August's Pick - Last Light by Terri Blackstock

From the first page, Last Light takes you into a world that we can hardly imagine. A world in which one day all electronics go dead. But worse than no electricity, airplanes can't fly, watches don't run, cell phones and land lines have no signals.  It is a worldwide phenomenon and scientist are unable to reverse it.

We follow the average American family as they try to deal with this permanent power outage and the chaos it brings. As Christians, they are faced with a choice - to hoard all their possessions, like all of their neighbors, or to do what Christ has called us to do and "give freely, to everyone who asks."

I wondered how would I handle the situations that Doug and Kaye and their four children were dealing with?  I began questioning if my family and kids were too spoiled, with our steady stream of cyber entertainment diet.

Would we be able to have utter and complete faith in God for EVERY one of our physical needs on a daily, or every moment, basis.

But mostly, I wonder if it's too late to learn how to garden!

July's Pick - Me, Myself & Bob, by Phil Vischer

My first experience with the Veggie Tales was at a friend's house (whose kids were teenagers at the time) watching a dancing cucumber sing "oh, where is my hairbrush."  Dumbfounded, I said, "he doesn't have any hair."  The whole room rolled with laughter, shouting "that's the point."  Well, from there I was hooked, and when I had a son a year later, he would soon be hooked as well. 

Turning on the radio one day, I caught the tail end of an interview with Phil Vischer.  He said, "How dare we have any dreams." He went on to say that OUR dreams should be God's dreams that He unfolds in His timing. This really ministered to me as I dream of being a published writer - I had to pray, is this my goal or God's will for me?

I am so excited to read this book and hear his amazing spiritual journey, and I hope you are too!  Please let me know what you think!

Publisher's Weekly

Have you ever been tempted to start your own business? First read this cautionary tale, especially if you think your ideas come from God. Vischer, a pioneer in computerized animation and creator of Veggie Tales, proves that a pathetically skinny, shy techno-geek can be hilarious even when describing his headlong plunge into bankruptcy. In 1989, "with an unflappable `How hard could it be' attitude," the 22-year-old entrepreneur launched his dream of creating high-quality Christian entertainment by founding the company that would become Big Idea Productions. Thirteen stressful years later, he was featured in a People magazine cover story "small town kid kicked out of Bible college and down to his last ten bucks creates talking vegetables and hits it big, selling 40 million videos!" shortly before firing half his staff in an unsuccessful attempt to avert disaster. While Vischer accepts the blame for the collapse ("my strengths built Big Idea, and my weaknesses brought it down"), he also details various unnamed executives' incompetence. One question haunted him: if he was doing God's work, why didn't God rescue his company? Concluding his story of spiritual inspiration and heartbreak, Vischer draws lessons from his experience for anyone who has ever lost a dream. 

June's Pick - Friendship Bread by Darien Gee

Overview (from www.BarnesandNoble.com)

An anonymous gift sends a woman on a journey she never could have anticipated.
 
One afternoon, Julia Evarts and her five-year-old daughter, Gracie, arrive home to find an unexpected gift on the front porch: a homemade loaf of Amish Friendship Bread and a simple note: I hope you enjoy it. Also included are a bag of starter, instructions on how to make the bread herself, and a request to share it with others.

Still reeling from a personal tragedy that left her estranged from the sister who was once her best friend, Julia remains at a loss as to how to move on with her life. She’d just as soon toss the anonymous gift, but to make Gracie happy, she agrees to bake the bread.  

When Julia meets two newcomers to the small town of Avalon, Illinois, she sparks a connection by offering them her extra bread starter. Widow Madeline Davis is laboring to keep her tea salon afloat while Hannah Wang de Brisay, a famed concert cellist, is at a crossroads, her career and marriage having come to an abrupt end. In the warm kitchen of Madeline’s tea salon, the three women forge a friendship that will change their lives forever.

In no time, everyone in Avalon is baking Amish Friendship Bread. But even as the town unites for a benevolent cause and Julia becomes ever closer to her new friends, she realizes the profound necessity of confronting the painful past she shares with her sister.

About life and loss, friendship and community, food and family, Friendship Bread tells the uplifting story of what endures when even the unthinkable happens.

Petey, by Ben Mikaelsen

We have all seen him.

A man parked in a wheelchair, his body crumpled in horrific positions. You probably heard him desperate to speak in his own language of garbled noises.

After reading this YA novel, you will never look at someone like him the same. Petey is a story about a boy born with severe cerebal palsy, which leaves him with almost no control of his muscles. In 1922, when Petey is born, he is misdiagnosed as severly retarded. Not knowing that their son could think and feel and communicate, his parents commit him to an insane asylum. There he grows up, experiencing friendship, love and heartbreak under horrific conditions.  As an old man, Petey is moved to a nursing home and has almost given up on life, until he mets a teen named Trevor Ladd. The two form a strong friendship and give each other a new purpose and outlook on life.

A very simple, yet inspiring read.  I added this to my "Highly Recommend" list.

May's Pick - Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer

Book Summary (from Amazon)
Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? That brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? That the color blue can help you double your creative output?

From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively.

Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective (travel helps). He unveils the optimal mix of old and new partners in any creative collaboration, and explains why criticism is essential to the process. Then he zooms out to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

You’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addictions of poets. You’ll meet a Manhattan bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. You’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar’s office space is designed to spark the next big leap in animation.

Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.

April's Pick - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford

Book Description (from Barnes and Noble)
   In the opening pages of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.
   This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

   Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son and that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

   Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

Ronnell's Review-
As a plot driven reader, I found the opening chapters slow, waiting to for something to happen and waiting to connect with the characters. Eventually, I was taken in by the rich description, the historical background and the story itself. How can you not - a forbidden friendship that turns into an undying and innocent love? Ford interestingly portrayed 1940s American history from both the Chinese and Japanese viewpoint. And, without giving any spoilers, the ending was sastifying, unlike many other novels of this type. A "recommend" reading.

March's Pick - Paper Angels by Billy Coffey

Overview - from Barne & Noble:

Andy Sommerville seems no different than others in his rural Virginia community, but what sets him apart is that his best friend is an angel. The angel is God's answer to a childhood prayer Andy offered to a twinkling star that his deceased mother once called "the door to heaven." The first angelic proclamation instructs Andy to find the wooden keepsake box in his grandparents' attic. Over the years, he directs Andy to fill it with apparently meaningless objects from twelve people with who Andy randomly crosses paths.

Andy's world is turned upside down when a brutal attack leaves Andy burned and the boy he loved as a son dead. At this crucial juncture, the angel abandons him to loneliness and pain. All that remains is the wooden box Andy has always kept safe, and a new angel, who will use its contents to reveal truth to him as a result, he discovers the defining truth of his life, new hope in the community he loves, and greater trust in the God who sustains him.