ARC Review: Sing a New Song

Sing a New Song: A Woman's Guide to the Psalms  by Lydia Brownbeck 

Genre: Christian devotional

Expected publication date: October 31st 2017

I've always had a soft spot for the Psalms. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes dark, always lined with the silver edge of hope, I don't know why I've never actually sat down to study them in any significant way. 

So when I came across this gorgeous devotional on the book of Psalms on NetGallery, I knew I had to request it. And, in some fluke, NetGallery accepted my request and a digital copy magically appeared on my e-reader. 

Sing a New Song has commentary for each Psalm, breaking it down in sections. It talks about the theme, then it talks about how that psalm fits into the entire book in a section called harmony. The next section, singing in tune, has a verse-by-verse breakdown on the psalm. Musical notes shows how God's grace is seen in the psalm and sing the song gives suggestions on related scripture and practical application. 

Books are personal, but devotional books are even more so-- thus, I won't be writing a review per se because everyone is looking for drastically different things in books like these. 

What I liked: these devotionals were easy to read, and motivated me to start working my way through the Psalms. I loved being given additional scripture to read that related to the psalm. 

What I didn't like: On a small note, it was kind of annoying that the actual text of the Psalms weren't included in this devotional. It's not difficult to also have my Bible open while going through this devotional, but that was something that surprised me when I first started reading the devotional. Also, the Psalms can be difficult and dark and that's something that I felt like the devotional didn't always tackle. I mean yes, we can see God's grace and mercy through each Psalm but something we also see righteous anger which can be more difficult to understand. This devotional tended to stick to the easier things. 

Overall, I am grateful for this devotional book because it has motivated me to start studying and reading each Psalm. The accompanying text for each Psalm is quick enough to read that I've actually kept up with doing a Psalm every night before I go to bed. 

What about you? What's your favorite devotional book? I don't read nearly enough, so please leave your recommendations in the comments below! 

Dear Sunday: A Chill Week

Dear Sunday is my weekly post participating in the Caffeinated Book Reviewer series. This week I'm also doing a brief Stacking the Shelves and have also linked up with  tyngas reviews. 

What did I even do this week? This weekly series is great because it forces me to actually look back on the past week. Let's see...I had choir practice-- the odd classical piece we are working on is finally sounding vaguely pleasant and that's great, even if the silly composer doesn't understand how high us poor altos can/cannot sing; I petted the most adorable fluffy ball of fur when I came across a student walking her puppy; my youth group cancelled our weekly meeting in order to go see the new Martin Luther movie-- it was pretty good; I got frustrated teaching my students; my wrist hurt from explaining the right hand rule far too many times; I got excited when my students finally understood the concept. OH and I got the most fall picture of them all-- Canadian geese migrating south with a beautiful sunset as the backdrop. 

It's been a pretty chill week! No complaints here :)

Vigil by Angela Slatter 

Months and months ago, I heard about this book on some now-forgotten blog. It sounded right up my alley, but my library didn't have a copy. Never fear! I put a request in through the interlibrary loan system. My request was cancelled and my library told me that they were going to just buy the book and put me on hold to be the first one to read it. 

Fast forward monthhhsss and I had all but forgotten about it, until I get an email telling me that my book on hold was now ready to be checked out! I'm excited to finally read it :) 

• Dear Sunday: Dollar Tree Finds
• TTT: 3 nonfiction books by super awesome women adventurers
• ARC Review: The Medievalist
• ARC Review: Sing a New Song

Four posts in one week?? Who am I? It helped that Sing a New Song wasn't an in-depth review. It's a Christain devotional book and since that's such a personalized genre, I mainly just wanted to introduce the book to those who might be interested. 

(one can hope at least...)

• Top Ten Tuesday
• ARC Review: This Side of Murder by Anna Lee Huber
• What I read: September 

That's about it for me! What about you? How was your week? Be sure to link to your own weekly recap in the comments below! 

Dear Sunday: Dollar Tree Finds

Dear Sunday is my weekly post participating in the Caffeinated Book Reviewer series. This week I'm also doing a brief Stacking the Shelves and have also linked up with  tyngas reviews. 

