Books, books, books

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I love to read. Really. Like, at the moment I'm in the middle of reading 3 different books. They're all different genres so that helps because I could not be reading 3 books of the same genre at the same time. But still. It's a little crazy sometimes. Now that I own a Nook, I have to really watch myself in order to keep from spending too much money on books just because they're so easy to download.

I thought I would share a few books that I have read or am reading that I really like in case any of you out there are looking for something new to read.

I didn't use to enjoy reading non-fiction very much, but I am really enjoying it now! 2 of the non-fiction books that I've read or am reading that I would encourage you to read are also really sad books. I have to say that upfront because I don't want anyone to have different expectations.

The first one is called "I Will Carry You" by Angie Smith. Angie was told the baby she was pregnant with would not live and she documents all of her thoughts and feeling throughout the pregnancy. It's very sad, but also uplifting. Angie is a strong Christian and she shares her faith very well in the book.

The second book I'm currently about halfway through reading, but I would still recommend it. It's called "Two Kisses for Maddy" by Matt Logelin. Matt's wife died about 24 hours after their daughter, Maddy, was born. She never got to hold her baby. It's really sad, but also encouraging to see how this dad manages in those days and weeks after losing his wife and also taking care of a newborn baby for the first time. Matt is not a Christian and uses some strong language in the book. I just felt I needed to add that for anyone who might read this expecting another book similar to Angie's.

The third non-fiction book is "Heaven is For Real" by Todd Burpo. I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this book before, but I would still tell anyone and everyone to read it. It's a great story and very uplifting.

I'm also currently reading a fiction book called "Amanda" but I'm not far enough into it to recommend it to anyone else. It's intriguing though. And the third book that I'm reading is Jimmy Fallon's "Thank You Notes" book. If you've never seen a "Thank You Notes" segment on Jimmy Fallon's show, you have to watch it sometime. He only does them on Friday nights and they are really funny. They just released a book full of them. Some of them are hysterical and of course some are only mildly amusing, but it's still a good book so far. Of course I have to add a language disclaimer to this book as well.

I'm sure by the end of the summer I'll have several more books to recommend, but I'll stop here for now.

Heaven is For Real

I recently read the book "Heaven is for Real" by Todd Burpo and I've had a hard time getting it out of my mind, so I wanted to jot down a few things about it, but I'll try not to giveaway any important information for those of you who may want to read it later.

The book is a true story written by a pastor who's son has emergency surgery at the age of 3. They find out months after the surgery that while surgery was taking place, the boy went to heaven. He tells them some incredible things. Things no 3 year old would ever dream up from their own imagination. Things most 3 year olds could never remember from a Sunday School lesson (if there is even a Sunday School teacher for 3 year olds who covers heaven and details from the book of Revelation...)

I'm typically a big skeptic about stuff like this, but even I am leaning more towards this being legitimate. Has anyone else read this book? If not, maybe you'll read it now that you know about it and then we can discuss it. I'm itching to discuss this book with someone and I highly recommend reading it. It's a short, easy read, less than 150 pages.

Where I go from sharing the baby's name, to a book on demon possession. Yeah, I don't know either.

I'm tired of waiting for us to agree on a middle name.  If Garrett is any indication, then we may not have a name firmly chosen until May.  So, drumroll please, baby boy #2 will be Cooper.  Keith's only hesitation with that name was when we first asked Garrett to say it he said "Pooper".  I think I sense a future nickname.  But hey, there could be a lot worse nicknames than that one, though I won't be encouraging its use.  I would prefer Coop for a nickname, if you're looking for a way to shorten it.  Garrett doesn't have a nickname, except for the occasional instance when I call him Gare or Garrita.  But neither is used enough for him to assume they are his name or even an alternate name.  

This weekend we bought the rest of our painting supplies and completely cleaned out Garrett's new room, except for a train table sitting in the middle.  Keith vacuumed the floors and the walls and filled in the nail holes, so now all that's left to do is paint.  I've taken a before picture, but I'm currently on the Mac and I have no clue how to upload pictures on this computer.  So I'll share that picture later.  Just picture an empty bedroom with tan walls, a ladder, and a train table sitting in the middle.  I think Garrett already loves his new room.  Keith spent an hour or two scraping paint off of the bedroom door and Garrett was in there with him the entire time.  Picking up paint chips and having a lot of fun.  

On a side note, the bedroom doors in our house weren't painted worth a crap.  Does that sentence even make sense?  We've lived here for 6 years and the interior doors look like we've lived here more like 60 years.  The paint is flaking terribly on them.  Keith asked the Sherwin Williams guy about it and he said that they weren't primed before they were painted.  So now we (Keith) begin the fun task of scraping the old paint off, priming them, and then painting them.  But I think in the scraping process he'll also have to put some sort of paint stripper on them because our doors have a lot of little grooves in them and it's impossible to get the paint out of them with a scraper.  That probably won't be finished until the bedrooms are in some sort of order and have been painted.  But this time of year is definitely the time to do it.  So we hope to have it all finished by June, both because the weather will definitely start getting too hot for this type of work, and because Cooper will be joining the family.

Somewhere in the middle of house cleaning, a stomach virus, and grocery shopping this weekend, I was also able to read a new book.  I've had it for a couple of months but hadn't been in the mood to read it.  The book is called "Adam" by Ted Dekker.  If you've never read Ted Dekker's books before, you really need to read one.  I don't think there's a specific one I would recommend first, just be sure that the one you choose isn't a sequel to another book.  He has a few like that and I'm not sure if they're clearly labeled as being a sequel.  

Back to "Adam".  I won't say too much about it because most of my family are Dekker fans and I don't think any of them have read this book yet, so I don't want to be accused of ruining it for them.  But it was a really good book and I'll just say that it's about demon possession.  I would place it right along the same lines as Frank Peretti's books "Piercing the Darkness" and "This Present Darkness" but even better, in my opinion.  At the end of "Adam" is a transcript of a conversation between Dekker and John Eldridge, you do not want to miss reading that either.  Dekker explains his reasoning for writing a book about demon possession which basically says that today's churches don't talk about the very real danger that the devil presents to us on a daily basis.  As a Christian, you cannot be possessed, but that doesn't mean that you can't feel their presence or their influence.  He feels that most Christians just chalk Satan up to temptation and leave it right there, when he can and does do much more than just tempt people.  He also said that this was the hardest book for him to write out of all the books he's written.  His research on demon possession kept him up at night.  I don't even want to know what all he found when researching that, I'm sure it would keep me up for a year.  

So if you're looking for a good book to read, then I would highly recommend this one.  I read it in a day and a half around the other things I was doing.  And the book itself did not keep me up at night nor did it haunt me, in case you're worried about that.  

I'm not entirely sure how I went from sharing my baby's name to a book about demon possession.  I assure you that it's just my crazy brain jumping around from one topic to another on little sleep.  Last night, Garrett woke me up at 3:30 saying there was a monster in his room.  I assured him there wasn't, but then I couldn't go back to sleep because Cooper woke up and was being pretty active for the middle of the night.  He'd better stop that right now because there will be no 3:30 am parties at our house.  Atleast none that I will approve of.  I'm sure he'll have different ideas though.