Several months ago, I listened to the audiobook of Colum Mcann's Let the Great World Spin, a novel which shares the story of several different characters, specifically their responses to the wire walking that Philippe Petit's unsanctioned high wire walk between the twin towers in 1974. Immediately, I was pulled in by Colum McCann's writing and characters. However in books like this, regardless of how good the writing is and how compelling the characters are, if something doesn't pull the vignettes together, it doesn't stand up as a novel to me. Colum McCann did this masterfully. He pulled these characters together in ways that were not at all predictable, and the theme of the world turning in the midst of everyone's separate lives runs through it completely. I was intrigued by his ability to write ...
Category Archives: Biography
Life, In Spite of Me
17-year old Kristen Jane Anderson had had enough. Life just wasn't what she planned. Losing a family member and a friend, then being raped by someone she knew and trusted had all taken their toll. One cold winter night, Kristen decided to end her life. She lay across railroad tracks near her home and waited to wake up in heaven. Instead, she woke up to a nightmare. Life, without her legs. Life, In Spite of Me: Extraordinary Hope After a Fatal Choice is Kristen's story of surviving her suicide attempt and much more. Kristen recounts the events of her life that led her to such drastic measures, and the hope she found as she learned to deal with the aftermath of her choice. Told with brutal (and sometimes quite graphic) honesty, Kristen's story isn't an easy read. It is ...
Books on Screen: Molly Ringwald movies
In Molly Ringwald's new book Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick, she looks back on her teen years that she spent on the big screen. Molly Ringwald is about my age, and so I grew up watching her, and the John Hughes movies that she starred in are so typically 80's, that I just had to revisit them. Read my interview with Molly Ringwald over at 5 Minutes for Mom, and enter to win a copy of her new book Getting the Pretty Back. The book is fun. It's not a beauty book, or a fashion book, or a self-help book. It has elements of all of this, but reading this book is just like having a good candid chat with a girlfriend. Ringwald dishes on personal style ...
Same Kind of Different as Me
I'm not sure what rock I've been living under, but I just heard about Same Kind of Different As Me a couple of months ago. I'd read such rave reviews, I decided I had to put this book on the top of my "To Read" list. I'm unbelievably glad I did. Two days after finishing the book, I'm still reeling from this powerful true story. Told by Denver Moore and Ron Hall in alternating chapters, Same Kind of Different As Me chronicles the friendship forged between a black homeless man and a white wealthy art dealer. Denver spent the first twenty-odd years of his life in proverbial slavery on a cotton plantation (in 20th century America). He finally decides to strike out on his own, and hops a train to Texas. After years on the street, he ...
Jane Austen (Christian Encounters)
I recently finished reading Jane Austen which is part of Thomas Nelson's new Christian Encounters biography series. A relatively short read on the life of Jane Austen, I was curious to know how Christianity was going to be tied into her story. This one hundred and fifty three page biography was written by Peter Leithart, whose teaching I have sat under in person during the time when I lived in Moscow, Idaho. Dr. Peter Leithart teaches Theology and Literature at New St. Andrews College in Moscow (that's Mos-coe not Mos-cow) and is the pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in the same town. You might also recognize his name as being associated with Canon Press and Doug Wilson. That to say, my familiarity with who Leithart is, ...
Bonhoeffer: A Biography
Bonhoeffer: A Biography is a hefty six hundred page read. However, when you close the book, you know Bonhoeffer in a way you've never quite understood him before. I saw this book coming down the pike from Thomas Nelson and I knew it would be one that I would absolutely want to read. Despite its length, I believed it would paint the most thorough picture of Bonhoeffer that I've come into contact with. I read Bonhoeffer's work, Life Together, listened to lectures about the man and watched a biographical movie about it. I was aware of the basics of what Bonhoeffer is sometimes though most famous for - being part of a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf ...
Claudette Colvin
I was curious to read the Cybils Nonfiction Finalist Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice because it's gotten so much buzz, and also because unlike some, I had heard of Claudette Colvin -- from, in fact, the Cybils MG/YA Nonfiction winner from 2006 that I was also privileged to help select -- Russell Freedman's Freedom Walkers (linked to my review). It was a teenaged Claudette Colvin who was one of the first who chose not to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, not Rosa Parks, who was sort of chosen to be the face of the lawsuit. The author Phillip Noose pulls us into Colvin's story right away, and I found it to be well-written and quite readable, though it did drag a bit towards the end. The fact that certain elements were not buried (such ...
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Jennifer Donovan
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