Category Archives: Books

Review: Dombey and Son

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Dombey and Son

Mr. Dombey of Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son was originally the son of the establishment by that name. Now he’s the father, his only son having just been born. Already he has plans and dreams for when his son is old enough to go into the family shipping business with him.

The Dombeys had a girl six years before, “But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! In the capital of the House’s name and dignity, such a child was merely a piece of base coin that couldn’t be invested” (p. 8, Kindle version).

Mr. Dombey’s wife, however, weakens fast and dies before the baby, little Paul, is a day old.

A wet nurse is hired, and Paul grows, but he’s never very strong. He and Florence are sent to Brighton to be aided by the sea air. Paul does so well that he stays there for school, with Florence helping him with his studies.

But Paul dies at age six.

Mr. Dombey does not open his heart to grieve with Florence. He’s barely aware of her.

Some years later, on a vacation with a friend, Mr. Dombey meets a widowed Mrs. Edith Granger, who is beautiful but proud and cold—just his type. Her mother and his friend connive to get the two together. Eventually they marry.

But once again, Mr. Dombey is disappointed. He had thought his wife’s pride would be blended with his own and transferred to his reputation, standing, and business. But proud people do not usually blend their pride with others. Thus the Dombey establishment is set for conflict.

In one brief scene, we see the reason behind Edith’s demeanor. For all her coldness to everyone else, the new Mrs. Dombey loves Florence. Yet Mr. Dombey is jealous that Florence receives the attention and warmth he doesn’t, and he takes it out on her.

Aside from his dysfunctional household, Dombey has a conniving, obsequious assistant named Mr. James Carker. We know Mr. Carker is up to no good, despite his flattery, but it takes a while before we find just what he is planning.

As always, Dickens weaves together many subplots into his narrative.

A young boy named Walter Gay works for Dombey. His uncle runs a shop where he makes and sells shipping instruments. One day when Florence is separated from the children’s nurse and lost, she runs into Walter, who sees her safely home. Though Mr. Dombey appreciates the effort, he doesn’t like him. When he misunderstands an action of Walter’s, he sends him to Barbados. But the ship is not heard of again, and Walter’s uncle goes to look for him.

A creepy, avaricious elderly woman named Mrs. Brown finds Florence when she is lost and makes her change her fine clothes and shoes for rags so she could sell them. Later, Mrs. Brown’s daughter returns from prison nursing a hatred for Mr. Carker, who had some part in sending her there. These two appear at intervals through the book.

Mr. Toots is a kind-hearted but weak-minded fellow student at Paul’s school who loves Florence and also turns up at intervals.

Mr. Carker’s brother, John, was guilty of wrongdoing in the firm some years earlier, but is repentant, humbled, and reformed. James continually belittles and argues with him. Their sister, Harriet, went to help John in his trouble, causing James to cut off relations with her. A mysterious stranger shows up later to John and Harriet’s home to offer help when they need it.

Besides these, there are a number of colorful characters, some comic and some cruel.

I love how Dickens phrases some things:

Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new (page 7, Kindle version).

Time and his brother Care had set some marks, as on a tree that was to come down in good time—remorseless twins they are for striding through their human forests, notching as they go (p. 7).

. . . the nurse, a simpering piece of faded gentility (p. 8).

He was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small suns looking at you through a fog (p. 27).

Snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses (p. 70).

It being part of Mrs. Pipchin’s system not to encourage a child’s mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster . . . (p. 71).

There was never a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than the Major, when in puffing him, he puffed himself (p. 185).

Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always: at her books, her music, and her work: in her morning walks, and in her nightly prayers: she had her engrossing aim in view. Strange study for a child, to learn the road to a hard parent’s heart!  (p. 208).

Harriet complied and read—read the eternal book for all the weary and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this earth—read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar, the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our dainty clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or sophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, can take away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain reduce—read the ministry of Him who, through the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs, from birth to death, from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its every scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow (pp. 520-521).

I think I can say the story is redemptive without giving away the ending. And though this is a sad story in many ways, Dickens sprinkles many choice comic moments throughout.

I wanted to read this book partly because I’ve purposed to read the Dickens books I’ve not read yet, and partly because this book played a significant part in The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron, which I recently read. I wondered if there was some connection between the stories or whether it was included because it would have been popular at the time.

I listened to the audiobook superbly read by David Timson. His voice characterizations and inflections added so much to my enjoyment of the book. When I look for my next Dickens’ book, I am going to see if I can find one narrated by Timson. That may be soon, as this book reminded me how much I love Dickens.

Review: Mildred Budge in Cloverdale

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Mildred Budge in Cloverdale

Mildred Budge in Cloverdale by Daphne Simpkins is the first of several books about retired schoolteacher Mildred Budge. Mildred retired a little on the early side, but we’re not told why until a few chapters in.

Mildred is finding retired life anything but peaceful. Her best friend, Fran, has set them up in booth for the Emporium to sell off some of their used furniture. A young couple across the street wants her help with their son, who doesn’t talk. And Sam at church wants her to host a young couple coming for the missionary conference.

