MARRIAGE AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY AUDIO BOOK: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
MARRIAGE AND OTHER
ACTS OF CHARITY
AN AUDIO BOOK
WRITTEN BY KATE BRAESTRUP
READ BY KATE BRAESTRUP

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Kate Braestrup has been married and widowed, betrayed and betrothed, her personal spirituality constantly evolving along the way. How do God and love figure in our everyday lives and bonds with others? In MARRIAGE, AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY, she tackles these big questions with stories from her own relationships--romantic and familial, platonic and professional--much as Anne Lamott weaves her spirituality through her tales of parenthood. With the same compassion and warmth that made Here If You Need Me a New York Times bestseller, Braestrup engages readers fully, regardless of their path in life. She tells us about teaching sex education for her daughter's eighth-grade class, and the welcome embrace extended toward her adopted nephew from Africa. She introduces the essential concept that charity--the key to all relationships--is a whole-hearted selfless emotion, which is but a hint of God's immense devotion. Kate Braestrup's very human outlook gives anyone seeking to understand human relationships a fresh perspective on what it is to love and be loved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Braestrup's novel Onion was published by Viking in 1990, and she has since published a series of magazine articles in Mademoiselle, Ms., City Paper, Hope and Law and Order. She lives in Maine.

REVIEW:

Kate Braestrup is a minister and in her work, she counsels people on marriage. I have to say that I wasn't sure if this would be a book I would take to as at first look, a minister talking about making marriages work? Could that be a thrill ride or a dull read? Well, the audio book format is what saved this book for me. In the book, Kate Braestrup will have you laughing one minute and crying the next. This is HER memoir and there is much about her life and loves and what she learned about them to pass on to others.

She writes the book as a series of essays that include her two marriages (the first that ended in tragedy in case you didn't read her first book HERE IF YOU NEED ME), as well as a serious relationship between the two. She goes into details about what worked and didn't in all of her relationships. There are also the other couples' stories. There is a couple planning their wedding and on the opposite end of the spectrum is another man who finds his marriage is falling apart. She deals with how to start a marriage all the way to how to end one. In between she has advice on how to put up with things in a marriage as well as how to do things to make it better. The key she believes is in charity. She feels that when we give selflessly of ourselves, we will learn what we need to do to really love and have that love returned to us. While that is certainly something I agree with, I am not sure I needed to be told that BUT perhaps others will look at that differently.

I do think the one thing I took away most from this book is the stark reality in which she discusses that all marriages will end in one way or another. And if the marriage ends due to the death of a partner, she discusses that and shares how difficult that is and how brave people have to be to love someone to begin with when we all know that at some point this can and will happen to one of the partners. Braestrup does give us a very unique way of going on and what to do next. I thought of friends who have been through this and how this would be a good book for them to read but really even better to read, anticipate and plan for, before we lose a partner.

I enjoyed this book as an audio book as it seemed to sink in better hearing Kate read her own words to me. I don't think I would have stuck with the book if I was doing the reading even though it is entertaining in parts, it wasn't really a book I would have taken to but with the audio, it was easy to listen in parts and get something out of it with minimal effort.

AN AUDIO BOOK GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO ANNA AND THE
HACHETTE BOOK GROUP FOR
SPONSORING THIS GIVEAWAY,
I HAVE 3 COPIES OF THIS AUDIO
BOOK TO GIVE AWAY TO YOU!

RULES:
**U.S. AND CANADIAN RESIDENTS ONLY
**NO P.O. BOXES, PLEASE
**MUST INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
**ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO COUNT

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: GO TO KATE BRAESTRUP'S WEBSITE HERE AND READ ABOUT HER. THEN COME BACK AND TELL SOMETHING INTERESTING THAT YOU FOUND OUT ABOUT HER.

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT IF YOU ALREADY ARE A LOYAL FOLLOWER OF ANY KIND AND WHERE/HOW

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND COME BACK HERE WITH THE LINK

ALL ENTRIES MUST BE IN
BY 6 PM, EST, FEBRUARY 18

GOOD LUCK TO ALL!