My reading buddy

Will has turned into quite the bookworm over the last several months. He loves climbing into our laps to read a favorite book. 

These pictures are from a few days ago. Emma actually fell asleep during her rest time, so Will and I had some nice snuggle and book time together.

He was all about pointing out the different animals, and especially the train.

Then he migrated to my lap

Who's that in the mirror? (Will says, "Will!")

Book List

Its been several months since I did a little recap of the books I've read, so I'll try to be brief.

Fiction favorites:

The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy - A fun little book, the story of Pride and Prejudice from the viewpoint of Mr. Darcy.

Unnatural Death - Another Lord Peter Wimsey novel, this one was my favorite so far!

Jane Eyre - I can't believe I had never read this great classic. I loved it. Long, but a really wonderful story.

Thorn In My Heart - The first novel in a series of historical fiction set in late 1700s Scotland. Its a retelling of the Biblical account of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.

NonFiction Favorites:

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard - A fascinating book that Martin and I read aloud to each other. There was an unusually large number of people born deaf in the early years of Martha's Vineyard settlement. No one considered these deaf handicapped, rather, everyone learned sign language as a result of communicating with the deaf in their community.

Pour Your Heart into It - The 1999 story of Starbucks by Howard Schultz. Really interesting stuff about coffee and business. I'm looking forward to reading the new book Onward sometime next year.

Miniatures and Morals - The Christian novels of Jane Austin. Leithart analyzes each of Austin's novels, pulling out the Christian implications of her writing. His opening remarks about "real men read Austin" are superb ("The mere fact that her novels give men an opportunity to see romance through the eyes of an uncommonly perceptive woman should be enough to recommend them.")

Honey for a child's heart - A fantastic book about the importance of books and reading to children. The second half of the book is an extensive annotated book list broken down by age, starting with picture books.

The Money Saving Mom's Budget - This book is released in January, I was given an advance copy to review. Lots of great stuff, not only about managing your money well, but also managing your time, cutting clutter (both physical and mental), and being content with what you have. I'm giving away a copy on Thrifty Living (ends 12/9).

Book List: Through August

I've read some great books lately! Here are a few of my favorites...

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery: The first book in a series about an 11-year-old chemist (who specializes in poisons) and helps the police solve mysteries in her small English town after World War II. These books are hilarious and great mysteries! I've also read the second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, and I am currently reading the third, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

I really liked Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a book about a Chinese-American with a Japanese-American best friend during WWII in Seattle. The book started a little slow, but I fell in love with it a few chapters in.

A re-read from last year that I just finished was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I love this book! Its written completely as letters, which is really different than most books. This is another post-WWII book (apparently I read a lot from that time period!).

Non-fiction favorites over the last few months are Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches, and Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches. Adopted for Life is a wonderful book about the spiritual and theological meaning of adoption as well as practical and physical adoption here on earth. Loving the Little Years is the most practical book about parenting small children that I have ever read! It is 20 short chapters, perfect for reading when you only have 5 minutes at a time. I've read it twice in 2 months and it has changed how I think about and prepare for our day-to-day life.

That's all for now! I love getting new book recommendations, and I can't plug Goodreads enough. Its totally free and a great way to see what your friends are reading and get recommendations for new books.

Book List: through May

I've not done a great job recording my books here, but I am still in love with Goodreads! It is such an easy way to keep track of the things you are reading.

Last time my favorites were all non-fiction, and I was struggling to find some fiction that I really enjoyed. I've since discovered a new favorite author - Dorothy Sayers. She was a contemporary of Lewis and Tolkien, and wrote some fascinating thoughts on education in The Lost Tools of Learning. I've really gotten hooked on her detective stories though. Her characters are delightful and the stories are masterfully crafted and full of twists. So far I've read Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness.

I also really enjoyed reading Men of Iron, by Howard Pyle. This was a re-read in that my mom read it aloud to us when I was homeschooled, but I had forgotten most of the story. I love the way Pyle writes about the nature of boyhood and the transformation of a boy becoming a man.

I also found a great book about bread-making, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. We have really enjoyed this bread - it reminds me of the bread they serve at Carrabba's! I'm not doing as much bread baking now that its so hot since the oven needs to be on for about an hour at 450!

Any great recommendations for books?

Books

It's no secret that one of my favorite things to do is read! I really wish I had kept better track of books that I have read in my life. Last year I did a pretty good job of keeping a list updated, and I've added all those books to the "books" tab right under the header of the blog.

This year I am doing way better about not only keeping track of what I read, but also writing a few sentences about each book. I'm using Goodreads to keep things organized, and I'm loving it. I have the app on our iPod touch which makes it really simple. Goodreads is free and you can find your friends via Facebook or email who are also on Goodreads...you should come find me! Its a great way to get recommendations for new books.

