Hello, and welcome to week nine! This week, we're getting into relationships.
Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy
Donald Miller, 2015, HarperCollins Publishing
Find it where I found it: Amazon.com link
Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy, by Donald Miller, is a book about the author learned to develop healthy relationships with people. Specifically, he writes it through the lens of his application of those lessons to his dating relationship and engagement to his now-wife.
Why I Read It:
One of my bible study leaders in college turned me on to Miller's Blue Like Jazz about ten years ago now (wow, that feels like a lifetime ago). I enjoyed it. My other bible study leader that year leant me her copy of Through Painted Deserts to read over the summer. I devoured that on a plane ride across the country to spend a summer with a really good friend flipping burgers and visiting Civil War battlefields in the South. Scary Close was on my list of books to read anyway, so before I left for Kenya at the end of last year, I downloaded it onto my e-reader with the intent of reading it during a few hours of the 30+ hours in-flight to or from.
Yeah, this was another one I started on the plane and didn't finish. Oi.
Opinion:
I'd like to think I went into reading this one with my eyes wide open to the lens Miller was writing from. He talks a lot about his dating relationship and engagement to his now-wife, and I think I would have been disappointed by that if I hadn't read a review or two off of Goodreads. His style of writing is usually more laidback, and he's less of a point-by-point kind of writer in this format. Scary Close is more of a "hey, I realized my relationships with people weren't healthy, and this is the story of how I learned to create and maintain healthy ones" kind of a book. I think Miller just chose to use his love story because it shows readers how he'd been able to apply what he'd learned to a really important kind of relationship.
Despite the reviews that spent time griping about how much time was spent on Miller's romantic relationships, I found a healthy number of stories about healthy friendships and family relationships. I also saw some things through it that were directly applicable to how I am in my relationships with people.
I will say that I felt like a few things were only explored at a surface-level, with a jump to a kind-of related anecdote, and I wish those things could have been dug into a little bit more.
Conclusion:
Healthy relationships with the people around us are really important. While Scary Close can come across like it's all about romantic love, it has a number of takeaways that can impact how you interact with and show love and respect to in a healthy and consistent way.
52 Weeks of Books Challenge? What is that? What book is Cat reviewing next week?
Read up here! Link: http://www.catpollockwrites.com/p/blog-page_30.html
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