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Eragon

by Christopher Paolini, 2003

How does a book this bad get to be a best seller? “An authentic work of great talent.” – The New York Times Book Review. Don’t ever believe any review by them! (Or, read the entire review…)

Authentic? Hardly – stolen from Lord of the Rings, but he never gives JRR Tolkien any credit – “I created Eragon…” is the first sentence in his Acknowledgements.

Eragon – Aragorn

Brom – Gandalf

Elves – Elves

Dwarves – Dwarves

Great city underground, hidden door – great city underground, hidden door

Arya – Arwin

Urgals – Orks

He even has a special fighting ork – Kull

Galbatorix – Sauron

Magic and dragons – probably stole that from Henry Potter. Or maybe the dragon is the only original thing in the whole book (NOT – see Amazon review).

He wrote this when he was 15 – graduated H.S. after being home-schooled all his life. His parents published it. His Mom arranged a book tour. (He lives in Paradise Valley, Montana.)

All would be acceptable if it was well-written, but it’s written so poorly (like a 15 year-old!)

Poor character development, the main character is so unlikable, poor dialogue, poor description. Why did I keep reading? I can’t really say. He’s written 4 books and Danette had just bought the 4th book. I can’t wait to read something good now. I’m sorry, Danette and Dee – this was a terrible book!

Just read Amazon reviews – they all agree with me – “Star Wars/LOTR rip-off – and very poorly written, never should have been published!”

The Testament

by John Grisham, 1999

Recommended by the church newsletter library writer, Wayne Clegern. Very interesting characters – page-turner. A billionaire leaves his entire estate, 11 billion dollars, to an illegitimate daughter, Rachel Lane, who is a missionary in the Pantanal of Brazil. Nate O’Riley, an alcoholic lawyer, is sent to find her. No one knows exactly where she is, even World Tribes, who she works for. He miraculously finds her, she doesn’t want the money. Nate gets Dengue Fever and almost died. She visits him in the hospital in Corumba, the nearest town, and miraculously cures him. She disappears. He looks all over Corumba for her and can’t find her. He goes back to the States and battles with the other 6 children, who thought their father would leave them all his money, who had it spent, who are despicable, with despicable lawyers. What finally happens is Nate, who has completely lost his demons and is a new man, exposes the 6 heirs in a deposition for what they are, along with Snead, the billionaire’s servant, who agreed to lie for 5 million dollars.

They finally settle out of court for 50 million each. Nate goes back to the Pantanal to beg Rachel to sign the new agreement. If she won’t, then the 6 nasty heirs get everything. Nate goes back to the tiny village in the Pantanal only to discover Rachel died of malaria. But she left a handwritten will giving everything to a trust to help the causes of World Tribes, with Nate as executor.

The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, 2011, First novel

What a fantastic book! I could not put it down! Had to keep reading to see what was going to happen to Victoria! She had a horrendous childhood – in and out of foster homes and then group homes, with only one good experience in her entire life, but that was enough to save her. She learned the Language of Flowers from Elizabeth, the only foster mother who ever really loved her and wanted to keep her. She uses that knowledge to get a job in a flower shop, where she runs into Grant, the son of Elizabeth’ sister, Catherine. A love story between Grant and Elizabeth develops and eventually, after many, many months, Elizabeth gets pregnant. She leaves Grant and disappears where no one can find her and when she has the baby, she tries for a month to take care of her but she just can’t do it, so she spirits her away to Grant and leaves her in Grant’s house with Grant and disappears again. She misses them (Grant, Elizabeth, the baby) so much and finally she is able to write the letter to Elizabeth – apologizing and admitting to setting the fire that destroyed the vineyard that caused her to be taken away from Elizabeth when she was 10, and finding that Elizabeth still loved her and forgave her – and wanted her to “come home.” When she gets enough nerve to visit, she finds Elizabeth with her baby girl in the backyard blowing bubbles. She runs to Grant’s flower farm (he lives next door) and he also has forgiven her, cooked her a delicious meal and asked her to stay. She decides to overcome her past and learn to love and accept love from Grant, Elizabeth, and her daughter, Hazel. Grant named Hazel because Hazel means “reconciliation” and he hoped Hazel would reconcile Victoria to him.

Throughout the book the language of flowers is used to describe emotions. Victoria learned quickly from Elizabeth and helped her in the vineyard. She was smart and she learned to trust and love Elizabeth but Elizabeth’s sister, Catherine (Grant’s mother) would not reconcile with Elizabeth over past hurts caused by their own mother and Catherine is the reason (in Victoria’s mind) why Elizabeth didn’t adopt Victoria. Grant was a young boy and Victoria sees him again at the flower marked in SF about 8 years later and he communicates with her with flowers. He gives her orange tiger Lily – queen – “it suits you.” She rejects it. She gives rhododendron – Beware – he throws it away. He gives her mistletoe – I surmount all obstacles. She gives snapdragons – Presumption. He gives her a drawing of a white poplar – she has to go to a library and look at all the old Victorian flower books to discover its meaning – Time.

Attachment disorder mentioned in “Acknowledgments” at the end of the book – so Victoria must have had attachment disorder. When she was homeless in SF she would keep her eye on busy restaurants and as soon as someone would get up, she’d run in and sit down and finish their food! She lived in a park and planted her own garden in that park.

