Best Two Hours Ever Spent In a Bookstore

Two girls. Too many books. And one corner in a bookstore. I'd say we were pretty productive. :)

So Rae Rae and I met at Lifeway to choose a book or two for next year. We wanted to make a video (like a reality TV show or something) of the whole process, but you can't film without a camera, so this'll have to do.

We started out just pulling books off of shelves. This turned a tiny pile into a tower (which explains why we didn't move our stuff from that corner) and we thought maybe we couldn't read every single one, so we started narrowing it down. Just a little bit. Maybe a lot. :)

In the end, we divided the remaining books into three categories: Books for next year, books for later, and books that would be good to read on your own.

Books for later: These were the books that looked really good and insightful, but might be a little more helpful in future years.
Clear: 8 Lessons on the Theological Foundations of Faith by Chris Folmsbee
Pure Love, Pure Life by Elsa Kok Colopy
Discerning the Voice of God by Priscilla Shirer

Books for Summer (Recommended Books): These were possibilities for this year, but since we had to narrow it down, these books were the ones that could also be read by yourself, like a summer study.
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Email From God by Claire and Curt Cloninger
Green's Not Your Best Color by Mieka Phillips
The Divine Dance by Shannon Kubiak Primicerio
Redefining Beautiful by Jenna Lucado

And finally, the possible book for next year!
These, we divided into two OTHER categories- the general category and not-so-general category.

The general category were the books that guys could read too. They didn't focus so much on just girl issues. (There weren't many of these) Because there weren't many (only three) we actually narrowed it down to one book: Make Every Day Count by Max Lucado. It focuses on making your life purposeful and it gives suggestion on things you can do. We really liked it because it inspires you to do hard things, but it doesn't leave you hanging, like "Go save the world!" and then leave you saying "YES! I WILL save the world! Wait... how does that happen? What can I do?" It's short enough to read in about one semester, so it would have to be paired with another semester long book.

So that's why it won of the three books in the 'General' category. (Which wasn't totally fair, because Max Lucado wrote two of the three books we chose from. Oh well.)

Sorry, this is REALLY long!

At long last, the 'Not-So-General' Category! These are the books that boys would probably not carry around with them on a daily basis... or ever. They deal with issues in life with a girl's perspective, so we can probably relate more to them.

Semester-Long Books
True Princess by Erin Davis~
The topic of this book was changing our focus of daily life from being self-absorbed to being God-absorbed. It only has like, maybe ten or six chapters that talk about how we are God's princesses and other royal matters. :) It included space to write in and a TON of Bible passages to look up, copy down, and mark in the margins. So it's kind of like a Bible study with advice and lots (we do mean LOTS) of Biblical backup.

Totally God's by Megan Clinton~
Again, really short book that could be covered in one semester. It's focus was pretty general for girls- family, friends, guys, peer pressure, self esteem, etc. Just by scanning through it, we found the funniest things she pointed out (it almost sounded like she was a part of our group...).
 She shares parts of her journal too. The thing that made this book stand out in particular was that she included insights from her dad on some things we girls deal with on a day to day basis. So that's how it made it to the 'Top 5'. :)

Year-Long Books
One Girl Can Change The World by Claudia Mitchell and Kim Goad~
Number one, it looks really really cute and feels amazing. That automatically earns it some points. :) It's similar to Make Every Day Count except that it focuses on girl stuff. The first chapter sort of introduces everything, and then from there on out, it helps you find your passion, formulate a plan, then act on it. So it doesn't leave you hanging either. There's places to write stuff in the book itself, AND there's a separate journal you can write in too.

Made To Crave For Young Women by Lysa Terkeurst and Shaunti Feldhahn~
The book itself is pretty general, but it all has a theme. Each chapter talks about something else, but it all links together. It exposes things that Satan uses to distract us from walking with Christ by promising happiness. We're meant to crave Him, but Satan provides so many other things that we can't focus and chase after other things instead. And this exposes them all.

Alright, we've had our say. We didn't want this to be a dictatorship, so we'd like your input. This is about as much as we could narrow it down, so you don't have to choose from twenty books. If you have any other ideas, just comment below with the title, author, and general topic. And please please please comment with what you think would be the best option for next year!
Thank you for reading all of this, and have a lovely rest of the day! :)
~Katie