Call me homesick for a good read, but this favorite and familiar author – Alice Munro – came through for what ailed me. Her latest collection, Dear Life, was the recent selection for my book club and neither the book nor our discussion disappointed.
The primary section of Dear Life consists of ten stories – all typical of Munro’s style. She crafts believable characters in unremarkable situations to achieve thoughtful and real episodes of poignancy. Not unlike Flannery O’Connor who allows all of her main characters a moment of grace to accept …

Call me a skeptic. Young adult, pseudo-science fiction, 22-year-old author, first novel (OK, so I like first novels) – Jessica Khoury’s Origin was not shaping up to be my cup of tea. However, toss in that the author is from Toccoa, Ga. – my hometown – and I’m a little more engaged. Add that two readers I respect suggest it is better than Hunger Games (one being my mom) and despite the fact that I haven’t actually read the Hunger Games (see list of why not to read above), I’ll be …

I’m a Tracy Chevalier fan. Since Girl with the Pearl Earring – one of my very first book club discussions – I’ve gladly picked up anything she’s written. I love the way she takes well-known art and constructs a narrative history around its creation.
The Last Runaway Chevalier takes a bit of a diversion – her first novel set in the U.S. – and while she does weave art into the story, it doesn’t take the front seat. The primary focus of The Last Runaway is the underground railroad.
The main character …

Fruit of My Spirit: Reframing Life in God’s Grace is Deanna Nowadnick’s personal reflection on how God used various seasons in her life to grow the Spirit’s fruit. Her story isn’t revolutionary or extraordinary, and perhaps that is the true beauty of it. This is the Christian journey, the road of sanctification; God using experiences, people and circumstances to make us more like Him.
Deanna is married and has two boys. Her challenges are like many women – the responsibility of parenting, body image, identity in Christ, struggles with her own parents …

I’m going to skip a lot of the middle of 15 Laws in order to get to the end. This book comes out next week (October 2), and I want to finish my posts before that. Also, it is the final three chapters that spoke the most to me in this phase of my life.
If you haven’t read the previous posts about this book, you might want to do that. You can find the first post here.
In addition to reading this book, there has been a lot going on in my …

This is part three of a series on John C. Maxwell’s The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth that will be out in October 2012. If you haven’t read the previous posts, you can find Part One here and Part Two here.
At this point I’ve read through chapter seven, and the theme that is resonating the most with me is this: get started now. This cord runs through the chapters, beginning in chapter two, “The Law of Awareness” where Maxwell encourages his readers to get started even when they think they …

The beginning of the post is from Saturday, so if you haven’t read it, skip on over to it now.
In this first chapter, Maxwell delivers eight gaps that keep people from being intentional about development. One really resonated with me – “The Inspiration Gap.” In his discussion on this gap, Maxwell basically de-bunks the idea of motivation, quoting from another writer who calls it a trap. In talking about his own onset with growing intentionally he says,
I had only one reason to do it. I believed I should do it …

John C. Maxwell is a man after my heart. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by him, but with The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, he’s honed in on one of my passions – practical instruction for personal development. In this book, Maxwell is articulating so many ideas that I’ve had a sense of and know to be true while at the same time pushing me further and deeper than I’ve gone before.
I have stopped requesting ARCs because I’ve gotten so behind in my reading, but when my friend Sarah showed …

My new favorite writer is John Piper. This year I’ve added reading his works to my morning quiet time. While this started unintentionally, his thinking has been so rewarding, it is now intentional.
Last year my mom gave me a copy of Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, which is an abbreviated taste of Piper at just over 100 pages. It wasn’t until I started Desiring God, the Piper classic, that I fell in love, not just with Piper, but all over in love with God and my relationship with Him.
The subtitle …

While I’m not big on traditional science fiction or fantasy literature, I do love a good dystopian novel. The Handmaid’s Tale, The Unit and Never Let Me Go are three such novels. However, Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke, fell short of what I had hoped for.

The idea behind When She Woke is that in this society – which is set in the not too distant future – criminals are injected with a dye and released back into society. Crimes are classified by color; for example, yellow is for misdemeanors, red …