Chelsea Marie Marie itibaren Salevere, Pärnu County, Estonia itibaren Salevere, Pärnu County, Estonia

The title is the thesis, that our faith requires a "ruthless trust" in what is true and good. Manning's writing, as always, is lucid and engaging, expertly weaving insight with stories to help us to understand on a deeper level the internalization of grace. His chapter on gratefulness has impacted my faith since I first read it in high school and I return to it often as a reminder that i am exceedingly ungrateful and am trapped and crippled by my sense of entitlement and the bitterness that grows out of that. Manning's goal of "blowing the dust off of shopworn theology" is achieved. This book also has a lot to say for anyone who is in a period of crisis, of transition, and general disorientation. Manning helps pastor us through the lack of foundation with a ruthless clinging to the God who is a foundation that lasts.

Let me start by saying that The Raising is a novel with potential. Its cover shows a blond girl lying in the grass, her profile illuminated by moonlight. The story is about a seemingly perfect sorority girl hitting it off with the wrong guy and dying tragically in a car accident. From the beginning, the author slips a few hints about her coming back from the dead (perhaps in a sensual vampire-like fashion?) while slowly revealing what happened in the preceding year. The trouble I had with this novel, is that I was expecting to encounter more suspense and eerie scenes in the first 130 pages, but when I realized that it could take maybe more than half of the book to see anything happening at all, I just could not muster any more enthusiasm for the book... and so I decided to stop reading. Personally, I felt that the author tried too hard at giving all the main characters (Craig, Perry, Nicole, Shelly and Mira) sufficient depth. At the point where I stopped reading, I could still not understand why Mira was married to a good-for-nothing stay-at-home dad or how Shelly's character would be more credible if she were portrayed as a lesbian.* Furthermore, even though I am an university student myself, I could not relate to the students or their lifestyles whatsoever. An explanation for this could be that student life can differ enormously, according to the country you live in. The structure of the chapters confused me, it was difficult (with the several main characters at the back of my mind) to understand whether something was happening now or a year ago. The story itself was proceeding too slowly, and I kept wondering whether the author intended to further explore the topic of (coping with) loss of a loved one, or perhaps the challenges of college life... it was difficult to believe that the story would eventually reveal what really happened on that dreadful night when Nicole died, and/or whether she had indeed risen from the dead in one way or another. In retrospect, I feel disappointed because I was expecting to read something different. It doesn't mean it's not a good book, just that I, as one individual reader, failed to enjoy it. *GLBT lit is something I'd like to explore more, but I felt that in this particular character it did not add to her personality at all.

Okay, while discussing The Edible Woman, I swear I’ll resist the temptation for cutesy puns (delicious prose, succulent plot, I devoured this like a hamburger, etc.). This book, in many ways, has restored my faith in the female narrator. After reading a series of novels in which our first person POV ladies were horribly self-pitying, Margaret Atwood has presented me with a narrator (Marian) who manages to be charmingly neurotic. It could possibly be the most accessible character I‘ve read, EVER, which is why The Edible Woman gains a spot on my top 20. While the book starts out slow, by page 70 or so it really gets meaty…and that pun was unintentional, really. Marian, who works in marketing, is out doing a face-to-face survey when she meets an bizarre grad student who she coincidentally continues bumping into and forms a friendship. Meanwhile, her boyfriend (who she’s in a comfort relationship with but they aren’t that compatible) proposes, seemingly out of will rather than love. Marian then seems to detach from her identity, and in the process finds more and more food too intimidating to eat. The story is full of subtle humor and metaphor. The point of view in this novel is especially interesting. It starts off in first person, switches to third, and then returns to first at the end. It first I wasn’t sure if Atwood had done this for the hell of it or what, but by the end of the book it became obvious.