Mildred is somewhat set in her ways, but is pressured to take the young couple in. She finds herself actually enjoying them and joins in with some of their activities.

But trouble comes when suspicious “serial widow” Liz makes moves towards Fran’s boyfriend and when Mildred is betrayed by someone she tried to help.

I liked that Mildred loosened up a bit over the course of the book and had a heart to help people.

But I’m sorry to say I did not care for this book very much. The author’s writing and style of humor didn’t gel with me. Plus there were many statements about what “church ladies” do and think (as if they all think and do the same) that rubbed me the wrong way–although those statements may have been meant as humorous. Also, a lot of lines of dialogue sounded stilted because of several paragraphs of extraneous information between each speaker’s lines.

Some of the spiritual content was a little wonky, like this: “Salvation is an old-timey word that simply means you don’t have to live out this life alone. You are not created to live like that” (p. 55, Kindle version). This was from a preacher at a funeral service. Salvation isn’t that old-timey a word, and it’s much more than not living alone. Later, when a young woman says she might be interested in having Jesus in her life, Mildred “felt an urgency” to ask her just to say His name. But the conversation (and any explanation) never went further. In the excerpt from the next book at the end, one man says a pastoral candidate at the church “preached grace, which means he wasn’t willing to preach Jesus front and center”—which doesn’t make sense.

I found very few negative reviews on Amazon or Goodreads for this book, so lots of other people liked it. I got it when Paula mentioned enjoying it. At that time, it was free for both the Kindle and Audible versions, so I got both. However, the Audible version was narrated by a “Virtual Voice,” which was not very good. It sounded human rather than robotic and had a bit of conversational flow to it, but it did not do inflections well and stumbled over words like “Tsk.”

Have you read Mildred Budge books? Have you ever disliked a book other people loved?

Review: Everything Sad Is Untrue

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Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri is, on one level, a story about a boy who came to America as a refugee from Iran. Besides encountering a different language, different ways of doing things, even different kinds of toilets, Daniel has to deal with losses.

First he lost his name, Khosrou, because no one could pronounce it. He lost the presence of his father, who stayed behind in Iran. He lost his language and culture. He lost his position in society: his mother had been a doctor in Iran but worked cutting cardboard in a company that made business cards in the US. And he lost his connection with his extended family, his memories of them in fragments. “A patchwork memory is the shame of a refugee” is something he says often.

That was when I realized I had to write down the memories and myths and the legends—and even the phrases and jokes. Or I’d lose everything. Maybe even the recipes (p. 235, Kindle version).

Another layer of the story is the sad human tendency not only not to welcome anyone “different,” but to actively persecute them.

Yet another major facet is Daniel’s mother’s conversion to Christianity and the fatwa that was placed on her head, which led to her fleeing Iran with her two children. They ended up in a refugee camp in Italy for three years before finally making it to the US.

Sima, my mom, read about him and became a Christian too. Not just a regular one, who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love. She wanted everybody to have what she had, to be free, to realize that in other religions you have rules and codes and obligations to follow to earn good things, but all you had to do with Jesus was believe he was the one who died for you (p. 195).

How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, “Because it’s true.” Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home, and the best cream puffs of Jolfa, and even maybe your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise (p. 196).

If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. That or Sima is insane (pp. 196-197).

Daniel tells his story from his viewpoint as a twelve-year-old boy in the style of Scheherazade, the storyteller in One Thousand and One Nights. Sometimes he addresses the reader directly. Sometimes he addresses his teacher as if what he is writing is for an assignment.

If you listen, I’ll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we’re not enemies anymore (p. 1).

The point of the Nights is that if you spend time with each other—if we really listen in the parlors of our minds and look at each other as we were meant to be seen—then we would fall in love. We would marvel at how beautifully we were made. We would never think to be villain kings, and we would never kill each other. Just the opposite. The stories aren’t the thing. The thing is the story of the story. The spending of the time. The falling in love. All the good stuff is between and around the things that happen (p. 299).

Being a Persian/Eastern tale, it isn’t told in a way we’re used to.

Mrs. Miller says I have “lost the plot,” and am now just making lists of things that happened to fill space. But I replied that she is beholden to a Western mode of storytelling that I do not accept and that the 1,001 Nights are basically Scheherazade stalling for time, so I don’t see the difference. She laughed when I said this (p. 299).

I had heard marvelous things about the book, but was confused when I started reading it. It jumps from a scene at school to a story about Daniel’s ancestors to a story about his mother or something that happened on their journey here. At first I thought this was because the narrator is a twelve-year-old boy. Then I realized it was a different style. I don’t often do this with fiction, but when I finished the book, I immediately started rereading it. I understood it much better the second time–I felt I had all the pieces, so I wasn’t confused. Plus, I just wasn’t ready to let go of the book yet.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the cover until another reviewer mentioned the tornado (which is in the book) is swirling around various things Nayeri mentions throughout his story. Plus, his style of storytelling is cyclical, like the tornado. That helped things click into place for me, plus it made me think the cover designer was a genius.

