Book Review: Last One Home

Once again, needing some audio fare to accompany my daily walking, I stumbled upon this book by Debbie Macomber, Last One Home. The author provides a bit of introduction telling a brief account of what triggered the impulse to capture this story. I love it when I get a glimpse into a writer's mind.

Cassie Carter is a wounded woman struggling to reclaim her life. At the tender age of 18, Cassie fled her home and family to marry Duke, the young man whose child she was secretly carrying. Duke moved them to Florida and forced her to cut all ties with her family. His abusiveness grew to the point where she feared for herself and her daughter, Amy. Finally free of Duke, she is rebuilding her life, working in a job as a hairdresser, and putting in hours with the Habitat for Humanity group so that she can one day work for her own home. Putting in those required hours means working with the brusque Steve Brody, a man who instantly disliked her. But Steve is battling his own demons, after the loss of his beloved wife to cancer, and eventually decides to give Cassie a chance.

The author expertly weaves in images of Cassie and her sisters as kids playing hide and seek and running to the base tree to be the "last one home." While Cassie desires a reunion with her sisters, she is unsure they are willing to reconnect. With tentative steps and the help of friends, she is able to regain her footing with her sisters and find the forgiveness her heart has longed for. Realistic characters and the promise of reconciliation and romance propel the reader along. While a bit predictable, the story is easy to absorb and leaves one with hope and encouragement at the end.

Book Review: In the Unlikely Event

I expected great things from this Judy Blume book, In the Unlikely Event. After all, Judy Blume! My opinion is that it was true to her writing style, but not as good a read as I had anticipated. My biggest issue was with the extensive cast of characters. It took a good 150 pages to get to the point in the novel where I had a grasp on which characters were important and which were incidental.

The story revolves around 15 year old Miri Ammerman. It is the winter of 1951-52 and Elizabeth, New Jersey, experiences three plane crashes within the space of two months. While the crashes are factual (Blume lived in Elizabeth and was a junior high student at the time), the characters are fictional. Miri is exploring a new relationship with a boy named Mason. She is living with her single mother and worried about her best friend, Natalie (who believes that one of the dead passengers is now living inside of her).

As I intimated, the cast of characters is extensive and often difficult to keep a handle on. It is somewhat like viewing a kaleidoscope (an image used in the novel) where different colorful bits and pieces flash into different patterns to reveal visually stunning images. The glimpses are brief and hard to follow at times. The end result creates a whole picture, but the process of getting to the final picture is a fragmented journey. I think it was the fragmented nature I struggled with most.  While I don't regret continuing with the novel (despite several moments where I was sorely tempted to cast it aside), it still wasn't as satisfying as I had anticipated and not one of my favorite Judy Blume reads.

Book Review: 100 Christian Quotes by 10 Great Christians

Who can turn down a free e-book promising highlight-worthy quotes? Not me. This book, 100 Christian Quotes by 10 Great Christians, by Pastor Duke Tabor held many pearls. While I wouldn't have highlighted all of them, here are my favorites:

"A saint's life is in the hands of God as a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see; He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says I cannot stand any more. But God does not heed; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly." - Oswald Chambers

"I wonder if people who asked for God to intervene in our world really know what they are asking. Will they want to be there when God really does intervene?" - C.S. Lewis

"We must allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.... It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Go for souls. Go straight for souls, and go for the worst." - General William Booth

"I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost; Christianity without Christ; forgiveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration; politics without God; and Heaven without Hell." - General William Booth

"We are all making a crown for Jesus out of these daily lives of ours, either a crown of golden, divine love, studded with gems of sacrifice and adoration, or a thorny crown, filled with the cruel briers of unbelief, or selfishness, and sin." - Aimee Semple McPherson

"The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as results, but in the deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God at His central throne of control in order to discover a sense of God's need in order to call on God's help to meet that need." - E.M. Bounds

