Biography
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C.S. Lewis and Bottoming Out
It seems to us that he went from being a formidable atheist to a formidable Christian right away, but he didn’t. There really are about ten years that we really don’t know very…
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Pioneer Girl
So you feel like you’ve lived an interesting life, maybe a life that illustrates one of the archetypal American themes — Manifest Destiny, for example. How do you go about writing your life…
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Steve Jobs
Though I’m neither an especially tech savvy person nor an Apple devotee, lately I’ve been hearing about Steve Jobs everywhere. He seems to be the one people like to quote, especially his comments…
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A Love Observed
Now 14 years old, this book doesn’t represent cutting edge scholarship on the marriage between Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. I saw it on the shelf at the library, and as a perpetual…
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Lessons from a Sheepdog
Phillip Keller’s Lessons from a Sheepdog was a read-aloud over the summer. All of us — my daughters, husband, and I — loved it. For me, it was a second reading of this…
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Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens
Recently, I revisited with my daughters the book some have called Dickens’s masterpiece: Great Expectations. From its gripping opening scene between Pip and Magwitch in the bleak and isolated churchyard, to the concluding…
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Reading Reflections
The grand totals are in. I read 32 books in 2013, listed here with links to reviews. 17 were fiction, 15 nonfiction; 9 were children’s or YA books; 7 were rereads. 2013 reflects…
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Soul Survivor
Soul Survivor provides inspiring biographical spotlights on thirteen people whose example was a lifeline to Philip Yancey. Each person influenced his understanding of Christian faith in a unique way, though not all of…
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The Eighty Dollar Champion
In a season when I am finding few books that I want to read all the way to the end, The Eighty Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts wouldn’t let me go. It’s the…
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The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors
Unlike other biographies that have focused on single members of the Bronte family, in The Brontes Juliet Barker offers a perspective on all of them. The result is a richly contextualized development of…
