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kikero

kikero

has 128 followers and is following 154 people

Whenver I'm sitting down - which isn't very often - I feel compelled to be reading something. Anything. Even the back of a cereal box. I've loved books since mom and dad read aloud to me as a little sprout. Now I'm also a professional mom, homeschooler, blogger, author, and chief wrangler at "the 'ole testosterone ranch." I have 5 boys,... more »
  • member since August 3, 2007

Reviews

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Displaying 1-10 of 33 reviews
  • Lost December
    • Rated 5 stars

    Inspiring, surprising, warm and wonderful. Curl up with a mug of hot chocolate next to the fireplace and treat yourself to this delightful holiday read!

    kikero wrote this review Thursday, November 10, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Lucky One
    • Rated 5 stars

    A wonderful, engaging story and a brisk read. Finished all 326 pages in a day and a half!

    kikero wrote this review Thursday, November 10, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • Ten Lies the Church Tells Women: How the Bible Has Been Misused to Keep Women in Spiritual Bondage
    • Rated 0 stars

    Outstanding. Thorough, relevant, biblically sound. A must-read.

    kikero wrote this review Wednesday, July 28, 2010. ( reply | permalink )
  • Inkheart
    • Rated 5 stars

    Delightful, delicious. Rollicking good fun. Written by an author who is obviously in love with books herself.

    kikero wrote this review Friday, September 25, 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Present Future
    • Rated 4 stars

    Cogent, clear-thinking, pulls-no-punches. Style is somewhat dry at times, engaging and informative at others. Points well-supported and well-taken. Offers fresh, real, and workable solutions to real deficiencies and problems. A must-read for anyone in - or rubbing elbows with - church leadership.

    kikero wrote this review Thursday, July 30, 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • Home
    • Rated 4 stars

    This book was a pleasant surprise. Rich, poignant, engaging. Penned by one remarkable lady.

    kikero wrote this review Thursday, July 30, 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • Boy
    • Rated 0 stars

    With five boys of my own - married to the oldest one for 26+ years - how could I resist?

    kikero wrote this review Thursday, July 30, 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Shack
    • Rated 5 stars

    The Shack is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read. Creative, intriguing, gutsy and a thoroughly engaging read, this remarkable novel addresses the age-old question of why/how a loving God can allow suffering and evil to exist in this world.

    Overwhelmed by "The Great Sadness" that threatens to drown him, Mackenzie "Mack" Allen Phillips receives a cryptic note in his mailbox one winter. No return address. No postal mark. No signature. The typed note is signed, "Papa" - the word his wife, Nan, uses for God. Unbelievably, the sender asks Mack to meet him at the shack - the site of an immense tragedy.

    Shortly thereafter, Mack gingerly, reluctantly finds himself on the road to the wilderness area where his young daughter, Missy, was murdered three and a half years prior. What and Who he finds at the shack helps him sort through intense rage, sorrow, confusion, disillusionment, heartache, amazement, forgiveness, and immeasurable joy and wonder - without cliches or canned answers.

    Set in the Pacific Northwest, this outstanding, beautifully written story is "ghostwritten" by the author as told by Mack, whose unspeakable personal loss and tragedy leads him onto a Bunyanesque journey into eternity - and some incredible surprises.

    Of the almost 200 books I've read thus far in 2008, "The Shack" is among my top three titles. This story isn't about churchianity or theology or seminary or sitting in a pew on Sundays, but about relationships (note that The Shack IS a novel, and neither purports nor pretends to be a theological treatise).

    I read the entire book cover-to-cover in about 24 hours. It's THAT good. HIGHLY recommended.

    kikero wrote this review Thursday, December 11, 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Grace
    • Rated 4 stars

    I finished reading Richard Paul Evans’ newest release, Grace, last week. I held off on writing a review because I wanted to ruminate on the novel awhile, let it roll around in my head and “marinate” heart and soul. I also wanted to take my time because you can’t rush a review of Grace. It’s not that kind of book. Here’s why:

    When I read the Author’s Note regarding the 1874 child abuse case of Mary Ellen Wilson, I almost put Grace back on the library shelf. I can’t get near that topic without one of two reactions: dissolving into a soggy heap of tears, or wanting to personally thrash the stuffing out of the perpetrators. As the mother of four boys and the Children’s Ministries Co-Director for our church, child abuse enrages me beyond words. It also rips my heart out. Frankly, I wasn’t up for either emotion the day Grace came into the library (It took awhile. I was #23 in the “On Hold” queue). Tempted to put it back, I refrained from doing so for just one reason: I own every title Evans has ever written. I’ve never been disappointed. So, on the strength of Evans’ prior work, I decided to trust him with this new book. So I stuffed Grace into my bag en route to the YMCA with my youngest. Poolside while Josiah splashed down the water slide, I gingerly withdrew Grace and started reading.

