Bogormen

Title:Hearing God
Author: Nathan Finochio
Genre: Christian non-fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 224
Date read: September, 2019

So many people wish that God would audibly weigh in on life's greatest questions of calling, meaning, and purpose. What's crazy is that God is weighing in on those questions. We just haven't learned to listen. Nathan Finochio believes that God is constantly communicating with this world he's created. We simply aren't following the right advice when it comes to hearing what he has to say. Through biblical teaching and true life stories, Hearing God empowers and enables readers to separate fact from fiction, myth from meaning, and truly understand what God is saying to them about big decisions and daily living.


Very accessible book with a lot of good points on how we can open ourselves up to guidance from God and some suggestions of how to apply this to our every day life in the end notes. Nathan especially caught my attention by elaborating on the difference between following the general will of God for our lives vs. following the specific will of God.

"Even if you never have a prophetic word in your life, just do what you know the Bible tell you to do, work hard, develop your skills, and stay in community, and you'll absolutely be doing God's specific will without ever having necessarily 'heard' it."

However, at the end of the day Nathan focuses more on how to hear God through circumstances and through other people than on actually hearing His voice. Which definitely serves a purpose as well, but wasn't what I was looking for. As a practical guide of how to start hearing God's voice, I'd recommend Mark Virkler's book 4 Keys to Hearing God's Voice instead.

Title: The Loose Ends List
Author: Carrie Firestone
Genre: YA
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 400
Date read: April, 2018

Seventeen-year-old Maddie O'Neill Levine's grandmother is a young-at-heart socialite who has always been Maddie's go-to confidante. Although Maddie and the rest of her family have learned to expect the unexpected from their matriarch, Gram still manages to shock them all when she announces that she has booked the O'Neill clan on a secret death-with-dignity ship called the Wishwell; Gram has terminal cancer and is determined to leave the world in her own way--and give her family an unforgettable summer of dreams-come-true in the process.

Soon, Maddie is on the trip of a lifetime with her wacky family. Aboard the ship, Maddie bonds with other Wishwellians and falls for Enzo, the son of the ship's owner, as they travel the globe. But despite the copious laugher, headiness of first love, and wonder of the glamorous destinations, Maddie knows she is on the brink of losing Gram, and she struggles to find the strength to let go in a whirlwind summer shaped by love, grief, and the power of forgiveness.


One of the best YA novels I've read in years. From the back blurb I expected "fluff with a substance" and that was definitely also what I got. It was funny, it was heartbreaking, it was life-affirming, it was poignant, it was beautiful, it made me sob my way through most of the last 100 pages (but in a good way).

I loved the relationship between Maggie and her Gram, and though the idea of a "death with dignity" cruise seemed more than a little morbid, once I accepted that premise I liked reading about the other passengers on the ship, and how they all ended up interacting in one way or another, and because an automatic support group. I've always been fascinated with cruises, and loved reading about both life on the ship and at the different ports they got off at.

I can easily see this book as not being for everybody, but it totally worked for me.

Title: Wishful Drinking
Author: Carrie Fisher
Genre: memoir
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~3hrs
Date read: January, 2010

Finally, after four hit novels, Carrie Fisher comes clean (well, sort of ) with the crazy truth that is her life in her first-ever memoir. In Wishful Drinking, adapted from her one-woman stage show, Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of "Hollywood in-breeding," come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen.

Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It's an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty -- Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher -- homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.

Very amusing memoir. As more or less a transcript of her stand-up show it was quickly read and very easily accessible. I enjoyed learning more about Carrie Fisher. I've heard so many rumours about her, that it's nice to be able to separate at least some of the facts from the fiction.

The version I found was read by Carrie Fisher herself, with lent a nice touch to it.

Title: Hush, Hush
Author: Bekka Ajoy Fitzpatrick
Genre: YA, Paranormal
Rating: 6/10
# pages: 350
Date read: November, 2008

Summary: This darkly romantic story - alternately comic and terrifying - revolves around the conflict between two breeds of immortals - fallen angels and Nephilim, a race of half-angels, half-mortals - whose mythology Becca Fitzpatrick has translated from dusty biblical references to modern-day Maine. I like to think of it as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, set in foggy Portland instead of Sunnydale, and with a dangerously sexy fallen angel in place of a brooding ensouled vampire. But there's so much more to the story, and the characters inhabit a world all their own.

Our heroine is Nora Grey, a seemingly normal teenage girl with her own shadowy connection to the Nephilim, who falls for a hunky older boy in biology class, only to find herself at the center of a centuries-old feud between a fallen angel and a Nephil.

Review: I'm having a hard time deciding exactly what I think about this book. On one hand I read it in under 12 hours, so it definitely caught my attention, but on the other hand it almost repulsed me, because the "hero" was so unpleasant. It's obviously aimed at teenage girls, but I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable letting a (hypothetical) daughter of mine read it until she was quite a bit older, precisely because the hero throughout the most of the book is threatening and manipulative.

The book is well written however, and the characters real enough that you want to reach in and shake them for making such bad decisions. Turns out there's a reason for it all though, and the author manages to tie all threads together very nicely in the end.

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Title: White Oleander
Author: Janet Fitch
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 496
Date read: February, 2007

Summary: Thirteen-year-old Astrid Magnussen, the sensitive and heart-wrenching narrator of this impressive debut, is burdened with an impossible mother in Ingrid, a beautiful, gifted poet whose scattered life is governed by an enormous ego. When Ingrid goes to prison for murdering her ex-lover, Astrid enters the Los Angeles foster care program and is placed with a series of brilliantly characterized families. Astrid's first home is with Starr, a born-again former druggie, whose boyfriend, middle-aged Ray, encourages Astrid to paint (Astrid's absent father is an artist) and soon becomes her first lover, but who disappears when Starr's jealousy becomes violent. Astrid finds herself next at the mercy of a new, tyrannical foster mom, Marvel Turlock, who grows wrathful at the girl's envy of a sympathetic next-door prostitute's luxurious life. "Never hope to find people who will understand you," Ingrid archly advises as her daughter's Dickensian descent continues in the household of sadistic Amelia Ramos, where Astrid is reduced to pilfering food from garbage cans. Then she's off to the dream home of childless yuppies Claire and Ron Richards, who shower her with gifts, art lessons and the warmth she's been craving. But this new development piques Ingrid's jealousy, and Astrid, now 17 and a high school senior, falls into the clutches of the entrepreneurial Rena Grushenka. Amid Rena's flea-market wares, Astrid learns to fabricate junk art and blossoms as a sculptor. Meanwhile, Ingrid, poet-in-prison, becomes a feminist icon who now has a chance at freedomAif Astrid will agree to testify untruthfully at the trial. Astrid's difficult choice yields unexpected truths about her hidden past, and propels her already epic story forward, with genuinely surprising and wrenching twists. (From Amazon.com)

Review: Somehow I'm not surprised that this has been on Oprah's book club. It's the kind of book she'd promote. Not unfairly, because it's a good book, and an important story, even if it is a hard one to read.

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