123 Covenant Women May 2017 Booklist Arbor Covenant Church Madison Wisconsin Debby Meyer A Generous Orthodoxy- The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Voracious: A Hungry Reader Brian McLauren Joanne Cannon Cooks her way through Great It has become my favorite Story of youth, neighborhoods, Books Christian book after Mere mistakes, mystery and grace. Cara Nicoletti Christianity (CS Lewis) and best non-fiction read of the year. Commonwealth Non-fiction book from a young Anne Patchett woman who is a professional cook- The Nest butcher but also a voracious Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney Story of broken families, siblings reader. She reviews her favorite who learn to get along when their great books of literature and How siblings come together over parents can’t and growing up. inserts a recipe that the book lost expected inheritance and find inspires. Fun and easy read relationship instead. Money really Miss Jane especially for bibliophiles and does not buy happiness Brad Watson cooks! The Island of the World Young girl in early 1900’s that is The Chilbury Ladies Choir Michael O’Brien born with a defect and against all Jennifer Ryan predictions learns to live a full life My favorite fiction book of the in spite of this. Semi-biographical The ladies form an all women’s year! We follow Josip as Croatia of the author’s aunt. choir when the men from this SE falls during WWII, faces prison, England coastal town head off to escapes, makes a new life, and WWII. Family intrigue, war comes full circle. Great read for intrigue, babies (who’s is it?) and those who love books with history, love. Lovely read. redemption and grace. Powerful book! 123 Covenant Women Booklist May 2017 Ruth Hallblade Peter Morris Kindred Finding Rebecca The Woman Next Door Octavia Butler Eoin Depsey Yewande Omotoso (Science Fiction) Rebecca and The story takes Dana, a woman from Christopher met as 6 place in the 20th Century, is year olds. Rebecca is predominantly repeatedly brought taken to Auschwitz. present day South back in time by her slave-owning Christopher works there. Africa but moves ancestor when his life is (Historical Romance) back and forth in endangered. Each time her stay place and time as the main becomes longer and she becomes The Pearl that character’s stories are revealed. entangled in the plantation. Broke the Shell Marion and Hortensia do not like Nadia Hashim each other but in the end this is The Secret Wife about friendship. Gill Paul Two young Afghan The story of the women, separated A Man of Good fate of the Russian by a century, who Hope royal family in the disguise themselves as man to Jonny Steinberg early 20th century. survive. Deals with gender Great historical equalities between males and In 1991, eight fiction) females and violence against year old Asad is women in two time periods. forced to leave Mogadishu, the Red Mountain The Trouble with capital of Somalia when civil war Boo Walker Goats and Sheep comes. This is a story of a person Story of four Joanne Cannon shorn of the things we have come complicated people to believe make us human – living in eastern Story of youth, possessions, family. Washington. Told neighborhoods, from multiple mistakes, mystery The Toughest Peace perspectives and rich language. and grace. Corps Job: Letters from Somalia Jim Douglas (1969) Lindsey Lund Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013) Jim Douglas is the father of one of my best friends Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military- growing up. In more recent years ruled Nigeria for the West. Ifelmu heads for America where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black. we had talked about our Obinza ends up in a dangerous undocumented part of London. Fifteen experiences in Africa. I’m grateful years later they reunite in Nigeria. this book lets me hear some of them. I’ll Give you the Sun by Jandy Nelson (2014). YA novel, which is not always my favorite, but I liked this one a lot. Fraternal twins and burgeoning artists are inseparable until puberty hits and they find themselves competing for boys, a spot in an exclusive art school and their parents’ affections. Told in alternating perspectives and timelines, the novel explores how it’s the people closest to us who have the power to both rend us utterly and knit us together. 