Keren Threlfall

collections of thoughts

My Top 10 Reads in 2016

Unlike much of the rest of 2016, this was a good year in books. I feel like I read a lot of good books, more than just 10. In trying to make a decision about my top 10, there were actually 4-5 that came to mind right away as “the best;” but then when saying “this was a really good read for 2016,” I could probably have selected 25-30. Here’s my attempt to narrow it down: All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Stephen Kinzer) Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (J. D. Vance) Seven Years in Tibet (Heinrich Harrer) When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi) Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Bryan Stevenson) Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Maria Semple) I’m afraid I’m going to have to create a tie between 2 books, for #10, which actually makes this 11 books. Of course. Who can limit a top 10 book list to just 10? 😉 Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ (Andrew David Naselli, J.D. Crowley) Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart at a Time (Jeremy Courtney) 2016 Reading Lists from Others: (I’m always thrilled when I see overlap between my annual top book list and some of these!) Amazon’s Best Books of 2016 Goodreads 2016 Choice Awards Anne Bogel’s 2016 Top Books Washington Post’s Best Book List 2016 NY Times: The 10 Best Books of 2016 NY Times: Bestsellers My Countdown in Booklists Since this wraps up my countdown to Christmas in book lists, here are the book lists I recently posted: 85 Books I Read in 2016 10 Books on Race That Every American Should Read 10 Personal Development Books That Rocked My World 10 Books My Kids Love to Read Over and Over Again 10 Business Books That Grew My Mind and Business 10 Books That Helped Grow My Faith

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10 Books That Helped Grow My Faith

1. Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just (Timothy Keller) Up until a short period prior reading this book, the phrase “social justice” was almost always seen as a pejorative term. Through our own experience and observing some of the practices that were ongoing in the urban ministry we were involved in, we came to question whether or not our current understanding of loving “the least of these” was truly biblical. Generous Justice came at an important turning point in our faith, and helped lay the foundation for a more robust theology of justice. 2. Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women (Carolyn Custis James) I read this book in conjunction with Half the Sky, a book that addresses oppression of women across the globe. Globally, women make up half of the world’s population; and within the church, they tend to make up an even larger percentage. James explores what it means to be a women within the church, both within and outside our Western construct of biblical womanhood. The church must work together to do God’s work here on earth. But in order to do so, women must first be given a seat a that table.

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10 Business Books That Grew My Mind and Business

1. Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money (Pat Flynn) Daniel and I had a bit of a rocky start into adulthood, having our identity wrapped up in who we would be as mission workers. We sort of accidentally stumbled into business and self-employment; and even then, we operated by many narrow and restrictive mindsets. One of them was that it was wrong to plan our ideal lifestyle or day. (The alternative? Just do whatever is the hardest thing, work as hard as you can, be content, and push through.) This book was helpful in motivating us to do just that. 2. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (Michael E. Gerber) Why do businesses often fail? Not because they don’t achieve success, but because they fail to plan for success. You’d never guess it from the title alone, but this is an important business book for many business owners. I’ve had several occasions of discussing this book with business relations, only to have them (or me) say, “wait…have you read The E-Myth Revisited?” 3. Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing and Selling (Michael Port) Book Yourself Solid is a comprehensive guide to networking and marketing through focusing on relationships and giving value. This has some great ideas for both online and offline marketing. 4. Essentialism: The Discipline Pursuit of Less (Greg McKeown) Do you have ADHD (or “entrepreneurial ADHD”)? Focus is not just important for business owners, but for any aspect of life. That just so happens to be the focus of this book. 5. The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure (Grant Cardone) I love the motivation in this book, but if you don’t like heavy-hitting, hard-pushing books, this might not be the one for you. I personally benefit from holding myself to these standards, but don’t necessarily advocate for holding and pushing others with this type of tone, as it tends to overlook the role of privilege in reaching success. 6. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Sheryl Sandberg) It’s been an evolution of sorts for me to recognize that the role of women is not as limited as the narrow set of options I’d grown up believing (i.e., motherhood or missions only). Along with…

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10 Books My Kids Love to Read Over and Over Again

