Month: September 2016

Authorber Fest

Tomorrow is October 1, and that means it is time for Authorber Fest!!! What is Authorber Fest? Every October the Bookies Facebook page has daily author takeovers for two hours! This will be the third year we have done this. The author can do giveaways, talk about their books, contests, whatever they want! This is to increase awareness for the author. We always have a lot of fun!!! Check out the Bookies page and maybe learn about a “new” author to you!! I’m personally excited for several of them and hope I can make it to their takeover! I hope to post on here a reminder for their takeover day!!

Here is a schedule of the takeovers each day:
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Here is the times for the takeovers. The times are Eastern Standard Time:
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I hope you can make it to some of these author takeovers! If you can, send me a message through the Contact Me page or to jessica@jessicasreadingroom.com

**I am one of the admins for the Bookies page.  You can visit the Bookies page by clicking HERE.

For the Love

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For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards
Author: Jen Hatmaker
220 Pages in Hardback

Published: August 8, 2015
Dates Read: September 21-28, 2016

My Rating: 2 stars

Book Summary from Amazon:

Best-selling author Jen Hatmaker is convinced life can be lovely and fun and courageous and kind. She reveals with humor and style how Jesus’ embarrassing grace is the key to dealing with life’s biggest challenge: people. The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, go to church with, don’t like, don’t understand, fear, compare ourselves to, and judge. Jen knows how the squeeze of this life can make us competitive and judgmental, how we can lose love for others and then for ourselves. She reveals how to:

  • Break free of guilt and shame by dismantling the unattainable Pinterest life.
  • Learn to engage our culture’s controversial issues with a grace-first approach.
  • Be liberated to love and release the burden of always being right.
  • Identify the tools you already have to develop real-life, all-in, know-my-junk-but-love-me-anyway friendships.
  • Escape our impossible standards for parenting and marriage by accepting the standard of “mostly good.”
  • Laugh your butt off.

In this raucous ride to freedom for modern women, Jen Hatmaker bares the refreshing wisdom, wry humor, no-nonsense faith, liberating insight, and fearless honesty that have made her beloved by women worldwide.


My Review

I had never heard of Jen Hatmaker until two friends raved about For the Love in the same week. I looked it up and it sounded interesting, so I eventually bought it. She is on a popular HGTV show, has written a couple of books, has five children, and a pastor’s wife (and daughter).

I expected a different book based off the title than what I read. I did not feel I got much out of the book. Part of it could be that she talks a lot about her kids and I don’t have children. I did not feel that The “Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards” was met. Maybe I am just not in the target demographic for this book. It didn’t have a “book” feel to me; it felt more like a blog. I was also surprised how much she talks about drinking. I don’t have an issue with people drinking, but was surprised how much it was mentioned, especially being a pastor’s wife.

Chapter 15 dealt with “Supper Club” where several couples meet together to fellowship, and they take turns cooking. I liked the idea, and she tried to show how easy cooking is and anyone can do it. I’m not a cook and it did not inspire me to want to cook. It’s a good thing my husband enjoys cooking, because otherwise we would starve!

The book is written in four parts and she ends each part with humorous thank you notes. Those “thank you notes” were the best parts of the book. The chapter I got the most out of was chapter 21 “Poverty Tourism”. It was talking about how can we really help the countries we visit where they actually get something out of the missionary work that is done for them. Not just painting the same building every year, but find out what that community actually needs and do that instead. And don’t just visit one time after that terrible event, continue the relationship with the community.

Overall, I can’t recommend this book. It just wasn’t for me.

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Banned Books Week

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This week is Banned Books Week! Celebrate!  Read a banned book, or promote Banned Books Week on your Facebook page and/or blog. Just increase awareness! This year’s theme is Celebrating Diversity.

The information below is provided by The Banned Books Week Coalition. There is so much more information in regard to banned books on their site. Check it out here.

The top ten most challenged books of 2015 include:

  1.  Looking for Alaska by John Green
    Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
  2. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
    Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
  3. I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
    Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
  4. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
    Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
  5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
    Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
  6. The Holy Bible
    Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
  7. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
    Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
  8. Habibi by Craig Thompson
    Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
  9. Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan by Jeanette Winter
    Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
  10. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
    Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).

Another great site with information on banned books is The American Library Association

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