"A Chance To Win: Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City" by Jonathan Schuppe

A Chance To Win: Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City by Jonathan Schuppe is not a baseball book. It is a book about life in the inner city. Rodney, an ex-con, is left wheelchair bound after a shooting and decides to coach a little league baseball team to give young boys an outlet in an attempt to keep them from his former life of drugs. Most of the book deals with the people with whom Rodney has every day contact. These people have a rough life to say the least, but they never gave up and the part about the baseball team was enjoyable.  I think you will like this one, I did. I was rooting for the people to get their lives on track.
(Gerard's review, 5+ stars)

Karen did not like it as much as I did.  You can find her review of it here.

Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!

We received a free copy to review but have not received any compensation. This did not affect our review in any way.

Tuesday Teasers: YA Science Fiction and Non-Fiction Teasers

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should  Be Reading. Anyone can play along, so I thought  I  would play for fun! Just do the following

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page (well, we cheat and choose specific ones)
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on  that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away!   You don’t  want  to  ruin the  book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can  add the book to their TBR  Lists  if they  like your teaser.   

Gerard's:

He knew what they needed: someone to steer them from the path that had been so easy for him to take, the one that now ended at the front curb of the building where he grew up, parked in his wheelchair, watching the world go by. He just needed a way to reach them.

From pages 3-4 of A Chance To Win by Jonathan Schuppe.

Karen's:

Kira turned to the open hole, eyeing the makeshift support beam nervously, when a shape in the darkness stopped her cold.
She hadn't seen it before--it had been behind the stone.

From page 37 of Partials by Dan Wells. (YA science fiction)

Why did you let me be born? I would rather have died before birth and been carried to the grave without ever breathing.

From Job 10:18-19 of the Extreme Faith God's Word Knows No Bounds Contemporary English Version of The Bible.


Happy Reading!

Whose Favorite Is It?

For April, here are our favorite reads.  Can you guess which is whose?  Click the links to see our reviews.

 Orphan Train by Christian Baker Kline (historical fiction)

 love water memory by Jennie Shortridge (contemporary fiction)

Trident K9 Warriors by Mike Ritland and Gary Brozek

The answers:

Karen's if the first one, Gerard's is the second one and Abby's is the third one.

What was your favorite read for last month?

Talk About Suffering Unfairly, Read the Book of Job

I finished reading the book of Job this week which I have been studying in my Circle of Friends group at church.  It is all about how Job lost everything including his health to prove that he did not worship God only for what he could get from him as Satan claimed.  Throughout the book, Job’s “friends” came to comfort him but instead accused him of sinning and kept telling him to repent.  They claimed God was punishing him for something but this was not true at all.  In the end, Elihu, a friend who finally spoke truth about God even though he was the youngest one.  Job never cursed God, although he did get to the point of being so depressed that he wished he had never been born.  The last few chapters, God speaks to Job and Job realizes what an all-powerful and mighty God he has.  God was angry with Job’s friends for not speaking the truth about Him and told Job to pray for them.  God also blessed Job with twice as much as he lost and gave him more children too!    After this, Job lived 140 years.

 

The first few chapters and the last few chapters of this book is the best part because the middle chapters are repetitive with each friend accusing Job and saying things that aren’t really true and Job’s rebuttal after each friend speaks.  The last few chapters is where God poses questions to Job, none of which Job can answer, showing God’s mighty power.  God never does explain to Job why he let Job suffer, but does give him even more than he had before.  There are lots of good lessons we can learn from reading this book such as, (1) even good, righteous people may suffer; (2) God is more powerful than Satan; (3) Satan cannot do anything without God’s permission; (4) people on earth are discussed in heaven; (5) not all suffering is punishment; and (6) accusing those hurting is not a good technique for comforting them.

As far as the Job study book, Trusting God in Times of Adversity by Kay Arthur and Pete De Lacy goes, I didn't much care for it.  Our Bible class quit using it about halfway through.    

Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!

"Maya's Notebook" by Isabel Allende is an International Best Seller!

Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende is about a young girl who goes off the deep end once her grandfather passes away.  What is really good about this book is that the girl is telling her story at a safe house and is looking back at all the trouble she got in and still might be in!  There is lots of action and a few twists that I didn't see coming.  I enjoyed it!
(Gerard's review, 5+ stars)

Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!