    Grace opens with a recap of Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Little Match Girl" and some grandfatherly reflections from protagonist Eric Welch on Christmas Day 2006 (p.5). Told in the first person, the story unfolds in flashback fashion during Eric’s teen years and moves from October 1962 to early January 1963. Eric’s father, a construction worker, is unable to work due to Guillain Barre Syndrome. The family of four, which includes Eric’s ten year-old brother and best friend, Joel, is forced to move from southern California to a rundown, low-rent part of Utah. (I have a good friend with GBS. I’ve never seen this debilitating disease in another novel.)

    We struggle with Eric through the first four chapters as he endures the slings and arrows of being “the new kid” in middle school and all the attendant traumas and woes that unhappy scenario typically includes. In Eric’s case it’s exacerbated by being poor and from out-of-state to boot.

    We meet fifteen year-old Grace in Chapter Five. She’s foraging for food in a dumpster behind “McBurger Queen,” Eric’s part-time (scum bag) employer. On page 34 we find out that Grace is a runaway: “I’m not going home.” But she has no where to go. Besides, there’s something about Grace (and grace) that’s …unexplained. Mysterious. Something that causes us as well as Eric to pause…

    Unwilling to leave Grace roaming the streets alone on a cold October night, Eric brings her to the “clubhouse” he and Joel built behind the family’s sprawling, dilapidated home. The next 240 pages detail the tender uncertainties of First Love, selflessness and sacrifice, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, the Cuban Missile Crisis, family and emotional struggles, and Eric’s rage at the people who “coulda, shoudla, woulda” protected young Grace from her predacious stepfather – but didn’t. The willful ignorance of neighbors, school officials and law enforcement receive a withering indictment that’s all the more effective for its understated subtlety: “I sat alone staring at the back of a pew while people who didn’t really know anything about Grace talked about her as if they suddenly cared.” (p. 292). Evans gently but unequivocally shows how any willful blindness or ignorance makes us all complicit when it comes to crimes against children:

    “You killed her. You and Dad and Joel and her pathetic, worthless mother and those stupid, idiotic policemen who just couldn’t wait to be heroes. … You all killed Grace…’ (p. 295)

    If the story stopped here, it would have been poignant, but Evans doesn’t let it go. Not quite. He doesn’t leave us outraged, wrung-out, hopeless and helpless. Instead, he subtly intertwines themes of God’s grace, redemption and restoration throughout this carefully crafted story of a teen runaway (see the bottom of page 296). This reaches its zenith in an Epilogue that is both hopeful and heart-wrenching. It is in these final, gripping pages that we see how tragedy transforms a painfully shy, self-conscious fourteen year-old boy “with acne and a bad hair cut” into a tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners prosecutor whose life is forever and irrevocably changed by those late autumn and winter months of 1962 and a girl named Grace:

    “I have spent my life hunting down and prosecuting people like Grace’s stepfather. I carry Grace’s locket into every trial. I’ve earned a reputation as a fierce courtroom combatant who takes every case personally. What Grace saw in the candle was true of me as well. I am feared. … Today I continue my crusade. I have testified about child abuse before state lawmakers more times than I can remember. I’ve lived to see child advocacy become a public concern. I am grateful that the world finally has the courage to open its eyes. My wife asks me when we can retire, but I tell her I’ll die in the saddle. With my last breath I’ll continue to fight for these children. I cannot save them all, but I can save some of them, and that’s worth doing. There are other Graces out there.” (p. 305, 306).

    I was relieved that Evans avoids any graphic details regarding Grace’s family history, relationships or the experiences that led to her running away from home. Consummate storyteller that he is, Evans drops subtle clues and hints throughout the story and allows us to fill in the blanks without assaulting us with additional traumatic narrative.

    In terms of format and style, Grace features Evans’ usual short chapters and his trademark “diary entries” that preface each chapter. The style is vintage Evans, luminous and evocative, introducing us to three-dimensional characters whom we come to know, love, and miss as plot, climax, and conclusion unfold with great sensitivity and sagacity. The book closes with A Letter from Richard Paul Evans detailing practical help readers can provide via The Christmas Box Initiative and Operation Kids. Web sites and a toll-free phone number are included.

