Ten Days Without - Daniel Ryan Day

This nonfiction book is about how the author, Daniel Day, goes 10 days without certain 'necessities' to increase awareness/raise money for different organizations.

He conducts 8 different challenges where he goes 10 days without:
Shoes (to address disease)
A Coat (to address homelessness)
Media (to address distractions)
Furniture (to address global poverty)
Legs (to address our response to disabilities)
Waste (to address the environment)
Speech (to address modern day slavery)
Human touch (to address orphans, widows, prisoners, and other untouchables)

This book doesn't try to make you feel guilty about not doing anything to help.  Instead it motivates you in a very positive, loving way to want to go out and do something, anything to help NOW.

One of my favorite lines from the book is "So maybe instead of trying to change the world, we need to focus on changing someone's world."

The one thing about the book that felt out of place to me was when he went 10 days without media.  He didn't raise money for anyone in that 10 day challenge.  He minimized his use of media to spend more time with family.  While this is admirable, it didn't really follow the theme of the book.

I think the entire point of the challenges is best summed up when Day says this "It's about making a difference in the world.  Its about the sacrifice and pain that lead you to a better understanding of an important issue and what you can do about it."

If you'd like to learn more about 10 days without, visit the website here.  You can also read his blogs here.

Here is the book description from Amazon:


“Life is full of good intentions, but for too many, our good intentions never become good actions—they don’t move us forward, draw us closer to God, or make a difference in the world.
Good intentions are cans of paint that could have become amazing works of art…but never did.”
—Daniel Day, in Ten Days Without

Daniel Day could tell you all about his love for God and his desire to live as a follower of Jesus. But it took a simple but radical experiment to move from simply talking about it to actually living like it. For ten days at a time, Daniel chose to abandon a certain “necessity”—a coat, a voice, shoes, media, furniture, legs, touch—and to blog about it to raise funds and awareness for organizations that are doing amazing things to make a difference in the world. And then he invited others to join him in the experiments and spread the vision. Together they served God and others—and experienced significant personal change in the process. Ten Days Without is the story of their life-altering adventure.

Ten Days Without is a compelling story and practical guide that will equip you and your friends to break through walls of convenience and indifference, and join a movement that is confronting apathy and ignorance around the world to make an impact on people’s lives in a God-honoring way. Ten Days Without is where our good intentions end and making a difference in the world begins.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Provence, 1970 - Luke Barr

Unfortunately, I was not thrilled with this book.  It sounded like something I'd love - famous chefs/cooks gathering together for a holiday period in Provence.  But it turned out to be way to focused on how much of a snob of couple of them were. There were too many parts of the story that was high on gossip and low on cooking.  I wanted it to be  a book about chefs discussing and cooking amazing food.

Now, when it did come around to discussing food and cooking, it was awesome!  I kept getting hungry and looking up recipes!  If there was more of a focus on this stuff, I would have loved the book.

Overall, it was just not my cup of tea.

I will be trying to hunt down some of the cookbooks/memoirs discussed in this book though, so not a total loss.

Book description:  Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now. The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In Provence, 1970, he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance.

The Men Who United The States - Simon Winchester

I read this book because I enjoyed another of Winchester's books - The Professor and the Madman.  I am so happy that I did because this book is such a fantastic read! I liked it even more than The Professor and the Madman (and I liked that one a lot).

It is arranged in such a unique way.  He used the Chinese symbols of wood, earth, water, fire, and metal.  When I first read the theme, I wasn't sold on it but it really works.

One of my favorite stories is about Calbraith Rodgers - first man to fly across the United States.  But there are so many great characters and stories to learn about including Samuel Morse, Clarence King, Thomas MacDonald and Theodore Judah.  No, I won't give you more than their names.  You need to read this book to learn their very interesting stories.

It is pretty much settled that I will now have to read anything this man writes because he is a great storyteller of nonfiction.  And from my experience, that is a hard combo to find!


Amazon book description:

Simon Winchester, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Atlantic and The Professor and the Madman, delivers his first book about America: a fascinating popular history that illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings.

How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators, such as Lewis and Clark and the leaders of the Great Surveys; the builders of the first transcontinental telegraph and the powerful civil engineer behind the Interstate Highway System. He treks vast swaths of territory, from Pittsburgh to Portland, Rochester to San Francisco, Seattle to Anchorage, introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States.