The most suspenseful part was when she had her baby and she was alone with her and although she loved her, she didn’t know how to handle her – constant nursing – she decided to buy formula, and left her alone and fled to her park and laid down and ended up sleeping for 7 hours! When she got back to her apt., the baby was okay but that is when she decided to bring her to Grant and abandon her.

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

by Ernest Hemingway, 1936

Short story in Wayne’s college literature book – very, very good! An American couple, Francis Macomber, and his wife, Margot/Margaret, are on safari in Africa. Their white hunter, Wilson, a “red-faced” man, takes them out to shoot a lion, who has been roaring all night near the camp, Macomber chickens out and botches the shoot and only wounds the lion so they have to go find him (the lion) in the grass. The lion charges and rather than shooting him, Macomber runs wildly in panic. His wife sees him do this. He is deeply ashamed. She is a beautiful woman and he is very rich. She has no respect for him. That night she sleeps with Wilson. The next day, they go buffalo hunting. Macomber is very angry at his wife and Wilson. He blasts 3 buffalo and during that shoot, he loses his cowardice, finds his happy life, and babbles about it. One of the buffalo is only wounded, like the lion, and they have to find it in the grass and kill it. It charges. Macomber stays his ground and while he is shooting the charging buffalo, right before he can take a final shot, his wife shoots from the car and hits Macomber in the base of his skull, dead. It will appear as an accident but she shot him because she realized he had lost his fear and would be able to rid himself of her now and she was too old to find another.

So, Francis Macomber had a short happy life of no fear finally. Lesson to all! DO NOT FEAR! Really, really interesting read. Did not like the shooting of these beautiful animals. Hemingway had a lot of respect for them – describes in detail the lion’s thoughts. The Great White Hunter and Margot, especially Margot, are despicable characters.

Blood Lure

by Nevada Barr, 2001

Anna Pigeon, District Ranger, is working in Glacier National Park with Joan Rand, a National Park Service bear expert, and Rory, a young man interested in bears. They are attacked at night in their camp by a bear, which they don’t see, but which destroys their tents. Rory runs away. Anna and Joan pack out to another camp where a murdered woman is discovered. Turns out it’s Rory’s step-mom, Carolyn Van Slyke. Carolyn was a violent woman who abused Rory’s dad, Les, and put him in the hospital several times. Anna investigates the murder, suspects are Rory, Les, and a man named Bill McCaskill. It turns out a beautiful, huge Alaskan grizzly bear named Balthazar, was the one who killed Carolyn, with a swipe to the head. She was wearing Bill McCaskill’s army jacket, who was trying to capture Balthazar and sell him for trophy hunting in Canada. A young boy, 15 years old, Geoffrey Micou, had raised Balthazar and trained him for a Florida adventure park. The park had closed and Geoffrey was taking Balthazar to learn how to live in the wild. Good mystery – page-turner.

Radical

by David Platt, 2010

The American Church has lost its way in the American Dream. “We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”

Christian news publication, 2 headlines side-by-side: “First Baptist Church Celebrates New $23 Million Building.” On the right the article said, “Baptists have raised $5,000 to send to refugees in Western Sudan.”

“Every year in the United States, we spend more than $10 billion on church buildings. In America alone, the amount of real estate owned by institutional churches is worth over $230 billion…My heart aches even as I write this, because the reality is that I preach every Sunday in one of these giant buildings. How do we even begin to reverse the trends regarding where we spend our resources?”

“God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more?”

“Set a cap on our lifestyles…”This is enough and I am giving away everything I have or earn above this line.”

Radical Experiment – one year:

  1. Pray for the entire world; (www.operationworld.org)
  2. Read through the entire Word
  3. Sacrifice, not give, but sacrifice your money for a specific purpose
  4. “GO” Spend your time in another context. “A true brother comes to be with you in your time of need.” “God sent Himself, the Son.”
  5. Commit your life to a multiplying community. www.radicalthebook.com – stories, links, helps that can make your one-year experiment a thrilling success. Dr. David Platt is lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills, a 4000 member congregation in Birmingham, Alabama…

Pages 34-36, he describes Jesus sweating out blood in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Picture Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he kneels before his Father, drops of sweat and blood fall together from his head. Why is he in such agony and pain? The answer is not because he is afraid of crucifixion. He is not trembling because of what the Roman soldiers are about to do to him.

“Since that day countless men and women in the history of Christianity have died for their faith. Some of them were not just hung on crosses; they were burned there. Many of them went to their crosses singing…

“Did these men and women in Christian history have more courage than Christ himself? Why was he trembling in that garden, weeping and full of anguish? We can rest assured that he was not a coward about to face Roman soldiers. Instead he was a Savior about to endure divine wrath.

“Listen to his words: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” The “cup” is not a reference to a wooden cross; it is a reference to divine judgment. It is the cup of God’s wrath.

“This is what Jesus is recoiling from in the garden. All God’s holy wrath and hatred toward sin and sinners, stored up since the beginning of the world, is about to be poured out on him, and he is sweating blood at the thought of it.

“What happened at the Cross was not primarily about nails being thrust into Jesus’ hands and feet but about the wrath due your sin and my sin being thrust upon his soul. In that holy moment, all the righteous wrath and justice of God due us came rushing down like a torrent on Christ himself. Some say, “God looked down and could not bear to see the suffering that the soldiers were inflicting on Jesus, so he turned away.” But this is not true. God turned away because he could not bear to see your sin and my sin on his Son.

