Books I Read in 2020

Interestingly enough, I read 20 books in 2020. :) My job called for me to read a handful of business and leadership books, and I enjoyed the insights from them as I try to do the best I can in my position at work. But I also chose to read/listen to more fiction this year as a way to bring some fun into my reading time and my commute to work.
This is my yearly nerdy exercise of sharing my thoughts about books. The books are listed in the order that I read them.

1. Find Your Way: Unleash Your Power and Highest Potential by Carly Fiorina     I think Carly Fiorina is worth learning from because she embodies many admirable traits. When I think of her, I think of integrity, strength, courage, realistic yet positive, firm yet kind. From what I know of her, she is a wonderful example of a woman leader. In this book, she shares a few stories of failures she experienced and how she saw them as opportunities to go a new direction. If you have followed her leadership and career at all, then I think you would enjoy this book.
2. Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman    I believe I’m going to look back in 10 years and say that reading this book and beginning the Entrepreneurial Operating System with our EOS implementer, Dale Cooper, was the best thing we could do for the leadership of the Hope Center (where I work). We have been following the EOS process for about 18 months now, and I’m a firm believer that it can help any organization grow and be more efficient. (Having your executive team meet quarterly with an EOS implementer is key to making it work.)
3. Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasha Morrison    I listened to a few podcast interviews with Latasha Morrison, which prompted me to order her book and check out her website. I listened to this on audio, and I’m ready to listen to it again. I love her Biblical view on racial reconciliation and want to keep learning from her and the resources she recommends!
4. In Pursuit of Love: One Woman’s Journey from Trafficked to Triumphant by Rebecca Bender    If you have an interest in learning about sex trafficking in America, you need to read this book. This is Rebecca’s story of getting trafficked when her boyfriend convinced her to move to Las Vegas with him. What struck me most about her story was how close she was with the other women that were being trafficked by her pimp. They called themselves sisters, and it was beautiful to me to see how they continued their sisterly relationship after they got out of the situation. It was a privilege to learn from Rebecca of all the different aspects of her life and her experience of being trafficked. This book has a happier ending (Rebecca got married to a great guy and is doing great today—leading her own nonprofit!) than most memoirs about trafficking. She is very discreet in how she describes things, so I highly recommend it for those who are just beginning to read stories about trafficking.
5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni    For anyone who is leading a team at work, I highly recommend this book! It’s not a boring business book. It’s written in a fun way to help you learn how to be better at leading a team.
6. Unwilling to Concede: Discovering God’s Redeeming Commitment in a Broken World by Brad Stanley    I was able to meet this author at Brandywine Community Church when he and his wife came to speak at a missions banquet. Brad has been a ministry leader for YWAM in Chicago for several years. He wrote this book after his first wife passed away of cancer in 2003. This is the deep work of someone wrestling to find the will to live and serve Jesus after tragedy. I started reading this book in November 2019 (only 5 months after my brother’s death) when I traveled with my sister-in-law Stephanie to Tijuana and San Diego. It took me a few months to get through this because of the depth, but it was a great theological read that comforted me. I underlined a lot of things that helped me in grieving.
7. The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton    Wow, this book was incredible. This is the memoir of a man who was wrongly accused of murder. He was innocent, but he spent 30 years on death row before attorney Bryan Stevenson appealed his case. (Check out more of his story: https://eji.org/cases/anthony-ray-hinton/). A few of the details of this story that I won’t forget:

• Anthony’s best friend from childhood visited him in prison every Friday for 30 years. This was a 7-hour roundtrip drive for him. He also always sent him money to buy him necessities and books. I want to be a friend that shows faithfulness like that!
• Anthony appealed to the warden to start a book club for the men on death row. It was especially amazing to see how white men and black men in the South could overcome racism through their discussions of these books.
• Anthony described the inmates who lived in cells near him who were executed. He talked about his conversations with them on the days leading up to the execution, about the last words he shared with these men (his friends) when the guards came to escort them to the execution room, the songs that were played over the loud speaker before the execution, and how he could smell the men’s burnt flesh for many hours after the execution.
