These wise, well-crafted inspirational essays, worth any Christian’s time, should prove especially relevant to busy women.
A debut devotional book blends anecdotes, thoughts on incorporating faith into everyday life, and recipes.
Growing up the daughter of a Methodist minister, Hartman learned to value Sunday as a day of rest. Over the course of a decade, she compiled these 31 reflections on the Sabbath’s significance for Christians. She whimsically likens Sunday to “a comma penned into a runaway sentence” and calls it a “day for discovering (or rediscovering) the miraculous within the routine and the everyday.” Whether she’s spending the day directing a Nativity play, weeding her garden, teaching her teens to drive, making jam, or entertaining bittersweet memories of her dead parents, Hartman believes God can use any experience to nourish one’s faith. Even when she’s on duty on the occasional Sunday as a lab tech at a hospital blood bank, she turns it into a spiritual benefit: “When our work is done mindfully, it can feel as sacred as worship.” Each chapter is in two parts: a personal anecdote is followed by a short section suggesting wider application. The “I” of the first part is thus balanced out by “you” and “we” in the second. The pieces end with recipes for suggested Sunday dinner dishes, most of them Southern-tinged, down-home fare—a main course, salad or side, and dessert, all accompanied by approximate calorie counts—simple yet special enough to warrant the weekend effort. Hartman’s style, an appealing cross between self-deprecation (she describes herself as “the atomic fusion of a Martha Stewart wannabe and the Tasmanian devil”) and religious exhortation, should endear her to readers of Shauna Niequist and Anne Lamott. Although most readers can appreciate a message about keeping Sundays special by prioritizing family time and avoiding technology and stressors, this will be an especially meaningful bedside book for harried mothers who want to cherish life’s meaningful moments. An imagined month of Sundays is a novel format, though the material starts to get slightly repetitive at Chapter 26. But a final chapter about letting go remains an overall highlight.
These wise, well-crafted inspirational essays, worth any Christian’s time, should prove especially relevant to busy women.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-3069-2
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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