Captivating by John & Stasi Eldredge

Captivating tries to touch women at their core. It illustrates all the difficulties women have and tries to show them how God is always there to listen and get them through their problems. The author Stasi and her husband John advise women not to be afraid of their desire to be loved and appreciated the way God wanted them to be. This is a self help book for Christian woman struggling with issues that are common to most women. The book teaches that you can always find solace and love if you turn to God. The Stasi and John give plenty of advice, encouragements and prayers to help you find the woman that God meant for you to be.

The book refers so much to the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and I am not sure I see “The Fall” in the same way. I did not like women portrayed as victims, broken, empty, and looking for someone to fill in the holes in their lives and always need to be rescued. Women were not represented as capable of taking care of themselves; but I think that is the point of the book, “you cannot take care of yourself, you need God with you all the time in order to make it”.

The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche

My head is still swimming after reading this book. 

Antichrist can also be translated as Anti-Christian.

Nietzsche asks if Pity is a Virtue. He denounces Christianity completely. As far as he was concerned Christianity was the greatest evil out to destroy man of his true form and identity. He was furious that Jesus’ practice and words were taken out of context.

Here are 2 sections I wanted to share.

Section 9

Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one's eyes upon one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation" and "eternity."

Section 62

With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal. . . . For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!--The "equality of souls before God"--this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded--this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order--this is Christian dynamite. . . . The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the "humanitarianism" of Christianity!--Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its anaemic and "holy" ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,--against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul--against life itself. . . .

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

Son of a Witch, Maguire’s sequel to Wicked, focuses on Liir, the boy who saw Dorothy kill the witch with a pail of water at then end of Wicked. Liir thinks that The Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba and Fiyero are his parents, but no one seems to know for sure. He struggles with this and tries to find an answer throughout the story.

The story begins with Liir found on the road after being attacked by dragons. He is taken to a convent (the Cloister of Saint Glinda Mauntery) where he is cared for by Candle, a girl that was dropped off at the Mauntery by her uncle a few weeks before.

Liir’s tasks: to find Nor, help the Princess Nostoya, help the birds regain their freedom and to figure out who the hell he is.

The book, written for adults, received mostly positive reviews but I did not like it. There were a few parts that caught my attention but for the most part I found it wordy, it did not make sense and the story was all over the place.

A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

At the age of 51, on the brink of suicide, Tolstoy went from the pursuit of fame and money towards religion and the meaning of life. A Confession details his search for God and what is truly important in life. Tolstoy says it is important to ask yourself “What am I doing and Why”, “How can I make my life worth living”. You should not live your life afraid of asking these questions and searching for an answer. This is an in-depth search for the meaning of his life.

As one gets closer to the end it is usually common to look back and ask “What have I done with my life”, “Is this all there is”. For Tolstoy faith in what Jesus said (not the religion) saved him.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a fairy tale where the characters always learn a moral lesson from their journey.  Albus Dumbledore tells you the meaning at the end of each story.  It gets a little boring but it's still fun and worth it in the end. There are five stories in the whole book.  


Beedle the Bard appears in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh novel of the series. The book is a popular collection of Wizarding children's fairy tales that Albus Dumbledore left to Hermione Granger in his will.

Introducing the Deathly Hallows. There is a symbol above the story "The Tale of the Three Brothers", which is the symbol of the Hallows. The Triangle represents the Invisibility Cloak, The Circle represents the Resurrection Stone, and The Vertical line represents the Elder Wand.

Rabble Rousers by Cheryl Harness

20 Women Who Made A Difference
Ann Lee - Mother of the American Shakers
Frances Wright - Passionate Patriot
Emma Hart Willard - Equal Opportunity Educator
Sojourner Truth - The Abolition Movement
Mary Ann Shadd Cary - Abolitionist Activist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton - Revolutionary in Petticoats
Susan B. Anthony - Suffrage: The Women's Movement
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker - Civil War Heroine and Performer
Frances E. Willard - Temperance Activist
Mary E. Lease - Populist "Joan of Arc of Kansas"
Ida Bell Wells - Barnett - Anti-Lynching Campaigner
Jane Addams - Social Worker in the Mankind Business
Mary Harris Jones - The Labor Movement
Margaret Sanger - Birth-Control Activist
Alice Paul - Suffragist: The Last Push for the Vote
Eleanor Roosevelt - First Lady of the World
Fannie Lou Hamer - The Civil Rights Movement
Betty Friedman - Feminist
Dolores Huerta - Champion of Migrant Farmworkers
Doris Haddock - Champion of Government Reform

Hatshepsut - The Princess Who Became King - By Ellen Galford

A.D. 1842-1845 Lepsiu's confirms that there was a female pharaoh - Hatshepsut. 

