How the Bible Actually Works
For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us.
“The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading.
Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today.
How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’s freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.
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A really informative, readable look at the Bible as an ancient book of wisdom that we must update and reimagine in our time, covering the long biblical tradition of doing just that. A must read for those who are wondering how the Bible actually fits into their faith, especially if they are deconstructing/reconstructing. I have recommended this book to many friends and I plan on re-reading it at some point.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather’s best known novel is an epic–almost mythic–story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows–gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.
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Willa Cather’s writing is wonderful, and her characters are lovable. However, there is a fair amount of outdated and offensive material regarding Mexicans and native Americans which keeps this book from still being truly enjoyable to read. I would recommend one of Cather’s other books instead.
Rating: Good but Problematic
Something That May Shock and Discredit You
Sometimes you just have to yell. New York Times bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre Daniel M. Lavery publishing as Daniel Mallory Ortberg has mastered the art of “poetic yelling,” a genre surely familiar to fans of his cult-favorite website The Toast.
In this irreverent essay collection, Ortberg expands on this concept with in-depth and hilarious studies of all things pop culture, from the high to low brow. From a thoughtful analysis on the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a laugh-out-loud funny and whip-smart collection for those who don’t take anything—including themselves—much too seriously.
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A fascinating (sometimes too smart for me) look at transitioning through the lens of literature, particularly the Bible, and pop culture. I love Lavery’s writing, even though I’m not always familiar with all the classics he draws from.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Scorched Grace
Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test in this debut crime novel.
When Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding community are thrust into chaos. Unsatisfied with the officials’ response, sardonic and headstrong Sister Holiday becomes determined to unveil the mysterious attacker herself and return her home and sanctuary to its former peace. Her investigation leads down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the sticky, oppressive New Orleans heat, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way.
Sister Holiday is more faithful than most, but she’s no saint. To piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must first reckon with the sins of her checkered past-and neither task will be easy.
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A fast-paced story set in a Catholic school in New Orleans, starring an extremely flawed nun whose past may be catching up with her. I found the characters really fun to read about, the setting was great, and the mystery was satisfying if a bit dramatic at times. I’m excited to see where the rest of the series goes.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
The Golden Name Day
While nine-year-old Nancy is staying with her adopted Swedish grandparents for a year, everyone tries to figure out how she can celebrate a name day since her name isn’t Swedish.
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Newbery book. A sweet story of Nancy and her cousins spending a perfect spring and summer together looking for her Swedish name day. It’s a fun old fashioned story, only marred by a bit of patronizing towards a character who uses a wheelchair. We can do better with today’s children’s literature.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
West Heart Kill
Welcome to the West Heart country club. Where the drinks are neat but behind closed doors . . . things can get messy. Where upright citizens are deemed downright boring. Where the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader.
A unique and irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene — a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre.
An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters.
When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead . . .
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As an avid mystery reader, I appreciate what the author was trying to do here–address the reader as a participant in the mystery and make connections with the tropes and historic moments of the mystery genre. However, I think the very end–the final reveal by which every mystery lives or dies–fell a bit flat and failed to live up to the potential promised by the rest of the book. The setup is great, but the execution, for me, left a little bit wanting.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway
Since her mother’s death, Madeline “Gwen” Hathaway has been determined that nothing in her life will change ever again. That’s why she keeps extensive lists in journals, has had only one friend since childhood, and looks forward to the monotony of working the ren faire circuit with her father. Until she arrives at her mother’s favourite end-of-tour stop to find the faire is under new management and completely changed.
Meeting Arthur, the son of the new owners and an actual lute-playing bard, messes up Maddie’s plans even more. For some reason, he wants to be her friend – and ropes her into becoming Princess of the Faire. Now Maddie is overseeing a faire dramatically changed from what her mother loved and going on road trips vastly different from the routine she used to rely on. Worst of all, she’s kind of having fun.
Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway is filled with a wise old magician who sells potion bottles, gallant knights who are afraid of horses and ride camels instead, kings with a fondness for theatrics, a lazy river castle moat with inflatable crocodile floaties, and a plus-sized heroine with a wide-open heart… if only she just admits it.
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I loved this sweet YA romance set at a ren faire, as Madeline works through her grief over her mother’s death and tries to figure out if Arthur is worth her vulnerability. The biggest thing I disliked was Arthur’s insistence on calling her Gwen (not her name, just his observation that she looks like Guinevere from his childhood book of fairy tales). Still, a fully enjoyable read.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Reading the Bible from the Margins
This introduction focuses on how issues involving race, class, and gender influence our understanding of the Bible. Describing how “standard” readings of the Bible are not always acceptable to people or groups on the “margins,” this book afters valuable new insights into biblical texts today.
