Books

Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans

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It’s a cool thing to discuss why Millennials are leaving the church today, but it’s refreshing to hear from an actual Millennial.  Even more so because Evans is self-professed obsessed with the church even while railing against its failings.  This complicated relationship with God, religion, and the people who make up a local church makes for a compelling read, both for those who are leaving Christianity and for those who can’t understand why this is happening.

The book is divided into sections based on seven sacraments, and each section is made up of various vignettes, some of which fit the theme better than others.  I found myself more interested in Evans’s personal story than the think pieces she wrote.  Not that they aren’t good–I just think the most important part of this conversation is individual people telling their stories of heartache, desire, and frustration.

I love Rachel Held Evans because, well, honestly, because she reminds me of me.  She thinks she knows best, and is therefore constantly thrown by the reality that she is not, in fact, perfect.  She relies on her head knowledge and struggles to trust in her heart knowledge.  She has a million ideas about how to make the world better, but she’s as much of the problem as she is the solution.  I resonate so deeply with all of this, and I appreciate getting to live through her and learn alongside her.  Continue reading →

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

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THIS BOOK.  Holy cow, it’s been a while since I’ve torn through a book in one day, but I’ll Give You the Sun was impossible to put down.  Art, mystery, family, love, grief–this book is absolutely beautiful, both in the way that it is written and in what it covers.  I’m still stunned.  This book shook me up, made me lighter, and weighed me down.  It even made me start thinking in contradictory metaphors.

I was skeptical of Nelson’s setup–she alternates chapters between twins.  This is a common writing device, but Nelson adds a twist.  The chapters told by Noah are from his 13-year-old perspective, while the chapters told by Jude jump ahead three years to when they are 16.  I didn’t know how Nelson could keep the plot moving if we found out in Jude’s chapters everything that was going to happen to younger Noah.  But I was wrong!  This worked out so well!  The hints and foreshadowing only made me more curious.  On top of that, Noah and Jude keep an incredibly amount of secrets from each other, and this makes their individual chapters all the more interesting. Continue reading →

The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy

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A book about a traveler who fears being unable to commit to marriage?  Um, yes please!  McCarthy’s book is an absolutely beautiful combination of self-awareness and travel log.  As he hops from Patagonia to the Osa to Vienna to Kilimanjaro, McCarthy considers how his love of travel–and the escape it offers–affects his relationship with his father, his children, and especially his fiancee.

This combination of physical exploration and emotional introspection hit exactly upon what I too love about traveling.  Finding yourself outside of a normal routine, relying on strangers for help, and witness to events and sights totally new–these circumstances of travel offer people a chance to examine themselves in a deeper way than life typically allows.  The fact that this can become a crutch, so that self-awareness is dependent upon isolation and exploration, is also explored as McCarthy works his way toward marriage.  His honesty and transparency made me trust him and root for him as he found a way to merge his love of traveling with his love for his fiancee.  Continue reading →

D.C. for Book Lovers (Guest Post)

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Elizabeth Waibel works in communications in the D.C. area. Her laptop has been broken for months, so she gets a lot of reading done. She once did an internship located mostly in the basement of the Folger library.

Washington, D.C., may be better known for Supreme Court briefs than its literary hangouts, but the District is also home to many universities, flourishing independent bookstores, and the largest library in the world. Julia Child lived in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, both before and after a stint in France that inspired her work on the revolutionary cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Its museums and archives are home to the founding documents of America and some of its most iconic movie memorabilia.

DSC00755When Tricia visited me in the D.C. suburbs in 2013, short on time, we decided on a literary theme to narrow down our options of places to visit and to indulge our mutual love of books. Whenever we had trouble deciding what to do, we picked the activity that involved the most books — problem solved. As an indecisive person, I loved delegating decisions to a pre-determined theme, and I also loved having an excuse to watch a Shakespeare episode of “Doctor Who” when we got tired of exploring.

Here, in no particular order, are a few of the places we visited, plus a few I’ve discovered since then.  Continue reading →

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

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My roommate let me borrow this book as a birthday present.  As much as I love fantasy, I have a weird “but I’m not that nerdy” attitude toward authors that aren’t J. R. R. Tolkien.  Which is completely dumb, because I am that nerdy.  Anyway, I let it sit untouched for a month, at which point my roommate said, “Um, are you ever going to read that book I gave you?”  Feeling guilty, I started reading….and couldn’t stop!  Mistborn is SO GOOD.  It’s a high fantasy heist novel, two genres I didn’t realize need to be combined all the time!

The world of Mistborn is atmospheric (ash falls from the sky on a regular basis) and extremely intriguing.  Although we don’t learn how Allomancers first received their power, not in this book at least, I am totally in love with the creativity behind these “magical” powers.  Allomancers can swallow and then “burn” metals, which give them various abilities.  Special Mistborn men and women can burn multiple metals at once, giving them the ability to alter peoples emotions, gain strength, or most impressive, push and pull metals around them.  The ways in which characters use these abilities are increasingly creative throughout the story, and I was delighted by their creativity.