Hello everyone! There is no exciting news to detail, no changes in my life as it quietly hurtles itself through the semester. I'm excited it's almost October mainly because the temps here have been solidly unabashedly summer temperatures, not the beautiful temperate chill that fall promises. 

I've also kind of sort of decided to officially do NaNoWriMo this year! National Novel Writing Month takes place every November where the goal is to write 55,000 words in one crazy caffeine-fueled fourth-wall-destroying month. I did it all through high school but went on a wise hiatus through college. Last year, a couple weeks before November, I had all but forgotten about NaNo until a blogger announced she was going to do it and suddenly it hit me. I have way more free time in grad school than in college-- and what else to do with that free time but clean cook write a blog  watch YouTube write a novel?! I won last year and I'm looking forward to participating this year! It's still a bit early but I really need to get some planning done. Are you doing NaNo?? If so be sure to befriend me and maybe we can cheer each other on :) 

This year will mark ten years since my first NaNo and my first novel! Like...what?! 

The Oyster Catcher by Jo Thomas

I picked this up when I was in my local Dollar Tree buying more candles that I'll never light (but they're just a dollar!). The cute cover drew me in and the cute story made this an enjoyable read. Stay tuned for my review! 

• Dear Sunday: My New Project
• Top Ten Tuesday: My Fall TBR Picks
• Review: A Curious Beginning

• Top Ten Tuesday 
• ARC Review: The Medievalist 
• ARC Review: Sing A New Song 

That's it for me! How was your week? Do you want to write one novel in one month?? Join me in my craziness :)

Stacking the Shelves: My first ARCs!

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly series created by tyngas reviews where I talk about the books I've recently added to my ever growing bookshelf.

It's happened y'all.

Ever since I started blogging (many moons aka 3 months ago) I've seen advanced readers copy books pop up on almost every book blog I perused. If you're like me and are slightly out of the loop, ARCs are advanced digital or print editions of books that are sent out pre-publication in order to drum up publicity and awareness. This is helpful for any book but especially for books from small publishing companies or by new authors.

Since I almost exclusively read library books, the idea of getting free books didn't really hold any special appeal, and so I never applied for digital ARCs.

Until now.

Too much free time at work (I'm at a weird point hovering in between projects right now) meant that I finally got around to figuring out how NetGallery (big site to get digital ARCs) worked, and applying for my first ARCs.

And to my massive shock and surprise, I was approved, and several digital ARCs found their way onto my Kindle! Like. What?

The Woolly Hat Knitting Club by Poppy Dolan

A feel good romance featuring a feisty main character and tons of knitting references. I'm enjoying it thus far!

The Medievalist by Anne-Marie Lacy

A time slip novel (aka one of my favorite genres). We'll see if it meets my high expectations. 

Sing a New Song by Lydia Brownback

A Christian study of one of my favorite parts of the Bible, the Psalms! I never read through study books on my own, so I'm excited about this one. Also can we talk about how gorgeous this cover is??

That's it! Since three books magically appeared on  my Kindle (seriously though technology is amazing) AND I still have two library books that need to be read, I didn't pick up any more books.

What about you? Are you a fan of ARCs or like me have just started reading them??

5 Beautiful Blue Book Covers

This post brought to you by the Top Ten Tuesday series over at That Artsy Reader Girl! 

This week's prompt for Top Ten Tuesday was books with your favorite color on the cover. After rummaging through my Goodreads shelves, I've come up with five books that not only (a) have my favorite color on them (b) are in and of themselves GORGEOUS but also (c) are amazing books.

What more could you want?

                                           

                                                                

Click on the covers to go to Goodreads!

All of these books are amazing (or expected to be amazing). Binti, Conservation of Shadows, and Record of spaceborn few are all science fiction, All the Light is historical fiction, and Sing a New Song is actually a devotional I picked up through NetGalley a while back. Also apparently I am now playing a game to see how many times I can talk about Record of a Spaceborn on this blog. Can you tell I'm excited to check it out? 

Have you read any of these books? What are some of your favorite book covers?