Books I’m Reading in 2012 {updated}

• The Hunger Games (awesome!)
• Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)
• Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)
• Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make A Difference (wonderful!)
• Strengthen Yourself in the Lord: How to Release the Hidden Power of God in Your Life (very practical and encouraging!)
• Interrupted: An Adventure in Relearning the Essentials of Faith (even better than awesome!)
• What Women Fear: Walking in Faith that Transforms (very good!)
• Stand by Me (A SouledOut Sisters Novel) — my review here
• You’re Already Amazing: Embracing Who You Are, Becoming All God Created You to Be — my review here
• Simple Secrets to a Happy Life — my review here
• Churched: One Kid’s Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess (I listened to the audio version, does that count??) I really enjoyed this book…I would love to chat sometime with the author…my only beef with this book is that I can’t tell when the author is being sarcastic and when he is not…some of the things he mentioned about his growing up years, I wish I would have known – was the whole thing a “holy mess?” was he poking fun at all of it? or just some of it. 🙂
• One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (2nd reading, even better than the first time around.)
• 31 Days of Faith
• The Mission-Minded Child: Raising a New Generation to Fulfill God’s Purpose – love this book!
• Revolution in World Missions – GREAT book – you can get it here FREE!
• Parenting With Love And Logic (Updated and Expanded Edition)
• Pure (I was told to read this if I enjoyed Hunger Games. I didn’t love this book as much as Hunger Games…it was good, but I wouldn’t say my favorite. It was just a bit more “out there” than Hunger Games and some of it was just plain weird. But the story did grip me.)
• Divergent – I enjoyed Divergent much more than I enjoyed Pure. I would love to read the next books in this series…they aren’t out yet. Will I remember the story line by the time they do come out!?! ha! 
• The Hiding Place – Corrie Ten Boom – WHY have I never read this book?? SUCH a faith booster!! I want to read it to my children when we get to this point in history!
  
• The Screwtape Letters – a great classic I enjoyed re-reading
  
• The Secret of Counting Gifts – (.99 kindle version! ) – this is such a sweet story (that will make you cry!!) based on 2 friends that start counting gifts together (based on One Thousand Gifts) as they face cancer. Beautiful, beautiful.
• The Middle Place – I have seen this memoir mentioned on several of my favorite blogs…so I checked it out from the library. I am about halfway through the book and it is wonderful. I am not usually a huge fan of memoirs, but this one is excellent. (I should warn you there is some profanity scattered throughout.) But, I love how candidly the author discusses family relationships, cancer, parents, just LIFE. Even if you haven’t dealt with cancer, you just are drawn into this story because she is real and makes you feel like you aren’t alone in your crazy feelings. 🙂
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
   – this is an absolute MUST READ. It’s a true story from WWII that includes much of the unbelievable atrocities that our POW’s went through. Then, most importantly, it is a story of redemption. You just don’t want to miss this amazing book. 
• The House at Riverton by Kate Morton – excellent fiction!! I have heard Kate Morton mentioned here and there on a few blogs I read….WHY did I wait so long to try out one of her books?? I’m already reserving another one of hers to read next. This book was so good…I felt like I was on the set of Downton Abbey!! Woo-hoo! 
• Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners – loved this one! Wrote more about it here.
• Girls on the Edge – a must read for every parent of a girl (not a faith based book at all, but very much needed in our culture today!!)
• Everything
• 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
• River Rising – (kindle version is 2.99) I saw this one when it was free on kindle (sorry I didn’t share it then, but I don’t like to recommend books til I’ve read them!) This story is NOT a quick read…pretty “deep reading” for me. It is fiction, but there SO many parallels to our Christian walk. Themes such as slavery, forgiveness, prejudice, freedom in Christ…the story drew me in, and I won’t lie, it was difficult reading in some parts. But so worth it!!
• The Bridge – very sweet (and short) Karen Kingsbury Christmas fiction. I love her writing…sometimes I just want to relax at night with some good, encouraging “fluff” and not have to think too hard. 🙂 Her books fit the bill – and are Christ-centered also. Makes them not quite so “fluff-like.” ha! I only wish this one had been longer!

Books I’m Reading NowMended: Pieces of a Life Made Whole by Angie Smith – more to come soon, but I love this book. If you need hope and encouragement in your walk with Christ, this is a great place to start. She talks about how God can use us – BROKEN and all…He mends us for His purposes!

The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?  – I’m reviewing this for BookSneeze and will have a review ready soon. It’s good, though. This copy I’m reading is the newly updated and anniversary copy – it has sermons and audio online that go along with it! super cool!