recent acquisition. Okay, so I love my library's hold options. I love being able to drive up and, long past the initial pandemic necessity, have someone walk my held books out to my car. Thank you! Thank you! 

What I do not love is my library's new card catalog platform. Why mess with a good thing, I ask? I used to be able to see early on if a book had no option for renewal (meaning the hold list is long and the next person is already waiting for their turn). Now, patrons are told how many times they have renewed a book, rather than how many renewals are still available. Thus, you remain in the dark until a few days prior to the due date, when the library sends a notification explaining that a further renewal is not available. I desperately need more than a few day's notice.

So, there I was, facing down the notification email. I had three days to return this book, My Jesus: From Heartache to Hope by Anne Wilson. Thank goodness it is a short, easy read (194 pages). I suppose the key is simple. Check out fewer books and get around to them the moment you bring them home - ha!😉

My Jesus shares the personal testimony of a new Christian recording artist, Anne Wilson. The tragic loss of Anne's older brother, in a car accident, shifted Anne's career trajectory. Her dreams of becoming an astronaut (something my youngest has expressed a vague interest in) faded when a talent scout found a video of Anne singing her funeral contribution, "What a Wonderful Name." Sadly, I was out of the loop on this. (When I still had my van with its broken CD player, I usually listened to Christian radio. Now that I'm in a car with a functioning CD player, I tend to use that time to listen to audio books.) Apparently, Anne's first song, "My Jesus," went to the top of the charts immediately.

If you are seeking a quick and encouraging Christian testimony, this book fits the bill. While the writing is not noteworthy, the story is sincere and inspirational. Of course, as soon as I closed the book (just in time to return it to the library, shwew), I logged on to YouTube and listened to "My Jesus," "What a Wonderful Name," and one other song called "No Place Like Home." They were a great accompaniment to this personal story.

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Now, I wouldn't be averse to a change like this: A library in Colorado has a self-checkout station where you can select the language for your receipt. One option is "Pirate" language. This is how the receipt prints out:

(Photo from Carole O'Brien on Facebook)

Book Review: Letters to Malcolm

The other day, I scoured my library for books on prayer. I'm several months into my 2023 Facebook Prayer Project. Prayer is a discipline, to be sure. And can often feel more like a duty than a delight, as C. S. Lewis writes in this compilation of letters to a friend, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. We long for it to be something we anticipate with joy, but our humanity often pulls it into the realm of obligation. I acknowledge it is a privilege to pray for my friends. Yet, the actual process of setting aside time - morning, noon, and night - is sometimes challenging.

Lewis also observes that our prayers, while grounded in time, are "eternally in the score of the great symphony." What a beautiful picture of prayer. We take time to express our hopes, dreams, wishes, and struggles to God, who is already aware of all these things, and the process weaves out into a symphony outside of time (because God exists and works outside of time). Our actions, grounded in time, matter for eternity! How cool is that!

Finally, I especially appreciated his discussion of Christ's prayer in Gesthemane. When I first encountered our struggle with a prodigal child, it triggered a deep anguish and despair within me. This didn't surprise me. I battle chronic depression even in the best of times. But what surprised me was the response of other Christians to my anguish. 

Lewis sums it up well: "Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don't agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ." Others encouraged me to stop "sinning" in unbelief and to take hold of firm faith. Yet, I believe one can ride the dual waves of anxiety and faith without one cancelling out the other. My faith in God's perfect will (for my best and for His glory) never wavers, though my emotional response to my trial may bring angst and affliction. And when someone is in anguish over a trial God has allowed into their life, isn't that a far better time to extend a hand of comfort and solidarity than to express condemnation for perceived sin. An offer of "I'll be praying for you!" means far more than "You can't allow circumstances to determine your faith." Would that we were all kinder to one another when pain enters our lives!

Book Review: Inciting Joy

I stumbled upon this book in the audio selections at my library (on the display shelves, especially given the author's Indiana connections as a writing professor at Indiana University). Although I cannot grasp what it is to be a black man, and although I do not share many of this author's perspectives on life and politics, I fell in love with the poetic writing in these essays on joy. The subject is dear to my heart. I agree with much of what this author shares, especially the idea that pain and suffering are portals, necessary pathways, to joy.

