April Reading List

It’s still winter here. I don’t know how, but it’s April and there is still snow on the ground. Every once in a while I’ll look out my office window and realize that tiny little particles of hate are descending once again. I used to like winter, you know. Not as much any more. Winter isn’t meant to last 5 months….

Anyway, all this winter has given me the chance to do a little more reading than usual and I wanted to share my April reading list with you! I also really wanted an excuse to take some pretty pictures…. So, pull up a chair, grab a mug of tea (or in my case a bath and a classic G&T) and grab a good book.

The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern

YOU GUYS. This book is AMAZING. I thought I would hate it because my book club recommended it and last time I read a book they recommended I found myself wishing I hadn’t picked it up at all….

BUT THIS BOOK!

I don’t exactly have the words to describe it. The closest I can get to is this: You feel like it’s a dream. The whole tangle of mystery and magic you know can’t untangle. The more you try and make sense of it the more you feel like it’s slipping away. So you just don’t. You give up trying to make it fit into your mortal, trivial, linear world, and just enjoy the ride. But something about it, and you aren’t quite sure what, is sad. A far away sadness. A longing almost, that you know can never be. A night that you wish would never end; a dream you wish you never awaken from.

You need to read this book.

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Faith Unraveled
Rachel Held Evans

I don’t really have a “review” of Faith Unraveled yet mostly because I haven’t started reading it yet. But I have read (and raved about) Rachel Held Evans and some of her other books, especially ‘A Year of Biblical Womanhood’ and ‘Searching for Sunday’.

Evans has such a unique perspective that I don’t often find in female Christian authors. She is always honest about her misgivings about the Christian world, and offers a fresh opinion. Here’s a little intro to the book and what it’s about:

Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial made a spectacle of Christian fundamentalism and brought national attention to her hometown, Rachel Held Evans faced a trial of her own when she began to have doubts about her faith.

In Faith Unraveled, Rachel recounts growing up in a culture obsessed with apologetics, struggling as her own faith unraveled one unexpected question at a time.

In order for her faith to survive, Rachel realizes, it must adapt to change and evolve. Using as an illustration her own spiritual journey from certainty to doubt to faith, Evans challenges you to disentangle your faith from false fundamentals and to trust in a God who is big enough to handle your tough questions.

In a changing cultural environment where new ideas seem to threaten the safety and security of the faith, Faith Unraveled is a fearlessly honest story of survival. 

I’ve been struggling with making sense of what I believe for a long time now, and I promise that once I think I’ve figured it out I’ll share that journey with you. In the meantime, I’m going to read this book, and thank God for Rachel Held Evans.

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One Thousand Gifts
Ann Voskamp

A long time ago I read the first half of this book. I don’t remember too much but I remember crying and thinking, “Everything about this makes so much sense.” My mom recently read it and said she thought that I would like it and sent me a copy. It wasn’t until I opened the box that I started remembering bits and pieces.

This isn’t an easy book. I should say that now. It deals with a lot of pain and anger and depression. But it also deals with a lot of healing. Ann Voskamp’s writing style is poetic and flowing, which is exactly the kind of writing style I love. Much more about her feelings and her heart than fact. It’s more a psalm than a gospel, more a poem than a narrative tale. But it IS her story, of coming through tragedy and trying one way to live and then dropping all her defenses and being open to whatever God gives.

I’ve already cried a couple times and I’m only on chapter three. I’m looking forward to finishing this one, and I promise to tell you how it goes.

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Well that’s it for now, friends. What books are on your reading list? Let me know if you have any suggestions on what I should read next!