Summer Reading

Back in Louisville recently and  hit the bookstore with Mom. Here's our starting pile:

Many of these came from Al Mohler's summer reading list.

After much debate, thumb wrestling and staring contests, we decided on the following:

1. Blood Feud - Mom's working on this one. Explores the story of the the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys.

2. The Art of Intelligence - My wife grabbed this off the pile and has already finished it. She can't get enough of spies and special forces.

3. The President's Club - My choice to start with. Worked about 1/2 way through it  so far and am enjoying the insider information about a very exclusive club.

I picked up Something's Rising on my own. Can't read enough about the tragedy of mountain top removal mining in Appalachia.

Do you have any summer reading recommendations?

Favorite Parenting Books & Resources

A friend recently asked for some parenting resource recommendations. Here's an edited version of my response:

My favorite overall parenting book is Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd
Tripp. LOVE, love, love this book. So helpful in getting a parent to focus
on the child's heart (and your own) instead of just behavior. It's a great one to do with a group. Make sure to involve the Parent's Handbook, but skip the videos.

Ginger Plowman has taken Tripp's approach and applied it to the toddler years in
her book, called Don't Make Me Count to Three." One of Julie's favorites.

Baby Wise was another helpful one, though it often gets a bad rap for being too
legalistic and strict. However we found it very helpful for navigating the
first few years. I'd make sure to tell whoever reads it to take it with a
grain of salt and apply the principles with wisdom and grace and PRAYER.

Dennis and Barbara did a video series called Right from the Start
that has a workbook along with it. A young man I'm mentoring just went
through it with his wife and said it was very helpful (though he also said
the video quality was pretty poor... But the content was helpful). It is focused on the first five years of a child's life.

One not mentioned in the email, but is tied for first (with Shepherding) is a self published book by Lawrence Lucas, called The Things You'll See. Lawrence visited FamilyLife ten years ago to introduce his book on FamilyLife Today. His personality and presence was one of great poise and patience, a rare calm that brings much wisdom to parenting. He wrote the book to his adult children to pass along the parenting principles he gleaned from the book of proverbs. Great, great read, and short too, structured in one or two page chapters based on a verse of Scripture.

Leave comments with any of your favorite parenting resources and what you like about them.

The Heart and Peer Pressure

There's an interesting podcast on the nature of peer pressure among adults, how it is surprisingly effective in altering behavior, more than most realize. It's a good reminder that most of us do not really know our own hearts. What we think we want, we often shun, and what we think we abhor, we often embrace, even unknowingly.

Listen to it here: Freakonomics: Riding the Herd Mentality

(Make sure to at least listen to the segment on motivations and energy use that starts at 6:40)

Thus the reason Steve Jobs did very little market research about what people wanted, proclaiming that "People won't know what they want till I show them." (paraphrased)

And of course, the famous Henry Ford quote, "If I gave people what they'd asked for, it would be a faster horse."

And then there is the biblical insight on the subject...

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"
-Jeremiah 17:9