Tag: nonfiction

Reading

Two Elisabeth Elliot Bios: One Authorized, One Definitive

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Soon after I became a Christian, almost 30 years ago, I found an author/speaker that I liked very much—a no-nonsense, straight-talking woman who would help shape many aspects of my early Christian walk. I owe a tremendous debt to Elisabeth Elliot, her books, and her radio program, Gateway to Joy, and I’m grateful to God for placing her in my life at just the right time. Her influence has made me a better person, and a better Christian.

So I was thrilled to see, a few years ago, that new biographies about her were in the works. First came Ellen Vaughn’s Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, part one of a two-volume set published in the fall of 2020 by B&H Books. Then came Lucy S. R. Austen’s Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, published in June 2023 by Crossway. This was followed very quickly by Vaughn’s highly anticipated second volume, Being Elisabeth Elliot, published in the fall of 2023. (I think these dates are important, as you’ll see.)

The two biographies (counting Vaughn’s two volumes as one bio) have similar titles, similar covers, and were published right around the same time. Vaughn’s is officially the authorized biography, but in my mind, Austen’s is the definitive one; of the two, it’s the most complete, must-read biography of Elliot’s entire life.

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At the Intersection of Art and Faith

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A few years ago, I went to a museum exhibit and did something I’ve never done before or since in an art museum: I stood in front of a painting and cried.

The exhibit featured the paintings of 19th-century French artist Jean-François Millet, but it also included paintings by artists who were influenced by Millet—the most famous being Vincent van Gogh. I saw dozens of beautiful and amazing paintings that day, but the one that brought me to tears was this one:

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My Year-End Favorite Book List – 2024

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

I love all of the “favorite books” lists that abound at the end of each year. I’ll look at lists from just about anyone, no matter how much our reading tastes might (or might not) overlap, just because it’s interesting to me what people like to read.

I read a total of 25 fiction and 16 nonfiction books this year, with five abandoned (DNF) and a couple I merely skimmed. I hope you can find some new reading ideas among these favorite books I read in 2024. All books are listed simply in the order I read them during the year.

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Phone-Free and Play-Full

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Phone-free and play-full. That’s what childhood used to be, and if you’re over a certain age (born before 1995, about), this probably describes your own childhood.

These two phrases—phone-free and play-full—are my big takeaways from Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. The copy I read is pictured above, with my many sticky notes still attached.

You might know Haidt as the co-author of the 2018 bestseller about college students, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, among other books. He’s an NYU professor and social psychologist who says in The Anxious Generation what has been obvious to many people just from observation and personal experience, and he’s got the data to back it up.

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Favorite Books about Pioneer Women

Rebekah MattLeave a comment

“Hey, God, you should have made me born 100 years earlier!” —me, age 8

The first time I can ever remember telling God what he ought to have done in my life was while I was reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. I was given the complete boxed set for my birthday, and I devoured them one after the other, immersing myself in the world of late-19th century U.S. pioneer life. I felt deep in my heart that I ought to have been a child of the 1870s rather than the 1970s.

I trust God’s judgment and plan for my life more now than I did as a child, so I’m no longer upset about not being born into the 19th-century American west (which in the 1800s would have been anything west of the Appalachian mountains). But I still love reading about this time period, and more specifically, about women during this time period, especially pioneer women who traveled west and often stayed there to create a home.

So here’s a list of my personal favorite books in this area for those who, like me, are pioneers at heart—or who just like to read about them.

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Books about Books

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Fellow readers, why do we love so much to read books about books and reading? This category of books is so large that you could probably devote an entire year to it and never run out of reading material.

Just recently, I read three fairly short books back-to-back about books and reading—not intentionally, though. One was a book my son was reading for his high school English class (and I’m his teacher, so I read it, too). One was a mostly-forgotten classic that I was lucky to find even one copy of in my library’s catalog of nearly 5 million items. And one was an Amazon suggestion that I had first read 30 years ago.

Two are fiction; one is nonfiction. Two are delightful and charming (even laugh-out-loud funny); one is chillingly prescient. Their publication dates span fifty-three years, and reflect the tremendous changes of the early to mid-twentieth century. Here’s my take on each of these very different books, followed by a list of other books about books that I’ve loved … and a few that I haven’t.

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My Year-End Favorite Book List – 2023

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

I love year-end “best of” reading lists. I love the ones from people whose reading tastes I mostly share (for obvious reasons), but I’m also interested in lists from people who I’m pretty sure I have very little in common with. Because a reader is a reader, and even if we are not alike in other ways, we both love books. If someone loves them enough to make public their honest year-end favorite book list, then more likely than not, I’m happy to look at it.

I only started keeping an actual “books I’ve read” list in 2018. Why it took me so long, I’ll never know. What I would give today if I had a list like this for every year of my life. If you’re not already keeping a list, I encourage you to start in 2024!

That said, here are my favorite books that I read in 2023:

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