Well, sometimes our best laid plans get preempted by other things. :) While I haven’t blogged my books recently, I didn’t want to get too far into 2015 without sharing some of my favorites from last year. What are your favorite books from last year?
Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God’s Voice Above All Others, Steven Furtick
I had seen this book floating around the Interwebs ever since its release early last year, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long to pick it up! As someone who struggles with negative messaging more than I would like, this book spoke deeply to me. Furtick’s premise is that we have more control than we think we do over the internal dialogue we believe, and in particular, that we can use the power of God’s promises to “crash” our internal chatterbox.
This is an important fight, “[b]ecause it’s in the mind that the transmission of God’s plans for our lives either succeeds or fails.” And this contains important implications not only for our own lives, but also for the impact that extends beyond ourselves. If you are looking for powerful, practical ways to deal with insecurity, fear, or discouragement, I think you’ll find this book incredibly worthwhile.
The Book of Life: A Novel (Book 3 in the All Souls Trilogy), Deborah Harkness
A fellow book lover recommended A Discovery of Witches, Book 1 in this trilogy, to me more than a year ago. I loved it, immediately read Book 2, and promptly gifted Book 1 to several friends. Which taught me an important lesson: don’t introduce a friend to a trilogy unless all the books are available! I heard about it when we all had to wait almost a year for Book 3 to be released. :)
Whether you liked Twilight or not, I like to describe the All Souls Trilogy as “Twilight for adults.” This series follows Diana Bishop, a descendant of witches, as she discovers a long-lost, enchanted manuscript in an Oxford library. Of course, no story would be complete without a vampire, and in this case, Diana becomes the object of affection of 1500-year-old vampire Matthew Clairmont. This is a series that will appeal to lovers of historical fiction and vampire stories alike. And, perhaps most importantly, the series-ending book is worth the wait and provides a satisfying ending to the adventure. It’s now safe for me to say, pick up Book 1!
Keep Your Love On: Connection, Communication & Boundaries, Danny Silk
One of my dearest friends recently returned home from a time living in Redding and attending Bethel Church, where Silk is on staff. She and another dear friend found great wisdom and encouragement in Silk’s Loving Our Kids on Purpose: Making a Heart-to-Heart Connection. However, without kids of my own, I decided to start with Keep Your Love On, which is a little more generally applicable.
Silk offers a practical and encouraging look at how to build healthy relationships. In particular, he focuses on establishing healthy boundaries, communicating in love, and maintaining strong connections with others. He hopes to empower us to “keep our love on” in response to the inevitable pain, fear, and mistakes that occur in our relationships. Surprisingly and sensibly all at once, Silk believes that one of the best ways to be loving to others is to take good care of yourself — “If you truly want to be loving and unselfish, you will take the time and effort to get your garden producing the best fruit possible so you can offer something valuable to others. You will invest in learning all there is to know about the garden God has given you–from your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health to your education, talents, gifts, callings, finances, relationships and more–and how to make it flourish.”
Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change, Shawn Achor
One of my favorite places to find book recommendations is among the pages of the book I’m currently reading. I can’t recall exactly which book led me here, but I’m so glad it did. Actually, it led me to The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work, Achor’s first book. But, as it turns out, Achor discovered that before one can put the principles of The Happiness Advantage to work, there’s something that needs to occur first — we must develop the ability to see the world through a more positive lens. And so, Before Happiness begins here.
Achor reminds us that we have control over the reality we see. Our “most valuable reality” is the one that is the most true, helpful, and positive. As once-primitive beings, our brains are wired to focus on the negative. Accordingly, it takes effort to retrain our brains to focus on the positive. It’s not about creating a false reality; the positive reality can be equally as true as the negative. The amount of “true” information available in the modern world greatly exceeds our ability to process, so we must choose the information to which we pay attention.
Once we’ve established a more positive reality, Achor shows us how to map our success route, accelerate the rate of success, eliminate negative noise, and share our positive reality with others. This was a quick and worthwhile read, and I’m already looking forward to picking up The Happiness Advantage.