Let's Bust a Recap : Women of the Word

Hi again! This is the second post this week for the second week in a row. Look at us go! Dare I say the blog is officially revived? I think I'm going to try to keep up this Monday/Thursday schedule until we're all caught up. But of course now that I've said it, you probably won't see another post around here for a month or so. (And if you're sitting there thinking, "There she goes, trying to hedge her bets"—you know me so well.) 

Anyway, today we're picking up another one of the books that's been sitting in my trusty book cart since I finished it last year: Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin. This Bible study aid published back in 2014 is Wilkin's first book and probably her most well-known. I know it's the one that has been recommended to me the most often. I read it over the course of two months last year—mid-August to mid-October—with three of my friends. This was a great book to read with company and there are helpful discussion questions at the end of each chapter for that exact purpose. 

Although I've had this book for several years and, as aforementioned, it's the Jen Wilkin book most often recommended to me, it's the one I've been most hesitant to read. I have long felt cautious about treating the Bible like a textbook or just another source of helpful information as opposed to what it actually is: the very Word of God to His people. Jen Wilkin's study method seemed intense to me (SPOILER ALERT: it is) which put it—in my mind—in the danger zone of making the Bible wholly academic. The perilous flip side of my own way of thinking is never studying the Bible at all. I certainly don't want to fall into that trap either. Jen Wilkin comes out swinging at the beginning of her book with the challenge that if we love God, we will want to know Him intimately. And the place we go to know Him is His Word. 

Touché, Jen. 

She also argues that you can't love something with your heart that you don't know with your mind.

Chalk another point up for Jen.

So right away she got me thinking and one of the conclusions I came to before even getting into the meat of the book is that if I say I love God with my heart, but I don't know Him—through His Word—with my mind, I'm prone to love a God of my own making, not the God who has actually revealed Himself to me in Scripture. 

All right then, Jen, let's get into it. 

She goes on to outline some common Bible study methods that aren't great, giving them amusing nicknames like The Pinball Approach, or The Magic 8-Ball Method, or The Personal Shopper. She then encourages her reader to take in the whole counsel of God. As a rule, tackle it expositionally rather than topically. 

Then she really gets into the nitty-gritty of Bible study. Some of this part of the book felt a bit like I was in an English Lit class, but it was a good review of how to read well. I appreciated her point that if we don't look at the context—Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? In what style was it written? Why was it written?—we are apt to misinterpret what we're reading. The Bible can't mean something to me that it didn't mean to its original audience. 

Although the process that Wilkin outlines and recommends is intensive and I have not used all of her methods; in reading Women of the Word I felt, if truth be told, affirmed in my own approach to Scripture. That is definitely not a credit to me. I'm very thankful that I was raised by parents who taught me the whole counsel of God—at home and from the pulpit—and encouraged me to read and study the Scriptures for myself. I particularly resonated with Wilkin's encouragement to treat Bible study like a savings account. Her advice is to keep reading and studying God's Word even when we don't understand it. Save that away. The Holy Spirit may illuminate a particularly tricky passage years later after we've read it hundreds of times. I know I've experienced this in my own study, and it was validating to hear her articulate my own experiences back to me.

She closes out her book with a chapter about teaching and common teaching pitfalls. I especially appreciated her warning about feminizing the Bible. It seems to be a trap that modern Christian writers can fall into and my radar is constantly up when I'm reading books by female authors I haven't encountered before. 

Ultimately though, I think the best thing Wilkin says in her entire book has to do with bathing our study of Scripture in prayer. 

"Without prayer, our study is nothing but an intellectual pursuit. With prayer, it is a means of communing with the Lord. Prayer is what changes our study from the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of God Himself."

Exactly right, Jen.  

You can read my reviews of the other Jen Wilkin books I've read here and here. How do you approach the Bible? Has your study of God's Word benefited from other books? And if yes, what books?

