Book quote – Rachel Svendsen

Book Review: “The Reckless Way of Love” by Dorothy Day

Since giving birth I’ve had trouble fitting reading into my daily schedule. But now with such luxuries as the baby’s regular bedtime, I’m finally able to sneak in a chapter here and there. I look for short, easy reads that I can pick up and put down at a moments notice. You know, in case the baby decides she’s going to dig some chokeable substance from deep underneath the sofa or crawl towards the ledge that leads down into the hallway.

The Reckless Way of Love is a lovely collection of thoughts from Dorothy Day’s letters and writings. Because each reflection is usually no more than four paragraphs long, it met my need for something I could pick up and put down without ever losing my place. An added bonus was that the content is spiritually encouraging, something I am in dire need of these days. I could grab a paragraph before minding the baby, and carry the thought of it with me as I went.

The book covered topics of Christian love, suffering, sacrifice and what it means to follow Christ. A writer herself, her book even contained a poignant quote about writing.

“Writing a book is hard, because you’re ‘giving yourself away.’ But if you love, you want to give yourself. You write as you are impelled to write, about man and his problems, his relation to God and his fellows. You write about yourself because in the long run all man’s problems are the same, his human needs of sustenance and love.”
– Dorothy Day

While I didn’t agree with everything she said, I think it’s important to be able to read books from other perspectives, so you can understand other beliefs. I really appreciated her thoughts on suffering and about living in community with other Christians. With my husband still in seminary, we would be lost without the generosity of family and friends who have opened their homes to give us a place to live.

One of the nicest things to do with a pleasant read is to pass it on to another. After sharing a passage of this book with my sister in Texas, I offered to mail her my copy when I finished reading it. I’m glad that I continued to underline my favorite passages as I read, because every time I took out my pencil, I knew it would be there when she read it. It felt like I was sharing thoughts and reflections with my sister who is so far away.

“It is not filth and ugliness, drugs and drink and perversion he is asking us to prefer him to. He is asking us to prefer him to all beauty and loveliness. To all other love.”
~ Dorothy Day ❤

Book Review: The God Who Heals by Johann & Christoph Blumhardt

First off, thank you again Plough Publishing for sending me another lovely book! There are few things more pleasing than receiving unexpected packages with free books inside. ❤

The most recent book they sent me was The God Who Heals, a collection of devotional thoughts from Johann and Christoph Blumhardt. They were a Lutheran father/son pastor team from 19th century Germany. The book is a collection of their thoughts on topics related to healing and patience through suffering. The book is divided into six sections: Turning to Jesus, Trusting Jesus, God Hears, God Promises to Heal, See What God Can Do, and The Hope That is Ours. Within the sections are short devotional-like thoughts on the topic, nice bite sized readings to chew and meditate on, all opening with a passage from scripture.

It’s a short book, and also sweet in that it is full of encouraging thoughts. The lessons within did not only apply to those who have life threatening or long lasting illnesses, but were applicable to suffering in general and encouraged you to hold fast in faith to Christ no matter what the outward circumstances. Here is a quote from the chapter entitled, “You Are Not Alone”:

If you can’t feel the Savior, than the more believe in him. Those to whom God’s love is nearest are precisely those who don’t see and yet believe (John 20:29). The same is true of those who don’t feel and yet believe. The enemy often wreaks havoc on our feelings; but he can’t touch your faith. The devil cannot own your faith – unless you give in.

~Johann Christoph Blumhardt

Thank you again Plough Publishing for giving me the joy of reading this book.

If you want to read it yourself, you can get your copy here!

Falling in Love with Pooh

My mother has always claimed to be a bookworm from her youth, but sometimes I wonder how it can be possible. The only childhood book she’s told me she loved was Charlotte’s Web. She once told me she read Flowers in the Attic, I know she used to read Nicholas Sparks, and she has this horror story she sometimes tells me about possibly throwing away some first edition Dickens novels because she couldn’t read Great Expectations due to the use of old English *cocks head in confusion, then shudders and hugs the nearest book*.

Along with these coflicting anti-booklover traits, for we all know a true book lover NEVER throws away a book, I can’t recall her shedding much light onto my reading pathway. Once she’d recommended Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, I’m fairly certain it was school librarians and my Grandmother who did the rest, hooking me on Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and even poor Mister Dickens *shudders again and kisses the nearest book*. My mother read to us a lot growing up, but the books I remember were Hank the Cowdog, Bible story picture books, and What Would Jesus Do?. Never the classics like Mary Poppins, The Wind in the Willows, or even Charlottes Web. Mind you, we saw all the movies, but never read the books.

