I have finished the twentieth book in my Epic 100 Book Attempt of 2011.

I Quit: Stop Thinking Everything is Fine and Change Your Life by Geri Scazzero

I chose to read this book because it was in my Kindle account, to be honest. (I suppose Chris had downloaded it…it was probably a free Kindle book.) I enjoyed it. It was a pretty good read. The writing wasn’t superior, but it was good. The book was written by a pastor’s wife who had reached the end of her rope, so she quit her husband’s church. That’s pretty brave, if you ask me. Her life wasn’t working for her, so she quit doing the things that weren’t working, and started operating under a new framework. I love that idea. If it’s not working, do something different.

The table of contents should give you a pretty clear idea of what the book contains:

1. Quit being afraid of what others think.

2. Quit lying.

3. Quit dying to the wrong things.

4. Quit denying anger, sadness, and fear.

5. Quit blaming.

6. Quit overfunctioning

7. Quit faulty thinking

8. Quit living someone else’s life.

Scazzero had a lot of good points to make, and she did a good job presenting them. This book is obviously written from a Christian perspective, so there are lots of Bible references to back up her points. I think the principles she sets forth could be beneficial to both Christians and non-Christians alike. A lot of it is common sense, but in a way that we often don’t allow ourselves to accept.

Three stars for “I Quit”. If you’re tired of your life as usual, check it out.

I have finished the nineteenth book in my Epic 100 Book Attempt of 2011.

Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness and Mythconceptions Throughout The Ages by Leland Gregory

After some pretty heavy reading with my Kindle App (i.e. Scandalous), I enjoyed this fun and easy read. The title says it all. This book is full of short snippets of misunderstood history. Things that we commonly hold to be true but actually aren’t are the backbone of this book. There are also amusing, trivial facts at the end of each small section. I read this book in just a couple of days.

As I was reading this book, I thought it would be a great book for the bathroom (for those of you sad people whose bathroom times have not already been revolutionized by the iPhone), since it is broken up into such small segments. Don’t act all hoity toity like you don’t read in the bathroom, either. I’m just saying this book would be a huge improvement over getting stuck reading the back of your hairspray can. Also, it costs four bucks on Amazon right now.

The other thing I thought was that this would be a good book for a kid, maybe middle school age. It’s really very interesting. Lots of it is funny. There is only a handful of slightly questionable humor, but there is reference to sex, homosexuality, and bestiality… Okay, nevermind about the middle schoolers. Unless you are fairly liberal with your kids’ reading material and you don’t mind them questioning the sexuality of our only bachelor president and his best bud or finding out just what exactly it means that the Puritan teenager “buggered” several types of livestock, don’t give them this book.

That said, this book is interesting. I enjoyed it. Fun and easy read. I’ll give it…three and a half stars.

I have finished the eighteenth book in my Epic 100 Book Attempt of 2011.

Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall & Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent

This was a fantastic book. The book tells the true story of the lives of Ron Hall and Denver Moore and how then intersect. Alternating chapters are written in first Ron’s voice and then Denver’s. This gives the book a unique flavor that I quite enjoyed. Ron, a white man, had worked his way up in the world to become a successful art dealer in Texas. Denver, a black man, was born and grew up working on a Louisiana plantation. His grandparents were sharecroppers, but Denver was what amounted to a modern day slave. He worked for “the Man” for nothing more than a shack, some clothes, and a little bit of food. It was mind-boggling to think that this was, one, a true story, and, two, not that long ago–the fifties.

Not only is this the autobiography of these two men, but it is an incredibly inspirational story. Not inspirational in a cheesy way, but in the way that makes you want to be a better person. I know I’m kind of late to read this book, but, if you haven’t read it yet, you should read it. I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.

I have finished the seventeenth book in The Epic 100 Book Attempt of 2011.

Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus by D.A. Carson

This was a very interesting book, but it wasn’t exactly a gripping page turner. Carson is a more scholarly writer, and I read this book in small chunks. Usually, before I went to sleep at night. There were lots of great insights in the book, and I truly feel like I have a better understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice  than before I read the book.

Here are a few excerpts that I really liked:

“To take up your cross does not mean to move forward with courage despite the fact you lost your job or your spouse. It means you are under sentence of death; you are taking up the horizontal cross-member on your way to the place of crucifixion. You have abandoned all hope of life in this world. And then, Jesus says, and only then, are we ready to follow him.”

“Suddenly the words of the mockers take on a new weight and meaning. “He saved other,” they said, “but he can’t save himself.” The deeper irony is that, in a way they did not understand, they were speaking the truth. If he had saved himself, he could not have saved others; the only way he could save others was precisely by not saving himself. In the irony behind the irony that the mockers intended, they spoke the truth they themselves did not see. The man who can’t save himself–saves others. ”

“It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will–and, within that framework, it was his love for sinners like me. He really could not save himself.”

“We live in an age where the one wrong thing to say is that somebody else is wrong.”

“If 160,000 Christians continue to be martyred each year, it means that of all the Christians in the world today, one out of every two hundred will die a martyr’s death. Now, of course, the martyrs are not evenly distributed across congregations, but would it not change our perspective a little bit if we saw it in those terms?”

There are lots more to share, but I’ll leave it at those few quotes. If you’re up for a serious read, I totally recommend this book. If you read it, let me know in the comments what you think about it.