What’s on Your Nighstand: January

Jump to Comments

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the last Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and plan to read. You can learn more about it by clicking the link or the button. This month’s participants are here.

When I posted my lengthy list last month, I guess I wasn’t thinking about this being a monthly meme, because I posted almost everything I have stacked up to read, more than I possibly could finish in a month. And then I found a clearance sale at our Christian bookstore and added another stack.

In January I completed What Women Wish You Knew About Dating: A Single Guy’s Guide to Romantic Relationships by Stephen W. Simpson. I had seen it at Deena’s, and have sons in or near dating ages, and the excerpt I saw looked interesting. I ended up having mixed emotions about it — a longer review is here.

I also finished Falling For You Again, the third in the Four Seasons series dealing with marriage by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman, and reviewed it here. Each book is about a group of couples in a community in various “seasons” of marriage, but this one primarily focuses on an older couple dealing with declining health and a couple of unresolved issues testing the foundation of their long marriage. It’s sweet but sad, and I loved it.

I also finished @ Home for the Holidays with the same characters from SAHM I Am by Meredith Efken about a group of stay-at-home moms who stay in touch via an e-mail loop. I didn’t review it. It was…ok. I liked the camaraderie and support of the ladies for each other. I did think some were a little catty, and the conservative viewpoints were given to the over-the-top self-righteous member. Not to open a can of worms, but I disagreed with one lady taking over preaching for her pastor-husband while he was ill.

Currently I am still reading the unabridged Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, now on page 612 of this 1,463 page book (up from 366 last month at this time!) I truly rejoiced when I reached page 500 — it seemed like such a milestone!

I’m also reading the last of the Four Seasons of Marriage books by Palmer and Chapman, Winter Turns to Spring, focusing on the youngest couple of the group with perhaps the stormiest relationship, and I just started rereading To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson about Americas’ first missionary, Adoniram Judson. It’s a classic missionary biography I read years ago and wanted to revisit.

I also started one of the books I came across at that clearance sale, a daily devotional book titled Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer. When I saw it my first thought was that I didn’t need yet another devotional book, but I had been wanting to read something about or by Meyer for a long time. I kept coming across his name in other Christian biographies but didn’t really know anything about him personally. So this is probably a good introduction to him. I have already been blessed beyond measure as there have been several days the reading for the day has been just exactly what I needed. Funny how God directs through what we think was a random choice.

The devotional book will, of course, take me through the year, and the others will probably take the month until the next “nightstand” posting to complete. If I do get done before then, I have plenty of others waiting for me!

13 Comments

Filed under Books