Through Book Sneeze, Thomas Nelson Publishers provided me with a complimentary copy of The Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns to review. Stearns narrates his journey from a business executive to president of World Vision. He encourages readers to give everything to God and show faith through works, particularly toward those in need.

I enjoyed the narrative portions of the book; I found myself glorifying God for the work He has done in Stearns’ life and through Stearns’ work in the lives of others. I think this book is helpful in exposing American Christians (including myself) and churches to our need to act.

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Yesterday evening, I finished Aging with Grace by David Snowdon, Ph.D. It describes the research of a unique study on Alzheimer’s by intertwining the stories of individual nuns with research findings.

I enjoyed reading about the research process. I am familiar with some aspects of the research process (things like peer review and ethical issues involving human subjects) because of Michael’s work, but I think Snowdon describes things well enough that you don’t need to know a lot about academic research to enjoy the book.

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I started reading The Clutter Cure by Judi Culbertson. In her three step process of "Identify," "Assess," and "Take Action," I didn’t even finish Identify. It was easy to read and mildly humorous, but I did not find enough value in it to finish.

Culbertson’s approach did not seem useful. For example, green dots are to be put on items to give to charity rather than just putting the items in a bag. The dots just make extra work (someone will need to remove it), and going out to buy dots doesn’t work toward the goal of cutting clutter.

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