By Faith, Not by Sight

The inspirational story of a blind prodigy, a life-threatening illness

& an unexpected gift.

by Scott MacIntyre

Scott was born blind, but his parents treated him like a normal child and gave him the same opportunities they would have given any other child and taught him to act the way a sighted person would. He grew up listening to music and his family received a piano before his first birthday; he was captivated from day one. At 3, he began piano lessons and after a few lessons had learned all the notes and his teacher realized that he had perfect pitch. By the time he was 7, he was accomplished enough to be hired to play the keyboard in a wedding ceremony. He was homeschooled until age 14 when he took his SATs and scored high enough to get into college. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of music in piano performance 5 year later, and discovered that day that he had stage four renal failure. Amazingly, he was able to travel to university in England that fall. He eventually had a kidney transplant because of a friend's incredible gift, and went on to be a contestant on American Idol where he made the top 8 and realized his dream of inspiring thousands of people.

What a fascinating story! This is a great book about overcoming almost impossible odds. Scott's story teaches to never give up, God can use the people around you to help you through any difficulty.

There were a few grammatical errors: on page 38, it says, "If I gave into fear...," but should say "in to" instead; on the next page, I thought "Running without abandon..." should be "with abandon" instead; and on page 183, he talks about wanting to "build back up to the notoriety I once had," and I thought "notoriety" was a poor word choice because of its negative connotation.

Disclaimer: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

From this moment on

by Shania Twain

This Canadian girl was born into a poor family in the northern Ontario town of Timmins. She had a difficult childhood in which violence was common and enough food to eat was rare. In spite of it, she became the world's best-selling country singer. She describes a lot of what goes on behind the scenes and shares her desperate grief when her parents died when she was 21 and then when her marriage ended 21 years later.

While I'm not a big country fan, I found Shania's story very interesting and I even listened to a few of the songs she mentioned in the book. I did find one mistake: on page 202, she talks about hunting "Ontario forest foul" instead of fowl. She also says 3 or 4 times that she has been a vegetarian for 18 years; once would probably have been enough. I don't mean to be picky though; it was a pretty good book.

Edited to add: In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that there is some pretty crude language and bad situations in this book that some may find offensive.