"The heavenly Father does not ask for golden vessels. He does not ask for silver vessels. God asks for yielded vessels - those who will submit their will to the will of the Father. And the greatest human attainment in all the world is for a life to be so surrendered to Him that the name of God Almighty will be glorified through that life." - Kathryn Kuhlman

Book Review: The Five Money Conversations

Several months back, I read a book about nurturing children, regarding the use of money, in ways to keep them from being "spoiled." When my library highlighted this book in recent acquisitions, I thought I'd check it out to see if it had anything new to say. The books were totally different with a different focus in each case. While the first book focused more on behaviors to take with kids in regards to money, this book focused more on things to guide your conversations with kids about money.

In The Five Money Conversations to Have with Your Kids at Every Age and Stage, authors Scott and Bethany Palmer zero in on five different money personalities people can have: 1) Saver, 2) Spender, 3) Security Seeker, 4) Risk Taker, and 5) Flyer (a sort of vague title for people who don't really think about money but rather about relationship). They claim that each individual has two of these money personalities at work in their lives. While it was immediately obvious which two I veer towards (Saver, Security Seeker), I did wonder if all people fall so neatly into two categories, even if my own boys are pretty easy to peg. Both Bryce and Sean are definitely Savers and Trevor is clearly a Spender (that boy wants something every time we enter a store, wants to spend money as soon as he gets it, and is generous with others almost to a fault).

The key message of the book is to speak to your kids based on their personality type and attempt to establish balance. Encourage Spenders to think and plan and rein their impulses in, but encourage Savers to not be so hesitant to spend money having fun with friends. Encourage Security Seekers to realize that some things simply cannot be planned for or avoided and remind Risk Takers that "there are ramifications to their financial decisions." At times it felt like things were a bit too formulaic and that balance seemed to be the only thing the authors were preaching.

The authors assert that they are both Spenders. As a Saver, it was hard for me to believe that it is really okay for Spenders to simply be impulsive and enjoy the act of purchasing things. At one point, the authors mentioned that debt is not necessarily a bad thing. I had to balk at that. It sounded too much like, "Hey, I want to go on a big fancy trip because it is something I value and want to do, therefore I'm simply going to go, even though I know I cannot afford it, and debt be damned." I have a hard time accepting that such thinking is fine and merely an expression of a particular money personality type.

I do think there is always value in addressing your individual children based upon what you know about their personality types. I cannot deal with my ten year old in the same way I do with my eight year old because it simply doesn't work. They are as different as night and day. If only all three of my children were the same (two of them are very similar in personality type and disciplinary responsiveness), it would be easier to raise them to be responsible, contributing citizens of society. Alas, every individual is unique and they pose different challenges. I may not get it right, but I can try my darnedest to understand them and to try to speak their language. Frankly, in the grand scheme of things, I'm worried about more serious parenting challenges than speaking wisdom to my kids in regards to their views on money. Still, the book provided valuable thinking points for that particular topic of parenting.

Book Review: Dicey's Song

This was a book I had heard of but failed to read yet. Dicey's Song is a familiar title in children's literature, having won a Newbery Award. I wasn't aware that it is the second in a series of four books. The story unfolds in a very slow, meandering manner (or perhaps that was just the way the narrator presented it in the audio form). It was sweet and tender, but also a bit sad.

Here's the description from the back cover:

"It took 13-year-old Dicey Tillerman all summer to get herself and her three younger siblings to their grandmother's run-down farm on the Chesapeake Bay. Now the four of them face the difficult challenges of fitting into a frightening new world, one where once again, they are outsiders. Gram told Dicey to just hold on, to do all that she could to keep the family together. The trouble is, Dicey has only two hands, and quite a few problems of her own. Growing up, she discovers, is more than just holding on to what is important; it is learning how to let go."