Hatshepsut's tomb was excavated in 1893 by Henry Edouard Naville. She ruled for about 22 years. She made herself King after the death of her husband c.1501 B.C. After becoming King she rewrites the story of her birth to give herself divine lineage.

"Hatshepsut decorated the walls of her new temple at Deir el-Bahri with a rewritten life story, in which her birth was the result of a miraculous meeting between the divine Amen (Amon/Amun - sometimes called the Creator God) and her mother Ahmose".(p.49) This is B.C. (Before Christ) It's interesting how the story mirrors the Virgin Birth of Christ. The word "amen" is also used at the end of  Christian prayers. 

The New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon

Picture from the Yale Library

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. (Wikipedia)

We all have individual ideas of Utopia. New Atlantis, published in 1626, is Bacon’s idea of a Utopian world. The island is called Bensalem where people of all races and religion live together in harmony but leaning much more towards Christianity. The people are honest, generous, pious, and enlightened. There is an ideal college “Solomon House” where they study pure and applied science. In Bensalem religion and science co-exist perfectly. Bacon coined the phrase “Knowledge is Power”.

It is theorized that Bacon was hoping that America would be a model of this utopian world. There are many controversial ideas in the novel but it’s amazing all the wonderful ideas that Bacon foresees. Towards the end of the novel he describes all the things they have discovered, here’s an example:

"We have also furnaces of great diversities, and that keep great diversity of heats; fierce and quick, strong and constant, soft and mild, blown, quiet, dry, moist, and the like. But above all we have heats, in imitation of the sun's and heavenly bodies' heats, that pass divers inequalities, and as it were orbs, progresses, and returns whereby we produce admirable effects… Instruments also which generate heat only by motion. And farther, places for strong insulations; and, again, places under the earth, which by nature or art yield heat. These divers heats we use as the nature of the operation which we intend requireth.”

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Reading these books make learning history so much fun. Rick (yeah we’re on a first name basis) takes us on another adventure, this time it’s the history of the Gods of Egypt. He stays true to his trademark with young hero Carter, 14 years old, and his sister Sadie, 12 years old, who team up with the Gods to save the world.

After their mother passed away six years ago under mysterious circumstances Carter and Sadie were separated. Carter traveled with his dad Egyptologist Julius Kane and Sadie lived in London with her grandparents. On Christmas Eve their father takes them for a private tour of the British Museum and the fun begins. I’m looking forward to the second book.

A few Egyptian Gods:

Amon - The creator

Anubis - God of mummification.

Isis – Diviner and the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus.

Osiris - Ruler of the underworld.

Horus – The Falcon/sky god. Son of Osiris and Isis.

Set - God of Chaos and enemy of Horus.

Sobek - The crocodile god.
Ra - The sun god.

From the UnMuseum

The Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas

This is a very detailed account, from Bartolomé, of how the Indies was colonized. Friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote to Prince Philip II in 1542 about the mistreatment of the Native Americans. The writing is repetitive and filled with examples over and over again of horrible cruelties the Natives had to endure.  The Friar was not only horrified by the treatment of the natives, he was also concerned that Spain would come under God’s judgment for these evil acts. According to him the poor natives never had a chance to know the real Christian God because of the cruelties they witnessed they associate Christianity with the Devil. Bishop Bartolomé said he witnessed liquid gold being poured down a man’s throat, many of them burned alive or had their mouths and noses cut off.

What I tried to get my head around is the total number of natives killed. Is it 10 million, 20 million?  I don’t know if I believe that the Prince had no idea of what was going on? Where is all the gold that was taken from the Natives? How sad that the Natives never recovered?