Let's Bust a Recap : The Nightingale

The Nightingale was not on my list for 2025, but it's been sitting on my shelf for years. I've lost count of the people in my real life who have personally recommended this book to me, not to mention the hordes on the internet who have raved about it since it came out. It's been a contender for my book list for the last three years at least, but it's never quite made the final cut. And then at the end of February, I happened to catch one of my Goodreads friends unboxing her copy of the brand new 10th anniversary edition on one of her social media accounts. 

What?! The Nightingale is already ten years old? That can't be! But sure enough, a quick Google search revealed to me that this internationally best-selling book was published in February of 2015 and after doing a little recall of my own, I've had a copy sitting on my shelf for at least seven of those ten years. I did not think twice: I went straight to my shelf, pulled down my copy, and sat down to start reading. I must have had at least eight other books in progress, but I was immediately swept away into WWII occupied France.

"If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: 

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are."

This is the opening line of Kristin Hannah's powerful novel of two sisters and the very different choices they make during the course of Word War II. Vianne, married with a small daughter, is living a quiet, comfortable life in a small village before her husband is conscripted and eventually taken as a prisoner of war. Her younger sister Isabelle has been in and out of finishing schools, and as the Germans occupy France, her father sends her to Vianne in the country, but Isabelle is hungry to take an active role in the resistance movement. Fiery Isabelle can't understand her sister's quiet seeming acceptance of their new reality, especially when a German officer is billeted in Vianne's home. As the sisters' paths diverge, we follow each of them along their impossible journeys to cope with the war and watch them grapple with how to make sense of and live with integrity in the midst of such inconceivable evil. While their decisions take them in very different directions, both display heroic bravery in the heartbreaking circumstances they find themselves in.

And wow. What a story. I couldn't put The Nightingale down, and neither could my mom, and then neither could my dad. Hannah based the Isabelle character on a Belgian woman named Andrée de Jongh and the Vianne character on countless French women who put themselves in harm's way to save others. Her thorough research lent an authenticity to her story that broke my heart several times over. My parents and I discussed at length the impossible situations people found themselves in during the war and how they coped with it all. It boggles my mind to this day the depravity that humankind is capable of and how so many people during the war couldn't believe the things that were happening were even possible, much less that those things would happen to them. 

The content of this story is hard to stomach—at one point I was actually hyperventilating I was so upset, and my dad called me after he finished admitting that it made him cry—but the book is so well-written and the story so compelling that it isn't any wonder The Nightingale turned Kristin Hannah into a household name despite the fact she's been putting out a new novel every year or two since 1991. I fully understand why my friends have all been pestering me to read her work. As it happens, I've collected four of her other books since the massive success of The Nightingale, but The Nightingale is the first I've read. Upon finishing the book, my mom immediately borrowed Winter Garden and read that one too. 

After we had all finished it, I asked my parents which they would choose if they had to recommend either The Nightingale or All the Light We Cannot See (another novel set in occupied France during WWII). My mom couldn't decide, but my dad immediately said The Nightingale. Safe to say, we all would recommend both of these books without question. As the saying goes, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and books like these help us remember. 

Have you read any of Kristin Hannah's books? Which one should I read next?

Let's Bust a Recap : A House Without Windows

Alright, after recapping my most recently read book on Monday, we're taking it all the way back to the book that's been waiting the longest for a recap. I read A House Without Windows in August last year after drawing it out of the TBR Jar. I picked this book up at my local library's annual sale a few years back when they were doing their $5 box day, and I have no idea when I actually would have gotten around to reading it if I hadn't pulled this title out of my TBR Jar last year. Much like I approached The Beekeeper of Aleppo with a bit of trepidation, I faced the opening sentences of A House Without Windows with some apprehension. What are the odds I pull two books featuring areas known for ongoing conflict and unrest? But that's what happened and as it turned out, I spoke too soon when I said we should all read The Beekeeper of Aleppo instead of The Kite Runner. A House Without Windows is the more appropriate replacement due to the fact that both books are written by Afghan American doctors and feature Afghani stories. Consider this my official revision of my original statement and wholehearted endorsement that we should all be reading Nadia Hashimi instead of Khaled Hosseini. (And no, I will never let this go: I hated The Kite Runner so much.)