I also appreciated the…in-betweenness of the level of violence in Mistborn.  People definitely die, and there are a few scenes of squeamish grossness.  But this is no Game of Thrones, which I’m grateful for.  I want realistic levels of death tolls in a story about war and uprisings, but I don’t want to be constantly grossed out.

I should also mention how awesome Vin is.  She’s a terrified street urchiin turned fake noblewoman, both roles which help her discover her true self–a scared but bold woman who fights for those that she loves and delights in her skillset.  I can’t wait to read more about her in the final two books of Sanderson’s trilogy.  Continue reading →

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

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I LOVE getting backstory for a villain.  So while I desperately wanted Meyer to release the fourth and final volume of her quadrilogy, The Lunar Chronicles, Winter can wait.  It’s Levana’s story first!  Serving as a prequel of sorts, this mini-book (is 220 pages mini? I don’t know) was a fantastic look at the moon’s culture, an incredible insight into Levana’s motivations, and a tantalizing hint of main characters we’ve grown to love from the main series.  That sentence looks like I got lost in an overly expressive thesaurus, and I apologize.  I just forgot how much I love Meyer’s fantasy world!

Levana’s story is excellently handled.  Although we get to empathize with her (sadistic older sister, horribly disfigured) she is still consistently creepy enough that our allegiances never fully shift.  Her “love story” with Evret is terrifying, and a really compelling look into the nuances of the mind of a rapist.  Levana is such a great villain because she doesn’t realize that’s what she is.  She always thinks she is doing the best thing possible–for her country, for those she “loves,” and of course, for herself.  The fact that this leads her to murder on multiple occasions is why she’s the bad guy.

Although Fairest is a self-contained story that ends far before Cinder begins, it totally rejuvenated my love for Meyer’s series, and I cannot wait until Winter comes out in the fall!  Continue reading →

Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey

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The church is meant to be a place where sinners find Jesus and learn to love each other in unity on a journey toward become saints.  Unfortunately, the church remains filled with sinners who often devolve toward infighting and arrogance.  Those who grow up confused by the disparity between what is taught and what is lived out can be tempted to leave all of Christianity behind.

Although my church past is not as horrifying as Yancey’s, I still struggle to reconcile the strains of legalism and divisiveness that I was taught alongside grace and love.  Reading Soul Survivor was like taking a gulp of fresh air as I was encouraged to leave the bad behind and cling only to the good.

Yancey’s spiritual growth largely came from looking outside of the church to social reform leaders and literary geniuses.  As a soft-hearted bibliophile, I was utterly won over by his thirteen spiritual directors.  Much like the men and women described in the Bible, the people who most affected Yancey are complicated people who pursued the difficult life of forgiveness and reconciliation while also committing affairs and battling depression.  They are not perfect people, but they wrestled with God.  Unwilling to accept easy answers or the status quo, the people who fill Soul Survivor‘s pages are so inspiring.  I’m so grateful to Philip Yancey for his honest recollection of his past as well as his offering of spiritual giants to learn from and emulate.  Continue reading →

I Was Here by Gayle Forman

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WOW.  What a necessary book.  I feel like there is decent representation of depressed and suicidal teens in YA books, but there are not very many novels that deal with the affects of suicide on others.  Cody’s grief over losing her best friend Meg is palpable–the anger at her friend for killing herself, the blame she places on herself for not seeing it coming, and the slow hope of moving forward by finding her own strength.  I thought I Was Here did a wonderful job of honoring the mental illness and pain of those who commit suicide without ever glorifying or justifying the action.

There’s really not much to say about this book other than Read It.  It handles a difficult topic with delicacy, is full of memorable characters (and kittens!), and creates a vivid picture of a part of the country I’ve never experienced (rural Washington).  Most of all, it is a hopeful story.  It is about a girl who loses what she loves the most…and continues to live.  It is about the brave task of living one day at a time.  I adored it.  Continue reading →

On Reading Books Meant for Children

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In On Three Ways of Writing for Children, C. S. Lewis says:

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

I’ve gone through the same cycle.  I loved kid’s books when I was in elementary school.  But then I became known as a “reader,” which for some reason felt like I needed to step up my game.  I read The Three Musketeers in sixth grade, and I got hooked on the classics.  I read Austen, Brontë, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald.  I became a bit of a book snob (the Harry Potter series excepted), and I spent all of my time in book stores and libraries scanning the “Literature” section.  I took great pride in being a teenager not in “Young Adult” section.  Continue reading →

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

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This is such a cute book!  I read YA books to clear my mind of heavier non-fiction words on faith or life.  But sometimes I need to go a step further and read middle grade stories of children discovering life and romance for the first adorable time.  It’s fluffy, poignant, and a fantastic mental palate cleanser.

For all that, though, Flipped is really a very clever book.  Alternating chapters reveal the same events from both Bryce’s and Juli’s perspectives.  When this is done well (as it is here), the story grows with repetition, adding depth to an otherwise linear plot.  Continue reading →