Hi guys!

Your girl is under the weather today ( spring allergies kicking my butt 😦 ) so I’m going to try to be as quick as possible.

I had to stop reading “Hold Still” by Nina Lacour. I just couldn’t get into it. It kind of put me in the mind of two books I had previously read ( Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and I Was Here by Gayle Forman. )  as all three novels deal with suicide. I guess I was just over that particular plot line. It’s a library book, but I still have 2 weeks left with it. I may give it another chance.

Next I picked up “Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church”  by Lauren Drain. This is a memoir about a girl leaving the church and sharing her regrets about some of the acts she committed while being a member. Here is a synopsis of the book from http://www.amazon.com

You’ve likely heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Perhaps you’ve seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of the recent Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. The WBC is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. And they aren’t going anywhere: in March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the WBC’s right to picket funerals.

Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it’s perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later. BANISHED is the first look inside the organization, as well as a fascinating story of adaptation and perseverance.

Lauren spent her early years enjoying a normal life with her family in Florida. But when her formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. Over the next seven years, Lauren fully assimilated their extreme beliefs, and became a member of the church and an active and vocal picketer. But as she matured and began to challenge some of the church’s tenets, she was unceremoniously cast out from the church and permanently cut off from her family and from everyone else she knew and loved. BANISHED is the story of Lauren’s fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.

I remember watching the documentary “The Most Hated Family in America” which gives details about the church and what It stands for, and it crushed me! It was so disturbing to see people distorting the word of God and giving a false appearance of what true Christianity is about. So when I saw this book at the library, I had to read it and hear about it from the inside. It was an ok read. It does seem that she hasn’t become used to “life on the outside” and what that entails. I wish she would have waited a few years before writing this memoir.

Next, a book that I  mentioned in a previous blog ( https://justlovethemanyway.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/wednesday-weekly-reads-success/) was released. That book was,”Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland” by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus. This is the memoir of the other two Cleveland kidnapping survivors(Michelle Knight released her memoir, “Finding Me” last year) I finished this book in a day and a car ride. It was pretty parallel in content to Michelle’s book. This book really made me count my blessings that I was not a victim such a heinous crime. I pray these ladies one day truly find peace.

I suggest that you read these books in succession. Powerful stories of strength and resilience.

We took a break from our group devotional,”Women of the Bible” We will be back on it come Monday 🙂

This week, I have already started “The Good Sister” by Jamie Kain. The synopsis of this book is as follows:

The Kinsey sisters live in an unconventional world. Their parents are former flower-children who still don’t believe in rules. Their small, Northern California town is filled with free spirits and damaged souls seeking refuge from the real world. Without the anchor of authority, the three girls are adrift and have only each other to rely on.

Rachel is wild. Asha is lost. Sarah, the good sister, is the glue that holds them together. But the forces of a mysterious fate have taken Sarah’s life in a sudden and puzzling accident, sending her already fractured family into a tailspin of grief and confusion. Asha has questions. Rachel has secrets. And Sarah, waking up in the afterlife, must piece together how she got there.

Jamie Kain brings us The Good Sister, a stunning debut young adult novel about love in all its joyful, painful, exhilarating manifestations, and about the ties that bind us together, in life and beyond.

So far so good! I should finish this by tonight or tomorrow, ( Its a quick read) I really liked not having a reading goal last week and seeing where the reading fairy led me ( LOL) However there are two books that I have to return to the library soon that I would like to try to read. One of them is “The Children’s Crusade” by Ann Packer ( a book I’ve had my eye on for a while)

Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high.

Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family’s future. One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story–Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn’t settled down-their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history. ( goodreads.com)

Also, I would like to try to read “Secret of a Thousand Beauties” , which was a  random pick ( honestly the cover intrigued me, it reminded me of “Memoirs of a Geisha” )

Set against the vibrant and intrigue-laden backdrop of 1930s China, Mingmei Yip’s enthralling novel explores one woman’s defiant pursuit of independence.

Spring Swallow was promised in marriage while still in her mother’s belly. When the groom dies before a wedding can take place, seventeen-year-old Spring Swallow is ordered to become a ghost bride to appease his spirit. Under her in-laws’ protection, she will be little more than a servant, unable to know real love or bear children. Refusing to accept her fate as a “bad-luck woman,” Spring Swallow flees on her wedding day.

In the city of Soochow, Spring Swallow joins a community of renowned embroiderers. The women work for Aunty Peony, whose exquisite stitching once earned her the Emperor’s love. But when Aunty Peony agrees to replicate a famous painting–a lucrative assignment that will take a year to complete–betrayal and jealousy emerges within the group. Spring Swallow becomes entangled in each woman’s story of heartbreak, even while she embarks on a dangerous affair with a young revolutionary. On a journey that leads from the remote hillsides around Soochow to cosmopolitan Peking, Spring Swallow draws on the secret techniques learned from Aunty Peony and her own indomitable strength, determined to forge a life that is truly her own. ( goodreads.com)

Let’s see how much I accomplish this week. The weather is finally amazing and I love to be outdoors and active! To read or not to read…… 🙂 Enjoy whatever you are reading this week!

xoxo