123 Covenant Women Booklist May 2017 Matthew Elrene Lund Jen Stehley Fledderjohann As Nature Made Him Everyone Brave is I’m afraid that my 2016 reading was John Colapinto Forgiven particularly academic but I do have About identical twin Chris Cleave two texts in mind that I think others boys, one raised as An unforgettable would enjoy. Of course, they both novel about three a girl after a tragic have to do with my dissertation topic. lives entangled circumcision during WWII, told The Last Myth accident. with “dazzling Matthew Barrett Gross and Mel Gilles prose, sharp Evicted English wit, and compassion…” This is a highly Matthew Desmond readably survey of (listed under favorites) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family apocalyptic belief and Culture in Crisis starting from Meet Me Halfway: Milwaukee J.D. Vance ancient history and Stories A deeply moving carrying into the memoir, with its Jennifer present. Gross and share of humor and Gilles develop an Morales vividly colorful argument that current apocalyptic figures. This is the fascination stems from the Set in one of story of how unsustainability of capitalistic the nation’s upward mobility consumption. These ideas are most highly really feels. relevant, accessible and important. segregated cities, Meet Me The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Digital Jesus Halfway tells stories of Dispatches from an Ancient Rob Howard connections in a community with Landscape James Rebanks a tumultuous and divided past. Howard ( a Weaves together the Communication Arts human history of the professor at U-W The last two make a great farmers with factual Madison) hung out in pairing to read together history of the farms, online communities the spiritual pull of built around the land with the apocalyptic belief then tracked down physical demands it some of the primary contributors and makes, the cruelty organizers and interviewed them. and beauty, optimism This is an academic monograph that and pragmatism of the most beautiful isn’t afraid of bringing in rhetorical corner of the world. _____________________________ theory, but ultimately this book provides a very sympathetic, outside ( more from Jen) The Undoing Project: perspective on Evangelical The Things They Carried A Friendship that Changed our Minds Christendom’s interest in the end of Tim O’Brien Michael Lewis the world. I can think of two I have really liked A classic novel The story of the this year. that is a workings of the groundbreaking human mind is meditation on explored through the war, memory, personalities of two imagination, and fascinating the redemptive individuals so fundamentally power of storytelling different from each other that they seem unlikely friends or colleagues. 12 Covenant Women Booklist May 2017 Jane Smiley Ann Britt Keillor Some Luck Early Warning The October Killings The Underground Girls of Wessel Ebersohn Kabul Jenny Nordberg Golden Ages Ebersohn is an established African This story was in the New This trilogy starts in novelist who creates York Times about ten years 1920 in Debby, Iowa and engaging characters, ago. Then the author tried follows the Langton gripping plots and a to find a study of families who had one family until 2010. The three volumes story involving the countries violent of their daughters dress and act as include 100 chapters and past. Abigail Bakula was only survivor boys. It gives them a chance to encompasses 100 years. when her father and other blacks were accompany mothers and sisters as they murdered in Lesotho while fighting go out. Many of the girls eagerly go The Guest Room apartheid. She is now a lawyer in SA back to being girls; others do not. Chris Bohjalian department of justice and her help is Obviously puberty often stops this but sought in clearing a man who helped not always. An interesting chapter on One of my favorite her escape. the difference between sex and gender. storytellers. The story begins in Russia and Augusta’s Daughter: Life Hidden Figures continues in suburban New York City. in Nineteenth Century Margaret Lee Shatterly It involves young girls, gangsters and Sweden a bachelor party gone horribly wrong. After I saw the movie It is hard to put down. In July 1948, Carrie goes twice I decided to with her great- read the book. The The Underground Railroad grandmother to Sweden movie was a Colson Whitehead so they can visit her childhood home condensation of the and learn more about her family. book. It was an The story of Cora, a slave, Although a novel I think it is true to that excellent account of as she embarks on a era. Sounds la bit like the place my the three women in journey to freedom. Here the Mormor and Morfar grew up. Not the movie plus some Underground Railroad is actual idyllic. It also interested me because I others of a period of twenty years. I railroad fraught with dangers for a came her in November 1948. was impressed by the desires of the young girl escaping certain death. families to educate their girls and then The Whistler of the girls as they sacrificed family life Small Great Things John Grisham to do the work they had studied to do Jodi Picoult and I wondered if I would have had the The book centers on an courage and strength to pursue a career I normally don’t read her elaborate conspiracy under these difficulties.