January readings

I didn't do great this month.  Only 5 books and 1,802 pages.  Here we go!

A Better Way to Pray by Andrew Wommack (180 pages).  One of my New Years resolutions was to improve my prayer life.  I bought this book several months ago and decided this would be a great book to help me kick off 2015 right!  To be honest, some of it was very outside my comfort level (the author prays in tongues and he doesn't seem to believe that God ever says no to a prayer request).  But for the most part, it was a nice way to remind myself of why I want a better prayer life - because God is my Father and who doesn't want a great relationship with their Dad?!  It's not about trying to supersede what Jesus has done and save people from their sins.  It's not to pester God until He gives me what I want.  It's to simply thank Him and praise Him for the blessings currently in my life, and the blessings yet to come.  If my earthly parents, who are sinners, want good things for me, how much more so does God want those good things for me?!  I need to remember that prayer is a time of intimacy and communication with God.  I read this in one afternoon and already feel more encouraged about my resolution.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (458 pages).  This was my book club book.  I've read two of Moriarty's books before.  Loved one.  Didn't like the other.  So I knew this one could go either way.  Just like all of her books, it takes place in Australia.  This one centers around an elementary school and the families of the children who attend it.  Madeline is 40 and fabulous - she is witty and loyal.  She and her husband Ed have two young children, along with her teenage daughter from her first marriage.  Her youngest is starting kindergarten.  Alongside the first child of her ex and his yogi new wife.  The first day of orientation, she meets Jane and her son Ziggy.  Jane is a young single mom who can't seem to settle down.  Madeline quickly introduces Jane to her good friend Celeste.  Celeste is gorgeous and a seemingly happy wife and mother of twin boys.  But in this school, things are never what they appear.  From day one, the other mothers have issues with Jane and Ziggy.  But never fear - Madeline has appointed herself Jane's protector!  Slowly, things with Ziggy seem to be getting worse - he's accused by one of the parents of bullying her daughter.  But things in the classroom seem normal and Ziggy and the little girl seem to be friends.  So who's bullying whom?  Then the school trivia night happens, which is some sort of costume party/fundraiser from what I can gather, and all hell breaks loose.  Interspersed in the chapters are interviews with Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan and the mothers as he investigates a murder.  But who is dead?  And who is the murderer?  Neither were who I expected, I can tell you that!  I found the interviews to be a little distracting.  I will say that, while I didn't like this book as much as I liked the first one of Moriarty's that I read, I liked it a lot more than the second.  It took me 8 days to read.

The Land of Stories: The Enchantress Returns by Chris Colfer (517 pages).  The second book in Kurt Hummel's Land of Stories series.  The Bailey twins (Alex and Connor) have returned home and life is moving on.  Their mom is dating.  Their grandmother (you know, the Fairy Godmother) has been MIA for a while, but that's not totally unusual.  The twins thought they had left the Land of Stories in pretty good shape when they returned home.  Boy, were they wrong!  The Enchantress, the very one who cursed Sleeping Beauty, has returned.  And this time, she's back with a vengeance.  She starts attacking Sleeping Beauty and the Eastern Kingdom.  Then kidnaps the twins' mom and steals the Fairy Godmother's soul.  Her goal?  To take over both the Land of Stories and our world!  The twins find their way back to the Land of Stories and meet up with their old friends in order to save the world.  Just like before, they are on a quest to find magical objects that will help them.  This is a fairy tale, after all, so they succeed.  But the way they had to was very interesting.  Once the Enchantress is defeated, the Fairy Council decides that it will be safer for the Land of Stories if the portal between the worlds is forever closed.  Alex knows that she is the one who is going to carry on her grandmother's legacy.  And that Connor is going to share that legacy with the world through his writing.  It took me 11 days to finish the book.  Which is no reflection of the book itself, which I really enjoyed.  Just like the first one.

The Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning by Chris Colfer (469 pages).  Yes, book three.  I bought them at the same time, so decided to go ahead and read them book!  Alex (in the Land of Stories) and Connor (in our world) have been apart for the first time in their lives.  They can interact via a magic mirror, but it's not the same.  Alex is happily training to join the Fairy Council and take her place as the heir to the Fairy Godmother, who's health is starting to fail.  Connor is, of course, living the life of a 14 year old boy - going to school, getting crushes on girls, and taking school trips to Germany.  Wait, what?  Yep, he takes a school trip to Germany to attend a festival for the Brothers Grimm.  A time capsule has been uncovered and three new stories are to be read.  One of those stories contains a warning about the Grand Armee, an army of 5000 men who have been magically lost between the worlds, but are heading to the Land of Stories to seize it for Napoleon.  Connor has to find a way to warn Alex.  His classmate Bree overhears him talking to Mother Goose and their European adventure has begun.  From London to Monte Carlo to Neuschwanstein Castle, they are on a quest to again save the Land of Stories.  As the Fairy Godmother's powers grow weaker, the portal between the worlds reopens.  And a war has begun.  The Armee finds help from a prisoner, the Masked Man.  But the rest of the Land of Stories finds that its greatest strength can be found from the citizens of the land, if only they can work together.  Being a fairy tale, of course the citizens of the Land of Stories are victorious.  But the twins' world is rocked when they realize who the Masked Man is.  It took me 8 days to finish and I'm totally ready for the next book in the series!

Lord, Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days by Kay Arthur (178 days).  I started this book at the beginning of the month and it took me the whole month to finish (obviously).  It was a daily devotional and I really got a lot from it.  It focused on the model prayer that Jesus gave us in the book of Matthew, the Lord's Prayer.  And it broke it down, section by section.  It's actually really helped me focus my prayer time on what it needs to be.  The author REALLY loves to underline and decorate her Bible (she suggests drawing a crown over Jesus' name every time you see it) - I would LOVE to get a look at her Bible.  That's not really something I'm keen on.  But the rest of it was fantastic.  Kay Arthur is a wonderful Christian devotional leader and I think I really got a lot from the book.