Throughout, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree. Featuring 32 illustrations throughout the text, The Men Who United the States is a fresh look at the way in which the most powerful nation on earth came together.

Walking with Mary - Edward Sri

As my Advent reading, I chose Walking with Mary.  This book is an excellent little read.  It's only 118 pages long but it is filled with helpful, prayerful information.

The book is broken down into nine steps
Step 1 - An open heart: Mary in dialogue with God
Step 2 - A servant of the Lord: Let it be done to me
Step 3 Magnify the Lord: The humility of Mary
Step 4 - Keep and ponder: The Mother at the Manger
Step 5: Sharing in the sword: Mary's participation in her Son's suffering
Step 6: Walking in darkness: She who did not understand
Step 7: She still says yes: Mary's choice at Cana
Step 8 Total surrender, total trust: Standing at he cross of Jesus
Step 9: Persevering in faith: Mary, crowned with glory

I love that the author first presents the steps in relation to the Bible and then brings it home with application to our lives.  It really helps me 'get it'.  Another thing I love is how the book intertwines Old Testament and New Testament verses to tell the story.

This is not a book that I will read and put away but one I think I will refer to often over the course of my life.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Advent readings and wreath

This Advent, we (my family) are reading two books together.

1. Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families (Sarah Rinehard).  It is exactly what I was looking for - a way to more fully incorporate Jesus into the season and leave out the guy in the red suit.

This book is just lovely!  Each day, there is a verse from the Bible, and three small sections to read - Think, Pray, Act.  My daughter gets really excited about doing the action of the day (one day it was pray for someone who had annoyed or upset you).  After we say the prayer for that day, we light the candles on our Advent wreath. This book will definitely become part of our annual Advent traditions.  Highly recommend it!

2. Destination Bethlehem by Sharon Altman.  This is our second year reading this book and my daughter LOVES it! It is about a young boy that finds himself traveling along with the Nativity story. We read a little every night of Advent and finish it up on Christmas Eve with the birth of Jesus.  Oops, hopefully I didn't ruin it by giving away the ending ;)

Do you have any Advent books that your family reads together?  I'd love more ideas and suggestions.

Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup wrote this book in 1853.  This is a nonfiction account of his life as a free man in New York  that was captured and sold into slavery. I saw the movie was coming out soon and decided to read the book instead.  I am so glad that I did!

This book is such a great read.  It is so easy to read (as in the pages fly by) and so hard to read (the content).  I think this books describes slavery in a more personal way than I've ever encountered before.  You can identify with the folks involved and truly feel their pain, frustrations, and sense of hopelessness. I think this book should be required reading in every high school in America.

Do yourself a favor and read this book.  NOW!

Amazon book description:

First published in 1853, Twelve Years a Slave is the narrative of Solomon Northup’s experience as a free man sold into slavery. Northup’s memoir reveals unimaginable details about the slave markets, the horrors of life on a plantation, and the dreadful day-to-day treatment of the slaves from the perspective of a man who lived more than thirty years as a free man before being forcibly enslaved.

Written in the year after Northup was freed and published in the wake of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Northup’s story was quickly taken up by abolitionist groups and news organizations as part of the fight against slavery. The book fell into obscurity in later decades, only to be rediscovered in the early 1960’s. In 2013 it was adapted into a feature film entitled 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen and produced by Brad Pitt.

The Good Earth - Pearl Buck

First we have to start with Pearl Buck.  What an interesting life she led!  She was born to christian missionaries and moved to China when she was three months old.  She spent quite a bit of her youth and later, her adult life there.  She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (for this book).

The Good Earth - book description from Amazon.com

The Good Earth is Buck’s classic story of Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer, and his wife, O-lan, a former slave. With luck and hard work, the couple’s fortunes improve over the years: They are blessed with sons, and save steadily until one day they can afford to buy property in the House of Wang—the very house in which O-lan used to work. But success brings with it a new set of problems. Wang soon finds himself the target of jealousy, and as good harvests come and go, so does the social order. Will Wang’s family cherish the estate after he’s gone? And can his material success, the bedrock of his life, guarantee anything about his soul?

This book is so wonderful!  It starts when Wang Lung was a young man, getting ready to be married.  It follows Wang and his family through their lives - their hardships, successes, and good and bad decisions.  It takes you into a time and place where you live and die by the elements - rains, floods, famine.  The characters are unforgettable, their lives unimaginable, their story probably not so unique for that time period.