• I loved how the men on death row would show their sympathy to another inmate when that man received news that his family member died. In the South (and in the Midwest where I live) people show their sympathy by bringing food to families who are grieving. In this spirit, each inmate would take whatever food they had—pudding cups, chips or candy bars they had bought from commissary—and pass them from cell to cell to the man who was now grieving. The image of dozens of men passing their food cell to cell to the grieving man really touched my heart.
• The blatant racism that caused this case to send Anthony to death row for a crime he did not commit is infuriating. I strongly believe that God will hold people accountable for the ways they have misused their authority and oppressed those who lacked money and social support.

8. Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength by Liz Pryor    I absolutely loved this book. It’s Liz’s memoir of when she got pregnant as a senior in high school back in the 1960s, and her wealthy, Catholic parents sent her away to hide her pregnancy and give her baby up for adoption. While Liz has come from a well-to-do family in a wealthy area of Chicago, she goes to a home for pregnant teenage girls who have been in foster care and/or juvenile detention. Liz’s sheltered life is in stark contrast to these girls. It kept my attention from the first page to the last, and I had to chuckle at so many parts of it. I think what won my affection was the teenage girls in this juvenile home and the real way that Liz shares their conversations. Some of these girls just really won my heart. I wanted to hug them so badly. (But just to let you know that this book contains some strong language because these girls’ conversations are very blunt.)
9. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover    Lots of people told me to read this book, and as I read the description, it just didn’t grab my attention, so I didn’t read it for awhile. I’m not sure what eventually prompted me to go ahead and read it, but I am so glad that I did. So many times during this book, as I read descriptions of things her extremist Mormon, bipolar father said and did, I think my jaw hung open as I thought, “Are you kidding me?” There is so much on the internet about this book and Tara Westover (all her awards are well deserved!) that I would recommend you check it out yourself. Tara never went to school as a child, but she found a way to get into college, and she went on to earn her PhD from Cambridge University. If you like memoirs, you have to read this book.
10. Rocketfuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters    This book shows how a visionary leader and integrator can work together well to lead an organization. Every great organization needs a visionary, and every visionary needs an integrator. :)
11. Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera    I just love this title. Isn’t it beautiful? This historical novel was not the most gripping of the ones that I read this year, but I did enjoy it and would recommend it if you like fictional stories set after the Civil War in the South. It centered around 3 women from different socioeconomic classes and their relationships with their daughters. I was not expecting the ending, but I decided that I loved it.
12. Kingdom Woman by Tony Evans & Chrystal Hurst    If you haven’t read this book, I encourage you to put it on your list to read! Dr. Evans writes, “A kingdom woman may be defined as ‘a woman who positions herself under and operates according to the rule of God over every area of her life.’” I underlined a lot of things in this book and will be referring back to it for years to come! Dr. Evans preaches a message called “The Value of a Kingdom Woman” that is posted to his youtube channel. Even if you don’t want to read the book, check the video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy70aAmYSaU
13. The Connected Parent: Real-Life Strategies for Building Trust and Attachment by Karyn Purvis, PhD, and Lisa Qualls    Lisa Qualls is a treasure. I love her blog and her podcast, and I value the wisdom she shares about being an adoptive mom. And anyone who knows of Dr. Karyn Purvis knows that she is a treasure too. If you have any friends who are adoptive or foster parents, buy this book for them. Then go watch their child or clean their house while they go to a coffee shop to read it.
14. A Woman Is No Man:  A Novel by Etaf Rum    I give this book 5 stars. I didn’t want to stop reading because of the tension and the mystery of the plot. The ending was incredible because 1) I didn’t see it coming, and 2) I still really liked the ending even though it’s not what I would have originally hoped for. I loved learning the family culture of a Palestinian family who immigrated to Brooklyn. I loved the main characters and at some points just wanted to help them somehow or at least give them a hug.
