Drive-By Book Reviews: January

My reading list this month was pretty varied.  I read a few best-sellers, some memoirs, some Christian living and some family-oriented stuff.  Here's my quick take on January's books.  

Farewell to the East End - Jennifer Worth

If you've read my other short book reviews, you'll know that I recently read Jennifer Worth's first memoir Call the Midwife which has recently been made into an excellent BBC miniseries by the same name.  This book is another memoir of her experiences as a midwife in poverty stricken London in the late 1950s.  Although this one was also interesting, I was disappointed by the chapters on abortion.  I had wondered why the topic had not come up in books about childbirth, but I actually had knots in my stomach reading about it.  The story of her experience with abortion was graphic and disturbing, and her perspective on abortion comes down to wanting to provide safe medical care for women rather than a moral issue.  

The Emotionally Destructive Relationship - Leslie Vernick
Having read Vernick's other book, How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong, I picked this one up out of curiosity.  Vernick, a Christian counselor, clearly defines emotionally destructive and unhealthy relationships, outlines their effects on people, and lays out a plan for those in these kinds of relationships to change the destructive patterns.  Although many of the examples given relate to marriage, Vernick is addressing many kinds of unhealthy relationships such as parent/child and friendships.  I'm slightly torn about this book.  I think it would be a great book to hand to someone in a destructive dating relationship to allow them to see the pattern before entering into marriage.  I love how she talks about finding healing even while remaining in destructive relationships.  However, my problem comes with how her plan for getting out of destructive relationships applies to marriage.  Her plan is three-fold: 1) speak up, 2) stand up, and 3) step back.  I agree that sin should be confronted (i.e. speak up), and help should be called in for serious sins, but I can see many women taking the "step back" part as a justification for separation and divorce, even when not biblically supported.  If anyone has read this book, I'd love to hear your take on it.

Love Does - Bob Goff
Judging from the nearly 100% positive reviews of this book that I've read, someone is going to hate me, but I just did not love this book.  I guess if you're a fan of Donald Miller, you might love it, but I just found it cheesy and repetitive.  Bob narrates stories from his life and then draws out spiritual lessons and applications for each one.  Every chapter followed the same format, and if the guy used the word "whimsy" one more time, I was going to scream.  I'm sure there are people who relate to his somewhat hippie-ish style, but I find this trend to make Jesus cool and relevant by calling him "a dude" to be annoying.  Anyway, it was not for me.  But hey, if you liked Blue Like Jazz, you might like this one; Goff is a close friend of Miller.  

Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
Oh. My. Goodness.  This book was just amazing.  Hillenbrand (also the author of Seabiscuit) tells the true story of Louis Zamperini.  Zamperini was a childhood ruffian turned Olympic runner turned airman during World War II.  During a flight over the Pacific, his plane crashed and along with a few other survivors, he spent 47 days afloat until being picked up by the Japanese.  He then spends the next 2 1/2 years as a prisoner of war and finally returns home only after the atomic bombs are dropped.  Following the war, he struggles with memories of his traumatic experiences and falls into alcoholism.  During his tumultuous marriage, his wife becomes a Christian through the fairly new ministry of Billy Graham.  Eventually, Zamperini also converts and spends the rest of his life speaking about forgiveness, actually forgiving some of his former POW guards in person.  Besides being an incredible story, the book itself reads like a novel; I couldn't put it down and finished it in two days.  And apparently, it's set to be a film directed (oddly enough) by Angelina Jolie.

Different Children, Different Needs - Dr. Charles Boyd
My one parenting book of the month and it wasn't my favorite.  Boyd has identified four basic personality types; his goal is to help each parent discern what their child's strengths and weaknesses are in order to adapt parenting strategies that will be most successful for that child.  Although it's always interesting to do those personality test things, I tend to get stuck in the labels, even if that's not at all what the author intends.  And I was kind of bored, which didn't help me enjoy the book.  Basically, what I got from this book is this: know your kids and parent them according to their needs.  If you don't know your kids or you're baffled about how to parent a particular child, this may be a helpful resource for you.

Closer Than Your Skin - Susan Hill
This book was lent to me by a friend, and partly through it, I wrote to her asking if I could just buy her a new one because there was a lot I wanted to underline.  Many people are extremely emotional about their faith at the expense of knowledge or understanding of Scripture and doctrine.  I tend to fall at the other end of the spectrum by being very rational and intellectual about my faith.  Sometimes this means I have absolutely no emotions about God or faith and I think there should be a good balance between emotions and intellect.  This book was helpful to me in opening my eyes to seeing where God is working in my life.  However...the book got weird at the very end.  Like, really odd.  Throughout the book, she had been describing various dreams that she believes were given to her by God to instruct her on a certain point of faith.  It didn't bother me all that much because, well, God has the right to speak to anyone in any way He chooses, so that's not for me to pass judgment on.  But then she went off on this tangent of interpreting dreams for other people, and sitting around in silence waiting for a word from God to pass onto someone else and it really made me uncomfortable.  Something about it just didn't seem right.  But anyway, I did still get a bunch of helpful ideas from it.  I just don't think I'll read the end of the book again.  Ever.

Blame It On the Brain - Ed Welch
Ed Welch is one of the big name people over at the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF) along with Paul David Tripp who is one of my all-time favorite Christian authors.  In this book, Welch discusses the interplay between the brain and the soul, arguing for counseling that treats both aspects of a person.  He then applies his teaching to several specific situations, discussing whether they are a result of the brain malfunctioning so to speak or whether they really are *just* spiritual issues.  Beginning with Alzheimer's Disease and brain injuries as examples of problems definitely caused by the brain, he then moves onto discussing depression and ADD as possibly and sometimes being caused by the brain to then arguing that homosexuality and alcoholism were most definitely not caused by the brain, but instead are primarily sin issues.  The book is slightly old so I'm not sure that all the scientific research is up to date, but it was helpful for me to get a basic grasp of how the brain and the human spirit/soul interact.  Each of the topics that was discussed could obviously have an entire book dedicated to it, but it was a good general overview.  

Ok, that's it for me this month...

Anyone else read anything worth talking about?  Please share in the comments!

Sharing with: Thriving Thursdays, Rediscovering Domesticity, Thought Provoking Thursday, Thoughtful Thursday, Hearts for Home Thursday, Raising Mighty Arrows, NOBH, Cozy Book Hop