7 Books I Read in July
7 Books I Read in July
By: Brittany Shields
Summer is winding down!
In July I crossed off four more books from the 2021 Spring/Summer Reading Challenge.
This month’s nonfiction selection covers topics including: body-related things like gender, sexuality, illness, age, etc; racial injustices in our legal and prison systems; standing firm and defending our faith when it’s under attack; and defending the authority and inerrancy of the Bible.
My fiction selection were mostly suspense/thrillers with one old-timey mystery thrown in. Unfortunately, one of these was a dud, which was disappointing because the author is one of my favorites.
As usual, short blurbs for each book and links to my full reviews that will tell you more about the book and usually include some quotes.
Thanks for stopping by!
What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves by Sam Allberry
Genre: Christian Living/Cultural
Are you thankful for your body?
Our bodies can cause us a lot of pain— physically or emotionally.
This book explores many topics related to our bodies including gender, identity, sex, self-harm, illness, aging, death, disability, dysphoria, and empathy.
Allberry’s primary goal in this book is to lay out how important and purposeful our bodies are, how they can be used to glorify God, and how we have hope that all things will be made right.
2. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Genre: Nonfiction/Cultural
I’m probably one of the few who didn’t watch the movie, but I finally got around to reading the book. I didn’t particularly like the formatting of the book and felt it to be a bit disjointed, but there was a lot of eye-opening information about our court and prison systems that will expose some injustices happening that need reform.
In this review I share a list of things I learned and some cautionary thoughts about thinking through some of the information portrayed in this book.
3. Immoral (Jonathan Stride #1) by Brian Freeman
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
If you follow my reviews at all you will know that Freeman is one of my favorite authors. After starting this series at book 8, I went back to read the series through and I was highly disappointed with this one. Ironically, the immorality was shocking— too explicit for me. But don’t avoid all Freeman books. Click here to find his better books.
4. Christians in a Cancel Culture: Speaking with Truth and Grace in a Hostile World by Joe Dallas
Genre: Christian Living/Cultural
In this book, Joe Dallas (former member of the gay community) has zeroed in on the impact and hostility cancel culture is having specifically on and toward the Christian community. The main cultural values at odds with our beliefs as Bible-believing Christians revolve around gender, marriage, abortion, Critical Race Theory, and ‘exclusive’ theological positions.
In this review I offer a couple caveats in terms of this book’s writing style, but overall I found his stances to be biblically sound.
5. A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera #2) by Isabella Maldonado
Genre: Suspense/Thriller/Crime
An excellent follow up to book one— The Cipher— this one meets back up with this FBI specialty team made up of a former cop, former Navy SEAL, criminal profiler, and computer wiz. After investigating a double homicide/suicide, connections are found to several other cases spanning decades all occurring on Leap Day. It is the search for the Leap Day serial killer.
Great suspense— but read this series in order!
6. A Test of Wills (Inspector Ian Rutledge #1) by Charles Todd
Genre: Mystery/Historical Fiction
Historical Fiction mystery set in England post WWI. Our protagonist came out of the war with PTSD and has returned to his job as an investigator with the Scotland Yard.
This series solves a mystery in each book, but we also have this psychological thread following Rutledge’s inner turmoil— figuring out how to endure and overcome his shell shock.
This review shares the one potential downside to this series and then a couple things I wish were different in this particular mystery revolving the murder of a popular war hero in a small village the equally popular main suspect.
7. “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God by J.I. Packer
Genre: Theology/Apologetics
J.I. Packer wrote one of my favorite books— Knowing God. This, too, is an excellent book. Packer presents his argument defending the authority and infallibility of Scripture which is one of the core beliefs of Fundamentalism— a term no longer helpful in defining any group of people.
Fundamentalism is in quotes in this title because Packer critiques the original movement and clarifies that as Evangelicals (a better, but still problematic nowadays, term) we must only take the biblical aspects of the original fundamentalists and leave behind the things they did wrong (such as denying the use of reason and being skeptical of scholarship).
This is an older book so in this review I also include some more recent books that speak to this topic as well, but there are many wonderful quotes in this book.
Summer may almost be over, but your reading doesn’t have to be! Even if it’s just 15 minutes a day, find a book that intrigues you and get to reading.
Check out some of my other reading lists below!
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