Wow, a quarter of the year has gone already. I think that keeping this reading log is helping me to read more books.
Here are the books that I finished reading in March:
Testing Tradition and Liberating Theology: Finding Your Own Voice by Val Webb
I had seen a review about this book in my churches state journal & probably would not have read this book if I didn’t happen to see it at the library. This one took me a while to read. I’m glad I had read God’s Dangerous Book first. This book really made me think about what I believe & why I believe it.
Growing Young: 6 Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church by Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, & Brad Griffen
I started this last year but hadn’t finished reading it. In fact I was almost half way through it when I picked it up again in March. “Based on groundbreaking research with over 250 of the nation’s leading congregations, Growing Young provides a strategy any church can use to involve and retain teenagers and young adults.” Although it is based on American research I think the strategies are equally important for Australian churches. I like the fact that these strategies can apply no matter church size, budget or denomination. Each chapter has great ideas & examples but emphasizes that each church needs to work out what is best for their context. Although our church has been supportive of young people for a long time, I think I need to form a team to strategically look at what we do from here.
Faithful Families: Creating Sacred Moments at Home by Traci Smith
I had read about Seamless Faith, Traci’s earlier version of this book and thought it might be useful for some of the families in the church. However I had never bought a copy as I thought my family was too old for it. When I saw Traci looking for people to help promote this new book (an updated version of Seamless Faith with more ideas), I jumped at the chance to preview a copy. I read through the whole book in one session but it is the kind of book that I will go back to often, to use the practices in there. I highly recommend this book & have already blogged about it earlier this week.
Choosing Hope by Kaitlin Roig-Debellis with Robin Gaby Fisher
This is the true story of Kaitlin, a teacher, who saved the lives of her children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. This is her account of what happened when a shooter came into the school on 14 Dec, 2012, how she managed to move forward afterwards and about the nonprofit Classes 4 Classes that she founded out of this. “There is no moving on, but there is always moving forward. And how we move forward is a choice.”
Searching for Schindler by Tom Keneally
The story of how Tom Keneally, an Australian author, met a Polish Jew in Beverly Hills (who became a close friend), came to learn about Schindler and write the book Schindler’s Ark, which the Oscar award winning movie Schindler’s List was eventually based on. Although I saw the movie years ago I have never read the book & had forgotten some of the story-line. It was fascinating to read both the behind the scenes stories of the book & the movies.
Coming of Age: Growing up Muslim in Australia, edited by Amra Pajalic & Demet Divardren
It was very interesting to read the stories of 12 different Australian Muslims. There stories are different and just like all Australians they come from richly diverse backgrounds. Australian Muslims come from 70 different countries. “Islam has many branches, just as Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy are all factions of Christianity and are practised differently depending on culture, ethnicity and nationality.” (p5)
So in March I finished a total of 6 books.
This brings my total for the year to date to 15 books.
What books have you been reading lately?
