📚Worst Books of 2023
⬇️📝 Keep Reading for my Review of:
📖 The Whole and Healthy Family by Jodi Mockabee
&
📖 Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Dugger Vuolo
📖 The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn
📖 The Notebook by Nicolas Sparks
📖 The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Conde
📖 Highlight Real by Emily Paulsen
📖 The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Kor
📖 It’s One of Us by J.T. Ellison
📖 The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok
📖 The Woman in me by Brittany Spears
📖 The Whole and Healthy Family
This has one of the most condescending tones I’ve ever read, spoken with authority that isn’t possessed.
Knowledge can be presented boldly, passionately, and authoritatively, but that isn’t the same thing as filling a book with extremisms and condescension.
This is also a prime example of nonfiction that uses a lot of flowery words to say essentially nothing. Many chapters could have been condensed to a few sentences.
A book framed as this one is either has to be helpful (and I don’t think this one is-unless you plan to embrace extreme minimalism and a fairly obsessive pursuit of a very specific version of health), or it has to be encouraging (and this one is not.)
📖 Becoming Free Indeed
This is difficult for me because I grew up in an IBLP adjacent, fundamentalist cult.
I empathize and I admire Jinger’s courage.
But, ultimately, she wasn’t ready to write the book, and I think it did more harm than good.
I’ve heard much admiration for her preserved respect and affection for her parents, and I too appreciate that.
But, respect and accountability are not mutually exclusive, and there was absolutely none of the latter here.
Her parents bear responsibility for so much and the words “neglect” and “abuse” are not overstatements.
Accountability is integral to true healing.
It also reads like a fairly novice college essay and an exercise in comparing and contrasting the IBLP to her current church, in a way far more stilted than reflective.
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