My favorites from this year so far have been Choosing to SEE: A Journey of Struggle and Hope (by Mary Beth Chapman, Steven Curtis Chapman's wife....AMAZING!), Same Kind of Different As Me (a true story), and Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just (by Tim Keller). I've read some fiction, but none that has made my "favorites" list at this point...gotta get to work on that!

Cozy Corner

Emma is loving her new floor reading pillows that Aunt Becca and Omi made her for Christmas!

She sat in her room and read by herself for a good half an hour this morning. What a bookworm!

August Book List

I started off August by finishing the Han Solo trilogy. These books were really fun to read, especially since this last book ends right where Episode IV (A New Hope) begins. If Lucas had only let Ms. Crispin work on the dialogue for the prequels, they would have been so much better!









As part of BookSneeze, I was given a copy of this new Anne Bradstreet biography to read and review. I am still working on the review post, but I did really enjoy the book. I am not into poetry as a general rule, but a few of her poems were assigned in high school, and I have loved her ever since. I especially liked that this book gave background information about the situation for Puritans like Anne who were new to America, and that Anne was able to accomplish so much writing while taking care of her family, her many children, and often in poor health herself!





I listened to this John Grisham book on cd, which is great because I am able to do dishes, clean up, and cross-stitch while listening to the story. This was not one of my favorites by Grisham, except for the ending, which I found to be unique and perfect. One of the main characters has what I would consider to be a fairly legitimate conversion experience in the book as well, which was very interesting to read.









The Hunger Games was on the summer reading list for many schools in the area, and I really enjoyed it! Its youth fiction, so it goes by very quickly and easily. I can see this book becoming the new generation's version of Lord of the Flies or 1984. The author has woven such a compelling story that is full of political issues that are relevant today. I would not be surprised to have this assigned in a Political Science class at the collegiate level at some point too.








I got this book from the library to read to Emma (which we have done), but I ended up sitting in bed and reading the whole thing one Sunday afternoon. It was so much fun to read through all of the Curious George stories in a row and exciting that Emma is old enough now to begin to enjoy them too!









Read any good books lately??

Book List: July

I've been meaning to get up my book list from July, but I'm just now getting to it! July is full of my eclectic taste in books:

I can't wait until Emma is a little older and I can read this book out loud to her! It is one of my favorites by Jane Austin, and I love how it is full of great examples for girls (and women) in their relationships with men. I think Jane Austin captures this better than just about any author, while still writing a wonderful fiction piece.

A few years back I read Creators , which has a chapter on Jane Austin. She never wrote a conversation that happened between two men (or what a man was thinking) because as a woman she believed she would not be able to capture it accurately. Its interesting to notice this while reading her, especially as a man relates his thoughts to a woman (thus allowing the woman to find out what he was thinking).







Martin and I were given this book while at the NEXT conference over Memorial Day weekend, and I just got around to it this month. This was a simple, easy to read book, but full of many gems that I was able to mull over throughout the days.











I had never read this Han Solo trilogy before, and Martin told me how much he thought I would like it...I did finish the third book, but I figured I would leave that until August since the months changed while reading. I really loved this series! It captured the spirit of the original Star Wars movies and added details that only true Star Wars fans can completely appreciate (including explaining how the Millinium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parscecs when parsceces is a distance of measure, not a time!)

This is a bit much...

Now I'm a big fan of Pride and Prejudice (the book first and foremost, but also the long-enough-to-be-mostly-true-to-the-book mini-series/movie), and I've even asked Martin what he thought about the middle name of Darcy for our yet to be born son, but I would not wear a shirt with Darcy's proposal, no matter how eloquent it is...


But if that's your thing, I won't judge (actually I will, but I'll try to keep it a secret! lol).



(via 22words)

Book List: June

I read some really interesting books this past month, so I thought I would share them, along with a few of my thoughts. You can also "look inside" each book by following the links to Amazon. Sometimes its nice to get to read a few pages, even with someone's recommendation.


I enjoy a great deal of C. S. Lewis's books. Till We Have Faces probably does not make my top 5 Lewis books, at least after the first reading. I think a lot of it just went over my head, but that I would get a lot more out of it on a second reading. I'm going to wait a year or so and then dive back in, I think.










I really enjoyed reading this book! Its the story of a man whose father was one of the 7 founders of Hamas, but converted to Christianity. His life changed so drastically, and the book is basically the history of growing up in a devout Muslim family, being imprisoned as a terrorist, working undercover in Hamas as a spy for Israel (thus thwarting many terrorist activities), and then converting to Christianity. He has so much insight on what has been happening in the Middle East over the last 50 years or so, and the book is well worth a read. Just yesterday the United States government dropped a deportation hearing against Mosab and has granted him asylum in the US (read more in this article).





I've enjoyed a number of John Grisham books over the last year and half, and while this was not my favorite, it was very good. I usually get them on audio book from the library, which is how I read The Last Juror. This one is set in Ford County, Mississippi during the 1970s and has some interesting commentary on small town life, Vietnam, and especially the penal system. I also enjoyed that it was hard to tell exactly where the book was going, as the "main" story (the trial) ended around a third of the way through the book.







