Raehink: May Reading

I'm really pleased that Annie is taking the opportunity to read Mere Christianity with her Hinesville book group. It's a wonderful read. Kind of tough in spots to work through, but filled with little nuggets of gospel truth. Musing about C.S. Lewis got me thinking about our group...

So...For the month of May, your assignment is to read a non-LDS religious book of some sort. I'm hoping you'll choose something non-fiction, but there's plenty of good religious fiction out there to dabble in if that makes you more apt to read along with us. Most good libraries have booklists of religious fiction.

The subject matter is up to you...Browse through the religion shelves (200s) at your local library if you have no idea what to read. I'm sure you'll find something interesting and worthwhile. It can be quite rewarding to look for gospel principles and truths in literature about/from other faiths.

Just to give you an idea of how wide this subject matter can be, here are some titles on my shelves (I will be choosing from one of these):

• From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith (White)
• Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up: A New Look at Today's Evangelical Church in the Light of Early Christianity (Bercot)
• Eating Your Way Through Luke's Gospel (Karris)
• The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha
• Confessions (St Augustine)
• The Whimsical Christian (Dorothy Sayers)
• What is a Jew? (Kertzer)
• Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit (Rosenblum)
• The Joyful Christian (C.S. Lewis)
• Pontius Pilate (Wroe)
• Luther (Oberman)
• Catholic Customs and Traditions (Dues)
  

If I have that many on my limited religious shelves, imagine what titles your library will have!

This will give me a much needed chance to read something from my own shelves. And hopefully, each of you will find something unique to share with us. Annie, you can count Mere Christianity for this group, if you'd like. Like I make up the rules...

I know this is a long post, but I want you ladies to know how much I enjoy reading about your reading! It keeps us in touch with each other, but it does so much more for me. I haven't found anyone in Payson (other than Maren and thank goodness for her!) who enjoys to read like I do. Sometimes I long to just sit down with someone and talk books! Knowing what you are reading allows me to do that vicariously! So, thanks.

And for anyone who might be interested in what books I take the time to read, I have started a book blog. It's nothing remarkable. In fact, it's really just a more personal extension of my Goodreads reviews. Take a look if you are so inclined.

www.raehink.blogspot.com

And, as always...

Happy reading!

suggestion from Annie Delight

One of the many out of our stack was Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini and Illustrated by Howard Fine. Both the story and pictures were so great! I really had fun with this one! A witch wants to eat piggie pie but she has no pigs, so she goes to a farm to get some. All the pigs disguise themselves as other farm animal and the witch gets angrier and angrier. At the end she meets the big bad wolf and lets say they both had different ideas as to what they could have for lunch since they were both unsuccessful in finding the piggies! Lulu I think your children would love this one!

Annie Delights March and April reads, even though Annie Delight doesnt feel like reading!!

