The Chosen

The Chosen. Ted Dekker. December 15, 2007. Thomas Nelson. 260 pages. Source: Audio library

First sentence: Our story begins in a world totally like our own, yet completely different.

Plot: Think with your heart and prepare to die for you have been chosen.

The land of the Forest Dwellers has been decimated by the Horde under the watchful eye of the vilest of all creatures, Teeleh. Thomas Hunter, supreme commander of the Forest Guard, is forced to lower the recruitment age of his army from 18 to 16. From among thousands, four new recruits are chosen to lead--and perhaps die--for the greater good.

The chosen four are sent on a quest to prove their character, but their mission takes a dramatic turn when they are intercepted, sworn to secrecy, and redirected to a different endgame. Now they must find the seven lost Books of History. Books that have power over the past, present, and future. Books whose words are alive. Books sought by the Dark One that control not only the destiny of their world...but that of ours as well. (Goodreads)

My thoughts: These types of stories are all starting to sound the same.  These four young warriors are sent on a mission to prove their leadership ability only to be derailed from their mission by an alternate task for the Chosen one of them.  It was a good read and recommended for young adults and teens.  But I won't be continuing with the series.

This Life I Live

This Life I Live. Rory Feek. February 14, 2017. Thomas Nelson. 252 pages. Source (Audio library book).

First sentence: I am famous.

Plot: Joey and Rory Feek were enjoying a steadily growing fan base in country music when Joey was diagnosed unexpectedly with a rapidly spreading cancer. This vibrant and beautiful young woman would soon be on a unique journey for which no one is ever fully prepared. Her husband, Rory, and children, Heidi, Hopie, and Indiana, were beside her each step of the way. Rory, a prolific songwriter, entrepreneur, farmer, and overall tender man, has seen God bless his life in countless unexpected ways and had started a blog, thislifeilive.com, not really knowing its purpose other than he needed to write. That purpose soon became clearer when Joey’s cancer battle hit.

By inviting so many into the final months of Joey’s life, this astounding couple captured the hearts of millions with their powerful love story, the manner in which they were handling the diagnosis, and the inspiring simple way they had chosen to live their lives.

In this vulnerable book, Rory takes us into his own challenging life story and shows what can happen when God brings both his presence and the right companion into our lives. He also gives never-before-revealed details on what he calls “the long goodbye,” the blessing of being able to know that life is going to end and taking advantage of it. Feek shows how we all are actually there already and how we can learn to live that way every day. He then goes into detail toward the end of the book on what it’s like to try to move on with your life once you’ve “had it all.”

My thoughts: Rory is famous for loving his wife.  This is true!  He showed the world just what Joey meant to him.  We often look at famous people as "having it all" not really thinking about just where they came from or what they've been through.  Rory starts this book by telling his personal history, before he gave his life to the Lord and met Joey.

Most of his childhood I could relate to.  Mine was very similar so I felt my heart aching for him.  I was so happy that the Lord gave him this beautiful understanding young woman to love.  It is an amazing love story!

The Book of Deacon

The Book of Deacon.  Joseph R. Lallo. Createspace. 322 pages (Source: Audio book)

First sentence: The end of an era is always a time of great importance. 

Plot: The tale of Myranda Celeste, a young woman orphaned by a century long war, and her chance discovery of a fallen soldier's priceless cargo. The find will change her life, sending her on an adventure of soldiers and rebels, wizards and warriors, and beasts both noble and monstrous. Each step will bring her closer to the truth of her potential, of the war, and of the fate of her world. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:  I have a hard time describing these fantasy books but here goes...  Myranda is a wizard but doesn't know it.  If that's possible.  She has powers that weren't ever developed.  But while running from the people who are trying to capture her for what reason she doesn't know she escapes to a land that is full of wizards of various types.  Because her powers are exceptional, without much effort, each wizard wants to train her first.  She passes each test with flying colors, she must be one of the chosen!  The Chosen have the abilit to stop the war that has raged for 150 years but refuses to do so because he makes his money as an assascin.

Deacon... The reasoning to this title didn't hit until Myranda arrived in the land that the wizards resided in.  Deacon was a record keeper of sorts.  The ending left us hearing from Deacon as he had been writing all these events and leading us into the next book.

It was good and I am looking forward to The Great Convergence (The Book of Deacon #2).

2018 Reading Challenge

I wanted to layout exactly what I must read each month.  Some of these books may be hard to get my hands on but I will definitely try.  I have been too spontaneous this past year.  The three or four books a month are a MUST and anything else I listen to or read is a PLUS. :)

January:

A book you own but haven't read. (March 2018)

A book that was made into a movie.

From my Classics Challenge list (Jan 2018)

February

A book picked solely because of the cover. (Jan 2018)

A book your friend loves. (Feb 2018)

Laura Ingall-Wilder Challenge book. (Feb 2018)

From my Classics Challenge list

March

A book of poems.

A book by an author you've never read before. (Jan 2018)

From my Classics Challenge list  (March 2018)

April

A book by an author you love.

A book at the bottom of your "to-read" pile. (since May 2012)

From my Classics Challenge list.

May

A book with a color in the title

A book set somewhere you've always wanted to visit. (London, England)

From my Classics Challenge list

June 

A book you've started but never finished.

A book with a female heroine.

From my Classics Challenge list.

July

A book set in the summer.

A book published this year.

From my Classics Challenge list

August

A book that will make you smarter.

A book with a blue cover.

From my Classics Challenge list.

September

A book everyone has read but you. (Jan 2018)

A book you loved -- Read it again!

From my Classics Challenge list.

October

A book based on a true story.

A book that came out the year you were born.

My Classics Challenge list. 

November

A book with a number in the title.

A book with a one word title.

My Classics Challenge list.

