Eight Years

Happy Anniversary, my sweet man!

Kissing you never gets old.

Let's Bust a Recap : Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting was the last book I read in March, and I immediately fell in love with this sweet little story. Originally published in 1975, this children's novel by Natalie Babbitt has gone on to win a whole passel of awards, has been adapted twice for the screen and also into a musical.

Telling the story of eleven year old Winnie Foster and her accidental discovery of the Tuck family who are blessed with doomed to eternal life after drinking from a secret spring, this short novel explores the concept of immortality and how it might not be all it's cracked up to be. It has sold over five million copies and has been called a classic of modern children's literature.

And I'm here for it. I was delighted with the writing and Babbitt's talent for creating winsome imagery. I was compelled by the story and didn't want to put the book down. And I was a little sad that I somehow missed this book during my childhood. This is definitely a story I will revisit and I think it would have been an easy favorite with me when I was younger. It's a new favorite now, for sure.

My only exposure to this story prior to finally reading it was seeing the 2002 Disney film adaptation starring Alexis Bledel as Winnie when it came out. At that time, the movie didn't really make an impression on me and certainly didn't pique my interest in reading the book. I kindof forgot about it and moved on with my life. Enter #bookstagram. When I joined that little community at the end of 2018, I discovered that there are definitely some big-time fans of this children's novel so I tucked that away in my memory bank and when I happened across this old copy at The Book Shelter, I brought it home and stuck it on the shelf. After reading it, I decided to revisit the movie (Disney+ for the win!) and I can now fully appreciate it for the travesty it is. Having only just read this book for the first time, it has so fully wormed its way into my heart that watching the movie was an affront to my literary senses. I will admit that I'm a bit of book snob when it comes to film adaptations, but this one was a particularly poor representation of such a wonderful book.

All said, I highly recommend reading Tuck Everlasting and just as highly discourage watching the movie. I hope you will be just as delighted with it as I was and that you fall in love with Winnie Foster and the Tuck family forever.

Have you ever read Tuck Everlasting or seen the 2002 movie? What is one of your all-time favorite children's novels?

Let's Bust a Recap : Lies Women Believe

Hello! Yes, the blog lives. I ended up taking a big break in April. You'd think with all the corona craziness and staying at home and social distancing I'd have more time than ever to get some posts together for the blog. And you would be right. But instead of focusing on that, I did a lot of reading in April without worrying about immediately writing recaps about each of the books I finished. Whitney at The Unread Shelf hosted an online BINGO game to motivate people to check off some of their unread books during quarantine, and I am all about that. As you know (or maybe you don't), my whole goal in starting this blog and creating yearly book lists for myself was to tackle my own unread shelves instead of constantly reverting to my favorite re-reads. All this to say, I read six books in April. None of them were from my 2020 book list. But they were all books I own that I hadn't read before so we'll chalk that up as a win and now my goal for May is to recap them all here on the blog. So let's get to it.

Lies Women Believe was on my list to read this year, and I actually finished it March 20th. According to my Goodreads account, I started this book near the beginning of January. And it's true, I intentionally took this book at a pretty slow pace. Most of it I ended up reading with a friend and we met to discuss it once a week which was a really beneficial approach. 

Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss was originally released in 2001, but an updated and expanded version of the book was published in 2018. I have the original version while my friend has the newer version so in meeting and discussing the book, we got the best of both worlds though I appreciated my original copy more than her newer edition (for reasons I'll expound on later). DeMoss states at the beginning of the book that her goal is to expose areas of deception most commonly believed by Christian women and offer tools to help the reader counter and overcome these lies and walk in God's freedom and grace. With chapters on lies about God, sin, circumstances, and priorities (to name a few), DeMoss ambitiously covers a lot of ground. 

And I don't think she does the best job with it. She doesn't do a bad job, but I did not think she developed each topic in a meaningful way. At best, she presents a commonly believed lie, provides a few anecdotal stories about said lie, gives some thoughts about why it's a lie, then moves on to her next topic. While DeMoss and I fundamentally line up in our beliefs and I ultimately didn't disagree with any of her points, some of her writing came across as cavalier and I could see how a casual reader would be very turned off to her approach. Don't get me wrong, I believe God's Word is offensive to sinners (of which I am chief) and there's not really any sugarcoating it. But in just scratching the surface of so many lies (each of which could easily be developed into a book of its own), DeMoss doesn't always come across the page as loving or helpful. 

Having said that, I do believe DeMoss writes with loving intention and that Lies Women Believe has the potential to be a very helpful book. If you're reading to be offended, you will be. But if you are genuinely reading to seek truth, you will find it. In the second chapter of the book, DeMoss says, "it's not enough to ask, 'Do I believe this lie?' Each of us must also ask, 'Do I live as though I believe this lie?'" And that was the best way to introduce her book. For me, as someone who has grown up with my faith from the time I was born, it is very easy to identify a lie on paper and reject it. To examine my life and find areas where I'm living as if I believe a lie is a very different (and challenging) matter. 

In my opinion, the greatest value of this book are the pages DeMoss includes at the end of each chapter entitled "Countering Lies With the Truth" and "Making It Personal". In any given chapter, DeMoss covers three to six lies within the stated topic. For example, in her chapter "Lies Women Believe About God", DeMoss deals with the lies "God is not really good", "God doesn't love me", and "God is not really enough" among others. At the end of the chapter, DeMoss re-states the lies she tackled countering them with the truth including several Scripture references to back it up. If she had just released a pamphlet with these pages and the book recommendations included in the back of Lies Women Believe, that would be just as valuable a resource as her entire book. After the "Countering Lies With Truth" page, she also includes pages in the 2001 edition that she entitles "Making It Personal". This is why I liked my copy of the book better than the updated and expanded version that my friend had. These pages aren't included in the newer version, and the very best part of my reading experience of this book was going through these pages, reading the suggested Scripture aloud, thinking deeper about changes I need to make in my life, and reading (and praying) the heartfelt prayers that Nancy Leigh DeMoss includes at the end. 

All in all, I'm glad I read this book and it was helpful to me. Meeting and discussing it with my friend deepened my experience with it, and I would definitely recommend reading it with someone if you decide to pick this up. Things that hit me a certain way didn't have the same impact on my friend and vice versa so discussing the book with someone else opened my eyes to the value of passages that I didn't think were necessarily that great at the time I read them. Obviously, the best and most helpful source of truth will always be the Word of God so my top recommendation will always be to start there. 

Have you read Lies Women Believe? Or have you ever read a book that was well-intentioned but maybe didn't deliver on those intentions? Let me know in the comments. And be on the lookout for more recaps in May including ones for Tuck Everlasting, Charlotte's Web, and Their Eyes Were Watching God!