Reading Challenge Updates 4

I'm doing really well with this challenge. It's now the middle of the year and I have only 6 books left to finish and 1 of those I am currently in the middle of reading.

The latest ones that I read are:

• Snow on the Tulips by Liz Tolsma
• 12 Questions to Ask Before You Marry by Clayton and Charie King
• From God's Word to a Woman's Heart by Janice Hanna

So 12 out of 18 puts me at 2/3 finished the challenge.

Snow on the Tulips is set in Holland at the end of World War 2, and focuses on the work of the Resistance just before liberation. The story is actually based on the experiences of members of the author's family.

I had started 12 Questions to Ask Before You Marry several years ago as I was reviewing it for a blog tour (you can find my post here). It was good to finish it, and I plan to read it again when I am in a relationship heading for marriage.

I enjoyed From God's Word to a Woman's Heart. It is a devotional which I have been reading a section of each day for the past few months. I recommend this one for anyone contemplating marriage, and even if you don't ever marry, there are many things in it that can apply to life in general.

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Just one more bingo square marked of for this challenge, but I am in the middle of reading 2 others.

One of those will mean I finish a line; and one I won't actually finish until the end of the year, so that will be revealed in my final challenge post!!

Begins a Series: Buried Secrets by Irene Hannon

This is the first book in her new Men of Valor series.

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In other reading news, I am in the process of checking out some books that I have purchased for the kids at work. Some are from authors I have read and these books are junior fiction, while others sounded good so I'm giving them a go. There were also some that I read and loved as a kid that have been reprinted, so there was no need to re-read them.

It's a bit of a switch for me. Back when I was a kid, my Mum used to preview books for me - that is until I read so fast that she couldn't keep up. Every single book that she and Dad gave me as a gift or I got as a Sunday School prize, Mum would read to make sure it was suitable. I like it that my parents cared for me in that way - to make sure that what my mind would be dwelling on lined up with Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things." (NKJV)

ACRBA Tour - Mirage by Jeanette Grant-Thomson

8 - 12 June 2015

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is introducing

Mirage
(Ark House Press)

By

Jeanette Grant-Thomson

About the Book:
Miraim is desperate. Her mind is a fog of drug-induced forgetfulness. She has forgotten her past, her family, even who she is. But who is the disturbingly familiar girl in the shopping centre?

Enmeshed in Soleternity, a cult in the Queensland outback, Miriam is pregnant. She believes her future - and that of her baby - lies with the cult.

Bronwyn is determined to rescue Miriam. She has not bargained on falling in love with the journalist helping her.

Away from Soleternity, Miriam faces conflicts. Sol . . .Soleternity . . .and now Anna and Christianity. How can she know the truth? Who is to be trusted?

About the Author

Jeanette Grant-Thomson has been writing since she was a child, having short pieces published. Her first book was Jodie's Story (Anzea 1991 and two later editions), followed by two more biographies and two novels. She is a teacher and a writer, living in Redlands.

My Thoughts:
I was initially reluctant to read this book because of the subject matter that it deals with - cults.
It's not something you think about much, and they are not really heard about much, unless something goes wrong and there is a news story about one, or an expose on one of the current affairs programs. In reality, you don't want to have to think about them, but you do need to be aware that they do exist; and the reason they exist is because we live in a sinful, broken world.

The way this book was written also makes sense in light of a recent blog post that Jeanette did about her own search for God. Not that she was in a cult, but she was searching for God and He did draw her to Himself.
It makes me think of something I read a long time ago, where Blaise Pascal brought up the context of all of us having a "God-shaped hole".
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” 
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)