    All in all, Grace is a fast – but not a light - read. I read the book cover-to-cover in an afternoon. I rate it four out of five stars. Although I love Evans' stories, Grace fell a little short for me, maybe because it seemed emotionally manipulative, pedantic and somewhat predictable at times. It isn’t as strong as either The Gift or Finding Noel. (This opinion may be due to the combined effects of sauna-like humidity, enough chlorine to choke a whale and countless interruptions from an errant beach ball – all part of trying to read beside an indoor pool.)

    At any rate, I wanted to stand up at cheer at the final page of Grace. I plan on a re-read – just as soon as I restock my Kleenex stash.

    kikero wrote this review Friday, November 7, 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Diana: In Pursuit of Love
    • Rated 3 stars

    And I thought All My Children was a soap opera. Indeed, Erica Kane has nothing on the late Princess of Wales and the latter’s tumultuous, tortured relationship with the British monarchy embodied by the stiff-upper-lip stoicism and self-absorbed myopia of the House of Windsor.

    This biography by acclaimed British “investigative writer” Andrew Morton, bears the unfortunate title of Diana: In Pursuit of Love (Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 2004). Depending upon which side of the warring Waleses one sympathizes with, a more accurate heading may have been : Diana: Queen of Hearts?, Diana: Goddess of the Hunt, Saint Diana: The People’s Princess, or Diana: Royal Nutcase.

    Whatever else may be the case regarding the late Princess, Morton’s meticulously researched and painstakingly documented account of Diana’s last five years of life is even-handed and so thorough it could choke whale. Morton tries hard not to take sides in the famous Windsor vs. Diana wars, but his affection for and admiration of the Princess is evident throughout the pages of this 302 page tome. It includes an Introduction, Prologue, and Epilogue. If the author’s name sounds familiar, it should. Hand-selected by Diana as her chosen biographer, Andrew Morton wrote the controversial Diana: Her True Story with Diana’s secret collaboration. Published in 1992, the book stood the public’s perception of both the Princess and the British monarchy on its ear.

    In Diana: In Pursuit of Love, Morton offers a finely drawn portrait of an intensely complicated young woman who was both vilified and adored by those inside and outside the royal family. Morton writes as a reporter chronicling the ups and downs of the Princess’s up-and-down life. Chapters include Hard Road to Freedom, the Year of Living Dangerously, In Search of Love, a Princess to the World, Fakes, Forgeries and Secret Tapes, the Long Goodbye, The Crowning of the Queen of Hearts, The Final Odyssey, and the Curse of the Lost Princess. Writes Morton:

    “She was a curious, and for many, an unsettling combination – a sophisticated woman of the world able to discuss death and dying with the Archbishop of Canterbury one minute, yet innocent of the ways of the world. A socially accomplished woman who could face a sophisticated cocktail party, she had never been to a pub on her own, and neither could she boil a pan of pasta.” (p. 73).

    Numerous suggestions are made that Diana had a “sheltered upbringing” and was “very immature when she married,” but it turned out that she wasn’t as malleable as the Windsor thought. It appears that neither side in the “Warring Waleses” (as well as their supporters) understood nor knew what to do with the other, and both gave as good as they got. Even so, some characters in this royal rigmarole qualify as “stand-outs”: Paul Burrell, Diana’s former butler, who once worked for Prince Charles, comes off looking like a target for skunk spray. Prince Philip appears cold, distant, and demanding. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is conniving, two-faced and ingratiating. Prince Charles is a narcissistic, pompous stuffed-shirt with all the warmth of an Inuit igloo. The Queen Mother is positively Antarctic. The only member of the monarchy who looks like another other than an exhibit at the wax museum is the Queen, who seemed determinedly above the fray, exhibiting a dignified detachment or “ostriching” – Diana’s term.

    A frequent theme throughout this tome, which includes a Timeline of Diana’s life, a Bibliography of some thirty-five additional sources and eleven=page Index, is Diana as a “woman driven by her emotions” who trusted her “instincts” more than her intellect. Diana is described as “sharp-witted, strikingly attractive and capricious” with a “superficial sociable cheeriness beneath which lay a deep-seated sadness, usually well-hidden.”

