Tag Archives: Christian Life

Seraphina Sequel! Station Eleven, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Praying Life

I just got my e-hands on an e-ARC for Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina, and it’s not disappointing. Full review will be posted on the release date. I joined a book club but missed the first meeting because production widow. I was so bummed, because Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was a great one for a discussion. I have long been fascinated by depictions of our world with the lights off, but usually they leave me with the megrims and a sense of…

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Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther

Synopsis: Subtitled: “My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future.” Review: I have long been a fan of Elizabeth Esther’s blog (especially her previous tagline: “I use my words.”) I did not grow up in fundamentalism (thankfully) but did grow up with some of the premillenial dispensationalism that had me scared that I’d be Left Behind. When I joined a church that was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America denomination, I was so relieved to find out that I no longer…

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Evolving in Monkeytown by Rachel Held Evans

Synopsis: Subtitled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. Review: If you grew up evangelical, you pretty much have to read Evolving in Monkeytown. Rachel Held Evans nails it perfectly. I have never felt such a kinship with a book in my life. I felt like the ending sort of wandered off, but that didn’t take away from its powerful message–that questions are more important to faith than answers.

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Sober Mercies by Heather Harpham Kopp

Synopsis: Subtitled: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk. Review: Sober Mercies is first and foremost an addiction memoir, showing the secrecy and the deception and the havoc wreaked by Heather Harpham Kopp’s need to drink as much alcohol as possible every single day. What makes her story stand apart is that Kopp was (and still is) a professing Christian at the time of her addiction. She believed that alcoholism was only a sin problem, not an addiction or a disease, and so she…

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Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler

Synopsis: A sheltered young man realizes he needs to decide what he really believes in. Review: Aaron Hartzler is witty and perceptive, and Rapture Practice is an insider’s look at the wacky outskirts of evangelicalism. I didn’t stay very interested in the memoir aspect, mainly because as I’ve mentioned before I’m not crazy about the genre, but I did like the way Hartzler told his story. He’s a good writer, to be sure. And the review would have been longer, but my site was hacked…

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Does Jesus Really Love Me? by Jeff Chu

Synopsis: Subtitled: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. Review: In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve met Jeff Chu on several occasions and am pretty sure at least one of them was a Thanksgiving potluck, so I read Does Jesus Really Love Me? with a bit of personal interest. The first compliment I’ll pay to the book is that I found it fascinating and riveting way beyond the mutual friends we share. The second compliment I’ll pay is that this book…

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Suburbianity by Byron Forrest Yawn

Synopsis: Subtitled “What Have We Done to the Gospel? Can We Find Our Way Back to Biblical Christianity?” Review: I don’t live in the suburbs but there was still a lot in Suburbianity that resonated with me. I really appreciated the incisive dissection of the way that the American church has taken Christ out of Christianity, a topic that was well-addressed by Michael Horton in Christless Christianity, and which is developed even further here. I felt newly inspired by the beauty and clarity of the…

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A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

Synopsis: Subtitled “How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband ‘Master’.” Review: I didn’t think I wanted to read A Year of Biblical Womanhood because it seemed gimmicky and I assumed that the writer was going for snark. But I gradually became turned on to the beautiful, incisive, perceptive, and deeply Christian writings of author Rachel Held Evans and realized I had to make this my next read. I want all of my friends to read…

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See Me Naked: Stories of Sexual Exile in American Christianity by Amy Frykholm

Synopsis: Biographical essays about people whose stories didn’t follow the script they were given by their parents and their American evangelical churches. Review: I read See Me Naked after the thoughtful review in Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog. I think the very premise will make people uncomfortable and that’s a good thing, because evangelical kids get exposed to a lot of really messed up stuff. Anyone who works with Christian teens really ought to read this book and see that not everyone’s challenges can be met…

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