Love Buzzard's Crafts & Life

Garden of Madness by Tracy L. Higley was quite an enjoyable book and I would recommend to anyone who likes Biblical fiction.  The research for this time period in Babylon was very well done and was true to the facts as found in the Bible.  The first of the book was somewhat slow but by the time I was a fourth of the way through I was completely immersed in the story.

Tiamat, the main character was not the typical princess and at times seemed to be a little too modern such as daily runs on the city wall and other exercises in her special exercise room.  She also seemed a little too independent for a princess of the time period of the book. Her uncharacteristic lifestyle kept getting her into trouble but she was usually rescued by Pedaiah the brother of her deceased husband or by the prophet Daniel.  However her quirkiness made her an engaging character.  I thought that the relationship that Tiamat had with her father  Nebuchadnezzar during his seven years of living as an animal to be the most touching part of the story.

In the last part of the book, Tiamat has many decisions to make with the main one being if she will give up everything and follow the God of the Israelites to save herself and her father’s kingdom.  The ending was predictable but that did not detract from the book.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Tonight was the second meeting for our new WMU group.  Part of the discussion involved choosing a new name because when many women hear the name WMU they immediately think of a group made up of only OLD ladies.  Hopefully we will get some of the thirty to forty age group interested.  We meet at night to make it easier for those who work to attend.  We had a good size group tonight with several there who were not there at the first meeting.

Cyndi asked us to think of names over the next month and then we will decide at the next meeting.  She suggested the acrostic SHINE but I cannot remember the words.  It was very descriptive and I think most of us liked it.  Will just have to wait until the next meeting to see what the name will be.

Tonight on my way home from Ruston I stopped by Brian’s but when I started my car to drive on home the little red battery warning light came on.  I went back inside and had Brian come out to see if he knew what was wrong.  Of course he did not know any more than I did.   He can take computers apart and put them back together but car engines are another kettle of fish.  I left his house and by the time I reached the light in Quitman, the battery light had gone off.  In the ten miles home it came on two or three more times.  I finally found information in the car manual which told me that “…may have a problem with the electrical charging system…Driving while this light is on could drain your battery.”  Needless to say I will just have to take my chances until the third of May when my Uncle Sam will deposit money in my bank account.  Hopefully it will be a minor repair.  The manual also told me that if I had to drive short distances then I should turn off the AC and radio.  Now I can live without the radio but in Louisiana one desperately needs the AC running most of the time.

Today was a beautiful Sunday.  Spent the morning at Sunday school and church and then home for lunch and a nap.  Tonight our worship service was different than usual.  We had a showing of the movie Courageous in place of Discipleship Training and the worship service.  It was a great movie and of course I shed a bucket of tears.  After the movie ended the pastor spoke a few words and then asked parents to stand who felt led to pledge to be better parents.   It was a very emotional evening that left  all of us with the desire to be better parents.

My review for Babylon Falling has been finished and posted and I have now downloaded another eBook from BookSneeze.  Since I have to read the BookSneeze eBooks on my laptop, I prefer a paper book but again there were no paper books that interested me.  Just because I was curious, I counted and there are eighty-seven eBooks and only fifteen paper books.  So if I continue doing book reviews I guess I will be reading a lot of eBooks on my laptop.

The first Monday of this month was the first meeting of the WMU group at Sweetwater and today was the quarterly meeting for all the WMU groups in Jackson Parish.  The program was good but with my hearing problem I did not hear everything and after a while of not hearing what was being said, I was ready for the meeting to end.  It did run a little long but then the ladies made up for the length of the meeting by serving a delicious lunch.  Only three of us from Sweetwater attended.

Babylon’s Falling by William G. Collins is historical and Biblical fiction that I found to be well written and very enjoyable reading.  In the introduction, the author stated that he based the fictional story of Daniel on the first six chapters of the book of Daniel.  I found the book to follow the biblical account very closely.  Of course the author added scenes from his imagination and in my opinion the story could have happened just as he told it.  With the descriptions of the city ofBabylon, the surrounding countryside, the people, the king, and his court, one gets a real feel for what was going on at that time.

At the beginning of the book we meet Daniel and his three friends as they are on the road traveling as captives from Israel to Babylon and it ends with the death of Daniel when he is finally back home in Israel after fifty to seventy years in captivity.  In between these two events, we learn of Daniel’s training, his work as an advisor/seer to King Nebuchadnezzar,  his work with other people in the kingdom and finally after the death of King Nebuchadnezzar, his work with the King of Persia.  The author’s description of the fiery furnace and the lions den really come to life.  Through all the trials and hardships that Daniel faced, he always stayed firm in his absolute faith in God.

I give this book five stars and recommend it to anyone who has a love of the Bible and history.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

It has been almost two months since I bought my Kindle Fire and I can honestly say that I LOVE it.  I am taking full advantage of all the free books from Amazon and as of today I have over two hundred downloaded.  After a long search in the manual I found that the Kindle will hold six thousand books.  I doubt I will ever get that many read.   I cannot keep up for even though I sometimes read a book a day I am downloading at least three a day.

At first I was downloading any book that sounded interesting but have ended up deleting several books.   I read a few pages and if there is profanity then I delete.  In fact I have decided to only download books from Christian authors.  However there are many authors who write clean books that are not listed as Christian authors and I do read their books.  One of my favorites is Richard Paul Evans.

I just finished reading Babylon’s Falling which is historical fiction about the life of Daniel and was true to the Biblical account.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and now I need to write my review so that I can get another book.  I have always gotten paper books but this time I did not care for any of the ones they had so downloaded this one as an eBook.  I was unhappy that I could not download it to my Kindle Fire, so I had to read it on the laptop which was not that bad but could only read it when I was at home.  I checked with the help department of BookSneeze and they said they would see what they could do about the problem.

Five years have passed since the night I made the most important decision of my life.  The night of April 23, 2007 I became a member of the family of God by accepting Jesus as my Savior.  In the five years since that night I have tried to live the best Christian life that I can and have failed many times but God in His mercy and grace has forgiven me and I strive on trying to be better each day.