    Diana reportedly bridles at attempts by the royal family to paint her as mentally and/or emotionally unstable. However, if Pursuit is accurate, they had plenty of ammo: calling male and female friends twenty times a day (or more) “in need of comfort or advice,” clandestine meetings with married men such as art dealer Oliver Hoare and rugby star Will Carling, immersing herself in the lives of men whom she was attracted to – usually married - to the point of obsession, and other behaviors that many might consider neurotic or just plain kooky. Morton is lavish in his explanation of Diana’s behaviors during the Kensington Palace in-fighting, frequently citing “royal pressure” or something similar. Justly or otherwise, Diana may have earned some of her own headlines as a “home wrecker” or descriptions as a “bored, manipulative and selfish princess” (p. 123) who “needed constant reassurances that she was loved” (p. 124).

    According to Pursuit, Diana was an outsider before, during and after she left the “constraining, invasive and alienating” life of Kensington Palace. In the royal kerfuffle surrounding the Waleses collapsed marriage – and there’s plenty of blame to go around – Morton cites matters that may have made the disintegrating ties insurmountable – Charles’ adultery and the tight-lipped, manipulative, cliquishness of his family and staff.

    Morton includes a sizeable chunk of Diana’s personal vision, post-divorce, as she sought to carve out a role for herself independent of Buckingham Palace, including her frequent visits to the homeless and hospices. “These visits were part of her healing process” writes Morton. “In the world she lived in, everyone’s motives were suspect; everyone had an agenda, either to influence her judgments or further their own careers and lives. On the other hand, the people she was visiting lived in a different world – one which had no hold over her.” And “The Princess’s day-to-day life was filled with rumor and hearsay of plots and counterplots. Rarely a day went by at Kensington Palace without there being some excursion and alarm” (p. 79)

    A perhaps unintentional view of Diana may emerge that some readers, particularly non-British, may garner: spoiled rich kid. The sheer volume of resources Diana availed herself of as she strove to “discover herself” would stagger the average person: voice coaches, speech writers, masseurs, hair dressers, security details, press secretaries, ladies-in-waiting, therapists, interior designers, personal trainers, and chauffeurs, and so on is immense and ever-changing. Not to mention the yacht cruises, vacations in Paris, worldwide travel and life in the lap of luxury that apparently come with a Windsorian title may leave some readers shaking their heads.

    The book also chronicles the “whispering campaigns” against Diana launched “from St. James’ Palace” (Prince Charles’ camp). Endless descriptions of Diana as “incredibly lonely and depressed” or “a deeply troubled young lady” prior to her separation from Charles are just that – endless. (Some may deem them tedious.) Morton also narrates Diana’s difficult relationship with her grandmother, Lady Ruth Fermoy, “a close friend of and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother.” The latter frequently referred to Diana as “that silly creature” and other pejoratives. Morton also chronicles Diana’s rekindled relationships with her once-estranged stepmother, Raine Spencer, and the “tidal relationship” with her mother, Frances Shand Kidd.

    Morton also covers Diana’s official separating from Prince Charles, and her struggles to free herself from the artificiality and “flummery” of the royal family and establish her own independence. The Windsor family’s frosty hostility and her attempts to care out a niche for herself as a “goodwill ambassador to the world” via her humanitarian and charitable work are presented at length. Diana’s devastating 1995 interview with Panorama is also included and reviewed. Meanwhile, from his royal temper tantrums to extravagant eccentricities, such as carrying “his own towels and lavatory paper to every house in which he stayed,” (p. 166), Charles is painted as, well, what stinks worse than a skunk?

    The book winds down with a detailed review of the Princess’s successful and perhaps brilliant “re-invention” of herself as a “semi-detached member of the royal family.” This includes Diana’s famous anti-landmine campaign, various romantic involvements, hospital visits to the sick and dying, her last days with Dodi Fayed and the ill-fated high-speed drive through the streets of Paris on the night of August 31, 1997.

    If you’re into soap operas or want an honest look at a troubled, gutsy and highly complicated woman whose life was tragically cut short, Diana: In Pursuit of Love is a great read. If you tire easily of quid pro quos, ad hominems, and cloak-and-dagger palace intrigue, you’ll need No-Doze for this one.

    Perhaps overlong and tedious at times, Pursuit still succeeds in capturing the essence of a remarkable woman who remains a conundrum even to those closest to her, a Princess who fought for and ultimately changed the face of the British monarchy forever.


    Diana: In Pursuit of Love
    By Andrew Morton
    Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 2004
    ISBN: 1-84317-084-1

    kikero wrote this review Saturday, September 27, 2008. ( reply | permalink )
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Displaying 1-10 of 33 reviews