For those of you who don’t know Ro, my Hub left on Feb 25th for Iraq. Wanting to stay in the spirit of reading during all my stress I chose to read Mama Rock’s Rules for the March read. It is a great book on parenting tips, full of comedy, written by the comedian Chris Rock’s mother. My Rachel bought it for me a while ago and I am sorry to say that I still have not read it. Not that I don’t enjoy it, actually the complete opposite! I love everything she says and I want to be able to digest it all. Needless to say amidst all the moving and packing, and craziness the book got set down and never got picked back up….
Once I had time again to read I was not in the mood for ANYTHING!! I eventually picked up Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Its not the best, or most appropriate but I was drawn in by the fiction of it all. Vampires exist, and have recently become legal members of society (main streaming). They survive off synthetic blood made in China. The main character, Sookie Stackhouse, a young naïve, old fashioned waitress falls in love with a vampire. Kinda silly I know but there was nothing to sad, to serious, to boring, it just was awesomely fictional! There are a couple of intimate sense which I just skipped over but other than that I had fun reading it!
And then here came April! I’m still feeling kinda blah and really had no desire to read anything. I kinda took the easy way out this month… or so I thought! I was very excited to support my local library seeing that I am in my home town and would not only need to get a library card for me, but could also get Lanycia her first library card!! What a better way to show support!! Once we had our cards in hand we headed over to the youth section. I had already decided that I would pick something short and easy for this month, but still had nothing in mind.
I went straight to the non-fiction section and found A Family From Iraq by John King. PERFECT! An easy non-fiction, a topic that Lany needs to hear about, with great pics so that Lany could have an idea of what “Iraq” was. It was published in 1998 so it does talk about Saddam Hussein, and the father in the book works for the Iraqi Army, but the book showed the individuals of the family and what they eat, where they sleep, work, and what they do for fun. I think everyone should read this to their children. It might help to visualize a positive for Iraq in such an uncomfortable time.
Lanycia and I both picked out a stack of fictions that I have been reading to the children at night but my favorite so far has been There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System (Cat In The Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe I totally want to but this book! It broke down the solar system in a fun, cat in the hat way! I also got Little House In The Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My Mom has the whole box set and I was interested but this one was missing. I have been reading it to Lanycia.
Now here’s when I really didn’t get off so easy. My ward in Hinesville started a book group! I really want to participate because I miss them so much! The first months book was already picked and it is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I of course had the privilege of returning to my library so that I could check it out. They had three copies, the first one was due May 07 and never returned, the second was returned with sever damage and the third was also returned with damage. I requested a copy from another Library and I am just waiting for the call. I am excited to read it mostly because this will be my first book group book where the titles a picked for me. I will let you know how it goes!

ANNIE

P.S. If you would like to write or send a care package, here is Ro’s address:
SSG William Y.R. Taylor
3rd Platoon
FOB Normandy
APO AE 09362

Lynness- April read: supporting my local library

    I have to say that we have a pretty good library system (well, I don't have much to compare it to, but I think it's pretty good).  One thing I like is that there are shelves near the front of each of the 9 or so branches that constantly change to display the newest adult fiction, adult non-fiction, young adult and juvenile additions to the library system's book collections (and there are HUNDREDS of new books each month spread over the branches, not to mention DVDs, etc.).  Since I don't get to browse a long time before my kids try and take off, I either have to know what I'm coming for or I just browse those.  I have found many interesting books, especially non-fiction, on topics I never would have looked up myself.  Case in point: SAND: The Never-ending Story, which I am almost done with.  Parts get a little long and technical, but other parts are utterly fascinating.  Did you know that there is a WHOLE lot that scientist still don't understand about something as simple as sand?  Or that sand, as a granular material often has the physical properties associated with liquids, unless you add about 10% or less of water to the mix, then it behaves more like a solid.  Anyway- that was on the "new books" shelf.
    The other thing that many branches have, somewhere near the front, is the "staff recommendations" shelf.  Supporting my local library was easy that way!  I picked up "The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune,and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden."  He arrived at said tomato cast by amortizing the cost of his garden over its productive life.  All I can say is that he spent a lot more putting that garden in than I ever could or would spend: a professional landscape designer, heavy-duty equipment for terracing a hill and building beds, an in-ground irrigation system, etc, etc.  So while my tomatoes won't cost near what his did, I can feel his pain in many of the chapters!!
    I also read another staff pick: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was compelling because it was told as if a record of an actual event being written by an autistic boy.  I don't know how accurate the author's representation of the thoughts and feelings and motivations of an autistic teen are, but they were pretty convincing to me.  I enjoyed the book, but had to grimace through frequent repetition of favorite British profanities.
    I read The Departure Lounge, a true account about a woman caring for her aged mother who likes too much to drink, has a fall, and ends up hitting her head a little hard and going a little nuts.  Then add her mother's second husband, who was always a little weird, who turns out to have Alzheimer's, and you have a recipe for disaster when the medical community won't declare either of them incompetent, so although she tries to get them into a care facility (the author lives in Canada and the aged couple in NJ or somewhere close to that) or to stop sending all their money to every scammer that calls or mails, etc. she can't really do anything about it.  It starts well, but I was just glad to get it over by the time I was through.
    Finally, I don't remember which shelf I got The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society from, (help- I can't get italics off...it says it is, but it's obviously not...) ANYWAY, it was either new books or staff picks, but I haven't read it yet.  I did open it and see that it's written in the form of letters back and forth, which I'm not sure if I like.  Sometimes it works very well, but it's often annoying.  I haven't gotten to it because Spring Break ended and I have seminary lessons again to prepare every day.  I enjoyed having so much reading time and having Isaiah home and having a different kind of schedule (especially sleeping in until 6:30!! Oh yeah!)