“One preacher described it as if you and I were standing a short hundred yards away from a dam of water then thousand miles high and then thousand miles wide. All of a sudden that dam was breached, and a torrential flood of water came crashing toward us. Right before it reached our feet, the ground in front of us opened up and swallowed it all. At the Cross, Christ drank the full cup of the wrath of God, and when he had downed the last drop, he turned the cup over and cried out, “It is finished.”

“This is the gospel. The just and loving Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent his Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin on the cross and to show his power over sin in the Resurrection so that all who trust in him will be reconciled to God forever.”

Wayne added to this the thought that we humans have never experienced the complete absence of the love of God on this earth. Even non-believers experience his light and love. Jesus experienced, not only the full outpouring of God’s wrath on our sin, but the full absence of God – the darkness and evil that Jesus experienced was complete.

Here is what I wrote in 2011: “Jesus is our Great High Priest – Hebrews 4:14-5:10. He took upon Himself all our sins from the beginning to the end of time and the anguish of soul He felt in the garden was the knowledge of being separated completely from God, because of our sin! What would this world be like without God completely – we do not want to imagine it. This is what caused Jesus’ anguish in the garden – He entered Hell for us – total separation from God! He was not fearing the suffering on the cross – many humans have experienced that – He was fearing something we cannot imagine – something so terrible–complete separation from the Love of God.”

Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese, 2009

Amazingly original story! Twin boys, Marion and Shiva, born at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to a nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, who died in childbirth. Their father, a gifted surgeon, Thomas Stone, abandons them at their birth. The twins are raised by Hema and Ghosh, 2 doctors at Missing. Ghosh is the most wonderful, loving man in the world and he adores Hema, an attractive Indian gynecologist. She falls in love with him as he helps her care for the twins. When he says he’s going back to live in his quarters, she cries, “No.” She agrees to marry him for one year. They can renew each year. The early years are beautiful and happy. Once the twins become teens, bad stuff starts to happen. Genet, Marion’s first and only love, is deflowered by Shiva. Her mother decides to have her circumcised. Marion stays with her as she nearly died. Then Genet’s mother hangs herself. Genet is the bane of Marion all his life. She takes part in an Eritrean uprising and Marion is forced to leave Ethiopia. He goes to America and works through his internship/residency at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, a poor person’s hospital in NYC. There he is helping to save the life of a young black man during surgery and his father, unknown to him, watches. He finds out he was Dr. Thomas Stone. He goes to him in Boston and gets into his apt. and takes Dr. Stone’s finger in a jar and leaves his mother’s bookmark. Thomas Stone comes to him in NYC and tells him his life story. Marion then understands him and is no longer angry at him.

Meanwhile Shiva has become a gifted surgeon in Ethiopia for vaginal fistula, a terrible condition of child brides who had problems in childbirth that damaged them horribly. He never went to medical school – it was his photographic memory and Hema’s tutelage.

Genet comes to visit Marion in NYC and to apologize. Marion has sex with her and winds up sick to death. Hema and Shiva come to him (Ghosh has died) and Shiva gives him part of his liver. Thomas Stone operates. They are successful but Shiva ends up with bleeding in the brain about 3 weeks later and dies. Marion returns to Ethiopia and works at Missing Hospital. He has forgiven his father and brother and is a gifted trauma surgeon.

page 396: “In America, my initial impression was that death or the possibility of it always seemed to come as a surprise, as if we took it for granted that we were immortal, and that death was just an option.”

Favorite character: Ghosh – what a great guy, best father and husband and doctor in the world, humble and loving.

Very, very interesting story! Loved it!

Mockingjay

by Suzanne Collins, 2010 (final book of the Hunger Games)

Katniss is rescued out of the Hunger Games at the capital before she is killed (end of Book 2) and taken to District 13, the District everyone thought was destroyed 75 years ago by the Capitol. But really they went underground and have been planning a rebellion ever since.

Katniss becomes the Mockingjay – the spokesperson of the rebellion, to rally the troops and conquer the Capitol. She is successful. Gale saved her Mom and little sister out of District 12 before the Capitol destroyed it, and they live with her in District 13, underground. Gale and Katniss become friends again. But Peeta, who was taken captive by the Capitol, is being tortured and brainwashed (hi-jacked) by President Snow. Gale and others finally rescue him and bring him to District 13. The first time he sees Katniss he tries to strangle her. They have to keep him handcuffed.

President Coin is the leader of District 13 and leader of rebellion – a matter-of-fact woman who Katniss is not sure of.

In the end, Katniss, Gale, Peeta and others are sent to the Capitol to help take it. Katniss leads her little band eventually to the front of President Snow’s mansion where a group of children are waiting to take refuge. A hovercraft drops silver parachutes to them which should have been food and gifts but end up being bombs. Some of them explode, killing and wounding the children. Prim, Katniss’s beloved sister, who is a doctor/nurse-in-training, runs to help the wounded and the rest of the parachutes explode killing her and badly injuring Katniss. The rebellion conquers the capital, imprisons Pres. Snow in the mansion rose garden. Pres. Coin takes over. Katniss gets to assassinate Pres. Snow and when she takes aim with her bow and arrow, she raises it to the balcony and kills Pres. Coin instead. Pres. Snow dies right after that. Katniss had just been part of a vote of the victors arranged by Pres. Coin to have another Hunger Games using Capitol children this time. She had voted yes. Peeta voted no. Pres. Coin had shown her true colors by coming up with it.

Katniss is taken back to District 12. She goes for months in her house just sitting in her kitchen. Greasy Sae feeds her. After a few months, she sees Peeta outside planting primroses in honor of Prim. Then, Prim’s cat Buttercup comes limping home from District 13 and Katniss finally breaks down and cries and grieves her beloved sister’s death. Gale’s bombs that he designed with Beetee were the silver parachutes. Gale has gone to work in District 2. Peeta is in District 12. Katniss and Peeta end up together, healing together.

Last paragraph: “Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I needed to survive was not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.

So after, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?”

I tell him, “Real.”

Epilogue: Peeta and Katniss watch their 2 children, a little boy and girl, playing in the meadow that has grown over the graveyard.

Last paragraphs: “My children, who don’t know they play on a graveyard.

Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that makes them braver. But one day I’ll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won’t ever really go away.

I’ll tell them how I survive it. I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.

But there are much worse games to play.

The End.”

Angle of Repose

by Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize winner 1971

A man, Lyman Ward, is stuck in a wheelchair and moves to his Grandma’s cottage in the California mountains. He decides to write a book about her life. What an interesting life. She is part of “gentility” in northeastern part of America in late 1800’s but marries a mining engineer and moves out west. First, New Almaden in California, then Leadville, Co, then Mexico briefly (loved that part), then to a canyon in Boise, ID. The main characters, Susan and Oliver Ward, are written about by Lyman their grandson. He tries to figure out their lives – how their marriage stayed together despite (never know for sure) supposed unfaithfulness of Susan with Frank Sargent, who loved her at first sight and never got over her. They (Oliver and Susan) lose a daughter by drowning and Frank commits suicide. This is towards the end of the book. Lyman, the grandson, is living in their cottage in Grass Valley and going through Susan’s letters and historical papers trying to write a novel. He says they lived together 50 years after the death of their youngest child and they seemed content. But he, whose wife left him for a surgeon when he became an invalid, realizes his grandfather never forgave his grandmother – he let her live with him but never forgave her.

Last sentence, Lyman has awakened from a terrible dream and lies awake in the darkness listening to a diesel go up the mountain: “In this not-quite-quiet darkness, while the diesel breaks its heart more and more faintly on the mountain grade, I lie wondering if I am man enough to be a bigger man than my grandfather.”

Beautifully written. Loved the stories of Leadville and Mexico in particular.

Oliver Ward (his grandpa) was a tremendously kind, loving, patient, and generous man. He never got a break, though, and Susan was disappointed in him over and over and lost faith in him.

Lyman’s wife, Ellen, left him for the surgeon who removed Lyman’s leg. The surgeon up and left Ellen, it turns out, we learn from Lyman’s son, and Ellen now wants to come back to Lyman. Will he be bigger than his grandfather, and forgive her and take her back?

The books’ letters from Susan to her friend, Augusta, are part of the book and I guess were exact copies of letters from Mary Hallock Foote, a real person. He used her life as the basis of the novel but changed and added to it.

Angle of Repose – the angle at which dirt and pebbles stop rolling and are at rest. He felt his grandmother reached the angle of repose.

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins, 2009

Book 2 in the Hunger Games Trilogy

Katniss and Peeta go on their Victory Tour and see that some of the Districts are starting to revolt against the Capitol. Supposedly started by Katniss and the berries of the first book, the Hunger Games. (I can’t remember the berries – but they are mentioned over and over in this book.)

President Snow blames it all on Katniss. He announces the Quarter Quell, a 25 year version of the Hunger Games, but this time, only former victors will take part. So, Katniss and Peeta go back to the arena. An ocean, jungle arena, arranged like a clock, with different evils in each hour of the clock. They form an alliance with former victors and work as a team. In the end, Katniss has a choice of shooting a teammate or shooting the force field. She remembers Haymitch’s last words to her – Remember who your enemy is – and shoots the force field which blows up the entire arena. She is captured by a hovercraft and is being nursed back to health when she discovers the hovercraft is flown by Plutarch – head Gamesmaker – and Haymitch. They are part of the Revolution. She learns that Peeta is taken captive by the Capitol, though, and is angry about that. Gale is on board the hovercraft and tells her, her home District 12, is no more.

Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

by Sara Miles, 2007

“The spiritual memoir of a twenty-first century Christian”

Written by Sara Miles, a lesbian raised by atheists who wanders into St. Gregory’s Episcopalian Church (in S.F.) one day and is served communion and cries and cries and can’t stop thinking about Jesus. She becomes a believer and eventually opens up a food pantry for the poor in Potrero Hill area of S.F. at St. Gregory’s. When a large donation comes in, she opens up several more throughout the city.

She sees the Kingdom of God and Christ in food and feeding people.

Heaven is for Real

by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent, 2010

True story about 4 year-old Colton Burpo from Imperial, Nebraska, who almost died of a ruptured appendix but gets a trip to heaven and relates what he heard and saw over the course of 6 years to his mom and dad, Sonja and Todd Burpo. Todd is a pastor, overhead garage door salesman, and a volunteer fireman, who had a rough year – August 2002 – shatters leg; Oct 2002 kidney stones; November 2002 – breast cancer (yes!). Then in Feb 27, 2003 – March 17, 2003, Colton’s ordeal starts and gets worse while on a trip to Colorado and after a visit to the Butterfly Pavilion. Vomiting every 1/2 hour. From March 5, 2003 – March 19, 2003, they are in the hospital in North Platte, Nebraska (after checking him out of the hospital in Imperial, Nebraska where they dismissed the suggestion of appendicitis!)