The title of the book comes from a scene in The Lord of the Rings when Samwise Gamgee “sees Gandalf come back and it’s like seeing his grandpa return from the land of death and memories.” “And Sam thinks maybe all the sad parts of the adventure will come untrue, now that this one has. And the beautiful part is that they do” (p. 232).

Though the story stops at a sad place, it seems a turning point towards hope.

Daniel makes his mother the heroine of story, the one who always had hope, who was unstoppable. “What you believe about the future will change how you live in the present” (p. 347).

The legend of my mom is that she can’t be stopped. Not when you hit her. Not when a whole country full of goons puts her in a cage. Not even if you make her poor and try to kill her slowly in the little-by-little poison of sadness. And the legend is true. I think because she’s fixed her eyes on something beyond the rivers of blood, to a beautiful place on the other side (p. 213).

Once I got into the book, I totally loved it. Well—almost totally. There were a lot of poop stories—maybe because the narrator is a twelve-year-old boy. But there were such poignant moments as well as many funny ones. I couldn’t help but admire and connect with Daniel’s mother. But my eyes were also opened to what refugees experience and to Persian culture.

Some of my other favorite quotes from the book:

I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I pick my nose. I don’t know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don’t know what anybody wants from me. But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw. Like you, I want a friend (p. 2).

To lose something you never had can be just as painful—because it is the hope of having it that you lose (p. 51).

The lesson here is that people have scales in their heads and they measure other people for their value and ugly refugee boys are near the bottom and pretty blond girls are at the top. This is not a happy lesson. But you either get the truth, or you get good news—you don’t often get both (p. 80).

Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble. Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for . . . making something is a hopeful thing to do. And being hopeful in a world of pain is either brave or crazy (p. 122).

My mom comes home exhausted every night. I have never seen her not exhausted. And also, I have never seen her not working (p. 154).

Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love (p. 217).

I found this video of the author and his mother making cream puffs, which I thought was really sweet. I had almost finished my second reading of the book when I saw this, and it was neat to actually see Daniel and his mother

I loved what Kathryn Butler said in her review of this book: “He weaves fragments of myth and personal history into his story, with threads intricately looping like the magnificent Persian rugs he describes (some of them studded with jewels, as can also be said of his prose).”

I’m sure this will be one of my favorite books of the year . . . and of all time.

Review: Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis

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Douglas Gresham was the son of Joy Davidman Gresham, who married C. S. Lewis when Douglas was eleven years old. In 1973, ten years after Lewis’s death, Gresham wrote Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, partly because he was asked to, partly to correct some misconceptions concerning C. S. Lewis. Yet Lenten Lands is his own biography, not Lewis’s.

The title of the book comes from a poem that Lewis had originally written for a friend, but then adapted to be put on Joy’s tombstone:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.

Joy married fellow writer William Gresham in 1942. They had two sons, David and Douglas. But their marriage was troubled. They had been atheists, but searched other religions. Joy was drawn to the writings of C. S. Lewis as he told of his own journey from atheism to Christianity. She began writing to Lewis and eventually visited him in England.

When she returned home, she found that her husband was having an affair with the cousin she had left to keep house for her husband and sons while she was away. She tried to reconcile the marriage, but it was too late. Joy took her two sons and moved to England.

Joy and Lewis and Lewis’s brother, Warnie (Warren) enjoyed a strong, intellectual friendship. Joy and Lewis influenced each other’s writing. When Joy’s visa was not renewed in 1956, Lewis married her in a civil ceremony.

But before long, the couple grew to love each other as more than friends and sought a Christian marriage, difficult since the church of England did not condone Joy’s divorce. But they found someone who would perform the ceremony.

Joy developed bone cancer but went into remission. The cancer came back a few years later, and Joy died in 1960. C. S. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed under a pseudonym. He had not been well himself, and died three years after Joy.

Douglas experienced all these things as a child: he was just eighteen when Lewis passed. He kept in touch with Warnie for some years, but Warnie’s grief and alcoholism were too much for Douglas to bear. He later regretted that he was not more attuned to Warnie’s grief and more of a help to him.

Douglas then tells of his various jobs, marriage, and children.

In his afterword, written in 2003, thirty years after the original publication of the book, he tells how he “committed [his] life to Christ and His service.” He had “always believed in God and in Jesus Christ; my problem was not one of belief, but one of arrogance and pride. I did not want to submit my life to any authority other than my own and it took me a long time to realize that I am simply not qualified to run it myself.” At that time he “was working more and more for the C. S. Lewis Literary Estate.” His Wikipedia page says he “hosted Focus on the Family Radio Theatre’s adaptations of his stepfather’s most famous works, and he was named co-producer for the series of theatrical films adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia” and is now a “stage and voice-over actor, biographer, film producer, and executive record producer.”

Not much is said of his brother, David, in the book. Douglas’s Wikipedia page says David returned to Judaism and was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

My heart went out to Douglas, having experienced so much loss at heartache at such a young age. His young adult years were somewhat tumultuous. A good talking to by the woman who would become his wife helped set him on the right course.

