"my seventh monsoon"

Naomi Reed is a physiotherapist/missionary turned author.  "my seventh monsoon" is the story of her and her family's missionary journey. She describes a little of her childhood, and conversion to christianity, and the events the led her and her husband to be serving as missionaries in Nepal with International Nepal Fellowship.  The book also describes an extended furlough period, where they dealt together with multiple pregnancy losses, the potentially fatal health problems of her husband, and the accident that crippled her father. After this time, and with 3 children in tow, they ended up in Nepal for a further term, when she clocks up monsoon number seven.

I found this book to be quite unlike any missionary biography I had read to date.  Reed describes many of events and circumstances that they went through, but not in the standard 'show and tell' manner that many of this style of biography use.  She uses the Ecclesiastes passage about seasons to interpret the many things that they experienced.  She then draws parallels that any reader could relate to and learn from; observations about how we all go through 'seasons' in our relationship with God.

I enjoyed this book immensely.  Reed's way of putting words together to evoke powerful images and emotions, together with her explorations of season of faith, made for an excellent read.  I hope to read the sequel "No Ordinary View" very soon!

"I am David"

 I picked up this one, mainly because I have seen it used in the library at school - for the Grade 6's reading list, I think. 

"I am David", written by Anne Holm, tells the story of a boy who escapes from a war time camp.  He has no memories of the outside world, so must learn many new things while he fends for himself as he makes his way through much of Europe.

I found the internal monologue of David to be really fascinating.  The author has done a wonderful job of articulating some very profound thoughts from David that help him to decide on his actions.  He thinks through things like "What makes a person truly free?" and "In what way am I responsible for my own action?"  Holm still gives these thought processes with a child-like quality, which is quite enchanting to read. 

I would gauge the book ideally to be for an audience of 9 to 13 years old.  Of course, not only that age, I'm in my 30's and I enjoyed a great deal. I must say, I found the lack of details [we are never told where the camp was] to be a little frustrating.  And the plausibility stretched a little thin in places [he travels through Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark, but never a single mention of the war!].  But I would think to a child audience, this lack of context would not be very worrying.

I will certainly be strongly encouraging my kids to read this, I think it's a great one for them.

"Between Sundays"

I'm not sure just how to sum up my impressions of "Between Sundays".  On the one hand it had so many plot cliches, really I could predict much of the ending after just reading the blurb.  And because I am an Aussie, all the football references and the whole NFL culture was really wasted on me.  

But then again, Karen Kingsbury's quality writing kept me wanting to get to the end.  So much so that I locked myself in my room to finish the final few chapters.  I would compare the experience to watching a sweet romance movie - even though you know how it's going to end, it's still pleasant enough to finish it anyway! 

I have enjoyed my little Kingsbury fest, but I will be happy to move on to something new next.