You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender. This week, Dan encourages

us to plan summer reading that's not just escape or distraction, but that invites us to engage our

deepest questions and to ponder rich, compelling stories. His first recommendation is Survivor

Cafe, a vivid look at generational trauma and how we tell the stories that we have no language for.

Likely, wherever you are, it's getting warmer and the sun brighter.

And indeed, the day is a bit longer.

And so it's time to talk about summer reading.

This very important part of anyone's life, what you read in the summer, I think in some ways comes to define a bit about what you will,

what you will ponder during those lulls and what you will anticipate even as you move

into the remainder of the summer and the coming fall.

So I'm going to do two book reports, two books that I most desire for you to consider as part

of your summer reading.

Before I do so, I think it's fair to ask what the criteria that matters to me and what I will be using as a means of determining what books I would most recommend.

In some ways, I think it's crucial to know that you need a good story. You need a kind of movement of a plot,

whether it's fiction or nonfiction, that just plain and simple grips you. And frankly,

for me, the truer the story, the more it just brings goosebumps as I read it. Second of all, I need a book that

will cut through something of the complexity of life and bring me into the questions that I think

I most ask questions of, is there goodness?

Can anyone truly be trusted?

What does it mean to live well?

So I need to have a book that brings me, frankly, to tears, to anger, at least first and foremost.

In some sense, over time, to a sense of both horror and

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