One of my favorite moments in the book was when Douglas actually met Jack. He had regarded him as “a cross between Sir Galahad and Merlin the Wise (p. 27), “on speaking terms with King Peter, with the Great Lion, Aslan himself” (p. 55). But Jack was “a slightly stooped, round-shouldered, balding gentleman whose full smiling mouth revealed long, prominent teeth, yellowed like those of some large rodent, by tobacco staining” (p. 55). “Well, so much for imagery,” Douglas concluded. But he also noticed “His florid and rather large face was lit as if from within with the warmth of his interest and his welcome. I never knew a man whose face was more expressive of the vitality of his person” (p. 55).

Another favorite part was when Douglas said “When I was home from school, the dinner table of The Kilns was the scene of my real education. Jack and Warnie were both brilliant at sustaining a conversation at any one of a dozen different levels and on almost any topic, and I learnt more sitting and conversing over meals than I ever learnt at school (p. 81). I imagine so!

I appreciated what was said about the interaction between Joy and a friend named Jean: “Though they did not always agree upon matters of religion, politics, or taste, they could argue for hours and finally simply agree to disagree, without the dissent having the slightest adverse effect on their friendship” (p. 92).

I became interested in this book after reading a fictional account of the relationship between Joy and Lewis, Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan (linked to my review). Since much of what the author wrote (like letters between the two) was made up, I wanted to read the account from one who was actually there at the time. It’s taken me a few years to get to it, but I am glad I finally did.

Review: The British Booksellers

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The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron

The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron shifts back and forth from WWI to WWII.

Amos Darby and Charlotte Terrington are secret childhood friends with a love for books. But that’s all they can ever be. Amos is a tenant farmer’s son, and Charlotte is an earl’s daughter. Though Charlotte loves Amos, her parents arrange her marriage with Will Holt, the future Earl of Harcourt.

Amos goes off to WWI and comes back scarred. He opens a book shop on Bailey Lane in Coventry, England, but becomes something of a recluse.

Charlotte, now widowed Lady Harcourt, has opened a bookshop as well across the lane with her daughter, Eden. The booksellers have been rivals and enemies for over twenty years, though Eden has tried to negotiate a peace between them.

When an American lawyer, Jacob Cole, shows up with alarming news for Charlotte and Eden, they fight back to keep their estate, even though it is becoming ever harder to maintain.

But when WWII begins and German bombers fly across Coventry, Amos, Charlotte, Eden, and Jacob have to work together to help each other and their neighbors survive.

The Coventry Blitz is referred to as the Forgotten Blitz. The London Blitz received so much attention, Coventry was overlooked in the press. Kristy Cambron says in her author’s notes that some officials suppressed news of the devastation of Coventry so as not to damage morale.

The story includes four Land Girls, part of the Women’s Land Army in Britain who helped out at various farms and homes across the nation. I had read of these women in other books, so it was neat to see their roles fleshed out a bit more.

The historical story was quite interesting, but Charlotte and Amos’ story was so touching.

With characters who have a common love for books and who become rival booksellers, the importance of books comes up often. One of my favorite quotes about this aspect:

Books are an escape that beckons the reader from the heavy burdens of this world.’ Isn’t that what you told me once? They can challenge as well as comfort. Entertain and educate. Even save us in ways we’d never expect. You’ve used the words art, oxygen, and life all to describe them. Anyone who can see such value in these pages ought to also see that they could take him away from a future he doesn’t want. If anything, that is what Dickens wrote for his characters. Isn’t that what you wish for yourself?

I listened to the audiobook, beautifully read by Barrie Kreinik. Happily, this time the audiobook did contain author’s notes about the historical aspects of the book. There weren’t any notes about what inspired the personal stories, though.

With going back and forth between timelines, it was a little hard to keep up sometimes with where we were in the story. It’s not as easy with an audiobook to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to check the dates. Plus 1914 and 1940 sound alike. But it didn’t take too long to get oriented.

Overall, I loved the book and the characters and felt for them.

Review: Be Complete (Colossians)

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Be Complete (Colossians): Become the Whole Person God Intends You to Be by Warren Woersbe

I think most of Warren Wiersbe’s “Be” commentaries are about the same size. So a commentary on Isaiah, which has sixty-six chapters, discusses large portions at a time.

The book of Colossians just has four chapters. So Be Complete (Colossians): Become the Whole Person God Intends You to Be covers just a few verses of Colossians in each of its twelve chapters.

Since Colossians is so densely packed, and the ESV Study Bible had a lot of notes on it as well, plus Wiersbe’s book had more detail, I decided to slow down my usual pace of reading and take time to soak in what was written.

Wiersbe calls Colossians “one of the most profound letters Paul ever wrote.”

The church in Colossae was not one that Paul started; in fact, he had never been to that city. But Paul had been in nearby Ephesus for three years, from which the Bible says “‘all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks'” ‘ (Acts 19:10). This would include people in Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis.” A Colossian named Epaphras seems to have heard Paul preach in Ephesus and then brought the gospel back to Colossae.

