Friday, May 14, 2010

Show Us Your Life - Favorite Books...

Kelly, from Kelly's Korner, has a "Show Us Your Life" segment on her blog and today's "Show Us Your Life" was "Favorite Books"...

...I am going to begin using Kelly's requests to "Show Us Your Life" and will post my "life" on Fridays, here on my own blog!

I LOVE to read!  Admittedly I didn't begin to "love" reading until a few years ago...it was during my Oprah infatuation. 

What?  Like you don't have embarrassing secrets...

Oprah...yes, she started a "book club" and I was ALL about reading every. single. Oprah. recommended. book!

So began my love for reading!  (See, it turned out to be a good thing)

Some of my very FAVORITE books...



Jim Palmer (author) had been a rising star in the world of evangelical leaders. At the time, Jim delivered Jesus-mottos, but never experienced the grace of God moving in among the hurts of his childhood. Jim's ascent into evangelical heights came to a screeching halt when his marriage fell apart.

"Divine Nobodies" is the story of God rebuilding Jim's spirituality by placing a line of ordinary "Joe's" and "Janes" into his life. Each chapter of "Divine Nobodies" contains an essay about one of these "nobodies"...a waitress, a mechanic, a wheel-chair bound girl and her father among them, and how these individuals made Jim reconsider what it means to be spiritual.




The Book of Ruth is one of those books that is very thought provoking. It is not the most upbeat book that I have read, but Ruth is in her own way trying to survive the best that she can.


Ruth's main tormentor in the book is her mother, May, who is so consumed by negativity that it is really pointless to try to argue with her. Ruth learns to survive her mother's negativity with the dream of visiting her Aunt Sid, who is May's youngest sister.
Unfortunately, Ruth has to deal with her brother, Matt, who is a math prodigy. May always seems to be more preoccupied with Matt. Thus, Ruth is always second fiddle. When Matt leaves for college, May still thinks that Matt can do nothing wrong. Even though, he basically cuts off communication with their family.

Ruth eventually hooks up with Ruby, a very emotionally disturbed man. They form a unique bond that eventually leads to marriage, which leads to Ruth, Ruby and May living under the same roof.

All I can say is that the ending is unbelievable. I saw the signs of major tension, but the ending still caught me off guard!  I'm not sure if the author was trying to emphasize the fact that what we endure will make us stronger, but that is definitely what I got out of this book!




The main character, Lily Owens is fleeing an abusive father and an all-consuming truth surrounding her mother's death. The Secret Life of Bee's is set in the 1960's when racial tensions and violence were at an all time high. Lily and her caretaker Rosaleen, leave town after a violent encounter with racists while Rosaleen was attempting to exercise some of her newly granted freedoms.
Since the death of her mother, Lilly has a few precious clues as to her last days. The clues lead Lily and Rosaleen to Tiburon, South Carolina where they meet the `calendar sisters', May, June, and August Boatwright. The Boatwright sisters operate a successful Bee farm. Lily and Rosaleen are welcomed to the farm with open arms. Through her work on the farm, Lily is able to examine her past and begin to trust as she finds love again.  This is the first book that ever made me cry while reading!



This book is about the possibly healing affects we can have as friends and the potentially destructive power we have as family. It is about the undeniable value of positive self-image and the brutal consequences of inappropriate guilt. It is about divorce, it is about AIDS, it is about obesity, and it is about rape and abortion. It is about hope and love. It contains several hundred of the most physically painful pages that I have ever read, interrupted only intermittently with some dark joke made as Delores faces her struggles. In the space of 465 pages the author brings to life not a classic heroine who defeats all of her struggles, but a woman simply trying to survive!


I could go on and on....I have approximately ten more "favorites!"

....What are some of your favorite books?  I would love to hear some "must reads!"

1 comment:

  1. Wow now I wanna read all of these. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete