The Great American Read: Day 74 Left Behind

I have to be honest I was kinda surprised to see this book make the list.  Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins is one of the first modern fiction books I ever read.  I had no idea what to read as a Christian teen.  I didn't know what was good so I tended to stick to classics but they weren't always a favorite.  I also didn't REALLY like romance all that much and that seemed to be the only other Christian alternative.  This isn't to say I wasn't allowed to read other things I just didn't even know where to start when it came to choosing a book in the past.  To put it lightly, I was overwhelmed and painfully too shy to ask for help.  Enter in my first boyfriend's mom in 1998 who recommended The Left Behind Series.  As the books came out she gave them to me to borrow.  I was really hooked on these books and I was really into "End Times" because the world was "going to end" soon.  I read all the way up to Book Number 8 The Mark.  And when the world didn't end and I broke up with my boyfriend I felt a little cheated.  I got busy and never finished the last 4 books in the series.  But even as I discovered these books are VERY poorly written and pretty cheesy I thought maybe if I found all of them at a used book sale some day I would read them all for a laugh and for fun.  Ironically this was the year I thought I might finally finish the series until I started The Great American Read summer project I set for myself.  I found almost all the books at the big sale and I found the last 3 I needed at Goodwill so now I have to complete set.  I recently reread Left Behind and had fun making notes about the outdated technology. 






So this book is based on the theological idea that the "rapture" will take place and all the Christians will be taken up to heaven and the rest of the people will be left to deal with the mess and try to figure out God, Jesus and the Bible basically alone.  It follows a pilot named Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, a journalist named Buck Williams, Hattie Durham former airline stewardess, and for the most part, their pastor.  If the books weren't cheesy enough they also made for some VERY corny movies.  I am honestly not sure what I believe about the rapture any more, but it certainly isn't this.  I didn't know this was a popular enough book to make it onto The Great American Reads List.  So now I have extra excuse to read it because I was already a little embarrassed to be reading them.

 

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