At the time Colossians was written, Paul was in prison. Epaphras was with him and evidently shared that a dangerous teaching was making the rounds in Colossae. So Paul wrote to help these believers. Wiersbe believed the false teaching was Gnosticism; the ESV Study Bible notes say that “an improved understanding of Gnosticism” due to more information having been discovered about it has led scholars to think Gnosticism was not the problem, but they don’t know exactly what false teaching was being promoted. Nevertheless, there’s much we can learn from Colossians even without knowing exactly what teaching was being combated.

Paul begins the book with greetings and thankfulness for the Colossians faith. Then he shares what he prays for them, one of my favorite prayers in the Bible:

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

I have prayed this often for myself and loved ones.

Paul then writes about the preeminence of Christ, “the image of the invisible God,” the one who created everything and holds it all together, the head of the church. “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (1:19-20).

And, amazingly, “you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (1:21-22).

Paul says his stewardship was “to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (1:25-29). In the Bible, a mystery wasn’t something to figure out from clues: it was something that was not previously revealed but now is.

Paul warns them to “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit” or “delude(s) you with plausible arguments” (2:8, 4).

Paul goes on to exalt Christ as the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). As we received Him, we’re to “walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving (2:6-7).

After sharing the gospel, Paul gives practical instruction for how the gospel affects our lives, families, and workplaces. There are certain behaviors we’re to put off, others we’re to put on. We’re to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (3:1-2).

Paul wraps up his teaching by encouraging believers to pray, give thanks, and “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (4:5-6).

I can get so caught up in the affairs of this life, I need the reminder to “set my mind on things above” and exalt Christ above all.

A few more quotes from the book that stood out to me:

The gospel message does not center in a philosophy, a doctrine, or a religious system. It centers in Jesus Christ, the Son of God (p. 30, Kindle version).

Uniformity is the result of compulsion from the outside; unity is the result of compassion from the inside (p. 37).

Satan is so deceptive! He likes to borrow Christian vocabulary, but he does not use the Christian dictionary (p. 43).

The false teachers in Colossae, like the false teachers of our own day, would not deny the importance of Jesus Christ. They would simply dethrone Him, giving Him prominence but not preeminence. In their philosophy, Jesus Christ was but one of many “emanations” that proceeded from God and through which men could reach God. It was this claim that Paul refuted in this section (p. 57).

In the New Testament, saints are not dead people who during their lives performed miracles and never sinned. New Testament saints were living people who had trusted Jesus Christ. Paul wrote this letter to living saints (Col. 1:2), (p. 73).

Prayer is not our trying to change God’s mind. It is learning what is the mind of God and asking accordingly (1 John 5:14-15) (p. 81).

It does little good if Christians declare and defend the truth, but fail to demonstrate it in their lives (p. 113).

Paul did not ask for the prison doors to be opened, but that doors of ministry might be opened (1 Cor. 16: 9; Acts 14: 27). It was more important to Paul that he be a faithful minister than a free man. It is worth noting that in all of Paul’s prison prayers, his concern was not for personal safety or material help, but for spiritual character and blessing (p. 154).

I like how Wiersbe closed his commentary on Colossians:

As we come to the close of our study of this remarkable letter, we must remind ourselves that we are complete in Jesus Christ. We should beware of any teaching that claims to give us “something more” than we already have in Christ. All of God’s fullness is in Him, and He has perfectly equipped us for the life that God wants us to live. We do not live and grow by addition, but by appropriation (p. 173).

Review: For a Lifetime

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For a Lifetime by Gabrielle Meyer

For a Lifetime is Gabrielle Meyer’s hot-off-the-press third book in her Timeless series about time crossers.

In this series of novel, a time crosser is one who lives in two timelines. They live in one period of history, and when they go to sleep, they wake up in a different time without any loss of time between. When they go to sleep again, they wake up back in the first time as the very next day, going back and forth. They all bear a sunburst birthmark that marks them as time crossers, some over their heart, some on the back of their heads. The ones with the head marking have until their twenty-fifth birthday to decide which time they want to live the rest of their lives in. If they knowingly try to change history at all, they’ll forfeit their lives in that time period.

In this book, the time crossers are twin girls, Faith and Hope. One of their timelines is in Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692, just before the Salem witch trials begin. The twins are twenty-four, working at their father’s tavern and restaurant. They never knew their mother, having been told she died in childbirth. Their father is harsh and distant, treating them more like servants than daughters.

Their second timeline in in 1912, where Grace is a journalist and Hope is a beginning aviatrix in New York. Their mother in this timeline is a time crosser as well (from the previous book) and lives in Washington DC, where her husband had been a Pinkerton agent during the Civil War and then helped start the Secret Service.

The young women have both decided to stay in 1912 on their twenty-fifth birthdays. Hope thinks they should change history in 1692 so they can go ahead and stay in 1912. Grace thinks the risks are too great–one change could cause a catastrophe.

