A Long Way Gone, Irresistible Revolution, Gathering Blue
It's been too long, and sadly that absence was not filled with book reading!
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Baeh
This is the autobiographical story of a young boy in Sierra Leone who loses his family and continually flees from militias in order to escape becoming a child soldier. His efforts, although strong and consistent, end up being futile, and he enters into the scary life of killing. Killing to survive, killing to entertain, killing as a means to an end.
Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne
I actually don't read a lot of Christian inspirational books. I think I've read two entire books in my lifetime that had to do specifically with Christian living. Luckily, both were good, and I'm happy to add this book to those two to make a grand total of three!
Even before finishing this book I was recommending it to my friends, glad that I was reading a book that made complete sense to me, that resonated a lot with my life and where I saw myself heading, what I longed for while I was in Korea. What a great read, but not as just a read, but a very encouraging book.
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
This is said to be the companion for The Giver, even though the stories are not related. They both deal with utopian societies, but don't get confused: Jonas never shows up in this book, nor is the utopian society in Gathering Blue set up the same as in The Giver. Still, there are similarities, and Lowry again tells a good story of choosing between good and evil.
The one thing I love about what Lowry presents, both in The Giver and Gathering Blue, is a story that is both engaging and difficult. Yet, Lowry's audience is the pre-teen/early teen set, and she writes these stories with such wisdom for these kids, who, at this age, are beginning to see the world in more than black and white. Both of the main characters in these books are going through the same thing- beginning to see gray, just as the target audience is doing.
Gathering Blue took a while for me to get into, actually, and it doesn't seem to have the same pull as The Giver. It also doesn't seem to possess the same enormous issues, but the issues it does present are valid and worth reading. At a little more than halfway in, I felt the conflict and was finally really interested.
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Baeh
This is the autobiographical story of a young boy in Sierra Leone who loses his family and continually flees from militias in order to escape becoming a child soldier. His efforts, although strong and consistent, end up being futile, and he enters into the scary life of killing. Killing to survive, killing to entertain, killing as a means to an end.
Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne
I actually don't read a lot of Christian inspirational books. I think I've read two entire books in my lifetime that had to do specifically with Christian living. Luckily, both were good, and I'm happy to add this book to those two to make a grand total of three!
Even before finishing this book I was recommending it to my friends, glad that I was reading a book that made complete sense to me, that resonated a lot with my life and where I saw myself heading, what I longed for while I was in Korea. What a great read, but not as just a read, but a very encouraging book.
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
This is said to be the companion for The Giver, even though the stories are not related. They both deal with utopian societies, but don't get confused: Jonas never shows up in this book, nor is the utopian society in Gathering Blue set up the same as in The Giver. Still, there are similarities, and Lowry again tells a good story of choosing between good and evil.
The one thing I love about what Lowry presents, both in The Giver and Gathering Blue, is a story that is both engaging and difficult. Yet, Lowry's audience is the pre-teen/early teen set, and she writes these stories with such wisdom for these kids, who, at this age, are beginning to see the world in more than black and white. Both of the main characters in these books are going through the same thing- beginning to see gray, just as the target audience is doing.
Gathering Blue took a while for me to get into, actually, and it doesn't seem to have the same pull as The Giver. It also doesn't seem to possess the same enormous issues, but the issues it does present are valid and worth reading. At a little more than halfway in, I felt the conflict and was finally really interested.
posted by Meghan at 9:39 PM
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