A House Without Windows was published in 2016 and is Hashimi's third international best-seller. In the opening pages, we meet Zeba who is found in a catatonic state, covered in her husband's blood, next to his body with a hatchet in his back. She is immediately taken to Kabul's women's prison, and her young children are taken to her husband's family. We also meet idealistic Yusuf, an Afghan-born but American-raised lawyer ready to return to his native home and do some good there. When he is assigned Zeba's case, his client is nothing like what he expects and when she won't speak to him, he doesn't know how to handle her case. As Zeba slowly befriends other women at the prison, many of them there for "love crimes", they begin to wonder if she has her mother's power of jadu, and they start to confide their hopes for their futures in her. As Yusuf struggles to get to the bottom of what really happened to Zeba's husband Kamal, he also has to contend with his American sense of justice and face the reality that he may not be able to bring any meaningful change to his war-torn homeland.

This story was beautiful and heart-wrenching all at once. Hashimi deftly weaves together the many threads in her narrative in a gentle way that opens the reader's eyes to the plight of Afghani women without dragging you down into miry despair. I was intrigued by the murder mystery aspect which kept me turning the pages right to the end, and I appreciated the way Hashimi ended on a hopeful note without compromising the reality of life for women in Afghanistan. While the actual details of the murder are hard to stomach, Hashimi handles her difficult content delicately with a skilled hand. This story has stayed with me since turning the final page several months ago. 

Reading A House Without Windows and The Beekeeper of Aleppo last year really broadened my horizons. Coming face to face with the realities women contend with in these conflict-ridden regions made me so profoundly grateful for my own reality of growing up in the United States where I am free and respected as a human being, equal to the other humans around me. These are the reasons I try to diversify my reading, and those instincts were rewarded by these two excellent novels. I highly recommend both. I even bought Hashimi's debut novel on a recent trip to my favorite secondhand bookstore, and I look forward to reading it soon.

Why do you read? What books have opened your eyes to something you will probably never experience in your own life?

Let's Bust a Recap : Franklin Pierce

Hello there! It's June which means 2025 is nearly halfway over, and if we don't start busting out some of these recaps soon, I fear this blog may never recover. Including this slim biography on our 14th president, I have no less than twelve books sitting in my book cart waiting for recaps before I can re-shelve them and move on with my life so let's get cracking, shall we?

Even though I was determined to get to Pierce last year and even started reading this paltry biography in September, I didn't get past the first chapter and ended up having to start completely over a couple weeks ago. That means I didn't make any progress on my goal of reading through the U.S. presidents last year. Oy. But we dust ourselves off and keep trying. I was determined to finish Franklin Pierce by the end of May and I just barely eked it out Saturday evening. 

Which also means that I'm sitting here ignoring the eleven other books (five of them from last year) that have been waiting for recaps longer and filling you in on my most recently completed reading endeavor before I forget everything I just learned about Franklin Pierce. Which wasn't much. Even though after reading Eisenhower's tiny biography on Zachary Taylor I determined to avoid The American Presidents series from here on out, I unfortunately could not find an affordable option for Peter Wallner's two-volume series on Pierce and had to settle for Michael F. Holt's scant rendering of our 14th president instead. 

While this is technically a cradle-to-grave biography of Franklin Pierce (which meets my criteria for this particular life goal), it was more an argument for Holt's thesis that without a strong opposition, a political party is doomed to fracture internally and become its own worst enemy. For the majority of this 154-page biography, I didn't get much insight into Franklin Pierce at all and felt that Holt focused too much on the entire political landscape of the time rather than on the specific man he was tasked with writing about. The final chapter of the book covering Pierce's life after his presidency was by far the most interesting and illuminating. 

Franklin Pierce was born in 1804 to American Revolutionary war hero and two-time New Hampshire governor Benjamin Pierce. After getting an education in the law at Bowdoin College in Maine and Northampton Law School in Massachusetts, he quickly ascended in local and state politics before moving on to the U.S. House of Representatives and finally the Senate. He then retired from politics and after a brief (and embarrassing) stint as a colonel in the Mexican-American War, he left the national scene altogether for nearly ten years, practicing law back home in New Hampshire.