Grace is dutiful, thoughtful, kind, and level-headed. Hope is adventurous, strong-willed, and prefers acting to thinking.

In 1912, one of Grace’s articles exposed an owner of shirtwaist factories for his unsafe practices which resulted in a serious fire. He struck back by trying to buy the building her parents rented for their orphanage, offering three times the amount the building was worth. Grace wants to confront him, but her father warns that it’s unsafe. So they try to find another way to raise the money to purchase the orphanage themselves.

Also in 1912, Hope is attracted to her flying instructor, well-known aviator Lucas Voland. But he wants to keep their relationship professional. When she introduces Luc to Grace, they instantly dislike each other.

In 1692, Grace is attracted to a neighboring farmer named Isaac, but he only has eyes for Hope. Hope, however, wants nothing to do with him.

In 1912, Grace once looked up a history book about the Salem witch trials and saw, to her horror, that she was said to have accused Hope of being a witch. Grace shut the book and didn’t look up any more information about it. She didn’t tell anyone, and has no intention of accusing Hope–she doesn’t see how such a thing could ever be.

Meanwhile, some young girls are said to be “afflicted,” experiencing convulsions and complaining of being pinched, etc. They accuse a few women in the village of afflicting them. Thus the hysteria begins.

The Salem witch trials are not my favorite time in history to read about. They seem a blight not only on American history, but on church history. The lack of common sense, much less spiritual sense, among the leadership in the village is troubling. If this account is true, if anyone challenged to accusations, then they became a target.

But it was interesting to read how Grace, Hope, and Isaac dealt with life under such situations.

Plus I didn’t like Hope much as first. She seemed immature and selfish. But part of her story arc includes her realizing that about herself.

I had thought, with twins being the main characters, that the major conflict would go one particular direction. It didn’t appear to go the way I was thinking at first until a major, shocking, unexpected plot twist occurred. My interest in the book increased after that.

I listened to the audiobook, nicely read by Rachel Botchan. Happily, this audiobook did include the author’s historical notes at the end. She had ancestors on both sides of the Salem trials, sparking her interest. Her research shows that some of the afflicted girls probably had some form of mental illness, which would not have been understood at the time. But others took advantage of the hysteria. She said the reasons for the hysteria were many and complicated.

She also said both Grace’s and Hopes characters in 1912 were inspired by Harriet Quimby, who was both a journalist and flyer, the first woman to fly across the English Channel. (if you’re interested in reading this book, I would hold off reading about Harriet, or you might get some spoilers.)

I loved how everything ended up in both timelines. There are a number of themes in this book, but one that stood out to me was that God often works the most in our lives through circumstances that we did not want.

Song of Solomon

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Song of Solomon

Long-time readers know that I have been using Warren Wiersbe’s “Be” commentaries as companions on my current trek through the Bible. I thought he had written one for every book of the Bible. But when I came to the Song of Solomon, I couldn’t find a corresponding “Be” commentary for it. I searched all the titles. Since SoS is a smaller book, I figured its commentary was probably tucked in with another book’s. But I looked at the table of contents for all the Be books I thought it might be included with, and didn’t see it.

Then I found The Bible Exposition Commentary: Wisdom and Poetry by Wiersbe which covered Job through Song of Solomon. I found a used copy online for $3.99, so I went ahead and got it. As it turns out, the Bible Exposition Commentary series is made up of Wiersbe’s “Be” commentaries. The part dealing with SoS is only about eleven pages.

The subtitle of Song of Solomon says “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.” Both Wiersbe and the ESV Study Bible notes say this means something like “the greatest of songs”—similar wording used in King of kings and Holy of holies.

There are a number of different ways to interpret SoS. Wiersbe thinks Solomon is the bridegroom in the book. The ESV notes say it’s more likely that the book was written in Solomon’s honor or during his reign, but the bridegroom in the story is a shepherd. Both sources also disagree on when exactly in the book the couple marries. But neither of these are major factors in understanding the book.

They do agree that, to some extent, the book is an allegory of God’s love for His people (Ephesians 5:31-21 also says marriage pictures Christ and the church), and on another level it’s a celebration of married love.

While the Song of Solomon illustrates the deepening love we can have with Christ, we must be careful not to turn the story into an allegory and make everything mean something. All things are possible to those who allegorize—and what they come up with is usually heretical.

It’s almost laughable to read some of the ancient commentaries (and their modern imitators) and see how interpreters have made Solomon say what they want him to say. The language of love is imaginative and piles one image on top of another to convey its message. But to make the bride’s breasts represent the two ordinances, or the garden stand for the local church, or the voice of the turtledove mean the Holy Spirit speaking, is to obscure if not destroy the message of the book. Other texts in the Bible may support the ideas expressed by these fanciful interpreters, but their ideas didn’t come from what Solomon wrote (p. 542).

(I love that line—“All things are possible to those who allegorize.” 🙂 )

There are different speakers in the book: the shepherd, shepherdess, and a chorus of others, often referred to as the daughters of Jerusalem. Thankfully, the editors of the ESV and most other modern versions puzzled out who was speaking when and provided us with designations.

