Book Reviewer for Church

Recently I have wanted to become more active in my church and found out that there was a team that reviewed books for the bookstore. What could be more perfect for me? So I'm finally reviewing my first book after months of procrastonating. The book entitled, Gotta Have It! is about today's world of excess and how people are trying to satisfy unmet needs of purpose, hope, and security with desiring things.

The author, Dr. Gregory Jantz also wrote; Hope, Help, and Healing for Eating Disorders and is the founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources. I hope to learn a lot about today's obsession with possession and at least think more about the purchases I make and if I really "need" what I'm buying or if I'm trying to feed another unmet need with my purchase. Like many others in my generation, I too have made purchases that were completely unnecessary and have come to regret some of those impulse buys. But, in seeing how many toys many children have today and how silly it is that they have so many toys that some never really get played with, I have made a decision to not do the same with my own children. I know their grandparents will spoil them, but I won't buy them so many things that they cannot appreciate the value of what they already have. This may seem a bit lofty a goal for my future children, but I think it will teach them many lessons: to share what they do have, to appreciate what they have, to take care of what they have, and to only request what they really, really want.

Well, I'll keep you up to date with this book, since I have to return it in two weeks, I'll have more blogs too. I really do want to keep this blog up in the hopes that some people will read books they might not have because of my reviews.

Reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So I'm reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo now and I kind of got into it by accident. My mom and dad were visiting friends in North Carolina and my mom wound up coming home with this book. Her friend Mary said she'd love it, but my mom doesn't have that much time to read, so she ended up giving it to me because she knew I would read it. So, Mary, this review is for you.

My mom's issue with the book was so many characters with names that were hard to pronounce. Well, the book does take place in the Sweden, so I'll give her that one. But once I got into the two main characters, or the two characters I feel are the most pivotal: Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, it was impossible for me to quit reading the book.

So far all I know is Salander is working for an agency that essentially finds out information about people, but good dirt, like a detective agency. So Salander has been hired through her company to follow Mikael. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist is holed away in some estate in another city researching a family murder mystery for a very wealthy man.

Apparently Blomkvist has made a name for himself as the part owner of a financial magazine that is bent on seeking the truth about all of the CEOs of large companies and other financial superstars. He went to trial for some information he spilled about a wealthy hedge fund guy. The wealthy guy won the slander trial and so Mikael has to spend some time away from his magazine and also some time in jail.

Before he goes to jail, he is propositioned by a very wealthy man who might be able to help him get real dirt on the hedge fund guy, if he writes a bio tell-all for this man, but that is all as a guise for solving a family murder mystery that the wealthy man has spent his life trying to solve.

I don't know what is going to happen, but I have a feeling Salander is somehow mysteriously related to the wealthy guy's missing/murdered family member. No spoilers, I will find out how it ends the right way, by reading it!