Book Reviews - Painted Table & Peace Child

A couple of quick book reviews for y'all today. This first book is one that I received free from BookLook Bloggers in exchange for an honest review. I picked this book from the ones available based on the title and short description from the website.

The Painted Table follows the life of Saffee who is born to a mother traumatized by a  difficult childhood. The table that the title refers to was built by Saffee's great-grandfather and passed down to her mother, Joann. As a small child Joann often hid under the table and as an adult it brings back lots of difficult memories that she tries to forget by painting the table, over and over again in an unstable attempt to make things better. Saffee worries that she will become like her mother, but as the story goes along she grows into a responsible adult and eventually inherits the table herself. I enjoyed the story, however I thought this was a slow read. The story was pretty predictable, so it wasn't a page-turner and there weren't the twists and turns in the story that would normally make me stay up late reading to the end.

Peace Child is the second book my sister shared with me this year as part of our monthly book swap. This is one that she and Pun'kin Natashia have both read. The story is written by missionary Don Richardson. He and his wife were missionaries to the Sawi people in New Guinea in the 1960s. The Sawi were cannibals and headhunters who valued treachery, and it was extremely interesting reading how they were able to learn the language and customers of this primitive people and eventually share the gospel of of Christ with them. Just as Jesus taught using parables and stories and examples that people in Bible times would understand, Don Richardson found a way to share the gospel using an example from the Sawi culture. This book was also a slow read for me, primarily because the names are unfamiliar to me and there were several different groups of people involved so I had to concentrate more to keep it all straight. It was well worth the effort.

I'm starting two book this week - one is another Pulitzer prize winner (The Way West) and the other is for the library book club meeting next month (Big Fish). What will you be reading this week?