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This book deserves to be read by every American who calls themself a Christian. Although it was published 25 years ago, it is shockingly (and sadly) still timely and relevant in today’s culture. I learned a lot about how the Bible can be read and interpreted based on the language in which you read it or the marginalized culture you belong to, which was by turns fascinating, convicting, and freeing.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
Cross My Heart and Never Lie
In this fresh, sensitive, diary-style graphic novel, 12-year-old Tuva’s questions about becoming a teenager are confusing—so when her first crush turns out to be on another girl, it feels absolutely wonderful–so why does it become so complicated?
Perfect for fans of The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag, HeartStopper by Alice Oseman, and Jen Wang’s The Dressmaker and the Prince.
Tuva is starting seventh grade, and her checklist of goals writing out a diary, getting a trendy look, building the best fort in the woods with her BFFs, and much more. But when she starts school, nothing is how she hoped it would be.
Seventh grade has split her friends into rival TEAM LINNEA and the girls who fall in love and TEAM BAO and the girls who NEVER fall in love. Linnea has a BOYFRIEND, Bao hates everything related to love. Worst of all, Linnea and Bao expect Tuva to choose a side!
In this delighfully hand-lettered coming-of-age graphic diary, Tuva gets caught between feeling like a kid and wanting to know HOW to become a teenager. Then Miriam shows up and suddenly Tuva feels as if she’s met her soulmate. Can you fall in love with a girl, keep it from your friends, and survive? For Tuva, it may be possible, but it’s defintely not easy.
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A fun, relatable graphic novel in the style of a diary that Tuva keeps as she enters seventh grade and everything changes–friendships, crushes, and more. I found this cute though forgettable, but I imagine if you are in that middle grade age range you would enjoy it a lot more.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
The Tainted Cup
In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.
At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears–quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.
Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.
As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.
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A really fun murder mystery set in a fantasy world that is constantly on the brink of destruction by leviathans from the sea. Din, a genetically altered apprentice to an eccentric detective, faces danger of many kinds as he attempts to use his skills to solve the murder before anyone else gets hurt. I loved the exploration of the powerful taking advantage of the masses, alongside the great world building that never takes away from the fast moving, constantly evolving plot. The characters as well are really fun and complex. I would love to read more books in this world.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces
Gabi Hernandez chronicles her last year in high school in her diary: college applications, Cindy’s pregnancy, Sebastian’s coming out, the cute boys, her father’s meth habit, and the food she craves. And best of all, the poetry that helps forge her identity.
July 24
My mother named me Gabriella, after my grandmother who, coincidentally, didn’t want to meet me when I was born because my mother was unmarried, and therefore living in sin. My mom has told me the story many, many, MANY, times of how, when she confessed to my grandmother that she was pregnant with me, her mother beat her. BEAT HER! She was twenty-five. That story is the basis of my sexual education and has reiterated why it’s important to wait until you’re married to give it up. So now, every time I go out with a guy, my mom says, “Ojos abiertos, piernas cerradas.” Eyes open, legs closed. That’s as far as the birds and the bees talk has gone. And I don’t mind it. I don’t necessarily agree with that whole wait until you’re married crap, though. I mean, this is America and the 21st century; not Mexico one hundred years ago. But, of course, I can’t tell my mom that because she will think I’m bad. Or worse: trying to be White.
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A raw, honest, yet ultimately hopeful look at Gabi’s senior year of high school. She, along with her friends and family, face teen pregnancy, rape, addiction, death, and all the range of teenage emotions and hormones. It’s a powerful YA novel written in the form of a diary.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Wren Martin Ruins it All
Now that Wren Martin is student council president (on a technicality, but hey, it counts) he’s going to fix Rapture High. His first order of business: abolish the school’s annual Valentine’s Day Dance, a drain on the school’s resources and general social nightmare—especially when you’re asexual.
His greatest opponent: Leo Reyes, vice president and all-around annoyingly perfect student, who has a solution to Wren’s budget problem. A sponsorship from Buddy, the anonymous “not a dating” app sweeping the nation. Now instead of a dance-less senior year, Wren is in charge of the biggest dance Rapture High has ever seen. He’s even secretly signed up for the app. For research, of course.
But when Wren develops capital F-Feelings for his anonymous match, things spiral out of control. Wren decided a long time ago that dating while asexual wasn’t worth the hassle. With the Dance rapidly approaching, he isn’t sure what will kill him first: the dance, his relationship drama, or the growing realization that Leo’s perfect life might not be so perfect after all.
In an unforgettably quippy and endearingly chaotic voice, narrator Wren Martin explores the complexities of falling in love while asexual.
