Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc.  Published by Scholastic, Inc in 2024. It’s a young  adult novel.

Hey, don’t knock young adult novels if you haven’t tried them.  From time to time I grow tired of reading heavy things, murderous things, complex and torturous things, and just drop back to read something light.  The heading about the title of this book says “Get ready to fall in love.”  The word fall is just like that, in italics.  So, the emphasis is on this time of year when leaves are turning brown and people are carving jack-o-lanterns and drinking pumpkin spice.

I love pumpkin spice lattes.  Not that I drink them often.  Maybe one a season.

Right now, the other books I am reading, some each day, include–

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TIMOTHY KELLER’S “KING’S CROSS: The story of the World in the Life of Jesus.”  

Our church library has a shelf of freebies, books donated which they don’t need.  Yesterday I picked this one up and am loving it.  Keller is focusing on the life of Jesus from the Gospel According to Mark.

Consider this paragraph from the opening…

Who was Mark?  The earliest and most important source of an answer comes from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis until 130 A.D., who said that Mark had been a secretary and translator for Peter….and “wrote accurately all that (Peter) remembered.”  This testimony is of particular significance, since there is evidence that Papias (who lived from 60-135 A.D.) knew John, another of Jesus’s first and closest disciples, personally.  …Mark mentions Peter more than the other Gospels.  If you go through the book of Mark, you’ll see that nothing happens in which Peter is not present.  The entire Gospel of Mark, then, is almost certainly the eyewitness of Peter. 

Keller says the other religions of the world give advice; Christianity has “news.”  They all tell what you have to do; Christianity tells us what God has done.

HUMBLE INFLUENCE:  The Strength of True Followership by Jim Matuga

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