The Big Catch Up

If you take a peek into my side bar, you'll see a little code box to grab the button for Friday's Fave Five to put in your sidebar if you'd like. Thanks to Michelle for that! Now it's super easy for you to get that little baby into your sidebar. Or if you prefer just the button that links to Living to Tell the Story you can follow the instructions here. The bigger button to grab for your actual post can also be grabbed from that same spot or, of course, in my post tomorrow. I'd love for you to join me in looking back over the week and telling us your favorite things from your week.

Well, summer is just about gone. It's hard to believe it's already just days away from officially ending. I don't know about anyone else but mine just seemed to fly by. It was very busy what with getting Kay organized for her move to another province to go to school, a vacation, and just having extra children here during the day. But I did manage to do lots of one of my absolutely favorite things and that's to read. I managed lots of relaxed wonderful reading time on vacation and even during more relaxed days around here. So in a monumental effort to get organized for Katrina's Fall into Reading 2008, I finished up some great reads and for my own benefit am doing a quick review of each. I like to have a short review for myself on my book blog just so I can remember which books I've read and if I've liked them. If you can't stand reviews, then you better run, run like the wind. But don't forget to come back tomorrow for Friday's Fave Five! :v)

Okay, if you're still here, grab a coffee and we're moving on:

Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs

Our ladies bible study group did this as our study last year. When we first took it on there were some in the group who thought it would be a bit of a fluff study. Boy were they surprised. From Eve to Lot's Wife to Rahab and others the author takes on a deep study of these women's lives. Starting with the gist of the biblical story set in our times with modern day women, she then takes us to the biblical story. With very indepth questions after each chapter and lots of scripture references in the back of the book for each question, there was some soul searching going on in the group, for sure. It always took us at least 2 study nights to go through each chapter because of all the discussion that each question and each character's life fostered. As a group we loved this study. Something we didn't know about but which would also compliment the study is a workbook that goes along with it.

Mistaken Identity by Don & Susie Van Ryn and Newll, Colleen and Whitney Cerak

I along with the rest of North America was in shock a few years ago when I read the story of the horrific accident that took the life of five people from a Christian University who were travelling home from an invent. I remember reading that one of the sister's of a survivor had started a blog to keep family members updated of the progress of her severly injured and comatose sister. For five weeks the Van Ryn family kept a vigil by the bedside of Laura as she fought for her life. Meanwhile the Cerak family laid to rest their precious daughter and clung to God to get them through their grief.

But what really made the headlines nationwide was when it was discovered after 5 weeks that it was not Laura after all who was clinging to life but Whitney. There had been a mixup in the identifications and now a Christian family who thought they had buried their daughter could rejoice that indeed their daughter was alive but another Christian family now had to deal with devestating news and loss and grief five weeks after the fact of the accident.

I remember wondering how, in this day and age, could an error like that have been made. I remember my heart being broken for the families and wondering how they could cope with something like that. And then I remember seeing them on television in the spring and the mighty witness both families were for the love and grace of a mighty God in their lives. This book told their story. Their love for each other and the unfailing hope and belief in the goodness of God are amazing. This book is an incredible witness of what the grace of God can do in the lives of a family facing the unthinkable and how the love of God can bring them through it.

the Canopy by Angela Hunt

Although not a new novel, I thoroughly enjoyed The Canopy. I've always enjoyed Angela Hunts stories. She likes to use a lot of allegory type stories to teach a spiritual truth. And her characters are very real with flaws and human weaknesses. The same holds true for the Canopy.

The Canopy is about an atheist researcher who goes to the Amazon to find a cure for Prion diseases which turn your brain into spongiform tissue such as in the Mad Cow Disease in people. She herself has a form of the disease which is inherited and which is fatal. It literally is a disease where the brain gets fatal insomnia and cannot sleep. It is always firing. She watched her mother die of it and now is manifesting sypmtoms. She is very secretive about it because she doesn't want her young daughter to find out. She meets up with a doctor from England who's wife died of the Mad Cow disease who also doesn't share much of that hard time in his life but is a Christian now working in the Amazon with the natives. Through a string of events they are led to each other and led on a quest to a unreached group of peoples for the cure.

The story is very interesting and well researched, inculding both the disease and the Amazon tribal belief system. (She explains more of that right after the last chapter.) Definitely not a fluff read but it's not a hard book to read either and I personally did not think it bogged down with scientific explanations. I felt Ms. Hunt did a great job with giving enough info so that you knew what the disease was without the book becoming dry and reading like a textbook. It keeps a decent pace. There were parts in the book I could not stop reading and it found me up well past my bedtime to find out what happens to the characters.

So that's it for today. I'm just finishing up one more and then I can get right into making the list for Fall into Reading, which I have to tell you, just makes me giddy with excitement. I know, I'm such a nerd. And now I would be remiss not to remind you one more time of joining me for Friday's Fave Five. See you there.