15. Defying Jihad: The Dramatic True Story of a Woman Who Volunteered to Killed Infidels—and Then Faced Death for Becoming One by Esther Ahmad with Craig Borlese    A friend gave me this book for Christmas, and I have to say that it truly was inspirational for my faith. To see the way she craved God’s Word and risked her life to study it spurred me to value it even more. I loved hearing how God worked in her life, answered her prayers, and gave her boldness to follow Christ even when it meant that her own father was trying to kill her for it. I guarantee this book will inspire you.
16. 1 Peter: A Living Hope in Christ by Jen Wilkin    This might have been the most important book I bought last year! It’s a bible study on the book of 1 Peter. I liked it so much that I ordered more bible studies by this author. This bible study focused a lot of following the example Christ set while he was being persecuted. This was a very timely word for me, and it help me through many challenges.
17. The Giver of the Stars: A Novel by Jojo Moyes    Jojo Moyes—that girl can write. All of her novels suck you in and make you want to keep reading. (Sometimes I choose to stop reading some of her novels because I can tell that they are going to end up being rated R. But this novel is NOT rated R, and it’s a fun read.) This book was actually set in southeastern Kentucky in 1930s. I love that fact because my paternal grandparents would have been growing up in that exact region of Kentucky during that time period! :) It’s about a young woman from England who marries an American man, but when she moves back to live with him, she feels unloved by her inattentive husband and alone in a town of strangers. She has the opportunity to join with a few other women in her town to deliver library books by horseback in the mountains. In the midst of all this, there is an unsolved murder. I ordered it because it was on Holly Furtick’s book club. And I loved it!   
18. The Husband’s Secret: A Novel by Liane Moriarty    This is the third novel that I have read by Australian author Liane Moriarty, and I will continue to read her other novels because I love the way that she weaves storylines together. (Also, I’ve never read other books that took place in Australia, so I like learning about Australian culture.) This novel follows the lives of 3 women. One of the women is Rachel, a school secretary near retirement who is living with the grief of her daughter’s murder 20 years earlier. Rachel's storyline was probably the most impactful to me because of my experience of grieving for my brother. 
19. The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni    I listened to this book in my car. Patrick Lencioni is a great leader to listen to. I certainly recommend this book to anyone in a leadership position in their job. Using real stories from his experiences of acting as a consultant with multiple companies, Patrick describes what organizational health should look like and how it matters because it affects everything the company does.
20. Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward    This book includes a lot of tragedy, and it isn’t normally something that I would want to dive into. I intentionally chose this book to read so that I could learn from the life story of a woman of color. I realized that for the most part, I read a lot of books that are written by authors who look like me and/or come from a similar background as me. So I wanted to try to listen and learn from someone like Jesmyn Ward who grew up poor and black in the South. I also decided on this book because it was set near New Orleans. I visited New Orleans with Gabby and Anna in 2017, and I absolutely loved the history of that city and want to go back sometime. I connect with her story because Jesmyn’s younger brother died, and she is trying to process her grief along with her sisters and parents.
    I first want to say that Jesmyn Ward is a brilliant writer who has a beautiful, thoughtful way with words. She is the author of several novels, and I have no doubt that her other books also demonstrate how gifted she is as a writer. In this book—her memoir—she writes about her childhood of growing up in a low-income, black family in Mississippi. Her stories of observing her parents’ hard work, discouragement, divorce, and desires for their children were impactful. I liked how she included sociological facts about that area in Mississippi with her stories. She also writes specifically about 5 young men in her family or close circle of friends who have all died while she was in her twenties. Her brother was killed by a drunk driver, one friend overdosed, her sister’s boyfriend was in a car that was hit by a train, and another friend committed suicide. All of these young men (boys, really…only in their late teens or early twenties) meant so much to their loved ones. Yet this reality of tragedy after tragedy is far too common for those living in impoverished areas with broken families.  She wrote about her experiences with each of these young men, about the moments that she heard the news of each of their deaths, about some of their funerals, about how she tried to cope afterwards. One story she told brought me to tears. At one of the funerals, she walked up to the sister of the young man who died. Jesmyn hugged her tightly because she had already lost her own brother. Jesmyn told this girl: “You will always be his sister.” And that still makes me want to cry because it’s what my heart feels too after losing my brother.