#25 - The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire - Kathryn Kenny

#25

Title:  Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire

Author:    Kathryn Kenny

Category:  Kid Fiction

Rating:  B

Published:  1984

Dates:  5/30/16 – 6/8/16

It is Memorial Day and the parade is beginning in Sleepyside-on-Hudson, New York, where Trixie and her Bob-White friends stand on the street corner to watch.  The town reporter flashes a picture of the group, takes their names for an article she’s writing about the event.  A fire begins down the block and soon everyone is scattering to escape the inferno.  Of course, it’s a mysterious occurrence which Trixie and her best friend, Honey, are determined to solve.  One suspect is arrested and two more are implicated in the ensuing pursuit of justice.  Will Trixie determine who the culprit is before more fires are set?  I’ve never read a Trixie book yet where she doesn’t solve the crime! 

I’ve read this book a number of times before and am re-reading the series now to gain points for the 16 in 16 contest the local library system is hosting this summer.  For each re-read I do I get 2 points.

#24 - Rediscovering Our Spiritual Gifts - Charles V. Bryant

#24

Title:  Rediscovering Our Spiritual Gifts

Author:    Charles V. Bryant

Genre:  Non-Fiction

Category:  Spiritual

Rating:  B

Published:  1991

Dates:  5/16/16 – 6/8/16

Subtitled Building up the Body of Christ through the Gifts of the Spirit, this small book with a huge message was just the thing I needed for this summer.  Although I think I know what my gifts are, there’s always more to learn about oneself and I’m usually nosy about such things. James K. Wagner, author of Blessed to Be a Blessing, offers a forewarning in the forward.  “This book could revolutionize your concept of Christianity, make a positive difference in your commitment to Christ and the church, and protect you from ‘spiritual burnout’.”  In the introduction of the book Bryant shares his own experience about his decision to give up the ministry.  He was miserable.  Then something happened.  He listened to a testimony of a businessman who, at the age of 52, had been reclaimed by God and restored.  After much soul-searching Bryant, also 52, became transformed and felt led to explore with others their God-given gifts.

With each of 32 gifts, Bryant provides supporting biblical citations.  He lists the gifts alphabetically beginning with Administration and ends with Wisdom.  One of his suggestions in using the book is to do so in a group setting.  He tells us that the word obey or obedience pops up in connection with the use of spiritual gifts (see Romans 11:29-33; obedience and disobedience are used there four times.)   The acrostic, O.B.E.D.I.E.N.C.E., helps as a guide to discovery.  Obey the calling.  Begin a study.  Examine feelings and fantasies.  Discipline(d) belief.  Investigate the gifts of others.  Experiment with the gifts.  Never doubt God’s promises.  Censure all notions of pride or defeat.  Expect God to produce the results.   

Next, in the Grace-Gifts Discovery Inventory, Bryant suggests that if you’re doing a group setting that you rank 160 statements with either Much (3), Some (2), Little (1), or None (0) according to how the statement describes your experience of strong inclination by first taking turns reading the gifts’ definitions from the Biblical References.  Though I’m not in a group setting this is where I am now – spending time each day for the next few weeks reading aloud the references for each of the gifts.  It will work well to spread out the reference readings over a 32 day period.

When I’m done I’ll use the Inventory Scoring Chart by plugging in the number of times I score a 3, then a 2, and so on from the numbers I’ve assigned to each of the 160 statements.  The sum ranges from 0 – 15 per gift.  Then I’ll look for which gifts have the highest totals.  If I score a high total for the gift of evangelism, for example, I would pray for ways God can best help me to operate the gift and then re-read the section about that gift.  I’m excited and curious to know what comes out of this endeavor.

#23 - Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

#23     

Title:  Suite Francaise

Author:    Irene Nemirovsky

Genre:  Fiction

Category:  Historical Fiction

Rating:  B

Published:  2004

Dates:  5/14/16 – 5/30/16

"Suite française is the title of a planned sequence of five novels by Irène Némirovsky, a French writer of Ukrainian-Jewish origin.  In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, Némirovsky was arrested as a Jew and detained at Pithiviers and then Auschwitz, where she died. The notebook containing the two novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998. They were published in a single volume entitled Suite française in 2004."  So reads the Wikipedia explanation of this work.

It continues by saying, “The sequence was to portray life in France in the period following June 1940, the month in which the German army rapidly defeated the French and British; Paris and northern France came under German occupation on June 14. The first novel, Tempête en juin (Storm in June) depicts the flight of citizens from Paris in the hours preceding the German advance and in the days following it. The second, Dolce (Sweet), shows life in a small French country town, Bussy (in the suburbs just east of Paris), in the first, strangely peaceful, months of the German occupation. These first two novels seem able to exist independently from each other on first reading. The links between them are rather tenuous; as Némirovsky observes in her notebook, it is the history and not the characters,that unite them.

“The third novel, Captivité (Captivity), for which Némirovsky left a plot outline, would have shown the coalescing of a resistance, with some characters introduced in Tempête en juin and Dolce having been arrested and put under threat of death, in Paris. The fourth and fifth novels would perhaps have been called Batailles (Battles) and La Paix (Peace) but these exist only as titles in Némirovsky's notebook, against which she had placed question marks. Nothing can be said about the plots of Batailles and La Paix. To quote Némirovsky's notes, they are ‘in limbo, and what limbo! It's really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens’.”

In this offering about WWII, I listened, enchanted by the simplicity with which the author relates in Storm in June, the panic of leaving home in the wake of the advancement of German soldiers into the heart of Paris.  Each character is portrayed as special in his or her basic desires – whether needing to go back to use the bathroom or wishing to steal gas for their auto which will take them away, if only temporarily.  In Dolce it is indeed a sweet time.  A French woman and her mother-in-law billet a German soldier.  It is a clandestine arrangement between the younger woman and the man yet as the relationship grows I was in empathy with them and their range of emotions from hate to love, resentment to respect and back again.