December

A book set during Christmas.

A book with more than 500 pages.

From my Classics Challenge list.

                   

Brave New World

Brave New World. Aldous Huxley. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 2006 (first published 1932). 259 pages. (Source: audio library book)

First sentence: A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

Plot: Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites. (Goodreads)

My thoughts: This book was way advanced for the year it was written.  What a wild imagination this author had!!  I did not particularly care for this one but I must give him that credit.

The idea is to show how the world could be controlled through medical advances.  Don't know if this author considered it a warning or not.  The State believes that if it controls the people and they have nothing to worry about then everyone is safe and happy.  Peace abounds.  Really it was a strange read.  Had a really bad ending in my opinion.  Don't know why I continue to try science fiction.   It promoted promiscuity over chastity.  Free living as apposed to the more "oppressed" life of marriage and family.

Last Light

Last Light. Terri Blackstock. Zondervan. October 2005. 381 pages. (Source: Audio library book)

First sentence: Deni Branning stepped down onto the tarmac, pulled out the handle of her carry-on, and glanced back up at her dad.

Plot: In the face of a crisis that sweeps an entire high-tech planet back to the age before electricity, Deni Branning's career ambitions have vanished. She's not about to let her dream of marriage go as well.

But keeping it alive will require extraordinary measures. Yesterday's world is gone. All Deni and her family have left is each other and their neighbors. Their little community will either stand or fall together. But they're only beginning to realize it - and trust doesn't come easily.

Particularly when one of them is a killer.  

Best-selling suspense author Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if novel in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts - and lights the way to restoration for a self-centered world.

My thoughts: An EMP is something that hubby and I used to fear.  We stockpiled and prepared for a disaster of this sort.  Ten years later nothing happened so we used up most of our stores and sold things we never really used.   Now I am wondering if we have done the right thing.  The struggles that these families went through were some of the very things we were concerned about at one time.  

Though my family is not as spoiled as these poor folks were I know we should still have had problem dealing with this hard life day in and day out.  I don't think that much of this was too far fetched.  In fact I found most everything to be very believable except maybe the gas powered generators and tillers not working.  Why would they not work. 

Great lessons for any Christian the way that God works to provide for us in our time of need.  Even though we may not see it in the moment.  Anyway it was a really good read and I hope to come across Restoration #2 in the near future.

Ripper

Ripper. Isabel Allende. Harper. 2013. 496 pages. (Source: Audio library book).

First sentence: Mom is still alive, but she is going to be murdered at midnight on Good Friday.

Plot: The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Yet, while their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda's father, she's reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her-Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco's elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL.

While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature, like her father, the SFPD's Deputy Chief of Homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.

When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother's disappearance be linked to the serial killer? Now, with her mother's life on the line, the young detective must solve the most complex mystery she's ever faced before it's too late.

My thoughts:  I liked this book despite the slow start for me.  There were may characters to be developed and introduced.  I think the more characters there were the more likely you would not figure out the crime too early in the book.

Recent murders in the San Francisco area is trying to be solved by a group of online people in a game called Ripper.  One Amanda Jackson heads up the group and has an inside connection of sorts.  Her father was in law enforcement, Deputy Chief.   When the murders hit close to home, her mother's fiance, things get tense.  Then Amanda's mother is kidnapped.  It's a race against the clock to find her before midnight on Good Friday.

There was some bad language in this one as I am finding is common in all Allende novels.  Over all a good suspenseful read.

Flowers in the Attic

Flowers in the Attic. V. C. Andrews. Pocket Books. 1979. 389 pages. (Source: purchased from Betterworldbooks.com)

First sentence: It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like that sun we seldom saw.

Plot:  Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!

It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake--a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.

So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic.

Just for a little while.

But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work--children who--one by one--must be destroyed....

'Way upstairs there are

four secrets hidden.

Blond, beautiful, innocent

struggling to stay alive...

My thoughts:  This was a suspensful read.  It's hard to say that something like this was enjoyable as it was stressful at times.  I found myself hoping and praying that an old man would die soon so that these children could run in the sun and enjoy life.  But it wasn't to be.  These were bright children  ages from 5 to 14.  Their mother bought them everything that money could buy except their freedom.  A home to call their own.

I am looking forward to the next one as I want to see how these children fare in a life.  I can't go into much detail or it will be a huge spoiler!  If you like mystery or drama you will like this one.

The Memory of Earth

The Memory of Earth. Orson Scott Card. Legend. 1992. 294 pages (Source: Library Audio)

First sentence: The master computer on the planet Harmony was afraid.

Plot: High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. It's task, programmed so many millennia ago,is to guard the human settlement on this planet.  To protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats.  To protect them most of all from themselves.

The Oversoul has done its job well.  There is no war on Harmony.  There are no weapons of mass destruction.  There is no technology that could lead to weapons of war.  By control of the data banks and subtle interference in the very thoughts of the people, the artificial intelligence has fullfilled its mission.

But now there is a problem.  In orbit, the Oversoul realizes that it has lost access to some of its memory banks, and some of its power systems are failing.  And on the planet, men are beginning to think about power, wealth, and conquest.

My thoughts: So Earth was destroyed by nuclear war form what I gathered.  Their description of what they know is like reading old testament prophesy.  Trying to describe airplanes or missiles moving through the sky.  This is a million years in the future.  The people who escaped Earth went to this new planet called Harmony to start a new life.  There has been no war or violence.  Now the computer or Oversoul as it is know is beginning to mess up.  People are starting to get knowledge of weapons and have greed in their hearts.

But the Oversoul sees this and makes plans for a particular family to keep life moving in the right direction.  One of peace and harmony.  It was a decent book.  One for older teens as there are situations that insinuate sexual content.