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A truly lovely YA romance with fun, sweet characters and a school dance setting. I loved it, and even being able to predict what would happen next just made it all the more satisfying. I loved the representation as well. One of my favorite reads of the year.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
Big Tree
A giant five-thousand-year-old Sequoia, called Wa-No-Na by the [Indigenous people], tells its life story.
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Newbery book. This book has beautiful illustrations of the life of a redwood tree. However, the story was boring and peppered with outdated terms for Indigenous people. Not recommended.
Rating: Meh
Trail of Lightning
While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.
Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last—and best—hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could imagine.
Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel to the rez to unravel clues from ancient legends, trade favors with tricksters, and battle dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.
As Maggie discovers the truth behind the disappearances, she will have to confront her past—if she wants to survive.
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This reads like the female, indigenous version of Dresden (which is to say, about ten times better in my opinion). It’s dark, it’s dangerous, it’s magical; there’s romance and gore and strained alliances. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but I found it hard to put down.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Reykjavik
Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík. In early August, the girl disappears without a trace. Time passes, and the mystery becomes Iceland‘s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there?
Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lára’s case. But as he draws closer to discovering the secret, and with the eyes of Reykjavík upon him, it soon becomes clear that Lára’s disappearance is a mystery that someone will stop at nothing to keep unsolved . . .
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This wasn’t the most gripping Icelandic noir mystery. I enjoyed the characters and the ending was satisfying, but it wasn’t anything special.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
Once a Queen
When fourteen-year-old Eva Joyce unexpectedly finds herself spending the summer at the mysterious manor house of the English grandmother she’s never met, troubling questions arise. Why the estrangement? What’s with the house’s employees and their guarded secrets? Why must Eva never mention trains, her father, or her favorite childhood fairy tales?
After strange things start happening in the gardens at night, Eva turns to the elderly housekeeper, gardener, and the gardener’s great-grandson, Frankie, for answers. Astonishingly, they all seem to believe the fairy tales are true–that portals to other worlds still exist, though hidden and steadily disappearing. They suspect that Eva’s grandmother was once a queen in one of those worlds.
But Eva’s grandmother denies it all. After a horrific family tragedy when she was young, her heart is closed to the beauty and pain of her past. It’s up to Eva, with Frankie’s help, to discover what really happened, whether family relationships can be restored, and if the portals are closed forever. As she unravels generational secrets, Eva wrestles with the grief of a vanishing childhood–and the fear that growing up means giving up fairy tales forever.
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I hate to say it, but this was boring–I wish the characters had spent any time at all in the magical world. Instead, the book was taken up with repetitive, vague mentions of a Narnia-esque world that others had been kings and queens in. Ternival doesn’t enter into the picture until 80% of the way through the book, and even then our main characters visit only long enough for the magical residents to tell Eva that she must return to the real world of England. Truly repetitive and unenjoyable.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Meh
Dungeons and Drama
Musical lover Riley has big aspirations to become a director on Broadway. Crucial to this plan is to bring back her high school’s spring musical, but when Riley takes her mom’s car without permission, she’s grounded and stuck with the worst punishment: spending her after-school hours working at her dad’s game shop.
Riley can’t waste her time working when she has a musical to save, so she convinces Nathan—a nerdy teen employee—to cover her shifts and, in exchange, she’ll flirt with him to make his gamer-girl crush jealous.
But Riley didn’t realize that meant joining Nathan’s Dungeons & Dragons game…or that role playing would be so fun. Soon, Riley starts to think that flirting with Nathan doesn’t require as much acting as she would’ve thought…
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A super cute YA romance. Riley is super into musicals, and when she gets grounded and forced to work at her dad’s game shop, the last thing she wants to do is spend time with Nathan, another employee and huge D&D fan. Still, when they get into fake dating, of course you know it’s going to turn into something more. Predictable as most romances are, but still super sweet and satisfying.
*Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
America Moves Forward
America Is Born and America Grows Up told the story of our country from its early beginnings to World War I. This final volume, which deals with the crucial period from 1917 to the present, brilliantly concludes Mr. Johnson’s distinguished history of America.
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Newbery book. This book is filled with a simplistic overview of American history from the end of World War I to the founding of the United Nations and the beginning of the Korean War. It is the end of a trilogy of American history books written for children in the early 1960s. Although there are many points on which the author has been proven by history to be incorrect, and there are many events that have been simplified to the point that they have lost all nuance (in particular, racism, sexism, and colonialism are barely touched on), I was surprised at some of the author’s views on communism, the role of the United States in the post-WWII world, and other things. There are certainly much better American histories for children now, but as a history written at a very specific historical point itself, this was a more interesting read than I had anticipated.
Rating: Meh
Newbery and Beyond 