About three years ago, I started picking up children’s books on my own. It was just last year that I read A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh for the first time. It was so much better than I’d anticipated. I thought it would just be a collection of sweet stories about a mismatched group of stuffed animals living in the Hundred Acre Wood, like the Disney movies I’d watched as a child, and never imagined how witty and hilarious they’d be. Even my husband was surprised when I began to read passages to him, and we ended by reading the last three chapters aloud together.
776407 I just got the second book The House at Pooh Corner from the library and love it as much as the first. Some of the humor is almost reminiscent of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. Let me show you what I mean.

Here’s a sample passage, where Piglet is imagining a conversation he’d have with a Heffalump.

HEFFALUMP (gloatingly): “Ho-ho !”
PIGLET (carelessly): “Tra-la-la, tra-la-la”
HEFFALUMP (surprised, and not quite sure of himself): “Ho-ho !”
PIGLET (more carelessly still): “Tiddle-um-tum, tiddle-um-tum.”
HEFFALUMP (beginning to say Ho-ho then turning it awkwardly into a cough): “H’r’m! What’s all this?”
PIGLET (surprised): “Hullo! This is a trap I’ve made, and I’m waiting for a Heffalump to fall into it.”
HEFFALUMP (greatly disappointed): “Oh?” (after a long silence) “Are you sure?”
PIGLET: “Yes.”
HEFFALUMP: “Oh!” (nervously) “I – I thought it was a trap I’d made to catch Piglets.”
PIGLET (surprised): “Oh, no!”
HEFFALUMP: “Oh!” (apologetically) “I – I must have got it wrong then.”
PIGLET: “I’m afraid so.” (politely) “I’m sorry.” (He goes on humming.)
HEFFALUMP: “Well – well – I – well. I suppose I’d better be getting back?
PIGLET (looking up carelessly): “Must you? Well, if you see Christopher Robin anywhere, you might tell him I want him.”
HEFFALUMP (eager to please): “Certainly! Certainly!” (he hurries off.)
POOH (who wasn’t going to be there, but we find we can’t do without him): “Oh, Piglet, how very brave and clever you are!”

The entire chapter had me giggling aloud, but you’ll have to read the book yourself to get the rest. Honestly, I don’t care what your age is, these books are a treat that you should not deny yourself. Along with the humor, he has a gift for making poignant moments of tenderness that warm your heart.

Every writer has authors they idolize and dreams of what they could one day become. One of my dreams is to be able to write like that. To be able to make people laugh, smile, and cry all at once. Yeah, yeah that would be fantastic. ❤

Book Review: “Half Broke Horses” by Jeanette Walls

I have been working my way through a reading list on Buzzfeed called, 35 Books You Need to Read in Your Twenties. Many of them were books that I had never read, by authors I’d never heard of. Most people get this kind of forced exposure in school, but since the only English class I took in college was a short story class, I haven’t been made to read much since the 12th grade.

One of the many treasures I found was a book called “Half Broke Horses” by Jeanette Walls.

It’s about the life of Lily Casey Smith, Jeanette’s grandmother. It’s really nonfiction, but Jeanette calls it “a true life novel,” reason being that many of the facts were word of mouth and unverifiable, along with the added dialogue. It did not read like historical fiction. To me it was a mix of novel and memoir. I loved it. Lily was an amazing woman. She was born in 1901, in a time when women were mostly wives and mothers. Watching her look squarely in the eye of society’s expectations and spending her life fighting to find out what she was meant to be, was intensely inspirational. She broke stereotypes and learned to fly planes, break horses, and even sold moonshine during the Prohibition to help keep her family fed.

Here’s one of favorite quotes from the book, hopefully to whet your appetite. It takes place after she and her husband lose everything and end up becoming caretakers of a backwoods ranch. This is her first trip to the outhouse.

A distinctly malodorous aroma arose from the hole, and for a moment I missed my snazzy mail-order toilet with the shiny white porcelain bowl, the mahogany lid, and the nifty pull-chain flush. As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things — though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart — and at the ranch, I could see we’d have pretty much everything we’d need but precious little else.”

Pick it up and give it a look, if for no other reason than to learn a little more about life on a pre WWI ranch in the American Southwest.

Quote from “Half Broke Horses” by Jeanette Walls – Simon and Schuster Inc. 2009