The Final Summit by Andy Andrews

Amazing book! I hardly know where to begin telling you about it! This book, The Final Summit, follows Andrews' earlier book The Traveler's Gift. Reading the inner cover summary I honestly didn't think I'd be too interested in this book. To summarize without giving too much away. . .David Ponder, widower, aged 74, embarks on another time travel adventure to save the world. Sounds a bit hokey, right? WRONG! The story includes many of the world's greatest people, in an imaginary setting where they would all be able to interact (despite not being historical contemporaries) to use their combined wisdom to find a way to save humankind.

I encourage you all to read this book—whether or not you’ve read the first book, The Traveler’s Gift (I hadn’t read it). I generally don’t care for time travel books or sci-fi books, but this was definitely an exception. It was so interestingly written that the chapters just flew by! How fun to imagine such figures as Joan of Arc, Benjamin Franklin, King David, Thomas Edison, and so many others—interacting and sharing ideas with each other! I can say that this book appeals to men and women, of all different ages—I would recommend this book to my dad, my grandma, my nephew, my neighbor! I plan on purchasing several copies of this book to use as gifts.

This book was entertaining, thought-provoking, suspenseful, and challenging. You WILL be glad you read it!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review.

Description from the publisher:
Book Description
David Ponder is back. This time the fate of mankind is in his hands.

This is mankind’s last chance. Centuries of greed, pride, and hate have sent humanity hurtling toward disaster, and far from its original purpose. There is only one solution that can reset the compass and right the ship, and it consists of only two words.

With time running out, it is up to David Ponder and a cast of history’s best and brightest minds to uncover this solution before it is too late. The catch? They are allowed only five tries to discover the answer.

Readers first encountered David Ponder in The Traveler's Gift. Now, in The Final Summit, Andrews combines a riveting narrative with astounding history in order to show us the one thing we must do when we don’t know what to do.

Johann Sebastian Bach by Rick Marschall

The book Johann Sebastian Bach by Rick Marschall is in a series of books called “Christian Encounters”. This series of biographies has been written to show the Christianity that was a large part of some of history’s familiar characters. It is a nice small-sized book, with fold-over covers that can function as bookmarks in a pinch!
This book has many explanations about traditions of the day and other sections that explain how things “worked” in that age and time. Details are given about Bach’s family (for instance, did you know that he came from a long line of musicians—music really “ran in the family”! There are descriptions of circumstances under which he wrote many of his musical works as well.

I am sorry to say that I did not much like this book. I love biographies and reading about the lives of historical figures, but found that this book was not an easy style of book for me to read. If I were doing detailed research of Bach I may have found it more helpful, but for me, it was not entertaining, compelling, or even easily flowing. It was very laborious to get through all the chapters. So, I’m going to just say that I’m sure there are many readers who would like this book, maybe more scholarly people, but it just didn’t happen to be a favorite of mine.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through
the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review.

WOW!!!

WOW! This may be one of the all-time best tips I've ever heard. . .

for those of you who have chickens or buy fresh eggs, you know that they are very hard to peel when boiled (unless you let them sit in your fridge for a few weeks). WELL--I read this tip and just tried it, for easy-peeling hard boiled eggs.

Ready for it?

STEAM them, don't boil them!! Steam them for about 10 min then cool in cold water, and the peels practically jump right off!! It's amazing!

http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/snitz/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=47884

thanks to the girls at MJF for this tip!! :)

Book Giveaway--Bad Girls of the Bible

Great book by Liz Curtis Higgs, good for either a group Bible study or individual. I'd love to give away a copy! To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment on this post about. . .anything!

Also--if you're a MJF person, leave me your username so I can get ahold of you if you are the winner! otherwise, I'll need to know how to contact you if you are the winner :)

Winner will be chosen on Thursday morning! :)

ALSO--if you could "rank" my review of this book (see previous post) that would be helpful to me! Thanks! :)

Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs

As I finished reading Bad Girls of the Bible (And What We Can Learn from Them) by Liz Curtis Higgs, I was wishing I was a part of a women’s Bible Study Group to carry on the discussion sections of the book. This book was a very well-written book about ten of the “bad girls” found in the Bible, such as Eve, Potiphar’s wife, Rahab, Lot’s wife, Delilah, and several others. The book was laid out in a format such that each chapter covered one woman—beginning with a fictional parallel story of a woman today, followed by the Scriptural record of each one, and a discussion of her and how she relates to each of us today.

The book was written in a friendly conversational tone, easy to read, and compelling to follow. She related these “Bad Girls” to each of us, whether we consider ourselves to be a “bad” or “good” girl. These women all had characteristics that can be seen in our lives today, and we are challenged to overcome these tendencies

I definitely liked this book. It was an enjoyable challenge read by myself; however I think I would have enjoyed it even more if read and discussed as part of a group Bible study. It could easily have been used in this format, as each chapter has great discussion questions included at the end of each chapter.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. I was not required to write a positive review.

What a lot of boots!! :) Nice welcome to our house, huh? :) Ah, mud season. This is only about half of what's lined/piled up at the front door. Well, the positive spin is that I'm thankful that we are blessed with boots for every season!

Transforming Prayer by Daniel Henderson

I was very excited to receive the book Transforming Prayer by Daniel Henderson, as I’ll admit, my prayer life could use some work. Throughout the years my prayer life has looked different at different times, sometimes searching, sometimes constant little prayers throughout the day, sometimes long lists of requests, you get the idea.

The little phrase on the front cover of the book, “How everything changes when you seek God’s face” pretty much sums up most of the book. The first 160 pages of the book are filled with stories of people whose lives have been transformed by this “new” way of prayer, as well as reasons why current common ways of prayer are inadequate. Finally, after 2/3 of the book are through, the author gets to his pattern for prayer (patterned somewhat after the Lord’s Prayer)—40 pages of discussion/ideas for this type of prayer. I did find some good ideas and a great description of how to pray using Scripture, which I’ll definitely incorporate into my life.

So. . .I didn’t love this book as I had hoped. It took a long time to slog through all the “front matter” before getting to the “meat” of the book. I’m afraid some readers may give up amongst all his stories of lives changed and never get to the part which could change their prayer lives. This being said, I didn’t totally dislike the book. I think it could be a good tool for a Bible Study-type setting—it would start good discussions about prayer and digging into the Word of God.
I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers as a part of their book review program.