And finally, I just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society yesterday. This is one of my new favorite books! It is entirely fictional letters written in the aftermath of World War II, and really reminded me of a Jane Austin novel, just set in the more modern era. Because it is made up of letters, many of which are just a few sentences long, it was easy to pick up and read just a few pages...but also easy to keep reading long after a few pages had passed! This is another one that I will plan to read again. It would make a great beach book for the summer too!

2010 Book List

Last year I managed to keep track of all the books I read pretty well, but this year I was hoping to do a little better. I recently added an Amazon widget on the right of the blog that has all of the books that I've read so far this year. I'm hoping this will help me to really keep track of them and keep me motivated to read, read, read!

I am always open to recommendations, so if you have suggestions, let me know!

Bookworm

Little munchkin is already taking after Mommy and Daddy - she loves books! But recently she has found her favorite place to read....

Some really good books

I just finished two great books this past week.

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card is a science fiction book, which I listened to on cd. More well known by Card is Ender's Game, a book that I read (or rather listened to) last year. In the author's introduction to ES he calls this book a "paradoxical" to EG in that it is a stand-alone book that is also a sequel. It tells the same story as EG, but from the point of view of a different character. The story is about children who go to Battle School to learn the art and techniques of intergalactic warfare in order to defend Earth from invasion by the Buggers. You get to see into the minds of the children in the story, which helps to make this interesting even for those who are not usually fans of science fiction (or so I have been told). I highly recommend both Ender books (and from some research I have found that there are many others which I will be looking into reading in the coming months!). These books are really good to listen to because they have such vivid images and characters. Card talks about a possible film adaptation for these books in his comments following the story, but adds that he thinks the best way to enjoy the Ender story is an audio performance.

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller is a short (130 pages) book written by a pastor in New York city about the parable of the Prodigal Son (which he says should really be the Two Lost Sons). Since this was such a short book, I knew I would be inclined to breeze through it quickly, so I forced myself to read a chapter at a time, then re-read and digest what was being said.

In seven concise chapters Keller explains the message of the gospel in easy to understand language through the characters in Jesus's parable. He calls God "prodigal" because the definition of prodigal is "recklessly extravagant"; God is recklessly extravagant in showing His love, mercy, and forgiveness to sinful people. Keller redefines sin by pointing out that there is obvious sin (like that of the wayward younger son) and less obvious sin (like that of the proud and arrogant older son). He redefines lostness by contrasting those who know that they are lost (and perhaps believe that God will not forgive them) and those who do not know that they are lost (and often believe that they have no need for God's forgiveness because of their good works). He redefines the elder brother in the story to show that Jesus Christ is our perfect brother (since Christians are co-heirs with Christ) and that He did what the older brother in this story would not -- He came to seek and save the lost. Keller also redefines hope; our hope in home will always disappoint here on earth because our ultimate home is heaven. Only there will our hope be made complete.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

C.S. Lewis

A great deal

I love libraries. Where I grew up in Howard County, MD, we had a great public library, and I loved our weekly trips there while I was homeschooled. When we moved to Middletown, one of the first things I did was find the public library. I couldn't believe how small it was! The children's section at my old library was probably 4 times as big as the whole Middletown library.

Since then, the library has moved to a larger location, which is nice, but it is still relatively small. In order to get books and movies that I want, I usually order them from a different library in the Delaware system. I do this so much in fact, that several of the librarians ask me if I'm picking up when I come in now! All this to say that I make frequent trips to pick up my ordered things, often going more than once a week. When I was at the library earlier this week I looked quickly over the For Sale rack and noticed these:

Its the Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker, but not the books; its the audiobooks. I couldn't believe it-these are some of my favorite books, and audiobooks are really really expensive (and these particular ones were not in the DE library system cause I checked a few months ago). But alas, on that particular trip I had no money with me, so I figured someone else would snatch them up by the time I got back.

THEN, when I went back to the library yesterday, I brought my wallet in, but anticipated that they would be gone. Happily, the audiobooks were still there, and I grabbed them! For $2 each, I now own all three of these audiobooks (which would be at least $50 had I bought them elsewhere)! I am very excited. Martin and I read the trilogy together last summer, so I may wait a little while before listening to it, but I'm making them available on loan if anyone else is interested in the meantime!

Kiss

I finished (well started and finished) a really great book this weekend, even with all of our sickliness: Kiss (subtitled She steals more than your heart).

Ted Dekker is one of my favorite authors, and I reserved his newest book at the library about 3 months before it was released. This was a great book! (Granted, I almost always think that about his books) Many of his books are woven together in complex ways that make them confusing sometimes, but this was a stand-alone mystery novel, and I highly recommend it.

Now I'm left waiting until September for his next book to be released!