Thursday, August 11, 2011

(This book was provided to me by Tyndale Publishing Team in exchange for an unbiased review)
Book:  Growing up Amish
Author:  Ira Wagler

Ira Wagler was born in 1961, the ninth of a Canadian Amish couple's eleven children. At seventeen, in the dark of night, he left the religious settlement, but it was only nine years later that he finally left the church for good. His favorite Bible verse is from Psalm 34: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." In this new memoir, he tells what it was like growing up Old World Amish and what it felt like leaving it for a strange new world. Far more than picturesque; Growing Up Amish conveys one man's heartfelt experience
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First Line:  One fateful, starless, April night, I got up at 2:00 am in the pitch black darkness, left a scribbled note under my pillow & walked away - all my earthly belongings stuffed in a little black duffel bag.

I'm usually a fan of biographies & memoirs.  I think people's lives are so interesting & insightful, so I was excited to read this book.  Especially because the Amish life is so different from my own & I love to know more about it, as it seems to be a guarded community.

I was also excited to see the author was a blogger.  If I know you blog, I instantly relate to you & feel like we're blog-family...

I have to say though, this book just wasnt for me.  I did enjoy the writing & I did enjoy learning more about the inside of the Amish lifestyle, but for me, the story just didnt hold my interest very well.  Just areas that I would have liked to known more about or the reasons why Ira did something, those points would be quickly mentioned & the story moved on.  But points of church services & gathering buggies were longer detailed... for me, I just wish it were backwards from each other.

I always feel funny when a book doesnt "reach" me because I know it can still reach someone else & really hold someone else's interset - but, for me, this book was nice.  Not life changing, no "ah ha" moments, just nice.

My Rating: 2 Skeins

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