Friday Books

This week I did a lot of reading while we were vacationing at the lake.

I finished Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese (paperback). Great story teller! It grabbed me.... but not always. Sometimes I just loved the story and could hardly put it down. Then I'd get to another boring part and feel disappointed. There was too much detail at times, and excuse me, but just WAY too many strange coincidences. These things are possible in life, but not every time one turns around. Crazy. My aunt whose opinion I regard very highly thinks this books is one of the best EVER. She has read it three times. I guess I'll just have to disagree with her on this one because of my above objections. It has the possibility to be the best, with some slicing and editing. This author can tell a GREAT story.

I read The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Kindle edition). This is a true account of a woman who is stricken with a debilitating disease, keeping her bedridden. A friend brings her a plant and a live snail. This is the story of her "friendship" with a live snail while bedridden. It's cute, touching, and you'll learn a lot about the life of a snail. A short book, easy to read in a day.

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Kraybill, Nolt, and Weaver-Zercher (hard cover) was for our book group at church. The book has three authors, one whose name contains a "Z," so I'm using it as my "Z" book on my A-Z challenge. It's the story of the shooting that took place in an Amish school, and the forgiveness that the Amish community extended to the shooter's family. Very interesting book. I learned much about Amish culture and religious practices. It also spurred probing into my own thoughts on forgiveness. It's something I would like to see more of in our culture (instead of so much revenge), but it's also quite a complicated topic. Good food for thought in this book.

If a Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard by jennifer Rosner (Kindle). A family discovers that their new baby is deaf. The book chronicles their struggles. The author looks into her family tree and discovers several deaf ancestors, then writes a fictional account of her deaf ancestors' lives, embedded into this book as her "journal entries." As someone who works in the field of deafness, I was a little disappointed with some of their decisions, though I know it can be very confusing for families who suddenly find themselves faced with this unknown. I also wonder about the "results" she claims they get from hearing aids and a cochlear implant. But overall, it was interesting and a good read. The family is close knit and doing their best to embrace deafness in their midst.