Good Books

I'm not a book reviewer. There's plenty of bright folks out there that do a great job of that. But I do love to read and I wanted to recommend a couple of my recent favorites.

Peace Like A River, by Lief Enger is the best novel I read last year. Enger is a master wordsmith and tells a moving story. I don't want to ruin the adventure of reading this book by giving any of the plot away, but here's a bit from the novel's opening chapter, where Reuben Land, the books' narrator, has just been born and is not breathing:

I was lying uncovered on a metal table across the room.
Dad lifted me gently. I was very clean from all that rubbing, and I was gray and beginning to cool. A little clay boy is what I was.
“Breathe,” Dad said.
I lay in his arms.
Dr. Nokes said, “Jeremiah, it has been twelve minutes.”
“Breathe!” The picture I see is of Dad, brown hair short and wild, giving this order as if he expected nothing but obedience.
Dr. Nokes approached him. “Jeremiah. There would be brain damage now. His lungs can’t fill.”
Dad leaned down, laid me back on the table, took off his jacket and wrapped me in it—a black canvas jacket with a quilted lining, I have it still. He left my face uncovered.
"Sometimes," said Dr. Nokes, “there is something unworkable in one of the organs. A ventricle that won’t pump correctly. A liver that poisons the blood.” Dr. Nokes was a kindly and reasonable man. “Lungs that can’t expand to take in air. In these cases,” said Dr. Nokes, “we must trust in the Almighty to do what is best.” At which Dad stepped across and smote Dr. Nokes with a right hand, so that the doctor went down and lay on his side with his pupils unfocused. As Mother cried out, Dad turned back to me, a clay child wrapped in a canvas coat, and said in a normal voice, “Reuben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breath.” (Peace Like A River, by Leif Enger, pages 2-3)


Buy or borrow this book today. You won't be disappointed.
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The Cross He Bore, by Frederick S. Leahy is the current recommended reading for the book club that I participate in. I am only on Chapter 5 of this small book (100 pages) and it is already one of my favorites. Don't be put off on this book thinking that it is too theological -- it is a superbly written and highly readable book about the suffering of our Savior.

Here's a sample from the chapter "Strengthened to Suffer" about Jesus' agonizing time of prayer in Gethsemane before his arrest:

Although the entreaties of Christ in the garden met with oppressive silence, it does not follow that the Father was indifferent to the Son's anguish or that his prayer was unheeded (page 18).

...the finger of the Father was upon the pulse of the lonely Sufferer in Gethsemane, and when the heart-beats of the One in conflict seemed to weaken, Heaven concerned itself about Him, and an angel was commissioned to hasten to His physical aid (page 18).

...The angel's mission was not to bring relief to Christ, but to strengthen Him for further and even greater anguish - anguish quite beyond human endurance (page 19).

This book will cause you to spend time meditating on and pondering what Christ endured for us.