He has a miraculous recovery the day after the doctor tells them he’s done all he can do (two surgeries and cleaning out abscesses). Now it’s time to transfer him to Children’s Hospital. A blizzard closes all the roads but the next morning Colton is fine and is playing like normal.

Over the course of the next 6 years he tells about meeting Jesus in Heaven – sat on His lap. He heard Colton’s daddy’s prayer and answered it. Colton saw from heaven that Todd was in a little room by himself praying (raging) to God. He also knew Sonja was in another place in the hospital talking on her cellphone and praying.

Some of the things Colton said after being in Heaven:

-Did that man have Jesus? He can’t get into heaven if he didn’t have Jesus in his heart.

-That’s where the angels sing to me.

-John the Baptist is really nice.

-Jesus has a horse.

-“That’s where all the rainbow colors are.”

-“Jesus has red markers” (the wounds on his hands and feet)

-“And he has brown hair and he has hair on his face..And his eyes…Oh, Dad, his eyes are so pretty.”

-“His clothes were white, but it was purple from here to here. Jesus was the only one in heaven who had purple on, Dad…” “And he had this gold thing on his head.”

-There were lots of kids.

-Everybody’s got wings (except for Jesus).

-All the people have a light above their head.

“Well, the reason I was yelling was that Jesus came to get me. He said I had to go back because He was answering your prayer. That’s how come I was yelling for you.”

Colton met his grandpa (“pop”) who died in July 1976, in heaven: “Pop has really big wings!”

They showed Colton pictures of Jesus but none of them were right until one painted by Akiane Kramarik, an 8 year old who had visions of heaven since she was 4 – and whose mother was atheist.

Colton also met a sister who Sonja miscarried before Colton was born when she was only 2 months pregnant. “Mommy, I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?…She’s okay, God adopted her.”

“[God’s throne] It was big, Dad…really, really big, because God is the biggest one there is. And he really, really loves us, Dad. You can’t believe how much he loves us!”

“And do you know that Jesus sits right next to God?”

(the right side-who sits on the other side: “That’s where the angel Gabriel is. He’s really nice.”)

‘I sat by God the Holy Spirit…he’s kind of blue.”

“God and Jesus light up heaven. It never gets dark. It’s always bright.”

‘He saw the gates of heaven, he said: “They were made of gold and there were pearls on them.” The heavenly city itself was made of something shiny, “like gold or silver.” The flowers and trees in heaven were “beautiful,” and there were animals of every kind!”

Other interesting things – Satan is not dead so the angels have swords – they are doing battle against Satan. Also, Colton’s Dad is too – He has a sword.

Also, the Holy Spirit shoots down power to Todd when he is praying – especially about his preaching, during his preaching.

Shanghai Girls

by Lisa See, 2009

Set in Shanghai and then Los Angeles from 1937 to 1957, two sisters, Pearl and May, grow up in Shanghai, loving life – rich, beautiful, “beautiful girls,” – painted on calendars. Then their Dad (Baba) gets in trouble with gang due to his gambling and he has to sell his daughters to be wives. Pearl and May try to escape the arranged marriages to Sam and Vern, sons of Old Man Louie, who lives in Los Angeles. Instead of having to Old Man Louie and his sons, they end up having to flee Shanghai with their mother in terror because of Japanese attacks. The mom and Pearl get raped by Japanese soldiers – the mom until death. Pearl almost died but May wheel barrows her to a hospital. The end up going to their husbands in Los Angeles, via San Francisco and Angel Island. The immigration officials interrogate them for months at Angel Island. Meanwhile May has a baby – she got pregnant while in Shanghai – but not by Vern, the 14 yr. old husband she was bought for, that she only spent one night with, and when that night was over, they checked the sheets for blood and there was none, so everyone knows they didn’t do the “husband-wife thing.” The sisters work out an elaborate plan that they will hide the fact that May is pregnant and wear peasant clothes (all this on Angel Island) and keep their stories incongruent – and pass off Pearl as the pregnant one (She and Sam did have sex their one night) and when the baby is born, they will develop matching stories so the immigrant officials will let them go to their new families in L.A. It works – May has her baby, a girl, in the showers in Angel Island – everyone thinks it’s Pearl’s baby. They name her Joy and Pearl and Sam are believed to be her parents. They move to L.A. and discover Old Man Louie and his sons are all fake- not wealthy, not real sons (paper sons) and nothing is as they thought. Also, there is a lot of prejudice against Chinese.

They do have businesses in China City that they help run and they scrape by and actually become a close-knit family over the years – they all live together in an apt. May becomes a beautiful extra in Hollywood movies. Sam and Pearl grow to love one another deeply – they are the only 2 who live honestly and tell all about their pasts. It brings them very close. Pearl gets pregnant and it’s a boy but he dies – still born. Vern, May’s husband, is actually the only true son of Old Man Louie and Yen-Yen. And Vern is mentally disabled and gets worse and worse eventually needing diapers and hands-on care.

The book ends strangely. Joy is all grown up and goes to Univ of Chicago-becomes interested in a boy named Joe – a commie – and comes home to LA for the summer full of ideas. Her Mom (Pearl) tells her to be careful but the family ends up with FBI agents hounding them and asking lots of questions – it was the 50’s when anti-communism was rampant. The FBI agents hound Sam so much he ends up hanging himself. Breaks Joy’s heart and Pearl’s. May admits to Pearl that she turned in Sam as a “paper son” in hopes they would admit it and get their citizenship. May and Pearl have a terrible argument where all their hurts pour out. Joy listens and discovers that May is her mother and Z.G., the painter in China who used to paint Pearl and May, and whom Pearl loved – is her father.

