Books, books, books

With my particular temperament, I find reading a good book to be somewhat frustrating. Being a people-person-supreme, I can't read a quotable quote without wanting to share it. My poor husband has been the recipient of many impromptu, animated, downright passionate, though unwanted, book reviews. What he doesn't realize is that all he has to do is agree to read the book, and I will leave him alone. With my friends, all I have to do is give them a brief blurb with highest acclaim, and they willingly borrow and read it for themselves.

My children, most of them, anyway, have grown into avid readers themselves. From earliest childhood they were my captive audience for read-alouds. Poor Jim wasn't allowed to substitute for me at story time because he didn't have the right "voice" for the different characters. Yes, read-alouds became an outlet for my dramatic tendencies. It's no surprise that I selected a literature-based curriculum, Sonlight (which I've mentioned here various times before), for home educating my family.

Books are some of our favorite family "friends." In fact, I thought is was cute when Tim and Heidi first came down to Mexico as newlyweds, he came over and took a stack of books for his new wife to read. After all, isn't it natural to want the love of your life to meet your friends and share in your adventures?

Today I am faced once again with the challenge of squeezing in all the new books I brought down from the states. Each year I box up the books from the previous year, and then bring out the ones for the new school year. Even though home schooling can get old after a while (after all, I'm now teaching fifth grade for the seventh time around!), I never tire of the same good books.

Okay, so before I organize the shelves and write out the kids' assignments for next week, I'll give you a short list of books I've read recently. This is something my friend, Laura, from the last post, and I do regularly. Some of these titles actually came from her lists.

Remember, all you have to do is agree to read them and I won't bore you with a long book review, okay? Just kidding.

I'm currently reading:

Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas (Jim will be hearing a lot about this one, smile)
The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood, by Sears
My Heart's Cry, by Anne Graham Lotz
The Secret, by Beverly Lewis
Satisfy My Thirsty Soul, by Linda Dillow (the speaker at the Women of the Harvest retreat in July)

(I seldom read one book at a time!)

Recent books:
The Rescue, by Nicholas Sparks (interesting because the main character's son apparently has Apraxia, like our Debbie, though it's never labeled as such)
The Man with a Bird on his Head, by Rush Anderson (an intriguing missionary story)
God Speaks Adventures Follow, by Wayne Crooke, the husband of one of my Sonlight e-maginary forum friends in Asia
A couple of others I can't remember titles for, since I borrowed them and returned them

So, what are you reading? What do you recommend? I'm ready to start a new Amazon wish list.





Here are the two bookcases in front of me, used as a room divider between the bedroom and family room. The second photo is from the other side looking back. This bookcase is back-to-back with the one in my room. This is still only a fraction of the books in every corner of every room in the house.

They say you should never love anything that can't love you back, but I confess, I LOVE BOOKS!