Book Reviews & A Layout

It's hard to believe we are halfway through the year 2012! As you can see on my Books Read page, I've completed 32 books so far this year. If you click on the title of a book on that page, it will take you to my review of the book. I noticed today that I've skipped reviewing quite a few books and thought I'd catch up on a few. I'm glad that I read each of the four books I'm sharing about today, however as you'll see from my reviews, there was also a little something I didn't like about each.

Your Life as Story is about writing your memoir in the form of story. The book contains a ton of good information & exercises to get you writing your own autobiography, however I have to admit that I was put off by the language at times and quite a few of the sample stories she shared were what I would consider inappropriate or immoral.

I read Room as part of the library book club I attend. The story is about a young woman who was abducted and locked in a shed for seven years. During that time she had a baby boy who also spent five years in that room. The book is written from the perspective of the 5-year-old boy, which makes for very tedious reading after a while because the mother has taught him that only things in the room are real and the things on TV are not real (like other people, "outside", etc). I think the story was told in a positive and realistic perspective for the most part, however it was a difficult read considering the subject matter (abduction, abuse, depression, deprivation).

The Harbinger: The ancient mystery that holds the secret of America's future centers around nine harbingers or foreshadowings of disaster based on Isaiah 9:10. This scripture was a prophecy about the nation of Israel and the events that would lead to its eventual destruction because the nation turned away from God. Israel was "unique among nations in that it was conceived and dedicated at its foundation for the purposes of God" . . . just like America. The author then shows how each of these harbingers are now being (or have already) played out in America as our nation continues to turn away from the God of our Founding Fathers. This is a very thought-provoking and discussion-inducing book. The downside is that it is written in the form of an interview, which involves endless dialogue that made for very slow reading. I highly recommend it for the information it presents, despite the tediousness of 250+ pages of dialogue.

Our pastor recently completed a sermon series based on Robert Morris's The Blessed Life: The Simple Secret of Achieving Guaranteed Financial Results, so I (of course) wanted to read the book for myself. The book focuses on giving through tithing, offerings, and sacrificial giving, practices that I firmly believe in and practice in my everyday life. The author gives many examples of blessings from his own and other's lives, however many of the examples are extreme and leave the impression that if we give financially, our return blessings are always financial. While I know from personal experience that these things do happen, I think it's important to remember that there are many blessings that are not tied to our financial situation and that we give in obedience rather than to gain more financially.

For those of you who've made it this far, here's a little something creative to go along with this book review post - a layout about our visit to a used book store. (You can see my favorite photos from that visit here.)

Journaling reads: We read about this used book store in Texas Highways and knew it was time for a Saturday drive to Denton!!

Have you read any of the books I reviewed today? If so, I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. (I'll be catching up with a few more reviews next week about some of the book series I've read.)