The Flight: A Monthly Book Sampler (February 2020)
Board member Andrea Humphries’ book review column is back for 2020! Here’s her summary of what she read in February:
I managed to throw my back out moving a box in the middle of the month and ended up having to spend my long weekend in bed. Being a book nerd, I spent the vast majority of that time reading books. Here are the best ones.
The Authenticity Project is one of those books that I probably would have skipped over in the library or bookstore, but I was sufficiently intrigued by the description to request an advanced copy. It’s the first novel from Clare Pooley, author of The Sober Diaries: How one woman stopped drinking and started living. The Authenticity Project is a wonderful exploration of friendship, community, authenticity, personality, masks, and building a life. The characters are vivid and well-drawn, each with a distinct voice and each gets just the right amount of resolution to their story. I’m looking forward to reading Pooley's next novel.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
With simplicity and frankness, John Mark Comer invites the reader to consider what he sees as the problems caused in our culture and society by our obsession with, and overwhelming tendency to, hurry. He compares those problems to what the Gospels tell us of the way Jesus lived. Then he lays out some of the practices that he has found to be helpful in orienting his life toward the latter rather than the former. The book reads as though you were having a conversation with a kind, wise friend who was pointing you towards a better way, without guilting or shaming you for the way you'd been living up to that point. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is a very good book.
I’m always on the lookout for new historical mysteries. Mostly because I need something to read while I’m waiting for the latest installments of the series I already love. I got to read an advance copy of The Body in the Garden by Katharine Schellman and it hit the spot. It’s a fun new entry in the Regency mystery genre. The mystery developed at a good pace, the characters were interesting, and the villains got their comeuppance in the end. (I’m somewhat ashamed that it’s taken me this long to work even a passing reference to The Mummy into this column.) I’ll be adding the next Lily Adler mystery to my list of books to keep an eye out for. But the rest of you should start with The Body in the Garden, when it comes out in April.
I loved Stewards of Eden and I'm both sad and angry that it needed to be written. Sandra L. Richter walks her reader through the Old and New Testaments, demonstrating from Scripture, that not only is there no contradiction between being an environmentalist or a conservationist and being a Christian, we are called to care for the environment and the creatures of this world. This is a clear, straightforward primer on our biblical mandate to steward creation. With reflection/discussion questions at the end of each chapter, this would be a great book to work through as a congregation or small group.
And the Rest Is History, The Long and Short of It, An Argumentation of Historians
I finished two full Chronicles St. Mary’s novels and the first collection of short stories - And the Rest Is History, An Argumentation of Historians, and The Long and Short of It - in one month. I might have a problem. I don’t care.
