Friday, April 22, 2016

Simple Pleasures Book Review

I picked this book because I love Amish fiction books so I decided that Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother (Plainspoken, Book Four) by Marianne Jantzi was the perfect next book to read.



Young Amish homemaker Marianne Jantzi invites readers into her family's life and Amish community. The mother of four young children, Jantzi writes about her daily routines and heartfelt faith with equal measures of wit and warmth. Sewing, cleaning, cooking, gardening, and helping to manage the family store take up most hours in her day, but Jantzi finds time to pen columns for the Connection, a magazine beloved by Amish and Mennonite readers. Never sugarcoating the frustrations of motherhood, Jantzi tells it like it is, broken washing machine and bickering children and all. But through her busy days, Jantzi finds strength in simple pleasures of family, fellowship with her Amish community, and quiet time with God.  Hear straight from Amish people themselves as they write about their daily lives and deeply rooted faith in the Plainspoken series from Herald Press. Each book includes A Day in the Life of the Author and the author s answers to FAQs about the Amish.

This was an interesting book of Amish life.  I don't think that I understood that this book was going to be a journal type book instead of a story of her life.  I thought when it was saying the stories that it would be lots of fun stories of the Amish life connected through time with this family instead the book is categorized by subjects including the following:

Little House Beside the Big House
Winter Blows Cold
Pajama-Clad Little Ones
Of Blankies and Band-Aids
It's A Small World
Garden of Plenty
It Takes A Community
From the Jantzi Shoe Box

As soon as she started a story and I got into it, she moved to the next one.  Some of them only a few sentences long.  The benefit is that it is a book that you can pick up for a short amount of time because you can read a passage of two quickly and then move on to other tasks you need to do that don't involve reading.  Although this book illustrates the reasons that all of us are going through the same struggles of messy closets, crazy child antics and never having enough hours in the day, it still didn't seem like a cohesive story for me because I want to be sucked into a story and not be able to put it down.  Each chapter is made up of lots of small anecdotes of living in this family in Canada all grouped together by the subject.  The book ends with a day in the life of the author which gives you more of the structure that I was hoping for out of the whole book because it gives you a glimpse into the families life.  The best part for me is the recipes at the back of the book because they are always my highlight!!  I hope that you check out this book and see how you like it and please let me know!

**I received a copy of this book from my review and honest opinion.  All opinions here are my own.

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