30 Day Book Challenge, Day 16: What is a book that you would recommend to an ignorant/closed-minded/racist person?

Finally, a question that is EASY to answer! I would highly recommend Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. But I would not only recommend it to someone who struggles with racism, I would recommend it to anyone!

Same Kind of Different as Me is two memoirs woven into one. It is the story of the mingling of two starkly different lives, and the journey that each person made towards understanding the other. It is a book that shows how God can use the most ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things.

In Same Kind of Different as Me you will meet Denver: the poor, uneducated grandson of a slave; and Ron: the wealthy, highly educated, international art dealer. You will learn how each acquired their respective prejudices, how each came to faith in Jesus, and how each learned to love and trust someone completely different than himself.

In subtle and not-so-subtle ways I found myself relating to each of the authors. Same Kind of Different as Me is beautiful, inspirational, and challenging all at the same time. This is a book you do not want to miss! 

30 Day Book Challenge--Day 7: What book is underrated?

Since I don't pay attention to best seller lists, Oprah's Book Club, or the book table at Costco (which I miss, but alas, there is no Costco in France!), I really have a hard time judging if a book is underrated. I have no idea what books are popular these days. But one book that I really enjoyed and that I find few people have read is Three Weeks with my Brother, by Nicolas Sparks. I mentioned in an earlier post that I am not a big fan of Nicolas Sparks in general. Frankly, I find his fiction painfully pedestrian. Three Weeks with my Brother is different, though, as it is a personal memoir rather than a work of fiction.

I read Three Weeks with my Brother several years ago in a book club. At that time, though Nicolas Sparks was a well-known author, I had never heard of his memoir. In Three Weeks with my Brother Sparks tells of a trip around the world that he takes with his only brother, weaving tales from their youth together with a day by day account of their adult adventure. The stories from their "trip of a lifetime" bring a nice rhythm and some excitement to the story; the selected "flashbacks" to childhood add depth and perspective to the narrative.

If you only ever read one book by Nicolas Sparks, skip The Notebook and A Walk to Remember, and opt for Three Weeks with my Brother.

Three WWII Favorites

I have a great interest in books about the holocaust. When I was a teenager I read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I was haunted by it for years. Then as I grew older, I discovered a wealth of books that are set in Europe during World War II. My favorites include a classic, a recently discovered treasure, and a new gem!

A Classic: The Hiding Place is Corrie ten Boom's autobiography, and one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. Though set in one of the darkest periods of modern history, this book is bursting with hope, joy, and love. There are no spiritual platitudes; rather, hard wrought morsels of truth.

Corrie was the daughter of a Dutch watchmaker, and as both she and her sister Betsy never married, they lived and worked in their father's workshop for most of their lives. When the Nazi's invaded Holland, the ten Boom family became actively involved in the resistance movement. They designed and built a secret room in their attic which they used to hide Jews. Eventually, they were found out, and Corrie and her sister were sent to a concentration camp.

If you have not read The Hiding Place, I urge you to add it to your list. You will be profoundly moved by this story of faith in action.

A Recently Discovered Treasure: Suite Française, by Irene Nemirovsky is a fictional story written about France during the Nazi occupation. It was written in France during the war, but it was not discovered and published until 2007.

The author, Irene Nemirovsky, was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish- Russian businessman who moved his family from Russia to Paris, France to escape persecution. At sixteen, she learned to speak and write fluently in French. She was married and had two daughters when Germany invaded France. With her family, she fled to the south of France, where Nazis had not yet invaded. There she began working for the resistance movement by writing for an underground newspaper. At the same time, she worked on her novel, Suite Française. Eventually she was found out, and taken to concentration camp.

Because he loved his wife so much, Irene's husband wrote daily to ask if he could take his wife's place in prison. He worried for her life, because she was not in good health. The officials tired of his requests, and rather than releasing his wife, they simply decided to imprison him as well. Just before he was taken, he managed to get his two daughters into hiding with one of their teachers. All they took with them was a satchel  of their mother's writings.

When the war finally ended, the two daughters went every day to the train station where prisoners returned from the concentration camps, hoping to find their mother or father. But neither parent had survived. Years later, one of the daughters became a book editor in New York. She finally dared to open the satchel of her mother's writings, and what she found was this novel, Suite Française. The story, which was written as their mother observed events unfold before her eyes, reads like an eye-witness account, even though it is a work of fiction. It is, of course, unfinished; but, the publisher includes the author's notes, in which Nemirovsky has carefully outlined the entire plot.

A New Gem: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is one of the best written books I've ever read.  Set in Germany during the second World War, it is the story of young foster girl named Liesl Memiger who is taken in by a passive resister and his wife. Her foster father teaches her to read using a book she had stolen off of a book burning pile--thus the title. The Book Thief offers a rare perspective for the WWII genre--one from inside the homes and families of everyday German people.The characters are flawed, real, and endearing.

I cannot possibly convey the brilliance with which this story is told. It is narrated by Death, a character that is so well personified that as a reader, I developed an affection for the phantom. He is gentle, witty, and, in his own words, "...nothing, if not fair." In order to whet your appetite, I'll leave you with excerpt from the prologue:

I could introduce myself properly, but it's really not necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that as some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away. 