Then during the 1852 Democratic National Convention, Pierce's name came up as a dark horse contender when no one could agree on one of the bigger name candidates. Ultimately, Pierce and Alabama's William R. King were chosen to run for president and vice president on the Democratic ticket. Even though Pierce's name had been sunken in political obscurity for the last ten years prior to the 1852 presidential election, he easily won running on a platform committed to upholding the Compromise of 1850 signed into law during Fillmore's presidency. His running-mate King ended up dying shortly after they were sworn in meaning Pierce served his one presidential term with no acting VP (which, let's be honest, isn't really that big of a deal since American vice presidents really don't do all that much). He is our country's only president from New Hampshire to date.

As for his presidency: it was a disaster. Franklin Pierce was a likable guy and he liked to be liked which isn't a particularly helpful trait when it comes to making tough decisions or taking a hardline stance on issues of national importance. His main objective as top dog of the land was maintaining party unity which was pretty much impossible at this point in our nation's history. You would think that by this point, the American political landscape would have split along sectional divides: the Northern anti-slavery contingent against the Southern states' rights contingent. But in 1852, we still had the Democrats spanning all settled states and their main opposition the Whigs spanning all settled states (with a lot of smaller parties sprinkled throughout with their own pet platforms). In trying to hold all the factions of Dems together, Pierce effectively pissed everyone off and started that sectional split all the major politicians of the day were so desperately trying to avoid in the name of keeping the country unified. Pierce used his presidential patronage to divide jobs up evenly among all the aforementioned Democratic factions which blew up in his face. He threw his weight behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act which effectually repealed the Missouri Compromise, earning him the accusation of being a slavery-loving doughface. By the time his term came to an end, he really hadn't accomplished much of anything and in his final annual message to Congress he bitterly contended that it wasn't his fault the country was such a mess. He was not renominated by his party, and he spent his remaining twelve years on earth traveling with his wife abroad, farming in New England, and spending time with friends. 

As for his personal life, he married Jane Means Appleton in 1834 and by all appearances, loved her and took care of her until her death in 1863. She was a frail, sickly woman often suffering with bouts of tuberculosis. They had three sons together but none of them survived past childhood, their third son being killed in a train accident—in the seat behind them!—at the age of of eleven. Jane hated politics and spent most of her time as First Lady living as an isolated recluse. As I mentioned, Frank Pierce was a highly likable person and his friends and family and even his presidential cabinet seemed to genuinely love and respect him, and he earned the lifelong loyalty of those whom he was close to. Some of his dearest friends included American author Nathaniel Hawthorne and Confederate president Jefferson Davis. All in all, I think Pierce was a good guy who just wasn't cut out for politics and certainly served his political career during an impossible time in American politics. He struggled with alcoholism all his life and finally succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver in 1869 at the age of 64. 

As we move one step closer to the man who is arguably America's most famous president, Abraham Lincoln, I found it interesting that Pierce tried to remain neutral and stay out of the press about Lincoln's administration but ended up publicly airing his criticisms when Lincoln trampled the civil rights of Democrat Clarence Vallandigham. Many in the North branded Pierce a traitor to the Union and a mob stormed his home when he didn't raise the flag in a gesture of mourning after Lincoln's death. I'm approaching the most heated and politically charged time in my nation's history in my personal read-through of the American presidents, and it's getting tense. 

Next up is James Buchanan who is considered by literally everyone to be our nation's very worst president, bar none. I'm sincerely hoping to read his biography by the end of the year, but we'll see what happens. 

Thirteen Years

 Happy Anniversary, my very favorite!

Being your girl makes the hard times feel easier.

My 10 Favorite Books From the Last 10 Years

Well, happy May then. Can you even believe we've got four months of 2025 under our belts? And yes, I missed another whole month of blogging. This year has been a tough one so far, and things that happened in my personal life last month made it difficult to even read, much less blog. But I did have an idea pop into my head to go over all the books I've read these past ten years and pick my personal top ten favorites. So that's what I'm sharing with you today.

