Bekah's Bookshelf: My 2023 Reads (So Far)

 

Right at the end of 2022, I decided to try a reading challenge for this year. The one I chose is 52 books long, proving I often have loftier goals than I have time to reach.

            Even though I know I’m unlikely to have time to read 52 books in this particular year, I want to read as many as I can, and I thought I’d share my finds in case you need something to read also! (Quality also trumps quantity, so I'd rather read slowly and truly absorb than blow through the books so quickly and not get anything out of them.)

            My first book, which I finished in three days (and could have finished in one if I hadn’t been a responsible adult doing chores) fulfilled the category of winter read. It’s called Like a Winter Snow and is written by Lindsay Harrel, a new-to-me author.

            It’s a shorter novel that I found free on Kindle, so I downloaded it and decided to make it my first read of the year, because I figured it was a good way to ease into a big project!

            Like a Winter Snow is absolutely a Hallmark movie in book form. It has all the elements I love so much in my sweet TV movies – in a book! It was predictable in all the ways I needed it to be, it was sweet and picturesque, and it included the Lord, which gave it extra points for me.

            Even so, it held some delightful surprises! The main character, Joy, (which happens to be my middle name) is a 40-something woman (like me) whose parents were in their forties when she was born (like me). She’s uprooted her life to move near them and care for them (okay, so the similarities end), but her best friend is getting married just after Christmas in England, and Joy’s the maid of honor.

            The book contains all the cozy winter things…bookstores, lighthouses, tours of London, and a single gentleman who just happens to catch Joy’s eye. I won’t elaborate further on the storyline because I think you get the main idea, and I don’t want to ruin anything for you if you choose to read it.

            But what I do want to tell you about are a couple of quotes that spoke to me so powerfully. I know fiction is not usually a storehouse of great quotes, but this book was! I’ll share two of my favorites:

            The first one is in response to a declaration that a situation could not work, because the choices were either A or B, and neither one could ever happen. The character said, “There’s some other solution that neither of us can see right now because it’s not the future. Only God knows what will happen, and He can work anything out.”

            And this one: “Sometimes God wants us to be stretched. To choose the thing that’s frightening and unsure. To live boldly. To take a chance on the unknown.”

            Both of those came to me on a difficult day when a couple of situations in front of me felt insurmountable. And yet the words of fictional characters rang true for my life. There are not merely choices A and B when God is involved. There can be an infinite number of solutions I can’t even fathom, but if He wants me to see them, He’ll bring them when the time is right. Meanwhile, He calls me to live boldly, stretch myself, and take chances on things that might be frightening and unknown.

            If you’re looking for a sweet, cozy, quick winter read, this is a great choice. (Bonus! It’s the front end of a series, so if you fall in love with the little village of Port Willis, you can go back to visit in another book!)

            My second read of the year was quite the about-face in content, but I am really glad I chose to read it. It fulfilled the category A Book Everyone is Talking About. I chose to read Matthew Perry’s recently-released memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

            I’m guessing a few of you might not know who Matthew Perry is, so I’ll explain and those of you who know can skip ahead to the next paragraph. Matthew Perry is an actor who is best known for his role as Chandler Bing on Friends. Chandler is quite a loved character on the show, but in real life, Matthew Perry has deep (deeper than I knew!) struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. I wanted to read his book to better understand him as a real person and to better understand exactly what deep addiction does to the person it ensnares.

            I’ll tell you straight from the start that the book is full of language I really did not appreciate, and if it had been any other book, I probably wouldn’t have kept reading. But I really wanted to push through and finish this story. Foul language aside, Matthew is a great writer, and I appreciated his raw (very, very raw) insights into how he thinks and operates.

            He writes candidly about how still, as a rich and famous actor in his fifties, he is afraid to his core of abandonment and being alone. He talks about how he tried to fill holes in his heart with drinking and drugs. He talks about how his body and mind seem to work differently than most people’s, giving him both a higher tolerance and need for massive quantities of drugs and alcohol. He writes about nearly dying when his colon exploded and the seven million dollars he has spent trying to get sober. Seven million.

            He writes about how his life has been riddled with poor choices that have left him alone and wading through the muck of addiction as a middle-aged man. He writes about how another relapse will surely kill him, because the amount of drugs and/or alcohol it would take for him to even get there would not be survivable.

            I told Ryan, when I was about halfway through the book, that reading Matthew’s story has made me exceedingly glad I chose never to take a drink. I believe in my soul that I have an addictive gene in my body, and I fear if I start, I will never stop. And I don’t have seven million dollars for rehab, so there’s that…

            Chandler is known for his quick wit, sarcasm, and one-liners, and all those things are true of Matthew Perry as well, but they are all his coping mechanisms to try to make and keep relationships even as he knows he will probably sabotage them before someone else does it first.

            When I worked at WillowBridge, I learned that it would be good for me to try to understand people who live differently than I do. I most certainly did that through the tenants we served. And through Matthew’s book, I’ve learned not just the behind-the-scenes story of the man who played a TV character I know, but the reality of an addict’s life and the cycle of his thoughts.

            Would I recommend the book? If you’re a Friends fan and/or like me, want to learn more about the struggles of addiction, this is a raw and informative insight into all of that. Matthew is a gifted writer, and aside from language, it’s very well done. But if you do choose to read, be prepared for a lot of extra words. (LOTTTTTTTT.) 

            I’m now working my way through the book I intended to start with for 2023, but it didn’t arrive in time. It’s called Redemptive Compassion and is written by a former Love INC director. It’s actually fascinating to read this on the heels of reading about ensnaring addiction. I’ll wait until I’ve finished it to tell you more about that. (I’m close!)