At that moment you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I'll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps. 

The King's Cross

I first fell in love with Tim Keller as an author after reading his book, The Prodigal God. If you have not yet read that--let me implore you to make it the next book that you read, particularly if you, like me, were raised in the church. It will give you a fresh (but convicting) appreciation for the story about the prodigal son. That being said, Keller's latest book, The King's Cross, is well worth a read.

As a wanna-be Bible scholar that has never attended seminary, I look for books that feed my desire to better understand the Word of God. The King's Cross is a study of the book of Mark which I found both thought provoking and informative. As you may know King's Cross is the name of a major train station in London--in fact I was there just a few weeks ago! Keller took the title of his book from this station--a name which so perfectly encapsulates the deity and the servitude of Christ. 

Keller chose the book of Mark because, according to Papia (60-135 A.D.), a bishop of the early church, Mark was most likely the secretary and translator for the apostle Peter. Keller asserts that it is possible that the Gospel according to Mark was almost entirely based on the eye-witness accounts of Peter, which explains how this book contains testimony about events at which Mark himself was not present. 

Perhaps the most basic and profound idea in The King's Cross is this: Most religions are based on advice--and they give us a series of "to-dos" and "not to-dos;" but the Gospel is not advice, it is news--Good News. Keller writes:

 Most religions have the same logic: If I perform, if I obey, I'm accepted. The gospel of Jesus is ... diametrically opposed to it: I'm fully accepted in Jesus Christ, and therefore I obey. 

Evolving in Monkey Town

Rachel Held Evans was raised in an evangelical Christian family in Dayton Tennessee--home of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. She knew the Four Spiritual Laws before she could read and she cried when she found out her grandfather had voted for Bill Clinton because she thought that surely he would go to hell for voting for a Democrat. When she went to Bryan Christian College, where her father is a professor, she began to have questions and doubts about her faith. Evolving in Monkey Town is an honest account of her on-going journey.

Evans does not arrive at answers as much as she learns to embrace the questions. My husband David says, "My theology say more about ME than it says about God." Along those lines, Evans writes:

Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter is a virtue.

I appreciated the warm tone of the book, which invited me into a dialogue of thoughts. The author is humble in her struggle and genuine in her searching. She does not outline a new theology or propose an unorthodox doctrine, neither does she acquiesce to the traditional American interpretations of scripture.

After reading Evolving in Monkey Town, I am inspired to plunge deeper into the Word and to live more fully in obedience. I share the author's hunger for depth and meaning and her fatigue of pat answers and platitudes. But if you are one who does not want to wrestle with your dearly held beliefs, do not pick up this book. It will quickly reveal if your faith is rooted in your theology or in the person of  the God-man, Jesus Christ. Such a revelation can be scary, to say the least.

Young, fresh, and edgy without being bitter, Evolving in Monkey Town is easy to read, but deliciously difficult to process. I do not agree with all of her assertions, but I certainly wrestle with many of the same questions. I am thankful for the reminder that God is so much greater than my capacity to define Him.

Surprised by Oxford

When Carolyn Weber is awarded a scholarship to do her graduate studies at Oxford University, she sets off on what promises to be a life-changing adventure. Immersed in the the study of classic literature, surrounded by history, and enveloped by a richly diverse group of friends, she tries with all her might to hold unswervingly to her post-modern agnostic beliefs. Wrought with wit, her memoir is both intellectually stimulating and spiritually inspiring.

"Prayer is weird. There's no way around it. The concept of it seemed bizarre. Talking, possibly out loud, to Someone unseen who might or might not be listening? Weeeird."

Weaving words into narrative like a skilled artist weaves a tapestry, Weber recounts her journey to faith. She does not skip over the difficult themes that many Christians writers have either long forgotten or gingerly avoid. At the same time, she humbly submits to truth once it is revealed --and welcomes it as both a stranger and a friend.

"Then a story from the Gospel of Mark jumped into my head. Scripture has a way of working like that. Be forewarned."

My fellow forty-somethings will appreciate the author's references to current events during her formative years, which reveal that Weber is right about our age. She knits her story together with references from Milton and Donne, quotes from secular literature, and lyrics from contemporary music --demonstrating God's ability to work His redemptive power through--or perhaps despite--the brokenness that surrounds us.

"'Grace, the name of a girl', U2 later sang. And the name of a thought that changed the world."

Surprised by Oxford is for the believer who is sick and tired of the second-rate writing that typifies contemporary Christian literature. It is for the skeptic who is open to a challenge. As well written as it is thought provoking, this memoir reads like a novel. I tore through it in two days, but I have been ruminating on it for months. It is one of those rare books that leaves you feeling both smarter and happier for having read it.

"Just before going abroad on my scholarship, I came across an epigram by Alexander Pope, the eighteenth-century English poet famous for his clever wit and urbane satire. Pope engraved the verse on the collar of a dog, which he then gifted the king:

I am his Highness’ Dog at Kew:

Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Granted, the dog image is not as elegant or politically correct as some might prefer, but it does effectively beg the question: just who is your master? For we all have one." 

 All quotes from of Surprised by Oxford, by Carolyn Weber