Growing Young: Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church, Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Brad Griffin
This book was a book club selection to help our club members better understand what it takes to attract young families to our congregation. Growing Young is a gift to the Christian community. Just looking at the index was encouraging and helped me read what the authors have carefully researched and experienced. Let me share a few quotes that caused much discussion in our club: — “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It is not enough to develop a strategy to attract young people; it requires a cultural change in the church. — “When interview participants describe their church, they are eight times more likely to mention that diversity of beliefs in their church than similarities.”
I highly recommend Growing Young to any church that sees a need to change and is looking for ideas about what to do and why.
The first book in The Circle Series, Black, by Ted Dekker, details the dual reality of Thomas Hunter through his dreams. I appreciate the Christian symbolism created by Dekker, but don’t especially like the plot, which requires the reader to suspend disbelief. The story is a fantasy thriller about a man who leaves one world during his dreams and does the same in the alternative world. To keep it interesting, there is a deadly virus in the hands of evil people who want to master this world (or is it another world?). Only Hunter can stop them, but to accomplish that, he must travel between worlds. Then we have “The Birth of Evil,” which is cleverly woven into the story as an allegory for original sin.
The end of the book is less than satisfying, with the story left to continue in the next book of the Circle Series.
Private is first in a series called “Private” by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, featuring Jack Morgan, a former CIA agent turned private detective with a worldwide agency of the same name. I doubt I will read many of the dozen or more books in the series. Private is fast-paced, with short chapters, and filled with formula law-enforcement slang, beautiful young women, and danger in every direction. Jack is the brave, glib war hero who seems to have an answer for every difficult situation. The book cover tells you where Jack will be traveling, and the bullet hole is a clue to the drama he will face. The character development is shallow, but there is never a dull moment in the lives of Jack and his colleagues.
This was my first Kristin Hannah book, but it will not be my last. Winter Garden was difficult for me to read, but rewarding to complete. The story is about the Whitson family, who operated an apple orchard business in Leavenworth, Washington, a town I have visited many times. Evan Whitson married a very reserved Russian woman, Anya, and they have two daughters, who never feel loved by their mother. Anya is a distant, cold, and forbidding mother, but a devoted wife.
Just before his passing, Evan asks his daughter to promise to make their mother finish a Russian fairy tale she never completed. The Russian fairy tale is about the life of a young woman living in Stalinist Leningrad. The tale is about Anya’s life during the Siege of Leningrad by the Natzis in WW2 and the brutal violence that claimed the lives of 1.5 million Russians between 1941 and 1944. Leningrad is now Saint Petersburg, another place I have been fortunate enough to visit. As Anya tells her adult children about the pain and sorrow of the siege, I was drawn into the narrative to the point that I could read only two pages per day. Hannah describes the trauma of not only Anya and her family but the entirety of the Russian experience.
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, Tony Horwitz
Midnight Rising is a book club assignment that our members, including me, enjoyed. It is a historical nonfiction account of John Brown’s life and death that had political consequences leading to the Civil War. The book is written in a novel style, but is carefully researched and annotated. I listened to the Audible version, which included an interview with Tony Horwitz, the author. The book has won several awards.
John Brown does not come off as a hero but rather as a delusional figure who suffered from a martyr complex. His 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry may have helped the cause of abolition, but it also cost Brown, his sons, and many others their lives. Brown should have taken a clue from Fredrick Douglas, who wisely refused to support Brown’s to spark a slave rebellion in the South.
Fourth Wing, a new genre for me, came to my attention at a Barnes & Noble book display table outfitted with cards, posters, jewelry, and clothing. The display reminded me of the Harry Potter craze in the last century. Castles, dragons, magic, and a war college set in an unidentified time and place. I picked up one of the three books in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean Series, and I was hooked within a few pages. The genre, frequently identified as “romantasy,” adult fiction, and magical fantasy, is not for young readers. After Violet Sorrengail enters Basgaith War College, the book never comes to a calm place where the reader can go into neutral for a few pages.