My 4 children are currently ages 8, 7, 4, and 2, at the time of this post. My older girls do enjoy longer read-alouds and chapter books, but for the most part I’ll focus on easier reads. Here are 10 books they love right now: 1. Tintin and the Picaros (Hergé) My two older girls have actually read the entire set of Tintin books (minus Tintin in the Congo, which is currently not really accessible where racism and some other issues are a little too much to try to discuss at this point). My husband had these books as a child, and their entry into the world of Tintin began with his childhood copy of this book, which subsequently spurred on our now 7-year-old to become a voracious reader. 2. Frog and Toad Together (Arnold Lobel) We love all the Frog and Toad series, but this collection (“A List,” “In the Garden,” “Cookies,” “Dragons and Giants,” and “The Dream”) takes the cake. (Or in this case, the cookie!). This is definitely one of my favorite easy books to read aloud. 

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10 Personal Development Books That Rocked My World

1. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business (Charles Duhigg) In a sense, this book was my gateway drug into the world of personal development and pop psychology reading. (See: my review in 2012.) It also helped me understand my own personal psychological makeup in a way that would best allow me to establish some important habits (reading, exercise, healthy eating) and remove others (nail-biting, stress-eating). An important concept that was embedded into my life through read The Power of Habit was that of keystone habits, a concept that has stuck with me in the years since and has cross-pollinated as I have read other books where an intersection with the topic of habit(s) occurred. 2. The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun I first read this book around the same time I read The Power of Habit. And while you might not suspect it from the title, Rubin’s The Happiness Project (and later writings) discusses habits a great deal. This book was an important one in self-awareness and being able to understand the best approaches to make personal change in my life. 3. The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) In recent years, Daniel and I have changed on just about every level. We have our reading to thank for much of that, but we also frequently find ourselves coming up against a wall. For the most part, it’s a wall that’s in our heads. In other words, our big struggle in forward momentum and overcoming fear continues to be a psychological one. The Big Leap pretty much blew our minds in pulling back some of the layers of the psychological barriers that were preventing us from moving forward. 4. Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Amy Cuddy) Fear is a big challenge for many of us, particularly as it plays out in self-confidence. Presence addresses this in a big way, and you might just find yourself doing some power posing by the end. 5. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Elizabeth Gilbert) Some people hate this book; others are borderline obsessed. I don’t think I fall into either category, but definitely not the middle, either. Nonetheless, I did find this book to hold some very powerful concepts. As a person whose…

