Book Review: Moving From Judgment

by Joseph and Brenda Rinehart, Review by Donna Totey

Who among us hasn’t looked at someone else and judged them?  Say you’re in a grocery store and see a mom harshly reprimand her child.  Or you’re in traffic and someone pulls out in front of you, causing you to slam on your brakes.  Or you see someone sitting in church and they’re wearing tattered jeans and kind of smell funny.  We get frustrated or superior or disgusted or even pious.  I know I’ve been there.  But sometimes we don’t even know we’re doing it.  The Rineharts talk about why we do this and how to move past it in ... Read More

Book Synopsis: Moving From Judgment

by Joseph and Brenda Rinehart

It is so easy to judge another person’s motives, in essence to judge their heart, without ever considering their journey. If we are honest, all of us would admit to having some type of personal bias, and sometimes, whether we intend to or not, that bias turns to judgment. Have you ever had the unpleasant experience of someone passing judgment on you? Most people have, but everyone has also judged someone else. So how do you balance compassion and conformity or empathy and complacency? Moving From Judgment: How to Have an Open Heart in a Closed World offers a practical ... Read More

Book Review: The Shack

by William P. Young, Review by Donna Totey

I must be one of the last people to read The Shack.  Written in 2007 by William Paul Young, this book quickly swept across the country and has on the New York Times Bestseller List for well over two years.  Since being published, over 10 million copies have been printed.  And now I see why. The Shack is the story of Mackenzie Allen Phillip, better known as Mac, and the process he went through after the abduction and murder of his youngest daughter, Missy.  Unable to successfully deal with her death, years later Mac is still going through what he ... Read More

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Book Synopsis: The Shack

by William P. Young

Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant “The ... Read More

Book Review: Book of Days

by James L. Rubardt, Review by Donna Totey

“… in Your book all my days were recorded, even those which were purposed before they had come into being.” —Psalm 139:16 Do you know anyone who is struggling with the existence of God?  Anyone who believes that He exists but doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge?  They have a lot in common with Cameron Vaux, the central character in Book of Days by James L. Rubart. After his father dies from apparent Alzheimer’s disease, and his wife dies in a plane accident, Cameron starts to find that some of his memories are slipping away and he fears ... Read More

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Book Synopsis: Book of Days

by Jame L. Rubart

“… in Your book all my days were recorded, even those which were purposed before they had come into being.” —Psalm 139:16 Young Cameron Vaux’s mind is slipping. Memories of his wife, killed two years earlier in a car accident, are vanishing just as his dad predicted they would. Memories he knows he has to remember. His father tells Cameron that to save his mind he must find “the book with all days in it” —the past and future record of every soul on earth. When an obscure clue leads Cameron to a small central Oregon town, he meets enigmatic ... Read More

Book Review: Gotta Have It!

by Gregory L. Jantz, PhD, Review by Donna Totey

I love the line on the back of this book, “Tame your inner two-year-old.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pick up this book and tame that inner two-year-old! I somehow knew that this book would change the way I look at my habits. Especially when I read the subtitle, Freedom from wanting everything right here, right now. There’s a kind of comfort in holding onto our emotional security blankets and I was reluctant to give mine up. Dr. Jantz describes all the things that we never get enough of–an activity, food, behavior–as “excessities.” As a reward ... Read More

Book Synopsis: Gotta Have It!

by Gregory L. Jantz, PhD

Are you spending so much time trying to get what you want that you have no energy left to get what you need? each of us has a “never enough” activity, food, or behavior – and we’re ready to throw a grown up tantrum when we don’t get it. Dr. Gregory L. Jantz calls this phenomenon excessity – when our excesses become “necessities.” Excessities are our reward, our coping mechanism, and the illusory answer to pain. We feel we need their pleasure to insulate us from a difficult world. Yet the more we starve, what we really need – such ... Read More

Book Review: Rooms

by James L. Rubart, Review by Donna Totey

The cover of Rooms touts that this book is “Part The Screwtape Letters and part The Shack.”  That’s a perfect description of this great allegory.  But it’s so much more than that. Rooms begins with Micah Taylor finding out that his late great-uncle has given him a house in Cannon Beach, Oregon…one that was recently built just for Micah.  The catch? Micah has never met his great-uncle. Micah decides to leave his multi-million dollar company and his girlfriend in Seattle to visit the house.  He soon discovers that this is no ordinary house.  In the huge house are many rooms, ... Read More

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Book Synopsis: Rooms

by James L. Rubart

On a rainy spring day in Seattle, young software tycoon Micah Taylor receives a cryptic, twenty-five-year-old letter from a great uncle he never knew. It claims a home awaits him on the Oregon coast that will turn his world inside out. Suspecting a prank, Micah arrives at Cannon Beach to discover a stunning brand new nine-thousand square foot house. And after meeting Sarah Sabin at a nearby ice cream shop, he has two reasons to visit the beach every weekend. When bizarre things start happening in the rooms of the home, Micah suspects they have some connection to his enigmatic ... Read More

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