Starting on the first day of war college, in a universe unlike our own, student mortality thins the ranks of future riders of flying dragons who spend three years training to defend the nation of Navaree. There are only two ways out of Basgaith College: graduate or die. In the midst of the brutal training and drama, students find a diversion in sex, mostly between first years and upperclassmen, explaining the “romantasy” genre label. I have yet to decide whether to continue with the series. The book deserves the attention, acclaim, and many awards received over the past few years.
Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, Gavin Newsom
I am writing this review while golfing in California and enjoying the sunshine. Yesterday, my Republican golf buddy, sitting next to me in the golf cart, said, “This state has a governor who is famous only because of his looks.” My MAGA-adjacent friend is still open to a civil conversation about politics, up to a point. I suggested he read Young Man in a Hurry by Gavin Newsom before he assumes the Fox News version of the author is even remotely accurate.
I would loan him the book, but my friend is not a reader. The irony is that, like my friend, Newsom was not much of a reader as a young man because he is dyslexic, a condition I am familiar with. Newsom has a serious version of the disorder, and it shaped much of his early life. A few days ago, Donald Trump said Newsom should not become president because of his dyslexia. Trump is projecting more than just a phobia of people with disabilities.
I have read other memoirs by politicians who are more guarded than Newsom about their past, struggles, and even failures. He must have understood that his opponents would seize upon select sentences for their own political purposes. Yet, he does not shy away from being transparent with his readers.
There are some insights and quotes in Young Man that are too good not to share:
In explaining how to cope with his condition, Newsom says, “This is how I discovered one of the secret powers of dyslexia. I could read a room with the best of them.”
Newsom was appointed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by Willie Brown, the city’s first black mayor. In announcing the appointment, Mayor Brown called the Irishman his “affirmative action pick.”
In addressing the homeless issue as the new mayor in San Francisco, Newsom explained that, “No liberal bias was required to put forward the case that the one man most responsible for the rise of homelessness in America was California’s own sunny Ronald Reagan.” He went on to explain that among his first acts as president, Reagan had “gutted” Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act, which removed $800 million earmarked for California.
Not to be missed in the final chapter is Newsom’s detailed description of his first meeting with President Trump when Newsom was Lieutenant Governor and Jerry Brown was Governor.
Buckeye is proof that a depressing novel can still be well written. I read misleading reviews: “Captivating,” “A once-in-a-decade-novel,” and downloaded the Audible version because I was between assignments. A more honest review states that the book is an LGBTQ-adjacent historical novel because it focuses on themes of sexuality, repression, and hidden identity. The author, Patrick Ryan, seems to make the point that gay men in the pre-WWII era had to hide who they were.
The other aspect of this work is the theme of spiritualism, seances, communication with the dead, and psychic events. It added very little to the book, and I found it a distraction. Interestingly, the psychic character (Becky) was an appealing person who did not charge for conducting seances in her home. I guess the point is that she may have been a lost soul, fooling herself and her clients, but she was not cheating them financially.
For some readers, Theo of Golden will be about portraits on the walls of a coffeehouse in a fictional town in rural Georgia. I received the book as a testament to faith, giving, and the power of love. It is also about the unrequited love of a man, Theo, who let fame and striving drown a relationship that he never appreciated until it was too late. By the time Theo arrives in Golden, the woman he loved has passed, but her son, their child, is an accomplished local portrait artist.
Golden is all the things you would expect in a Hallmark-style town with a bookstore, coffee shop, art, music, gardens, birds, river, churches, walking trails, and fine dining. There is even a fountain at city-center. Everything is perfect, except the people. Theo is the protagonist, but I believe Tony is the more interesting character, a combat veteran, agnostic, skeptic, and bookstore owner who complains his shop is perpetually one week away from closing. His story and journey are inspiring. I’m glad my book club leader encouraged me to read Allen Levi’s book.