As I thought about the books from the past decade of my reading life that rocketed onto my personal list of All-Time Favorites, it actually wasn't too hard to come up with the ten best. 

These are not ten brand new books. But they are books that I read for the very first time over these past ten years. Some of them are books I had never heard of, some I'd been meaning to get to for ages, some are books that I knew would be good for me to read but didn't realize how much would move me or completely delight me. Without further ado: My 10 Favorite Books From the Last 10 Years (in the order I originally read them, not ranked in any way).

To Kill A Mockingbird 

First Published: July 1960

My First Time Reading: January 2016

This Southern classic by Harper Lee is often assigned reading in school, but I missed out on it during my growing up years. Wise Atticus Finch and his two children Scout and Jem, their cook Calpurnia and mysterious neighbor Boo Radley: these characters immediately embedded themselves in the hearts of readers the world over, leading to a Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award winning film (which I still have not seen). It's about time I picked To Kill A Mockingbird up again and give it another read. 

The Hiding Place

First Published: November 1971

My First Time Reading: August 2017

I grew up knowing the story of Corrie ten Boom's family and their work to hide Jews from the Nazis during World War II, but I didn't get around to reading her book for myself until 2017. It is now the first book I recommend to anyone regardless of age, gender, personal reading preferences, or any other factor. Everyone should read this book. 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

First Published: July 2008

My First Time Reading: August 2018

I stumbled across this title by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows browsing one of my favorite secondhand bookshops and ended up reading it right away thanks to the encouragement of a fellow reader I had befriended over the internet. What a serendipitous jumble of events. This epistolary novel set right after the German occupation of the Channel Island of Guernsey during WWII is an ode to book lovers. Instant favorite. 

Tuck Everlasting

First Published: 1975

My First Time Reading: March 2020

I'm not sure if I even knew Disney's 2002 film was adapted from Natalie Babbitt's thoroughly charming children's novel when I watched it in high school, but upon discovering it was and then coming across a copy in a secondhand shop, it ended up being one of the first books I read after COVID-19 caused a global shutdown. I remember feeling so regretful about missing out on this book for so much of my life. And I blame Disney for part of that because the movie is entirely forgettable and certainly didn't inspire me to seek out the brilliant source material. 

The Penderwicks

First Published: 2005-2018

My First Time Reading: June 2021

Technically, this first book by Jeanne Birdsall is meant to represent the five book series in its entirety so I guess this list is actually my favorite fourteen books from the last ten years. Semantics. I immediately fell for the Penderwick sisters, their lovable dog Hound, and the lonely boy Jeffrey whom they befriend. This series is a delight from beginning to end.

The Secret Garden

First Published: August 1911

My First Time Reading: September 2021

I read Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic when COVID-19 finally caught me in 2021. The story of neglected little Mary Lennox and her awakening to childhood and joy and friendship and nature utterly captivated me. This book is just lovely.

Gone With the Wind

First Published: June 1936

My First Time Reading: October/November 2021

Gone With the Wind is one of the books on this list that I had been meaning to get around to reading for ages but was daunted by the sheer size of Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece. I needn't have worried. I was swept up in the saga of Tara and its young mistress Scarlett O'Hara as she faced the onset of the Civil War, then had to pick up the pieces in the aftermath during the Reconstruction. An epic, for sure.

Cold Sassy Tree

First Published: November 1984

My First Time Reading: May 2023

I grew up in ignorance of the existence of Olive Ann Burns' Southern historical novel, but it didn't take me long to realize it would be a treasured favorite. Will Tweedy's coming of age in 1906 small town Georgia stole my heart and took me straight back to my own teenage years, sprawled across my grandmother's bed listening to my own family history. 

