I finished three books this week. Francine Rivers’ Atonement Child was the only one I hadn’t started weeks or months ago. I read it, and it alone, to its satisfying end. It’s about a college girl who goes through a horrendous experience (I won’t go into the details here since I do write a mostly PG blog) and comes out the other side having followed her very strong Christian beliefs and rescuing no small handful of people in the process. The book is a well-written attempt to reach out to women who have been in “less-than-PG” circumstances. From my view, it succeeds quite stunningly.
I started Augusten Burroughs’ Possible Side Effects a few weeks ago, upon the recommendation of a friend. This book is not specifically written to reach out and help others, nor is it written from a Christian perspective. It is a wide open and starkly honest look at a large handful of the author’s experiences, with dry, wry, self-effacing humor tossed in alongside large handfuls of “take-it-or-leave-it-this-is-my-book-and-I-needed-to-write-it”. This is a great read—unless you require prim, proper, or the religiously-correct. I liked that Mr. Burroughs does not apologize for the fact that he is not prim, proper, or religiously-correct. He just is…who he is. Refreshing.
Finally, I finished Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia. This is another irreverent read (she cusses well and unapologetically) that I thoroughly enjoyed. Since I find putting dinner on the table a great challenge, Julie’s endeavor to complete (in one year) all 524 of the recipes included in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, has my vote for top 100 bravest undertakings of all time. That said, this is not the cookbook I would have chosen. I’m not all that into beef marrow, kidneys, brains and deboning ducks without breaking the skin…but the feat itself…come on! I find it particularly inspiring that she cooked each day whether or not she felt like it…and regardless of how late it became. She didn’t give up. Also, her husband, Eric, is a gem of a man, just like my husband, and inspired my favorite line from the book, which says (I’m completely paraphrasing here) that her husband catches the umpteen balls she juggles out of range of her waiting hands and somehow keeps them in the air so that she can continue along in her crazed journey without failure.
A final note: I am a reader who has many books going at once (think ten), and so finishing three of them this week has given me great satisfaction, as well as a good dose of inspiration: from book one that no situation is too big for God, from book two that someone-else’s straight-forward honesty encourages the open-mindedness in me, and from book three that I have an incredible husband who will one day revel in the fact that he has dinner waiting for him when he arrives home from a long day at work.