In these lyrical, elegant essays, written in a conversational style, Ross Gay covers fourteen things that incite joy. While some are easily understood (laughter, gardens, school, dancing, music, and gratitude), others fall outside of my experience (basketball, skateboarding), and many are surprising (death, time, losing your phone, and falling apart). In each essay, I found things with which I heartily agree. In many essays, though, my perspectives differed.

The first incitement offered a beautiful glimpse of individuals sharing their sorrows, and the joy such sharing brings. In a touching essay on the death of his father, the author moves the reader to tears as he outlines the friction and the love coexisting. The potential within relationships. His last words are beautiful: "It was through my tears, I saw my father was a garden. Or the two of us, or the all-of-us, not here long maybe it is. And from that what might grow." Next, he covers the generosity of gardening. He suggests that instead of cursing darkness, we might plant some seeds and share what grows. He discusses poetry, and what poetry can produce within us.

So much of this writing is beautiful and thought-provoking and brilliant. I love a well-turned word and a meticulously crafted metaphor. I love his deep understanding of, and desire for, fairness and compassion. Listening to his writing style - the repetitions, the pet phrases ("in which I mean," "which, I've said this before," and "or to come back to where we started..."), and the poetic expression of deep and important thoughts - makes the audio version the best way to experience this book. However, having said that, the use of expletives (why? unnecessary and interruptive) also made this version one I could only tolerate in my car (away from my husband walking into the room, hearing the profanity, and saying, "What ARE you listening to?").

The longer I listened, the less I felt those common bonds. Instead, it seemed the author was pointing a finger at me and accusing me of being the source of so many problems. My capitalism, my encouragement of excellence and competition, my desire to nurture the good and the upright, in his eyes, my white skin, lead to injustice and suppression. Indeed, he views cheating as "sharing ideas," and something to applaud (isn't this an injustice to the individual who studied to achieve his grade). He throws out grades because they stifle creativity. 

It felt as if he sees me, without cause, as an oppressor and a purveyor of injustice upon injustice. In that, our common goal of fairness and compassion, of living together in peace and making one another better than we were before we entered relationship, fizzled and dissolved. So, on the one hand, I loved this "wondering-aloud," this "finding in the minutiae of life the grand themes of human existence," and on the other hand, I shook my head, because you cannot attempt to repair the broken by breaking further. You cannot heal division by inciting more division. You cannot blindly overlook while saying, "everyone needs to be seen."

Content Caution: 📒 - language

Mid-month Mention: My Podcast Interview

 

In February, shortly after returning from my FL/TX trip, I embarked on an interview about my poetry book, Watching the Wayward: Psalms for Parents of Prodigals. Heather Hanton, Women's Ministries Specialist of The Central Territory of The Salvation Army, interviewed me for their Prepare Podcast. We discuss the experiences that prompted me to write my first book of poetry. We also discuss the mental health component of addiction. 

If you or a family member struggle with mental health or if you'd like an in-depth view of what prompted my book, follow this link to that podcast interview. I love how Heather pulled all of our conversation topics together to emphasize that, no matter what your journey, God is the source of our strength. He walks through every hill and valley with us. May all glory go to God, in and through this podcast interview.

Book Review: Indiana Winter

Once again, I jumped through the ridiculous and often annoying hoops required to take part in my library's winter reading challenge. I so prefer to read what I want to read and not what they dictate or suggest. Still, I'm always lured in with hopes to win a prize for my reading. (I won nothing.) Thankfully, many of the books I had already chosen to read fit the categories outlined in this winter challenge: a recipe book (which I didn't review because I only copied one recipe), a new form of reading (the book I read on my phone), and a biography of someone (Diana and her boys). This book, Indiana Winter, by Susan Neville, fulfilled a category suggesting you read a book with "Winter" in the title. Thankfully, since the author is a writing professor at Butler University, the book was interesting and well-written.