Joy runs away–they think to China to try to find him. Pearl is going to try to get to China to find Joy. May is going to stay in America, take care of Vern, and try to arrange things from there. The end. That’s it. We never know what happens.

Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

by Stephanie Barron, 2002

Being the sixth Jane Austen mystery. Not well-written! Contradictions – started out with tea and then “finished my chocolate.” Hard to follow. Story about Jane and her brother, Frank, a Navy captain, and the Navy and someone (a Navy captain, Thomas Seagrave) being wrongly accused of murder. A French gentleman posing as a surgeon on the French ship on which the captain is murdered is one of the prisoners of Wool House. Jane nurses him and finds out details that lead her and her brother, Frank, to eventually discover the real murderer, Lady Templeton, Tom Seagrave’s wife’s aunt. Tom Seagrave never developed well as a character. Too many loose ends throughout. Not a good book like some of hers I read.

Started Early, Took My Dog

by Kate Atkinson, 2011

Interesting novel, set in England, about a retired police superintendent, Tracy Waterhouse, who purchases a little girl, Courtney, from a drug-crazed, abusive prostitute, Kelly Cross, at a bus stop. At the same time, Jackson Brodie, a private investigator, saves a little dog beaten by a thug. Their lives intertwine while Jackson Brodie is trying to find the biological parents of a New Zealand woman. Ends up her mother was the murdered prostitute in 1975.

An Altar in the World

by Barbara Brown Taylor, 2009

Her philosophy on how to find God in the everyday world. I think Danette recommended this book.

  1. The Practice of Waking up to God – Vision: Long walk on the Big Island along the shore to a calm tidal pool. Jacob’s ladder dream – Surely the Lord is in this place – made his stone pillow into an altar. No lines between the church and the world. “Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish – separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.” “Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”
  2. The Practice of Paying Attention – Reverence: watching a meteor shower as a little girl on their family’s deck with her dad. “The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes.” Moses saw the burning bush out of the corner of his eye. He had to turn aside from what he was doing to go and investigate it. “Reverence for creation comes fairly easily for most people. Reverence for other people presents more of a challenge…I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings.” “One remedy for my condition is to pay attention to them when I can, even when they are in my way. Just for a moment, I look for the human being instead of the obstacle.” “I have a variation of this practice that I do on the subway, at least if I have a pair of sunglasses with me. From behind the veils of my dark lenses, I study the particular human beings sitting around me..Every one of them is dealing with something, the same way I am..Sometimes I say the Lord’s Prayer under my breath while I look from one of them to the next, but this is optional. Paying attention to them has already shifted my equilibrium. For all I know, one of them is practicing reverence on me.” “..The practice of paying attention is as simple as looking twice at people and things you might just as easily ignore. To see takes time, like having a friend takes time…” “…Like all other practices in this book, paying attention requires no equipment, no special clothes, no greens fees or personal trainers…All you need is a body on this earth, willing to notice where it is, trusting that even something as small as a hazelnut can become an altar in this world.”
  3. The Practice of Wearing Skin – Incarnation. A picture in a church of Jesus stepping out of the tomb, naked except for a loincloth. “…He came back wearing skin. He did not leave his body behind.” “…God speaks the language of the flesh…Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper?” “…When I hear people talk about what is wrong with organized religion, or why their mainline churches are failing, I hear about bad music, inept clergy, mean congregations, and preoccupation with institutional maintenance. I almost never hear about the intellectualization of faith, which strikes me as a far greater danger than anything else on the list…”
  4. The Practice of Walking on the Earth – Groundedness. “Not everyone is able to walk, but most people can…To detach the walking from the destination is in fact one of the best ways to recognize the altars you are passing right by all the time…” “…labyrinth is a kind of maze. Laid out in a perfect circle with a curling path inside, it rarely comes with walls…” “Once when a friend of mine wanted me to show him how to ride a horse, he kept asking me questions before he would get on. He wanted me to tell him all about the saddle, the bridle, the reins…the location of the “eject” button on the saddle. “Get on,” I said..”What?” my friend said…”Just get on,” I said…”This is fantastic,” he said. “…Things like that can happen when you give your mind a time-out so your body can embark on the journey.” “…solviture ambulando, wrote Augustine of Hippo…”It is solved by walking.” “Jesus walked a lot…This gave him time to see things…”
  5. The Practice of Getting Lost – Wilderness. Cattle following exact same paths everyday get off the path – get lost. “In my life, I have lost my way more times than I can count. I have set out to be married and ended up divorced. I have set out to be healthy and ended up sick…While none of these displacements was pleasant at first, I would not give a single one of them back. I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path…” “…The Bible gives no reason for God’s choice of Abraham and Sarah except their willingness to get lost.” Getting a flat tire at night on the highway – a type of getting lost. “Your carefully maintained safety net has ripped.” She ran into a tree riding her horse-had a concussion. Was at the mercy of strangers who found her, took her to hospital, and “people took care of me when I could not care for myself.” Also, regarding the concussion: “When I fell asleep, I fell into nightmares so vivid that I fought to stay awake…My head hurt like hell. I had such depraved dreams that I could not imagine where the vile images in them came from…Had the concussion opened a sewer line in my head?” “When someone goes for a walk with no particular destination in mind, willing to go wherever the wind blows him, that person is a flaneur. He saunters…” “…how near God can be when you have lost your way.”
  6. The Practice of Encountering Others-Community. She is an introvert. “…no one had to tell me why Martha stayed in the kitchen while her sister Mary sat at Jesus’s feet. Martha was an introvert. She found chopping potatoes far less exhausting than talking to people…” “…The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self…” “A good way to warm up is to focus on one of the human beings who usually sneak right past you because they are performing some mundane service such as taking your order or handing you your change. The next time you go to the grocery store, try engaging the cashier…Just meet her eyes for a moment when you say, “Thanks.” I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Matthew 25:34-37 Love the stranger – 36 places the Bible commands this. “The Supreme Religious challenge, says Rabbi Sacks, “is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.”
  7. The Practice of Living with Purpose – Vocation. When she was struggling with what to do with her life, she prayed for days, weeks, at the top of a rickety fire escape. God answered, “Do anything that pleases you, and belong to me.” Swedish movie: My Life as a Dog: “our vocation may turn out to be the things we do for free.”
  8. The Practice of Saying No – Sabbath. “…being busy is how our culture measures worth.” “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy…” “There is no talk about the loss of the Sabbath, then, without also talking about the rise in consumerism.” Leviticus 25:3-7: “Six years you may sow your field…But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest.” “Where there is money to be made, there is no rest for the land, nor for those who live on it.” “Sabbath is the true God’s gift to those who wish to rest and to be free…” “According to the rabbis, those who observe Sabbath observe all the other commandments. Practicing it over and over again they become accomplished at saying no, which is how they gradually become able to resist the culture’s killing rhythms of drivenness and depletion, compulsion and collapse…” “..Sabbath sickness…your welcome rest begins to feel like something closer to a bad cold..what if your energy level drops and never comes back up again?…Plus, how will you ever catch up after taking a whole day off? Just thinking about it makes you tired.” “At least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the toolshed and turn off the computer. Stay home not because you are sick but because you are well. Take a nap, a walk, an hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than what you can produce – that even if you spent one whole day being good for nothing you would still be precious in God’s sight…This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working…”
  9. The Practice of Carrying Water – Physical labor (digging potatoes, ice storm-no electricity.)
  10. The Practice of Feeling Pain – Breakthrough. “Pain makes theologians of us all…” The book of Job: “Like him, they have given up asking the question of why bad things happen to good people. They know that the real question is when.”
  11. The Practice of Being Present to God – Prayer: “I am a failure at prayer.” Recommends Brother Lawrence’s book, The Practice of the Presence of God.
  12. Practice of Pronouncing Blessings – Benediction: “…open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what it should be.”