We follow the bride and groom through various troubles (she doesn’t open her door to him one night and regrets it, then goes searching for him), deepening love, marriage, and admiring descriptions of each other

Both sources give helpful details in understanding the text. For instance, the bride is compared to a “mare among Pharaoh’s chariots”–but that probably means “the best of its kind,” not that she looked like a horse. Wiersbe says of some of the other descriptions of the bride in Chapter 4:

Doves’ eyes would reflect peace and depth. The bride’s teeth were clean, even beautiful. When you remember that ancient peoples didn’t quite understand dental hygiene, this was an admirable trait. Healthy teeth would also affect her breath (7:8). She had a queenly neck and a posture with it that exuded control, power, and stability. She was a tower of strength! (p. 546).

Another comment that stood out to me came from 2:10, 13), where the bridegroom says, “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.”

“Come” is the great word of the Gospel of God’s grace. It is God’s loving invitation to the weary who need rest (Matt. 11:28-30), the sin-stained who need cleansing (Isa. 1:18), the hungry who need nourishment (Luke 14:17), and all who thirst for the water of life (Rev. 22:17). But “come” is also His invitation to His own people: “Come and see” (John 1:39), “Come and drink” (John 7:37-38), “Come and dine” (John 21:12). In this text, the king invited his beloved to  leave her home and work and go with him to enjoy an adventure in the country (p. 544).

Chapter 2:3-4 says, “As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” Elizabeth Poston wrote a beautiful song based on this passage called “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree:

The first time I read SoS, which was probably in high school, I was surprised that it contained some graphic phrases and images. The Bible is often quite frank about the body and its functions.

In early married years, I was comforted by SoS. Growing up even in an unchurched family, about all I heard about sex growing up was “DON’T.” This book and passages like Hebrews 13:4 (“Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge,” NKJV) helped me understand that God created sexual love to be enjoyed by a husband and wife.

In his last couple of paragraphs, Wiersbe acknowledged the difficulty of preaching or teaching Song of Solomon in such a hyper-sexualized society as we have these days. He advised its use in premarital or marital counseling. He closed by saying:

In using this book in public ministry, we must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and not allow our good works to be classified as evil. Some people are against anything in the pulpit that deals with sex, while others wonder where they can get the help that they desperately need. Wise is the minister and teacher who can keep the right balance (p. 550).

It had been a long while since I read Song of Solomon. It was a blessing to spend time there again, aided by the ESV Study Bible and Wiersbe’s commentary.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: Yours Is the Night

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Yours Is the Night by Amanda Dykes

In Yours Is the Night by Amanda Dykes, Matthew Petticrew grows up with his sister on a racetrack in New York in the early 1900s until the father who never claimed them sent them away. Matthew’s sister, Celia, was sent to nursing school, Matthew to be a groom at the stables of Harvard University.

When Matthew travels with some Harvard boys to Plattsburg Training Camp to deliver horses, a chance meeting with his childhood hero, Jasper Truett, one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, changes his life.

Matthew and three acquaintances are sent to the Argonne forest for more wood to reinforce the trenches.

One of the men, George Piccadilly, is a Brit whose parents had sent him to Harvard to get a divinity degree to avoid having to fight in the first World War. However, through a series of events, he ends up at Plattsburg Training Camp . He has no use for religion but somehow ends up a chaplain. His joviality and Matthew’s seriousness don’t seem like they would mix, but George sticks close to Matthew because he looks like he would know how to survive. Plus George thinks he can lighten Matthew up a bit.

The last acquaintance is Henry Mueller, a bookish young man who was recruited as a fresh-faced, boy-next-door to write for the newspaper about the war under the pen name Hank Jones.

As they gather wood, they hear a woman singing. George dubs her the Angel of Argonne. And then one night they meet her in person at the freshly dug grave of her grandfather.

Mireilles, called Mira, grew up with her father and grandfather in the Argonne. When the war came crashing into their quiet lives, Mira’s father went to fight. Now her grandfather is gone, too.

The men feel they can’t leave her alone in her forest home so near the front lines. But they don’t want to send her out alone, either. They obtain permission to accompany her to her nearest relative’s house.

The journey will change each of them.

It took me longer to get into this book than Amanda’s previous book, Whose Waves These Are. The point of view shifts back and forth between Matthew, George, Hank, Jasper, and Mira. It took a little while to get them all sorted out. Plus there was a lot of bickering between George, whose character I didn’t really like at first, and the other two younger men. It was understandable, even funny at times. But not my favorite.

But at some point, everything clicked into place. The last few chapters were just beautiful. I loved the ending. Right after finishing, I went back and reread the first few chapters, understanding them better.

The prologue and epilogue tell of the choice of a casket for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In the author’s notes, Amanda tells of visiting the tomb on the centennial anniversary year and how much the symbolism meant to her. She writes that she did not mean to fictionalize the unknown soldier, but “His anonymity allows him to represent the countless ones who never came home. . . . I hope that only respect, gratitude, and a fierce guarding of the real soldier’s true story—untouched by this imagined one—is found in these pages.”

