Tag Archives: Reading

No Excuses for Complaining (re-post)

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Hope you find this list encouraging. I’ve been thinking I need to re-read Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, and this definitely confirms it. I needed to read this list again!

I recently finished reading Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs. It’s an excellent book, though a little difficult to read due to the cramped printing (though it only comes to 99 pages because of it). Burroughs provides the Christian absolutely no excuse for not being content in Christ. To give you a little bit of flavor, I’ll list his 12 points on how to become content, found in the last chapter of the book. And this is only one chapter! I highly suggest you read it for yourself, with highlighter in hand to help find the main points.

1. The change has to come first on the inside.

2. Don’t be more involved in worldly things than you have to.

3. Make sure that you are where you are supposed to be.

4. Make it a habit of doing what you have been called to do.

5. Exercise faith!

6. Seek to be spiritually minded.

7. Don’t daydream of great things in your future.

8. Moritify your hearts to the world.

9. Don’t think too much on your afflictions.

10. Always assume God has the best of intentions for you.

11. Don’t conform your thoughts of what is right and good to what others think is right and good.

12. Don’t get caught up with the comforts of the world when you have them.

Originally posted 7-20-2007

A Character I Relate to (re-post)

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I recently read Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes. It a story about a young girl, Elfride, who falls in love with an equally young man in her youth and her father refused to allow them to be married because he is the son of commoners. She and the man, Stephen, decide to meet between her home and London where he lives to be married, which requires her to travel by horseback to St. Launce’s. As she starts out on her mare, she has second thoughts, which Hardy details beautifully:

“…and Elfride felt it would be absurd to turn her little mare’s head the other way [back home]. ‘Still,’ she thought, ‘if I had a mamma at home I would go back!’

“And making one of those stealthy movements by which women let their hearts juggle with their brains, she did put the horse’s head about, as if unconsciously, and went at a hand-gallop towards home for more than a mile. By this time, fromthe inveterate habit of valuing what we have renounced directly the alternative is chosen, the thought of her forsaken Stephen recalled her, and she turned about, and cantered to St. Launce’s again.

“This miserable strife of thought now began to rage in all its wildness. Overwrought and trembling, she dropped the rein upon Pansy’s shoulders, and vowed she would be led whither the horse should take her….

“She was impatient. It seemed as if Pansy would never stop drinking; and the repose of the pool, and the idle motions of the insects and flies upon it, the placid waving of the flags, the leaf-skeletons, like Genoese filigree, placidly sleeping at the bottom, by their contrast with her own turmoil made her impatience greater.

“Pansy did turn at last, and went up the slope again to the high-road. The pony came upon it, and stood crosswise, looking up and down. Elfride’s heart throbbed erratically, and she thought, ‘Horses, if left to themselves, make for where they are best fed. Pansy will go home.’

“Pansy turned and walked on toward St. Launce’s.

“Pansy at home, during summer, had a little but grass to live on. After a run to St. Launce’s she always had a feed of corn to support her on the return journey. Therefore, being now more than half way, she preferred St. Launce’s.

“But Elfride did not remember this now. All she cared to recognize was a dreamy fancy that to-day’s rash action was not her own. She was disabled by her moods, and it seemed indispensable to adhere to the programme. So strangely involved are motives that, more than by her promise to Stephen, more even than by her love, she was forced on by a sense of the necessity of keeping faith with herself, as promised in the inane vow of ten minutes ago.”
p. 109-110

What makes this book so remarkable to me is the amount that I relate to the main character, Elfride. She is moved by her emotions, prone to rash decisions, and very unwise at times, yet I’ve never identified with any other character as much as I have with her. There are many characters that I’ve wanted to be: such as Mary Anne (The Babysitter’s Club), Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice), and Jo (Little Women), but I didn’t actually see myself in these characters. Yet this immature, emotionally Elfride (an ugly name, too!) I relate to!

Oh, and just in case you care, Elfride gets all the way to London and decides to back out of the elopement, which creates the possibility of scandal later when she wants to marry another man, Knight.