People of the Book

by Geraldine Brooks, 2008

Fictional tale of the true “Sarajevo Haggadah,” an ancient (1350) Jewish prayer book beautifully illustrated — “Illuminations.” It is now in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, valued at $700 million in 1991 – most valuable book in the world.

She goes back in time from Hanna Heath, and Australian book preserver, to 1: 1940 Sarajevo where Jewish girl, Lola, escapes Sarajevo with the help of a Muslim couple to the mountains with the book (where an insect’s wing gets into the book). 2. Backwards to Vienna, 1894, where a very ill Florien Mittl is given the book to rebind and he steals the silver clasps and gives them to his doctor to try and cure him of his V.D. – silver clasps missing. 3. Backwards to Venice 1609 where a Jewish man (gifted Rabbi) with a gambling problem loses the book to drunk friend priest, Father Vistorini – who signs his name to it that he clears it and it’s not burned. Wine stains on the book. 4. Backwards to Tarragona, Spain, 1492, where a Jewish man buys beautiful Illuminations from a beggar in the market and adds scripts as a wedding gift for his niece or nephew but he ends up dead by Spanish Inquisition. His daughter escapes with the book, and her newborn nephew – who she baptizes in the sea (that’s how saltwater got on some pages). 5. Backwards to Seville, Spain, 1480, where a young Muslim girl learns how to paint beautiful illustrations and she paints some beautiful Illuminations of the emira and to save her, the emira gives her to a Jewish doctor who has a deaf-mute son. She paints pictures of the Passover so he can understand the Passover.

Very difficult to get into-backwards, made-up history. Not really all that good. Interesting in each historical section but over too quick and on to the next, while switching back to Hanna in modern times.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, 2011

A true story about Kamila Sidiqi and her 5 sisters and how they survived under the Taliban. Very similar to My Forbidden Face. Khair Khana is the neighborhood in Kabul in which they lived. When the Taliban took over, they could no longer leave the house, unless accompanied by male relative “Mahram,” had to wear chadri, and feared for their lives whenever they ventured out. Her father and mother had to flee to the north since her father had been in the military before the Taliban. Her brother had to flee to Iran to keep from being taken for service with the Taliban. That left Kamila and 4 other sisters and a little brother, who became Kamila’s Mahram. Kamila decides to start a dressmaking business in their home. She soon has about 30 neighborhood women taking classes and sewing dresses and pantsuits. Kamila sells them clandestinely in the market to clothing shops. She brings her little brother as her Mahram and when inside the shop, conducts business while her and shopkeepers keep a close eye out for Taliban. I guess women still needed clothes to wear in their homes and under their chadris. Kamila’s efforts give relief to the women and money for their families to survive.

Kamila hopes to help rebuild Afghanistan. Her ideas are to empower women to be business women and young men so they can educate their families. Her new company is called Kaweyan. Interesting book. She bloomed where she was planted and had very little fear. She saved her family.

