VT Christian Reading Challenge discussion

What are you starting to read at the beginning of February?

I've decided not to read the biography about John Muir as the writer is biased and unreliable.

I'm currently reading Shadows on the Klamath: A Woman of the Woods... written by someone who used to live near where I live now.

Adding, for an audiobook - A book about a historic figure or event - American Lightning:: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, by Howard Blum - this is about labor unions and the bombing of the LA Times building on October 1, 1910.

Hoping to finish off a few books that have been in progress:
David Copperfield
The Roaring Game: The Sweeping Saga of Curling
Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City
And then reading:
The Man in the Brown Suit / The Secret of Chimneys
The Lady in the Attic
To Kill a Mockingbird I cannot believe that I have never actually read this book cover to cover - and I did an English lit degree to boot!
Death on the Nile
My Side of the Mountain

I’m working on finishing RC Sprouls commentary on Acts and chipping away at Concise Theology.

I want to read something by Jane Austen, either Northanger Abbey or Sense and Sensibility.

My newest read is The Bible in 90 Days: Cover to Cover in 12 Pages a Day I really need the structure right now and the format of this is perfect. It takes me an hour to read, but if I break it up into a half hour in the morning and a half hour at night it’s manageable. Also, having a highlighter helps!

I’m also planning to read When Faith Is Forbidden: 40 Days on the Frontlines with Persecuted Christians

I also plan to read Wings of Refuge in honor of my Mama. It was among the last book recommendations she gave me.

Just received in the mail: Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit: Reflections on Creativity and Faith , by Luci Shah. I'm planning to read it this month; one of the few books I didn't have a copy of for my reading plans this month.

Also received today: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, by Eric Metaxas. Not sure which month I'll be reading this. I bought it while doing ancestry.com research about my family. I discovered one of my relatives (a woman) in the 1600's was from the Wilberfoss family, and a friend told me about William Wilberforce because she had read this book. I learned W. Wilberforce's grandfather changed the family name because "force" sounds better than "foss" if you're in politics.

I'm not a direct descendant; my relative left England almost 100 years before Wilberforce was born, but it is nice to know I share a tiny amount of DNA with this great man, a Christian who worked to end the slave trade in England decades before our USA Civil War. I read that Wilberforce was a hero of Abraham Lincoln's.

What a fun piece of family history! I read that several years ago and enjoyed it and then watched the movie with my kids. He truly was a man of purpose whom I believe God used mightily. What an honor to have him connected to your family tree!

Linda wrote: "Just received in the mail: Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit: Reflections on Creativity and Faith , by Luci Shah. I'm planning to read it this month; one of the few books I didn't ..."

I read Amazing Grace 2 or 3 years ago. Great book! So fun to discover the connection that your family has to him.

Thank you and - how exciting to know you both read the book and enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to the time when I can put this into my "currently reading" folder. Maybe next month!

Finished reading Adventures in Prayer by Catherine Marshall - I liked it a lot. It is a very short book, but I felt it was worth reading.

To replace that: Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit: Reflections on Creativity and Faith, by Luci Shaw.

Good job! I haven’t read either of those, but they look good!

With the end of February reads, what was your best, worse, the surprise read for the month?
BEST: The Reason by Lacy Sturm. It is an emotional roller coaster but well written and with interesting lessons with each part of her life.
WORSE: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. A third of this book was laughably bad theology as a young girl leaves the Methodist beliefs of her pastor/father while the world is ending around them.
SURPRISE: The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective by Richard Rohr. The title is misleading: this is a Roman Catholic view of the Enneagram. There are also a couple parts where I just had to scratch my head at what the author was thinking or getting at.

Ian, I agree so much about Parable of the Sower. Bad theology, rebellion against the church, and mega-violence. Terrible book. I liked reading Kindred by the same author.

BEST: I liked so many of them it is hard to choose only one. I'll say... Adventures in Prayer, by Catherine Marshall. It was short, but contained a lot of ideas about prayer that I hadn't considered before and haven't found in other books on the topic of prayer.

WORST: None were really terrible this month. I'll give this to American Lightning:: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, by Howard Blum... I gave it four stars. the topics didn't hold together well but it was still very interesting, about Los Angeles history I never knew about before. I didn't like that it was called "the crime of the century" because it happened in 1910 and by the end of the century most people never knew it had ever happened. It seems there were a lot of other crimes afterwards.. before the century ended, and it is hard to say which was worst.

SURPRISE: The Heart of a Samurai, by Margi Preus - 2011 Newbery Honor Book ... I liked this historical fiction based on the life of a Japanese teenager who was shipwrecked then rescued by American whalers and brought to America.