Originally posted 7-9-2007

Ronnica and the Ridiculously Large Stack of Books

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It’s that time of year…time for the Readathon! I’m not sure how many I’ve done, but it’s been a few. I always enjoy the time spent reading and seeing what others are reading to.

So what am I reading this time around?

Embarrassing, no? I’m pretty sure that this is my largest stack yet, and that it’d take me until June to read. Besides, I didn’t even include a few audio books and a few that I had planned to finish by now, but I didn’t. If I make it through 1/4 of this list, my eyeballs will fall out, I’m sure. Still, it’s fun to have variety and not know what you’re going to pick up next.

Who am I kidding, I always know what I’m going to pick up next. But I don’t know what I’m picking up after that.

I plan on starting my Readathon at 4 PM today, when I get off. Why not, right? My goal is to read for at least 24 hours between 4 PM Friday and bedtime Monday. I’m pretty sure that I’ll make it…gotta love a 3-day weekend. I’m not working tomorrow!

I’ll keep this to a post a day and will try to update every 2 hours as I have in the past. I’m also heading the cheerleading for this year’s event, so I’ll have some administrative stuff to do in the back end, but I hope it goes smoothly!

Which book should I pick up next?

This Will Make You Smarter edited by John Brockman (book review)

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I was first interested in This Will Make You Smarter because, well, I want to be smarter. I’ve always found learning about learning to be interesting.

In this book, over a 100 scientist and other intellectuals answer the question, “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” The answers vary wildly and by-and-large are interesting and helpful.

I found it interesting that most people picked an idea outside of their expertise. That makes sense though: these are ideas from other branches of science that they found useful to their own studies and lives.

As one might expect of a book that includes Richard Dawkins, the anti-God bias in the book can, at times, be quite strong. I still think that there are plenty of things that can be learned from a book like this.

Another nit-picky thing is that this book is that it’s obvious that it’s a gathering of a large number of different people’s writings. While John Brockman does a good job of organizing them so that similar concepts appear together, some of the same facts and anecdotes show up several different times. This comes off as a bit disjointed.

If you’re someone who dabbles in science as I do, I would recommend this book. It’s not difficult to understand: it’s written for “everybody,” after all.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of  This Will Make You Smarter in exchange for this review.

 

Book Review: Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

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I read this at the recommendation of a friend. In fact, it was so recommended to me by a church staff member, that a copy was “stolen” from another staff member. True story.

Total Church: a Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community is a book about what the church should look like. Not a building or a program, but intentional relationships within a community of believers that is God-focused and outward-oriented.

The authors do not claim to be experts and openly admit that they fall short. They also don’t want a bunch of churches to look just like theirs. But they do want a lot of churches to look differently than they do now.

To be brief, a church should look, feel, and act more like a family and less like a country club. Church members should seek to serve, not be served. A church should be reaching out to those around them, not seeking to insulate themselves from the world. As they seek to grow closer to God, they should also be growing closer to each other.

I believe that the ideas of church as put forth in this book are very appealing to my generation, the Millennials.* We desire authentic relationships without pretension or cumbersome rituals. So many of those my age see church as completely irrelevant to their life, and I must admit that in many cases, I agree.

The concepts in this book are very hard to implement in most churches today because they’re large and there is usually a strict clergy/laymen distinction. I’m thankful to be a part of a church that, while a good size, seeks to grow small, by encouraging small groups to be the basis of our church family. Also, authority and responsibilities are not distributed on the basis of where you get a paycheck.

We’re not perfect, but I’m thankful that we’re trying. There’s a natural desire within a sinner to not let anyone else get close, and we have to fight against that. I have to fight against that. This book has encourages me to pursue deep relationships with those in my small group and to be proactive in building relationships with the hurting people around me.

I highly recommend this book.

*Note: I don’t give this appeal to Millennials as the reason to adopt the ideas of the book, but as a support that the ideas found here are also an answer to the shrinking church phenomenon.