Some of the other quotes I liked:

That burning justice is a gift. . . . But you be sure and save it for where it’s needed. Some battles aren’t battles after all (p. 23, Kindle app).

I understood the way words can shape hearts. Evade the creation of mobs and fear, and instill a home-front army of citizens armed with hope (p. 65).

The sky rumbled like only the earth should, and the earth bled like only people should, and people—people lived and died like nobody, ever, should (p. 151).

War happens. We help. It’s what we do. Not one of us can fix this whole mess, but maybe we can help this one moment (p. 151).

Men of few words, I was realizing, said much with their silence over here (p. 174).

“The matches . . . they are hope.” They are hope. The three words socked the air from me. Bringers of hope . . . creators of light from dark, when struck on hard places (p. 178).

It’s not mine to change what has happened . . . I cannot. It is mine to walk through what will come (p. 181).

There are none who can undo the past. But there is one who will carry the pain of it. He knows too well the sting of injustice. No, more than that. The blood of it. But with it, He bears the scars of his own injustice with the same hands that carry me now (p. 182).

Her brother was a thoughtful speaker, one who weighed his words and chose few of them to speak, ones that seemed always to carry so much in their depths. His sister seemed to do just the opposite—speak her words, then catch them and consider them, then say more words to explain. As if she were swimming in them, and happily so (p. 195).

What if what we believe to be our shortcomings, our oddities, are actually purposeful quirks that suit us for the moments we were made for? (p. 257).

Though I loved Whose Waves These Are more, I came to enjoy this book quite a lot as well. I’m a fan of Amanda’s writing and eager to read more of her books.

Review: All My Secrets

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All My Secrets by Lynn Austin

In Lynn Austin’s Gilded Age novel, All My Secrets, one of the wealthiest men in America has just died. The Stanhopes were contemporaries of New York’s elite families, like the Vanberbilts, Astors, and Van Burens.

Arthur Benton Stanhope III, known as A. B., was only forty-six when he passed. At the reading of his will, his mother, Junietta, wife Sylvia, and daughter Adelaide, or Addy, all found out that the original Arthur Stanhope had written his will in such a way that the Stanhope business and the bulk of the family money could only be passed down to the closest male heir. A small trust was left for Sylvia and Addy, but it was not as large as it might have been if the investments had the expected time to grow. But with a little economy, and perhaps the sale of the family yacht, they should manage fine.

Such economic measures, however, would send them toppling from the pinnacle of society they enjoyed. That was fine with Junietta. But Sylvia’s position and reputation as a hostess were her life. Sylvia decided the best thing they could do was find acceptable suitors to discreetly introduce Addy to in the hope that she might marry well before their financial state became too dire.

Addy didn’t like the idea of marrying a man for his money or feeling like a bargaining chip. Her mother assured her the choice was hers, and she wanted her to be happy. But Addy felt duty-bound to do everything in her power to keep the only home she had ever known in the family for her mother’s sake. Addy herself, didn’t want anything to change more than it had to.

Junietta thought their palatial home was a monstrosity. It had more rooms than they could ever possibly use. Addy had gotten lost in them as a child. The rooms they did inhabit were too large, their decorations overdone. The money expended on their balls and dinner parties could feed other families for weeks. Their contemporaries were gossipy rivals more than friends.

Junietta was more or less trapped in her marriage, but she wants Addy to know she has choices. Will Addy ever warm to the idea that the excessive wealth they are used to is wasteful, that there are better ways to live? Or would Addy write her grandmother off as eccentric? Junietta was going to have to reveal some of the secrets of her past that changed her own views. Would she have time to, before her erratic heart gave out?

I enjoyed this book a lot. I don’t see many novels set in this era, so it was fun to experience that time. Junietta’s secrets were revealed gradually in flashbacks, eventually prompting Sylvia to share secrets of her own. I enjoyed the characters and the natural way the faith element was woven in. The author makes sure to emphasize that being rich is not a sin in itself, and being poor is not inherently virtuous. But we’re all stewards of what we’ve been given.

But the book isn’t just about stewardship. It also involves loss, love, grief, life choices, forgiveness, and more.

In a fun coincidence, my oldest son visited the Marble House in RI with friends. It was built by William Vanderbilt for his wife, Alva, and started off the “summer cottage” fad among the elite (the “cottages” being 50+ rooms rather than what we think of as a cottage). The day after my son told us about his visit to this house, it came up in this book.

I enjoyed the audiobook, nicely read by Sarah Zimmerman. As usual, the audio version did not contain any of the author’s notes at the end, but I found some of that information in an interview with the author here.

I wished that the author had included an epilogue. The characters are left in such a way that we have a good idea what will happen to them, but I would have liked things to be a bit more wrapped up at the end. I just learned in the interview mentioned above that the author has written a novella with these characters that will come out at Christmas.