Friday's Favorites #5

Lately I have seen a lot of blogs posting their fall reading list or their favorite books from the summer. Now that it is a comfortable 80 out as I am writing, I thought I would go with that theme for this week's Friday's Favorites. If you are new to this blog you can read all about Friday's Favorites here.

I picked four of my favorite books to highlight. Some have been a favorite for years, others have become a favorite recently. I have to say, some of the books have things I don't agree with, one of the books disturbed me, but they all made me think and in that respect earned a spot as a favorite.

My first book is a recent favorite, "The Shack". In fact, it was the topic of my last Friday's Favorite. I won't spend a lot of time re-saying the same things. You can read what I wrote about it here.

One of my favorite authors is Donald Miller. His most popular book he's written thus far is "Blue Like Jazz." I liked the book, but the book he wrote that I want to mention is "Searching For God Knows What". It is just great. Here's a quote from the book, (on page ix) ...

"Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother's womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums. I unfold and find flight hundreds of feet above the center ring, the smell of popcorn in the air, the clowns gather below, amazed at my grace, and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings and I move swan-like toward the apex, where I draw my arms in, collapse my torso to my legs, roll over in perfection, then slowly give in to gravity. My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight.

And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net. And I wonder, 'what is the use of a circus?' and 'why should a man bother to be shot out of a cannon?' and 'why is the crowd's applause so fleeting? amd...'who is going to rescue me?' "


Next on my favorite's list is a book called, "A Severe Mercy" by Sheldon VanAuken. It's a love story but it also is the story of the author's conversion to Christianity through his friendship with C.S. Lewis. It's beautifully written and it's been my favorite book since I first read it in college.

Two other books I like are "Jesus Land" by Julia Scheeres. This is the pretty disturbing one, although its written well and riveting. The author grew up in a Christian family in Indiana with two adopted african american brothers, a cold and abusive physician father and an even more distant mother. It's heartbreaking.

The other book I read through as quickly as possible was, "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer. This is the author's version of what happened on that fateful Mt. Everest expedition the author was on in 1996 that took the lives of many. Jon Krakauer has written other great books like, "Into the Wild". I saw a book of his the other day that I thought I'd like to read. I can't remember the title but it involves a cult.

A couple of other books I would like to read this fall are:
"What's so amazing about grace?" by Philip Yancey
"A long way gone" by Ishmael Beah
"Persuasion" by Jane Austen


What about you? Any book you hope to read this fall? Let me know.
Take care,
Julie