The story brought me to tears a few times. Although I enjoyed it, I probably wouldn't rank it as one of my favorites for the year. It would be a good book to suggest to a child who is having difficulty with new circumstances or with family troubles. I don't think I enjoyed it enough to seek out the rest of the series, although if our library had another one in audio form, it might bump it up for consideration since I'm always looking for more books to listen to while I do my daily walk.

I will say that I like the cover posted at the top of this post far better than this one (to the left) on the cover of the library's audio version. I couldn't tell if the child on this cover is a boy or a girl. Perhaps that was intentional, but I think the first cover conveys more emotional pull than this particular one does. The downcast face also expresses more of the internal angst of the main character. Just a better cover, in my humble opinion.

Book Review: The Furious Longing of God

Every once in a while, a theme gets hammered into my psyche by repeated, seemingly coincidental exposure. Sunday morning's sermon was centered on the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. Our congregation was reminded of God's intense, unwavering love for us and further, of His desire that we go on to express that same love to others, not just the ones who are easy to love (even the pagans do that), but the most unlovable ones. It was an inspiring time of worship.

Then, I came home and my boys packed up to leave for a brief trip to Holiday World. Following their departure I sat in our quiet house, enjoying the calm and attempting (unsuccessfully) to make my failing laptop work. In frustration, I gave up and decided to simply open up my Kindle library (on my laptop) and read one of the many books I keep meaning to get to. I opened up the most recent acquisition, this book by Brennan Manning, called The Furious Longing of God.

This brief book cemented even further an understanding of the depth of God's love for me, even when I don't feel that I deserve it, even when I am at my most despicable. He loves me, even me! What a marvelous revelation.

As Manning writes: "The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment." He asserts that it is easier for people to believe that God exists than it is for them to believe that God loves them. Yet, it is true that "He loves me whether in a state of grace or disgrace."

Later, in talking of the power we have to heal someone else with our affirming love, seeing in them what they cannot see in themselves, he writes, "Lodged in your heart is the power to walk into somebody's life and give him or her what the bright Paul Tillich called 'the courage to be'." What a great commission!

He goes on. After talking about the healing found in the story of Don Quixote and Dulcinea, Manning writes: "The question is not can we heal? The question, the only question, is will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brave dare not go?"

What an opportunity lies before each and every one, to rise to the occasion and be the conveyor of a moment of healing in the life of another. I want to not only experience the unfathomable love of God but also extend that love to others in ways that produces great healing in their lives!

Book Review: Kidnapped by River Rats

How fitting to be reviewing this book on July 1st, 2015, as Salvationists from around the world gather in London, England, to celebrate the 150th year of The Salvation Army's existence. (Wishing I could be there too, as I watch all the photos and videos shared on Facebook from friends and family who are delegates attending the "Boundless" International Congress.) I became aware of Kidnapped by River Rats when Catherine reviewed it on her blog, A Spirited Mind, and was surprised to find it at my library. As a person affiliated with The Salvation Army since birth, I'm kind of amazed that I had never heard of it. The book, published in 1991 by Bethany House Publishers, gives a brief exposure to the early days of The Salvation Army in London, England, and the persecution early Salvationists endured.

Jack and Amy came to London with their mother to search for an uncle to provide for them. When their mother dies, Jack and Amy are left to fend for themselves and search for a man whose address they don't even know in a city full of danger. After they encounter The Salvation Army marching past on their way to an open air meeting (not actually termed in such a way in the book, but that is what we in the Army would call it), they must decide if William and Catherine Booth are going to harm them (they are told the Army is "after their souls") or help them.

The book provides a fairly basic introduction to the Army. I believe more details could have been used to flesh out the historical perspective. Still, it was a slightly interesting tale and does indeed provide a fairly good picture to kids of what it must have been like to live in the 1880s in London in poverty. It also touches on the evils of child sexual trafficking, so the reader should be aware of that before reading it aloud to children. It will open up some difficult, but important, discussions. I probably won't be reading it aloud to my boys simply because I don't think they'd find it to be engaging enough to hold their attention.