My Review of "Possible"

Stephen Bauman's Possible:  A Blueprint for Changing How We Change the World describes ordinary people that yearn for change and justice in a world filled with suffering and claims that it is possible to change the world.  Possible is filled with extensive first-hand experience working in countries crushed by poverty, those vivid stories that tell the realities, struggles, joys, and beliefs of people suffering all over the world.  These stories make Possible interesting, convicting, and creditable.

And Bauman's stories are littered with Scripture, theologians, and cultural references -- all of which make his vision for changing how we change the world that much more engaging.

This is the book Christians need to challenge that long-standing lie that ordinary people cannot bring change, that only "important" and "powerful" people can bring change.

And in the end he offers a convincing and compelling case for a social justice that is at the heart of God's love for the world.

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 "The Very Good Gospel"

Lisa Sharon Harper's The Very Good Gospel:  How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right blends deep theological reflection -- on such important topics as faith, church, and redemption -- with real life moral reflection.  What she gives us, in the process, is an important book for the Church that seeks to embody the Gospel of Jesus Christ:  Lessons on structural and political (in)justice, peacemaking , and living faithfully.

The vision Harper shares here is a vision of the Shalom of God -- wholeness for a broken world.

Shalom, Harper rightly insists, is the Gospel because it is the message from the earliest words of Genesis.  God has always desired and declared a Kingdom in which "enough" and "healing" and "dignity" are the words spoken over humanity and all creation.  Shalom is the word spoken by Jesus, and is the word spoken by Christians who follow Jesus.  What Harper gives us here is a way of taking up that message -- that wholeness -- and speaking it in and to a broken world.

This is not a book to be missed!

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

The Love Code

Alexander Loyd's The Love Code: The Secret Principle to Achieving Success in Life, Love, and Happiness is a book is had hoped to enjoy.  Sadly, it's proven to be another American-styled self-help book that promises far more than it delivers.

Much of what author Alexander Loyd says sounds good -- from the statistic that 97% of self-help books fail due to the fact that every problem stems from the fear that underlies it.  Even his definition of success rings true -- "True happiness and success mean living in love internally and externally in the present moment, regardless of your current circumstance".  But he hedges his bets in the definition of love and points to God/other, leaving it to the reader to fill in their personal preference.  That is a false choice that even the gospels won't allow.

In the end, much of the book is  rather quirky.

The Love Code is far more hype than it is substance.

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 "Lessons in Classical Painting"

Juliette Aristides' Lessons in Classical Painting:  Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier covers the essentials in classical painting -- subjects like understanding color and texture, to proportion, depth, light and shadow.  The text is insightful and filled with tips, supplemented by beautiful illustrated examples from artists and old masters.

This is not an immediately hands-on book where you can dive in and draw straightaway.  It focuses on the understanding of different techniques.   After which, each chapter ends with a guided practical lesson on learning points.

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 "God Bless America"

God Bless America is a beautiful adult coloring book.  The pages are printed on high quality heavy paper, perforated, and printed on only one side of the page.  Most of the pages have a quote by a famous American (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong, Lady Bird Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, etc.) woven into the coloring picture.  The 37 pictures here are all beautifully drawn (by nine different artists) even though not all are drawn in the same style.  Other pictures, while without a quote, contain a paragraph about the image for that page.  There's something here for everyone.

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 "Together at the Table"

Hillary Manton Lodge's Together at the Table: A Novel of Lost Loves and Second Helpings is a compelling and beautiful story of Juliette D'Alisa, a young Seattle woman who's working hard to get her fledgling restaurant -- with whom she is co-owner with Nico, her brother -- off the ground.  When, in a series of tragedies, she comes face-to-face with death -- the death of her relationship with her long-term boyfriend, and the real death of her mother.

Months later, she's dating her brother's sous chef, Adrian, who is wild about Juliette, and trying to again find her footing when her ex, Neil shows up in Seattle.  Remembering memories she thought she was over, Juliette struggles to separate the life that was with the life she has now.  It doesn't help that Neil keeps showing up in her world or that up until now Juliette never fully admitted what her heart knows; she's not over the not-so-distant past.

Together at the Table is a gentle love story that blends lots of fun recipes into the narrative.  It's a great novel for some light summer reading fare.

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 "Vinegar Girl"

Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl attempts to re-tell the story of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew for a modern audience.  So many, of course, think Shakespeare's story is irredemably sexist (it isn't -- Shakespeare is always more nuanced than modern ears can appreciate), but Tyler's version is faithful to the Bard's own nuanced story in fresh ways.

In Tyler's version, a sharp-tongued preschool assistant, Kate Battista, whose scientist father is convinced his dead-end research will soon break through -- if only he can hang onto his lab assistant, Pyotr Shcherbakov, whose O-1 visa is about to expire.  That's right, Dr. Battista wants Kate to marry Pytor to keep him in the country:  After all, he points out, she doesn't exactly have men flocking after her like her airhead sister Bunny, and she's still in high school.  Kate is hurt by her father's thoughtless cruelty, and already these characters have more depth than Shakespeare allows his broadly drawn protagonists.  The real drama, though, is between Kate and her widowed father, who depends on her without really valuing her; even self-absorbed Bunny turns out to have more appreciation for her sister than the selfish Dr. Battista.  The rest is a masterful re-telling that avoids all the counter-tale traps one might expect.

Vinegar Girl is a wonderful summer read.

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