Indiana Winter offers a smattering of essays about, you guessed it, Indiana in winter. The most interesting thing about this collection is that it weaves fact and fiction. Neville acknowledges she travelled around Indiana and gleaned snippets of overheard conversation. Using that dialogue, she intertwined some short-story telling into these essays. She visits museums, the women's prison, small town gatherings, the State Fair, and John Mellencamp's art opening. The essays have the feel of listening in on conversations, but also give the feel of Indiana's people and places. Her personal narrative about growing up with a manic-depressive mother is fascinating. I would love to meet this author someday. She won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her website offers an email address. Perhaps I will send her a letter.

Late to the Party - Read an E-book Week

On Tuesday, I discovered this is Read an E-book Week. Given this is not a method I generally use, it was exciting to see I had just posted about reading an e-book. Another sad realization from Tuesday? The e-book I mentioned as being available for a limited time at 99 cents, was in fact already more expensive. Sob! I apologize for the outdated information.

To celebrate what remains of this designated week, I thought I might list the last two free e-books that I added to my Kindle for PC account (hopefully still free):

A Light in the Window (Margarete's Journey Book 1 of 4) by Marion Kummerow - billed as "A completely gripping WWII historical novel with a heartbreaking twist." (280 pages)

The Obituary Society (Book 1 of 3) by Jessica L. Randall - Lila Moore inherits her grandfather's house in a small Midwestern town full of tightly guarded secrets. (194 pages)

As a further celebration, to join in the festivities, I will offer a free e-book copy of my book:

Watching the Wayward: Psalms for Parents of Prodigals to the first 5 individuals who join my mailing list before the end of this week (3/11/23). You can either subscribe to my blog (through the subscription button at top right) or for an additional freebie, sign up for the free 6-page book recommendation list (offered in side-bar to the right).  Or subscribe on my website at www.wendygortonhill.com (by subscribing there, you will also receive a free PDF of either sample poems or a listing of resources for parents of prodigals).

Happy E-book reading!

Book Review: Never Forget You

Although I had never read a book on my phone before, I was hoping to find one to purchase in Kindle form and carry on my phone for my FL/TX trip. I settled on Fiona Lucas' Never Forget You, and it was a wonderful decision. This novel gripped me by the heart. The hours of flight time slipped past without notice. I loved the premise, the characters, and the enchanting love story (even though I'm not generally a romance reader).

When a stranger, Ben, comes to Lili's aid after she is stung by a bee, it seems only reasonable to offer to take him to hidden spots in London to help him shoot photos for his book project. The two strike up an immediate bond and agree, after Ben's one-year travel stint, to meet up in the same location where they first met. Fate intervenes, and the scheduled meet-up never materializes. Five years later, Ben is surprised when a woman appears in his tiny village, wearing the same bee necklace he had given Lili, but confused about who she is and how she arrived there.

Told in a variety of timelines (the day of introduction, leading up to someone's wedding, and the present), the reader unravels the truth about this amnesiac. As the story plays out, we are swept into both joy and pain, love and regret. This book is engrossing and entertaining. I love the bright cover. I would happily try another book by this author.

Book Review: Heaven Rules

I had brought books along to read on my recent trip. Yet my dad, in the middle of reading this book, was insistent that I take this book back to my hotel room to read. My compliant personality kicked in and I finished the book in time to return it to his bookshelf.

Focusing on the book of Daniel, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth outlines how these two pithy words, "heaven rules," can address every temptation to worry that we face. Worry is like believing God just might get it wrong. But in every crazy situation we face, even the ones that seem contrary to what we think God would will for us, God in heaven is in control. His sovereign hand will never leave us.

I appreciated this book immensely. It gives excellent reminders to set our minds at ease. For example, here are 3 truths that the author draws from her experience with her husband's cancer: "1. Anything that makes us need God is a blessing. 2. You can trust God to write your story. and 3. Heaven rules!" I valued her observation, "You can be wrecked by bad news, even while fully convinced of God's abundant compassion" Too true! And finally, one of my favorite quotes (because it reminds me why I am doing my Facebook Prayer Project) - "Looking at life through the Heaven Rules lens makes doing almost anything other than prayer seem unproductive by comparison." May I always remember to trust in God's sovereignty and to lift hands to heaven submissive to His will.

Perhaps you prefer podcasts to books - The Revive Our Hearts organization that Wolgemuth works with has You Tube episodes with wisdom from this book. Here is a link to the first episode.