Tuesday, September 18, 2012

August Reading List

I'm reading 24 books this year- books that I already had in my house.  See the whole list here.

My fiction book for the month is Betrayal in Paris by Doris Elaine Fell.

(from the back cover) A double betrayal decades apart leaves a family at odds and siblings in rivalry.  In the favorite son's quest to restore his father's honor, he is left behind on foreign soil - the victim of a different war, the victim of the same betrayer.  Twenty-seven-year-old Adrienne Winters, daughter and sister to the men betrayed, steps into a game of intrigue involving a terrorist cell in Paris, a perilous captivity in Kuwait, her brother's deception, and her country's cover-up.

All the books I'm reading this year are books that I already owned.  I get my books from a variety of places, usually not full price at a retail store.  This particular book I got at a local used book store.  After reading it, I understand why it was there.

It was not good.  There was nothing morally bad with it or anything.  But it just wasn't good writing.  Minor characters were suddenly made into major characters in the middle of the book.  The story line just rambled on and on without any clear direction.  Big "twists" were so easy to figure out ahead of time that when they were revealed, it was the definition of anticlimactic.

I finished the book just because I haven't finished many recently, but it was tedious reading 400 pages of book that I really just didn't like.  If you see this book on the shelf, leave it there.

My nonfiction book was supposed to be Too Busy Not to Pray by Hybels, but instead I chose to go back and read June's selection (that I didn't get around to reading), Bringing Up Boys by James Dobson.


(from Amazon) Sensible advice and caring encouragement on raising boys from the nation's most trusted parenting expert, Dr.James Dobson. With so much confusion about the role of men in our society, it's no wonder so many parents and teachers are at a loss about how to bring up boys. Our culture has vilified masculinity and, as a result, boys are suffering. Parents, teachers, and others involved in shaping the character of boys have lots of questions. Dr. Dobson tackles these questions and offers advice and encouragement based on a firm foundation of biblical principles.

(my thoughts)  I'm still in the middle of this book, but it is just wonderful so far.  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  No only does it help me better understand my son, it helps me better understand my husband.  Things like, why can they both walk into a room and step over the same junk on the floor and never notice it.  Because boys are genetically wired to be focused on one thing at a time, such as whatever reason they had for coming into that room, to the exclusion of all else, including the junk on the floor.

There will be some hard sections of this book for some people to take.  Dr. Dobson has strong opinions about homosexuality and single parents families.  What I love about this book, including those sections, are all the statistics that Dobson uses to back up every conclusion he has in the book.  He mentions that this book took the longest to write out of every book he's written, simply because he was doing so much research for it.

Some amazing, eye-opening stats that he mentions...70% of all African American babies are born out of wedlock; 33% of all children are born to unwed mothers; boys that are raised in a home without a father present (including those with a stepfather, but not a biological father present) are 3 times more likely to be incarcerated.  It all boils down to the fact that it is vitally important to have a father in a boy's life, even more important than a mother.  But for those who are already raising a boy without a father, Dr. Dobson offers encouragement and advice as well.

I highly recommend this book to everyone raising a boy and even to those who want to better understand their husband.

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