P.S. Afghans loved Titanic – they went crazy for everything Titanic when the movie came out – despite the Taliban’s efforts to stop them.

My Forbidden Face

by Latifa, 2001

Sept. 27, 1996, Taliban take over Kabul, Afghanistan. No longer can women go to school or work – must cover themselves entirely. Also, no music, etc. No whistling, no TV, no pets, no kites, no weddings, not allowed to laugh in streets, no photos.

“One thing and one thing only, unites Afghans in spite of their ethnic divisions: resistance against all foreign invaders, be they British, Pakistani, Arab – or Soviet, of course.”

She remains in her apartment for basically 4 entire years, from age 16 to 20, while the Taliban make everyone miserable, publicly whipping, beating, and executing people in the beloved soccer stadium. They even destroyed a centuries-old statue – the Buddha of Bamiyan – “Colossi,” from 5th century AD – that is after they destroyed all art in the museum of Kabul and the frescoes of Behzad.

At first Latifa is depressed (no duh!) but then her friend convinced her to start an underground school for neighborhood children. That helps her keep going despite how dangerous it is.

Women are not allowed to work so there are no longer any female doctors. Women cannot be seen by a male doctor. So there is no health care for women any longer. They are forced to marry at age 14. Latifa’s mom is a former nurse/doctor and treats women in the apt. clandestinely. Until she no longer can because no medicine and no way to get any.

Finally, her mom and dad sneak out with her (leaving a sister and brother at home in Kabul) to France to do an interview with Elle magazine.

That is when this book is published (2001) and shortly before 9-11.

Osama bin Laden, the “rich Saudi Arabian,” bank-rolled the Taliban in Afghanistan. They believe most of the Taliban are from Pakistan. Afghanis hate Pakistan!

The Taliban are bad, bad, bad!

As I was reading this, we (CIA and Navy seals) got (killed) Osama bin Laden on 5/1/11 in Pakistan in a fortressed mansion.

A good timeline of Afghanistan from 1919 – Dec. 22, 2001 in the back of the book.

We helped the “Northern Alliance” topple the Taliban in Mazar-i-Sharif on 11-9-01. The Taliban abandon Kabul on 11-13-01 “overnight.” Mullah Omar is the leader of the Taliban.

Here is an article from The Denver Post on May 7, 2011:

Death may change dynamic in Afghanistan – Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.

The killing of Osama bin Laden could be a game changer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan by splitting the Taliban from the al-Qaeda terrorist network, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday during a stop at Seymour Air Force Base. “I think it’s too early to make a judgment, in terms of the impact inside Afghanistan, but I think in six months or so, we’ll know,” he said.

“We’ll have to see what that relationship looks like,” Gates said of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in a post-bin Laden world. “Bin Laden and (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar had a very close personal relationship. There are others in the Taliban that felt betrayed by al-Qaeda–that it was because of al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States that the Taliban got thrown out of Afghanistan.”

Denver Post Wire Services

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

by Alexander McCall Smith, 2011

12th book in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency

Wonderful, wonderful book! Mma Ramotswe solves the mystery of the cattle maulings – not really – but everyone else is satisfied; the kind neighbor who just wants to be friends buys the unkind Mr. Botsalo Moeti salt lick and offers to fix the fences. The maid and her dwarf-teacher lover say it will never happen again, and so does her little son. It is an example of how an unkind, evil person can bring trouble on himself.

Mma Grace Makutsi buys new shoes for her wedding and decides to wear them out of the store. Then she sees Mma Ramotswe’s little white van and as she is running after it, she breaks the heels and an ankle strap. She is too afraid to tell Phuti.

Charlie supposedly got a girl pregnant and she had twins. Grace berates him for not taking care of her. Charlie runs away. Mma Ramotswe finds out where he is (at Fanwell’s) and invites him over for a talk at her house. She agrees to talk to the girl and Mma Makutsi. When she talks to the girl, she finds out Charlie is not the father–She had 2 boyfriends at the same time and is going to marry the father. When Mma Ramotswe tells Charlie, he is so happy! He tells Mma Ramotswe, “I am going to be different from now on…” She says, “Don’t change too much…We like you the way you are, Charlie.” He stared at her incredulously and she realized that he might not have heard many people say that. So she repeated herself: “We like you, Charlie; you just remember that.”

And Charlie and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni go and buy back the tiny white van and surprise Mma Ramotswe with it early one morning–it is in her driveway.

When she drives to work in it, she cries and has to pull over, “her triumphal journey, her proud return.”

Finally, in the last chapter, Grace and Phuti get married. A beautiful wedding. Mrs. Potokwane arranges to get invited by offering to help with the food – “never enough pots” and the cakes – never enough cakes. And she takes over and Grace is so happy. Charlie tries to fix Grace’s shoes and apologizes for calling her a warthog. Mma Ramotswe buys her a new pair of shoes and Grace explains what happened, finally, to Phuti and, “He had not minded in the least.”

Beautiful, interesting, sweet, wonderful story! He just gets better and better. My doctor visit to Dr. Stephanie Lockwood (for penicillin for gross cough) – I brought the book with and she said, “Is that the new #1…?” and I said, “yes – it’s great.” She said, “I have it on hold at the library!” and I told her, “so did I!” When we were finished she said , “Now, hurry up and finish that book so I can read it!”

But Mom gets it first.