Dandelion Wine

First Published: 1957

My First Time Reading: Summer 2024

Not only is Dandelion Wine now one of my All-Time Favorite books, but Ray Bradbury is quickly becoming one of my All-Time Favorite authors. This interconnected collection of short stories centered around the Spaulding boys is a pure hit of nostalgia, summertime distilled into a novel. Dandelion Wine should be savored slowly and stretched to its absolute limits. 

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

First Published: 1972

My First Time Reading: November 2024

Are you kidding me? Barbara Robinson and her awful Herdman kids teaching their small town the true meaning of Christmas when they hijack the annual pageant is an absolute gem. I will be reading this every Christmas for the rest of my life. 

My All-Time Favorite books can be characterized like this: they make me laugh and cry, I'm sad when I get to the end and want to start over again immediately, and they are the books I reach for when everything else in life is too hard to face. Discovering the charms of these books over the past ten years has been a boon to my soul, and I look forward to what the next ten years of reading will unearth for me. 

What are some of your All-Time Favorite books? Have you discovered any new ones in the past ten years? 

2025 Book List

Does she have a book list this year? Is she doing this blog thing anymore? Was it just some kind of a ten-year project and now it's over?

All valid questions and to answer them: yes, I have a 2025 book list; yes, still hanging in with the blog; and don't worry, I'm planning to keep this thing going for the foreseeable future. 

Last month—yes, the month I didn't post a single thing around here—this blog turned 10. It seems hard to believe I've been sharing bookish thoughts with the internet at large for ten whole years now, but it's actually true. It has morphed over the years and there are some months I go radio silent, but I've pretty much stuck to my stated goal "to be intentional about what I read and to share about my literary adventures." And overall, it's pretty fun so I'm going to keep doing it. Thank you for coming along for any part of it. 

After taking stock at the end of last year and beginning of this year, I've admitted to myself that I get the most out of my reading life when I make myself a smaller book list at the beginning of the year (about 20 books or less) and complete the entire list while adding in comfortable re-reads, buddy reads with friends, or something that just catches my attention at the right time. The first year I made myself a book list—and subsequently started this blog for personal accountability—was 2015 and that was kind of a figuring things out year. From 2016-2018 I stuck to the smaller list that I could actually finish format and loved it. From 2019-2024, I experimented with internet challenges, TBR Jars, longer lists, and letting my whims guide me, and while all of that was fun and I read some really great books, I ended each year feeling less satisfied with my reading life than I was in the 2016-18 era. So we're going back to what works best for me and this year, I made a starting list of 20 books. 

Morning & Evening : Charles Spurgeon

Desiring God : John Piper

Living Life Backward : David Gibson

The Poetry of Robert Frost Complete & Unabridged

Franklin Pierce : Michael F. Holt

President James Buchanan : Philip Shriver Klein

The Devil in the White City : Erik Larson

Seabiscuit : Laura Hillenbrand

Two Gentlemen of Verona : William Shakespeare

Coriolanus : William Shakespeare

David Copperfield : Charles Dickens

A Separate Peace : John Knowles

Hannah Coulter : Wendell Berry

A Gentleman in Moscow : Amor Towles

Before We Were Yours : Lisa Wingate

The Age of Innocence : Edith Wharton

Brideshead Revisited : Evelyn Waugh

A Farewell to Arms : Ernest Hemingway

Animal Farm : George Orwell

Frankenstein : Mary Shelley

This year's list is made up of books I plan to read with my sister-in-law (hey, Caroline!), a couple that my husband picked out for me (Desiring God; Living Life Backward), some that will have feature film adaptations I want to see coming out this year (Animal Farm; Frankenstein), and, of course, my signature Shakespeare plays and presidential biographies. I've already finished reading two books from the list (and two that are not on this list), and if you glance over to that "Currently Reading" widget to the right, it's true that I'm actively reading nine books right now. Which maybe accounts for my blog silence. But it's all fun and I'm looking forward to the books I'll read in 2025. 

As for this blog, can I ask you a question or three? What do you like? What do you not like? Is there anything you'd like to see around here? I can't promise that anything will change, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. I truly do appreciate all of you who take the time to read my silly ramblings and cheer me on in my reading ventures. 

What have you been reading lately?