Top Ten Spiritual Growth Books

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For this week’s top ten, we’re asked to list the top 10 books of a given genre. I decided that I’m going to list the ten books that have most affected my walk with Christ. This is a very fluid list: hopefully if I made a similar list in 10 years, it’s contained many different titles. Not because books coming out today are better than ones written previously, but because I simply haven’t read all the books already available now. I want to always to be growing and challenged by my reading.

Here are my top ten books that have helped me spiritually, in no particular order:

1. Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul David Tripp - The concepts in this book made me completely rethink how I thought about sin.

2. Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges - This is where I first heard about the idea of preaching the gospel to yourself everyday.

3. Love to Eat, Hate to Eat by Elyse Fitzpatrick - Still mulling this one over.

4. Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs - Probably need to re-read this one sometime.

5. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters  by Timothy Keller  - A recent read, but one that I believe will stand the test of time.

6. Knowing God by J. I. Packer - Another instrumental book to my Christian walk.

7. Mere Christianity  by C. S. Lewis - I could probably put any Lewis book on this list, but this was the first of his non-fiction books that I read.

8. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt - I think that this is a book every American should read.

9. Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges - Perhaps the world wouldn’t consider me a sinner since I don’t commit the “big” sins, but I definitely am.

10. The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing by Leland Ryken - Perhaps an unconventional choice, yet this did draw we closer to God.

What books would you have included if you made this list?

Cruise Control Christianity

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I’m a part of a small group of a few women from my small group who meet twice a month to discuss a book that we’re reading together. I think we all cherish those hours we spend together sharing life and growing together.

Right now, we’re reading Jerry Bridges’s Discipline of Grace. I read it a few years back, but I’m still getting a lot out of it. You can never read a good book too many times. You may think I read a lot, but really, I have to read so much because I forget to so much. Reading a lot is the only way I can retain more.

One concept that really caught my attention this time around that I didn’t remember from the last time was Bridges’s metaphor of “Cruise Control Obedience” and “Race Car Obedience.”

The idea in “Cruise Control Obedience” is that you get to a certain level of obedience, and then just put on the cruise control, not seeking to pursue Christ any harder. You do the disciplines of the faith at a level that you’re comfortable with and then just remain there, content.

On the other hand, “Race Car Obedience” is characterized by a drive to always be going faster and farther. They are not content with going the speed of those around them, or the speed that they’ve were previously driving at. This person is consumed by his love of Christ and it influences every aspect of his life.

Well, I’m definitely one to take advantage of cruise control. Most of the time, I’m pretty happy with the time and energy I devote to Christ.

But is that pleasing to God? Is that really what it means to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30)?

No. I want to have a race car mentality, not settling for “fast enough.” Not that I have what it takes to follow Christ wholeheartedly in my own strength. But I know one who does.

Photo by MonkeyBoy69

Top Ten Books I’d Quickly Save If Our World Was Going To Be Taken Over By Aliens

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Hey, it could happen.

I’ve altered this week’s topic not to be about books I’d save from my house as I’m not particularly tied to my particular copies, and I don’t actually own many of my favorite books. Really, I’ve turned this into more of a deserted island scenario.

Top ten books I’d want:

1. My Bible. Okay, this probably should be a given, but I’d want my wide-margin Bible that I’ve been using to do my daily reading in for over 5 years. Or at least a Bible, preferably NASB. Though I’d choose a KJV Bible over no Bible, I wouldn’t find it particularly usable. I don’t live in 17th Century England.

2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. As much as you read, you bet I’d choose some long books if I could only have 10. This is one that I think I could read and enjoy over and over again, but would clearly provide lots of reading time at its size.

3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I really do enjoy this story, but once again, it’s link adds to its suitability in this scenario.

4. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. At its size, I’m not likely to re-read it given current non-alien conditions. But one plus of an alien invasion in this scenario is that I could re-read it.

5. Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs. Not a long book, but it’s meaty. Plus, I can imagine struggling with discontent if life as we know it was over.

6. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. There are situations worse than alien invasion, and it would be helpful to be reminded of someone else who had been through a tough situation and grew closer to God through it.

7. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. I’m counting this as one book, because you can’t stop me. Even better, can I get a complete works of C. S. Lewis?

8. 1984 by George Orwell. Because I know I enjoy reading it over and over again.

9. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Ditto.

10. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Might as well through in a Dickens, too.

Check out more top ten lists on Broke and Bookish

Introducing Reviewettes

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So, I haven’t been writing a lot of reviews in the last few months. In part because I didn’t read as much during unemployment as I do employed (yeah, that’s counter-intuitive) and in part because nothing has jumped out at me needing to be reviewed.

That said, I do have some thoughts about what I’ve been reading. So every few weeks or so (whenever I have three of these), I’m going to compile those post in a “Reviewettes” post. I’ll still occasionally write a full review when a book warrants it, but this will give you a short recap of what I’ve been reading and what I thought about them. I won’t mention every book I read (the full list can be found here, if you’re that curious), but will draw attention to the books that caught my fancy.

With that lovely introduction, here is the first set of reviewettes:

Lit: A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke ♥♥♥♥

As a reader, I enjoy about reading. Nerdy, I know. If you, too, like to read about reading, I would suggest this book. Or if you don’t like reading, I’d also suggest it.

One point that I took away from Lit is the idea that my personal reading helps the corporate body of Christ. I get this: friends are always asking me what I’m reading and what I got out of it. I don’t always have a good answer for them, but I should. I should be able to share with them a gold nugget that I found whenever asked. I’m going to be more intentional about this.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters  by Timothy Keller  ♥♥♥♥♥

I read Keller’s The Prodigal God last fall and was really impressed with his insights. He has some great things to say in Counterfeit Gods as well.

There is just something about Keller’s writing that feels incredibly accessible to non-churchy people, if that makes sense. In Counterfeit Gods he does a great job taking apart some common American idols and comparing them to God, where we can find true hope.

The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene (audio) ♥♥♥

The Hidden Reality is a popular science book about the possibilities of parallel universes. Greene walks the reader through various scientific theories that would support or even require multiple universes. I find this fascinating, but in the end, I really don’t think there are other universes out there. It almost feels like scientists like Greene want there to be other universes because it makes it seem less improbable that intelligent life would develop in their own.

That said, I would not be surprised at all if their were intelligent life forms on other planets within our own universe. Until we meet them (which I find unlikely), nothing can be proven either way.

For the record, this is the first author-read audio book I’ve ever enjoyed.


Top Ten Books That Broke My Heart A Little

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How about that for a Valentine’s Day topic?

Here are some of my “crying” books, books that left me crying in a good way.

I didn’t set out to make this a list of classics, but that’s what it became.

1. 1984 by George Orwell

When I think about books that make me cry, this one immediately comes to mind. On the most recent re-read I didn’t cry, but every other time it left me in tears.

2. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The ending shocked me the first time, but it makes the book.

3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The whole Kitty-Levin story line totally gets me, in a good way. But not Anna…I don’t cry for her.

4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I can’t help but feel sad for the monster. I don’t shed a tear for Frankenstein though…he reaps what he sows, and sadly way too many others were ruined because of his actions.

5. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 

I must admit that I really pity Willoughby at the end. Yes, he made his choice, but it’s sad to see people face the irreversibility of their actions.

6. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

What a tragic, twisted story! I’m not sure that I feel sorry for any of the characters, but the story is tragic anyway.

7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I recently re-listened to this and made the mistake of running errands on the day Beth died. I cried each time I got back into the car…

8. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Oh, but what a sweet story of making the best of what we have.

9. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I think every high school student can understand why I would add this to this list. I certainly hope so…too many high schools go easy on their students and might not make them read such a long, hard book.

10. Othello by William Shakespeare

I’ve never included a play on any of these lists, because I’m actually really against the idea of reading plays. Watching (good) plays, though, I really like, and this is perhaps my favorite. The story definitely qualifies as one that breaks my heart.

Check out more Top Ten Tuesday lists at Broke and Bookish