Carolyn Astfalk has a first Wednesday of the month book review linkup!
Sabbath Rest Book Talk will return in March!
There will be a few changes–good ones! First of all, I’ll be adding a few co-hosts. Both Carolyn Astfalk and Rebecca Willen will be joining me for March 5th’s SRBT. Also, we’ll be hosting the event over on my YouTube Channel as a YouTube Live Event. You can still comment and play along, of course. Lastly, I’ll be announcing the book selections and focus ahead of time, so you can read along and join the discussion a little more easily and thoughtfully. To keep on top of each month’s SRBT selections, do sign up for my monthly newsletter.
While we’re here, here are the selections for SRBT for March, focusing on JUSTICE:
Meanwhile, I’m still reading.
Her Royal Spyness Solves Her First Case by Rhys Bowen.
Oh, this was a rip-roaring fun thing to read. I initially picked it up because it’s been on my mind for a while to start this series, and Bowen’s latest (I think the latest?) was mentioned the 2016 list of Agatha Award nominees. The Agatha Awards are, “Loosely defined as ‘mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence,’ the Agatha Award salutes the books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie.” There’s a little too much racy talk in there for me to feel comfortable sharing this with my tween-readers. There are not, however, any actual sex scenes or horrifically detailed murders, etc. It was adult-funny, cleverly plotted, and peopled with fully-fleshed characters in spite of the fact that there were so many. I’ll be looking for more Royal Spyness.
In the Pleasure Groove by (Nigel, ahem) John Taylor
In the Pleasure Groove was everything you’d expect from JT. It was compelling, entertaining, slick, sexy, jet-setty… and flavored with a sad undercurrent of, well, narcissism. Still. Even in his chapters on facing down his drug and alcohol addictions. Don’t get me wrong: I am super glad the guy is working so hard health in all its dimensions, so invested in being a good father and husband. I’m concerned, though, that as long as he stays his own Higher Power, it might not last. In the end, that made the book unsatisfying. Still, if you’re recovering from or still a hardcore Duran Duran addict, I can’t not recommend In the Pleasure Groove. There’s a bit of depth for the reader in it, even if the author himself may have missed it.
Nutureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
One of the most influential books about children ever published, Nurture Shock offers a revolutionary new perspective on children that upends a library’s worth of conventional wisdom. With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, the authors demonstrate that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring–because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nothing like a parenting manual, NurtureShock gets to the core of how we grow, learn and live.
It’s amazing how actual science works and how easy it is for us to turn our backs on factual reality when it doesn’t fit what makes us feel good about ourselves, isn’t it? Long story short: NurtureShock confirms the value of common sense parenting in the face of everything from participation awards to gifted class placement tests to fat shaming and schedule-cramming. I got a lot of validation out of this book and some ideas for modifying my own parenting choices as well.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Yeah, totally embarrassing that this is the first Agatha Christie novel I’ve ever read in my whole life. To my credit, I was in And Then There Were None in freshman year of high school (Ethel the maid–first one offed, but I got to scream really loud, so that was cool).
Anyway, quick read, clean enough, tight plotting, and even I forgot about one of the big clues at the beginning so that the end was a well-timed surprise. That said, the end was a bit… unsatisfying in a moral sense, if you get what I mean. As an investigator, Poirot was warmer than Sherlock Holmes and in that sense more enjoyable from a human perspective; Holmes quirks my eyebrows at both his brilliance and his awkwardness, but Poirot brings me along for the ride.
You Carried Me: A Daughter’s Memoir by Melissa Ohden
What do you do when you find out you were not supposed to live? Would you want the find the birthmother who, according to all medical records, wanted you dead? And how do you hold onto a voice in a culture that calls you a liar and silences you at any available opportunity… because your very existence challenges the culture’s most cherished ideas? This is the story of a woman who survived an abortion in 1977 then went on to search for her birthparents. The pain, healing and triumph of her experience is one that every human should read. I give You Carried Me both five stars (would give a sixth if Amazon would let me) and a Four Kleenex Warning. I received a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I am honestly confident in giving this book the highest recommendation. Look for an upcoming in-depth review and giveaway in the next few days.
That’s it for February! While we’re here, gentle reminder: To keep on top of each month’s SRBT selections, do sign up for my monthly newsletter.
in Testing Liberty, Linden really ups the ante. It was like in Chasing we got to see the veneer of Aldonia’s oppressive deep green culture scraped painfully off, and then in Testing, we dive down deep, deeper into the hearts and lives threatened, destroyed, and changed for good or ill by the conflict between the Regimen’s culture and the inner drive for freedom and independence that some of the colonists live out for themselves… and are getting ready to share with Aldonia on a wider and far more risky basis. Usually the middle installment in a trilogy is the most difficult to keep spinning on a lively axis, but Linden turns that idea on its head and somehow makes Testing even more heart-rending and engaging than its predecessor.
And then in Fight for Liberty, it all comes so satisfyingly full-circle. Something Linden does so powerfully in this conclusion(ish) to the series is that the encourages us to look at the future of freedom (and, frankly, the present) through the lens of our history. The way she approached a renewal of personal freedom as a rebirth of the ideals and courage of the American Revolution is a tack we don’t see often taken in speculative fiction. It works. Fresh, engaging, honest and uplifting, we can see our future as fraught with danger… but also promising courage and hope and the best humanity has to offer.
A sweet, touching story of healing, forgiveness and closure, Sunflowers in a Hurricane weaves together the lives touched, smote and healed by an unlikely friendship. When single-mom Cheryl must clear out her estranged mother’s house, daughter Ruth becomes the garden help and Mass companion of elderly widower George next door. The move brings Cheryl face-to-face with her difficult past, a past she’s been evading ever since Ruth was conceived, as well as with her fears for her own and Ruth’s future. Meanwhile, George stands courageously and compassionately in the face of his own past losses resurfacing in ways he hadn’t expected. The two households mirror each other in ways that make us think more deeply about the nature of love, forgiveness, acceptance, and redemption. Faye turns a tale with an honest kindness often missing from family drama fiction these days, while keeping readers hooked on the story. This was an uplifting and enjoyable read you’ll want for your beach bag!
We all grieve in some way, because it’s a fallen world: we all need to cope with things not going according to plan, in ways both big and small. From Grief to Grace is a manual on how to navigate that pain, from simple disappointment to world-changing heartbreak. Ewing does not focus merely on death-related grief but on any kind of soul-pain that knocks us down to depths we’d much rather not visit. Instead of looking at grief as something to just “get through,” she gives us tools and the gift of her own personal experiences with grief, so that we can see our own suffering not as something to fear but as rungs on a ladder to God. How a book like this manages to be both practical and spiritually weighty is a testament to the author’s skill.
I am so excited to read this next book in 
I’d read 
This version has my favorite narrator of the three Anne books we’ve listened to so far as a family. Caruso’s voice has a timeless quality, and she gives each character a different voice but manages to avoid making any one of them a caricature. The story itself was typical, delightful Anne, again more episodic than narrative as Green Gables is. The narration in this production, however, really made it work for me best of the three Anne books we’ve heard.
Erin McCole Cupp 