Lulu: My personal library & April read

Hello, everybody! (read that in Grover's voice)

I have quite a few books on my shelves that are unread. It makes me blush a little every time I look at my shelves--because I think about half of them (so about 250) are unread. So for my book choices this month, I decided to pick something from my own "library". (Add to this fact that I recently bought a book from Wal-mart and read it, wanting to finish and see the ending, but finished annoyed by its actual "meat". Total waste of time.)

I'm reading The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini). I wasn't sure if I was ready for it, but I read the first half-page and was immediately hooked. I'm in chapter four now and reading it aloud to Phill. Just these first 23 pages have really stuck with me. That is to say I'm still thinking about what I'm reading, even when I'm doing dishes or typing this or changing diapers or sitting still doing nothing. I think I'm in need of a book like that; I've been reading pretty light lit for a while and I probably need to ask more of myself. I like having books that have shaped who I am, at least in some way. Sometimes I'm just not brave enough to seek them out.

For my other book choice, I'm reading--well, finishing--The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (Terry Ryan). I don't remember if I mentioned it (here) when I first started reading it a couple of months back. I was reading it aloud to Phill, we were both really enjoying it, we were halfway through, and then I stopped. I think life got in the way. It might have been December that I started. So now I'm finishing.

I'm also reading (in a reference, few-pages-at-a-time way) Parenting the Ephraim's Child: Characteristics, Capabilities, and Challenges of Children Who Are Intensely MORE (Deborah Talmadge and Jaime Theler). The title makes me laugh in a somewhat hysterical way. It is a book Abby has mentioned, and I've had another friend talk about it. I decided that I ought to give it a go, and I love what I've read so far.

Raehink: Regarding Outlander series

I have read all but one (the latest). I enjoyed them. They are long but quite engaging. I liked the whole premise of going back in time and falling in love with someone not in your time. The historical tidbits are accurate. Just know that there is some romance in there...not graphic really but definitely a romance. And sometimes it's as if the author is writing it all tongue-in-cheek. Give the first one a try. You can always put the book down. I thought they were amusing.

Abby: Anyone heard of this series and other tidbits about reading

Lately I haven't been reading as much as I usually do. But I have thought of the topic each month and even chosen books to read. Actually checking them out and reading them has been a different story.

Our ward book club is reading Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle this month so I've started that one and will hopefully finish it. Then maybe I'll watch the movie? So that fits the month we did books turned into movies. :)

I tried to start a series by Terry Goodkind, The Sword of Truth. I was sad that I ended up not wanting to finish it. I read about half of the first book. The story was a fun story and I would have loved to follow the series, but it was also really bloody/nasty whenever it came to battles or scenes with the bad guy. Oh well. Plenty more fish in the pond, right? :D

An acquaintance recently recommended Diana Gibaldi's Outlander series. Have any of you read it? Do you recommend it? I'd rather not waste my time if it's not worth it.

Mostly I've been reading tidbits of the scriptures, conference talks, Happiest Baby on the Block, A Beasty Story, Go Away Big Green Monster, and The Secret Garden. It's obvious where my time has been focused of late, isn't it?

Lynness- FYI on Baroness Emmuska Orczy

I was curious enough to look up why she turned to writing and it turns
out that they did have very little money, so she wrote to support her
family.
Her parents were Hungarian, and left the country during a peasant
revolt. She lived in several places but eventually London, where she
met her husband in a school of art. He was an illustrator and the son
of a clergyman: i.e.- not much money. So she wrote. She eventually
made enough money writing that they were eventually able to buy an
estate in Monte Carlo.
Anyway, just thought I'd share...