My Review of "Rooted in Design"

Tara Heibel & Tassy de Give's Rooted in Design:  Sprout Home's Guide to Creative Indoor Planting is a real treat to those who want to bring life to interior design.  They explain that the key to successful indoor gardens is marrying the right plants to the right location and conditions -- all in a container that complements the style of the home. 

A chandelier "collection of smaller plants ... hung together to make an overhead garden" or a self-watering container made of a two-liter soda bottle placed inside another container are two ideas that enable plant enthusiasts to create an indoor green environment with conscious flair.  Even the authors' nod to macrame elevates the "utilitarian, yet stylish craft" to new levels when it's paired with the glossy, frilly shoots of a Hindu rope plant. 

While the authors concentrate more on design than the practicalities of indoor gardening, they do address many common issues, such as watering and lighting.  The last few pages are a plant directory that answers questions of what plants work best in low light and with varying levels of water and soil.  That selection alone makes this book a must-have for those thinking about home decorating in early spring and summer.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Cookie Love"

There are so many cookbooks out there.  So why another cookbook?

Mindy Segal's Cookie Love is a book written by a professional for everyday cooks.  Segal is Chicago's most iconic pastry chef, and Cookie Love is her first book.  It's a perfectly lovely book -- with all sorts of mouth-watering pictures -- but it's also a useful book for every kitchen, in bringing what is perhaps the greatest dessert food to every table:  Cookies.

The book is divided into chapters based on different cookie types (bar cookies, shortbread, etc) -- kind of a choose your own cookie-plate adventure.  The range and variety of cookies is truly impressive, and it's what stood out when I first flipped through the book.  The recipes are universally appealing -- they are cookies after all.  These are the kind of recipes that get me hyped up to get in the kitchen and bake.  And while it would be so easy to pick a few recipes and run off cooking, I don't actually know where to begin ... or where to stop.

That's because the recipes are the greatest part of the book.  They give you insight into how to prepare from the first steps until the final product.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Teen"

Disruptive misbehavior, constant power struggles, manipulative or aggressive behavior -- the challenges facing parents and teachers of strong-willed teens can seem overwhelming at times.  So Robert McKenzie has given us another treasure -- continuing in the tradition of his Setting Limits for Your Strong-Willed Child -- in the new Setting Limits with Your Strong Willed Teen.  This book offers the best advice for adults who care for teens, maneuvering between the twin tragedies of permissiveness and punishment.  Moving beyond the traditional methods to practices that focus the caring energies in meaningful and productive ways.

Mackenzie gives readers plenty of actual scenarios, of typical infractions, and how to handle them.  Which makes Setting Limits with Your Strong Willed Teen absolutely essential reading.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Bringing Heaven to Earth"

Having grown up in the church, I heard, sang and even prayed a lot about "going to heaven."  The idea was that I wasn't a citizen of the world, but was a pilgrim destined for more because of my faith in Jesus.  We talked about heaven, we prayed about heaven, and we sang about heaven.  So when I finally decided that I wasn't sure I wanted to remain a Christian because of all that "other-world" language, the idea of heaven and hell became the primary reason I would cite why I wasn't sure I wanted to remain a Christian.

After having read Josh Ross' and Jonathan Storment's Bringing Heaven to Earth:  You Don't Have to Wait for Eternity to Life the Good News, I know I'm not alone.

Bringing Heaven to Earth is a masterful book that explores what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in the world God created, and how Jesus restores a vision of heaven and earth reunited.

Make no doubt about it, though, it's a challenging book, because it addresses so many myths we Christians typically believe, only because we've been taught them in our culture.  When we turn to Scripture, we find those myths obliterated by the truth of Jesus himself.

So this is a book I simply can't recommend too often. 

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

Jonathan Storment

My Review of "Near Enemy"

Adam Sternbergh's Near Enemy: A Spademan Novel is an interesting book.  Set in a future New York City that has been ravaged by a terrorist attack, it's primary character is a former garbage-man turned hit-man, Spademan.  While Near Enemy is the second in a series (the first was Shovel Ready), this is the first Sternbergh novel I've read.