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  • If 2.5 weeks ago you had told us we’d be sitting in Greenville, SC with the baby chicks we owned, I would think you were crazy. Yet here we are — our hearts filled with both sorrow and joy, gladness and grief. And chickens. 6 of them. ❤️😂🐤⁣ ⁣ To put it in the words that I shared along with an article entitled, “That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief...”⁣ ⁣ I've found myself wishing countless times that we had stayed in Guatemala. ⁣ ⁣ But I know that if I had stayed there, I'd also be wishing we'd left. ⁣ ⁣ My children miss their friends there, but they also miss their friends here. ⁣ ⁣ Those feelings of loss and confusion, I've realized, are rooted in grief.⁣ ⁣ You don't need to have just made an international move to feel it. ⁣ ⁣ You don't need to be a healthcare worker who cannot see your children to feel it. ⁣ ⁣ You don't need to be in Italy watching a convoy of coffins drive by to feel it. ⁣ ⁣ You don't have to be an exhausted delivery worker to feel it. ⁣ ⁣ You need only exist in the world that is now, and see the strangeness and sorrow that is outside your window, and inside it, too...⁣ ⁣ ...and hold space for yourself and your community who are in this together.⁣ ____________⁣ #travelwithkids #trekarooing #coronavirusevac #coronavirus #greenvillesc
  • ⁣Since January, we have been privileged to call Antigua, Guatemala our temporary home. It has been a gift to be in a place where we can see the Milky Way on most clear nights, or view orange lava crest over the top of Volcán de Fuego. As February disappears into March, we watch as the town fades into purple, the blooming jacaranda trees announce the arrival of spring and daily additions of purple fabric tell us Semana Santa is coming. ⁣ ⁣ With three of our kids enrolled in a bilingual green school here in town and a worldschooling community basing here for several months, we planned to stay here through June so that our kids could experience a full semester at one school, as well as be part of the community here. ⁣ ⁣ (Apart from homeschooling much of their lives, they've only had partial semesters in Germany and South Carolina.) Our kids spend their evenings and weekends running around hearing a mix of languages, often barefoot and covered in dust, and experiencing a childhood with lots of freedom to explore. We have had more community here than we have had time to spend part of it. ⁣ ⁣ On Friday morning, Guatemala announced the first reported case of COVID-19, a quarantined traveler who had arrived from Europe, and thankfully followed the quarantine protocol here of quarantining directly from the airport to the hospital in Guatemala City. However, like much of the rest of the world, we await the unavoidable. We feel very safe here, but also know that realistically the infrastructure here is not equipped to handle either a mass quarantine or mass hospitalizations. (For us as a family of 6, with no vehicle, even the latter has foreseeably challenging implications, as rationing has already started.) ⁣ ⁣ Yesterday evening, Guatemala announced that in addition to no longer permitting entry for Europeans, visitors from the USA and Canada would also no longer be allowed to enter the country, starting March 16. Today, we heard that this will likely also mean limited or restricted flights from Guatemala to the USA and elsewhere. For us, I think this is the immediate concern -- is there a way out if it comes to that? ⁣ ⁣ (Continued in comments ☺️) ___________
  • Antigua usually looks amazing from all angles, but a hike up to Cerro de La Cruz is a pretty amazing sight to see the city from above. You get to see how big the city is, but also how neatly it’s arranged. ____________ #cerrodelacruz #antiguaguatemala #guatelife #locationindependent #quechileroguate #quechilero
  • Local markets are such a window into the economies of daily life in a new place, and often the pulsing heart of life for locals. ⁣ ⁣ Last year we were in Antigua for just 3 days, but I never made it to the real market here. Topographically, the massive market is just outside the artisan market, which is catered toward tourists. But for the real experience, visit both. ⁣ ⁣ When we moved to Germany, I felt “off” without a car until I could master public transportation; then when we returned to the southern USA, I felt “off” without subways and trains. Similarly, I’ve felt “off” here without knowing how to shop as easily as in the US or urban Mexico, but I’m slowly figuring out where to find things in the mercado; I suspect that when we are no longer here, I’ll also feel “off” without having access to the mercado. ⁣ ___________⁣ #guatelife #antiguaguatemala #guatemala🇬🇹 #mercadodeantigua #mercado #locationindependent #travelphotography #sacatepequez
  • If you ask me to take your photos, I might ask you to take one back. So, thanks to the cute couple who took this—I hope yours turned out great, too! ☺️ This is the classic Antigua photo, but you can’t see the volcano every day. The air has been clearer this week, and the views have been incredible. So thankful to be living where there are such amazing views every day! ⁣ ________⁣ #guatelife #antiguaguatemala #womenwhotravel #locationindependent #arcodesantacatalina #yesiusuallywearblack #womenwhowearblack #quechilero
  • Volcanoes for days. Antigua, Guatemala is surrounded by four volcanoes, so it’s fairly likely that they’ll show up in my photos often. I’m looking forward to hiking one sometime soon, too. It’s also fairly likely that Kyrie will be wearing this dress in photos—she loves her dresses, but especially this blue one. ____________ #guatelife #guateever #travelwithkids #locationindependentfamily #volcandefuego #volcandeagua #antiguaguatemala #worldschooling #thirdculturekids
  • New school, language school, new country, new clients, new schedules, new friends, new goals, new books. That’s how we’ve filled our recent weeks of the new year, and the time transitioning from January to February. Our kids are loving their new school at Antigua Green school, and hopefully soon we will all speak a little more Spanish, too. _____________ #travelwithkids #worldschooling #locationindependentfamily #antiguaguatemala #guatelife #antiguagreenschool
  • Beautiful Antigua market basked in the end of day’s light. ______________ #antiguaguatemala #guatemala🇬🇹 #guatelife #guatelinda #mercadosdeguatemala #travelphotography

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