Lightweight spiritual encouragement for confident Christian women.
A Christian devotional, specifically aimed at a female readership.
Carpenter’s (Come Go with Me, 2017) definitively personal approach sets this book apart from others in its genre. Many devotionals are highly didactic or dependent upon the stories and thoughts of others, but each entry in this work speaks directly to readers themselves. For instance, in one entry, the author writes, “Please come with me for just a moment. Just stop whatever you are doing and drop those busy hands to your side.” Few devotionals narrow the divide between writer and reader to such an extent. Throughout, Carpenter speaks from her own worldview, telling of how she awakens before dawn, does chores, works with horses on her farm, and studies Scripture. However, this sense of familiarity may be as off-putting to some readers as it is endearing to others; the book’s ideal audience would be one of energetic, positive, and self-assured women, ready for like-minded Christian messages. For each day, the author offers a particular lesson, or simply a dominant thought. Entries are organized by monthly topics, such as “Memorable Christian Leaders” (February), “Women of the Bible” (August), “Jesus’ Miracles” (September), and “Not-So-Famous but Extraordinary Women” (November). It’s not unusual for Carpenter to reference the larger culture, mentioning chef Julia Child or basketball coach Jimmy Valvano, for example, with as much ease as she references Scripture. Rounding out each day’s message and lesson is a brief Bible quotation and an accompanying prayer, written by Sherry Shaw. Overall, this book is endearing and heartfelt. However, readers who are unsure of their faith or looking for deeply spiritualist resources may want to look elsewhere.
Lightweight spiritual encouragement for confident Christian women.Pub Date: July 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0513-3
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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