But it's a page-turner.

Most residents fled after the attacks and the ones who stayed escape through the limnosphere (called "the limn"), a virtual reality where people can live out their fantasies.  Everyone is safe in the limn, or so they thought.  Terrorists have discovered a way to kill people in the limn, a feat believed to be impossible.  Now it's up to Spademan to save the city and protect his make-shift family.

And what a character Spademan turns out to be.  He's talented with a box-cutter and his biting, sarcastic wit left me smiling page after page.  But he's not alone, either.  Nearly every character is so well written that Near Enemy is a real literary treat.  Particularly Persephone and Mark.

The plot, though, was the most intriguing.  Like most other dystopian stories, Near Enemy tells about a distant place in the future, but it could just as easily name our own world's fears of terrorism.  That also adds to this book's page-turner quality:  Because it trades on the anxieties we know all too well.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "This Is My Body"

Ragan Sutterfield's This is My Body:  From Obesity to Ironman, My Journey into the True Meaning of Flesh, Spirit, and Deeper Faith is a memoir of his own experience in moving toward a Christian faith in which our bodies matter.  Having wrestled with being overweight since his childhood, Sutterfield eventually finds himself in adulthood, with a failing marriage and at his heaviest weight.  He is faced with the incongruity that he is an environmentalist and farmer, doing grueling work to care for the land and creation, and yet taking poor care of his own body.  After the collapse of his first marriage, Sutterfield surrenders himself to the disciplines needed to care better for his body, specifically controlling his diet and becoming serious about exercise.  From this conversion point onward, Sutterfield begins to learn and experience an incarnational faith in which our bodies cannot be taken for granted.

In what is the most moving passage of the book, Sutterfield recounts:

What if God himself became flesh and remains enfleshed?  What if God not only has a heart that longs for our love but also a heart that pounds with blood?  What if God has skin that drips with sweat?  What if the God who offered his body as a sign of love also wants us to experience our bodies as a gift of his love?  Christians must worship a God who is all of these things because we worship a God who was made manifest to us in the human, embodied life of Jesus.  The denial of the body, of the flesh, is not a denial of the dangerous locus of sin, as so many of us have been taught.  It is a denial of the Word made flesh.  Those of us who follow Jesus Christ -- God in human skin and muscle and mind -- cannot deny the goodness of the body.  To do so is to reject the reality in which Christ now lives as the risen and ascended Lord. 

This Is My Body is an amazing book about the implications of the Christian incarnational faith for our daily lives.  Though it alternates between Sutterfield's larger conversion story with ones that focus on the particular story of preparing for the Ironman race, the book as a whole is a theological reminder that there's joy in living thoughtfully and faithfully by caring for our bodies as disciples of Jesus.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Our One Great Act of Fidelity"

The heart of the Christian faith is that God has come to us, with us, as one of us.  The Good New is nothing but this:  God-with-us.  And Our One Great Act of Fidelity:  Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist is a reminder of that simple truth.  The Christian Gospel is the story of God taking flesh.  In Scripture, "the body of Christ" takes on three meanings:  The historical body of Jesus, the Church and the bread of the Eucharist.  "From these we create church", Rohlheiser reminds us.

"Christianity is without doubt the earthiest of all religions" (page 25).  The Eucharist is a family meal that brings together the faith in all its messiness.  "There is no adequate explanation of the Eucharist for the same reason that, in the end, there is no adequate explanation for love, for embrace, and for the reception of life and spirit through touch" (page 29).  The touch heals.  Touch communicates.  And in the Eucharist, Jesus touches us in a great act of fidelity.

Rohlheiser rightly highlights all the ways we're estranged in our culture.  And he produces a biblical argument that the Eucharist is the meal that brings wholeness and healing.  It is the medicine of our souls and bodies.

Because the Eucharist is the gift of God's faithfulness to all creation in Jesus Christ.

The book ends with three fresh translation of Augustine's sermons on the Eucharist.  Those translations alone are worth the book.

Our One Great Act of Fidelity is an amazing book.  Don't miss it.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.