The Reading Post/Challenge, Part 2 (The Books)

Posted on April 28, 2021April 29, 2021 by Amy

Okay, here it is. The post you’ve been waiting for. My 5X5 Reading Challenge books revealed! You’ve been on the edges of your seats waiting for this one I know since I posted Part 1 over two weeks ago. Drum roll please…

CATEGORY 1: Authors I Want to Love

I have lots authors I really love. Some of them would even be considered great authors by the literary world, like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Mitchell. Some are children’s book authors, like Jan Brett, Barb Rosenstock, and Patricia Polaco. Some are less well-known, like Louis de Wohl.

There are also many authors that are very much beloved by others I know and/or by the world in general that I just don’t love. Primarily because I have little to no exposure to them. Hence, this first category.

I’m just going to start right off the bat here with a huge confession. The first book on this list is by an author that I tried to read several years ago and just couldn’t get into. She is a beloved author by many, including some of my dearest friends. I tried to read the book that seems like her most popular. The one everyone loves. The one made into multiple movies/miniseries. Who is this author, you ask? What is this book? I know I’m going to hear it on this one. I’m a little afraid to admit my prior lack of affinity for her work. It’s (gulp) Jane Austen. The book? “Pride and Prejudice,” of course. I just really couldn’t get into the whole Mr. Darcy thing before. Happily, I already jumped into this one and absolutely loved it the second time around. In fact, my devouring of this gorgeous book is the reason it’s taken me so long to finish this post. So, now I’m a Jane Austen lover and have purchased all of her books for my Nook for only a couple bucks. See, this reading challenge is already working!!

The second in this category is Anne Bronte. I wanted to find a love of a Bronte, but I just am not interested in what I’ve tried to read or what I know about Charlotte or Emily. So… Anne. The third is John Steinbeck. I don’t know why “The Pearl” is the only story from my literature textbooks that I remember reading, but I think I must have liked it, so I’m going to try to acquaint myself a bit better with Mr. Steinbeck. Fourth – William Faulkner, um, just because. Fifth – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because I’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes mystery and I just want to! The books to go with the authors:

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

CATEGORY 2: Books I Should Have Read in School

My girls have some amazing books on their reading lists for school, both now and in the upcoming years (I like to look ahead). And while there is no curriculum that is going to cover all the great books in a K-12 education, they have lots of really good ones. And there sure are a lot I think I should have read in school. A few of them, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I’ve already read and enjoyed, and some, like “Catcher in the Rye,” I’ve read and thought were horribly overrated. I’m all about rounding out my paltry education, though so here is a category to address my lack (and most of the books from the first category could be in this one too).

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

CATEGORY 3: Books to Reread

These are all books I enjoyed the first time I read them, and I’m either reading them again to share with my girls (“Little Women” on audiobook, “Watership Down”), or just planning to reread for the enjoyment. I’ve found that rereading books I read as a kid/adolescent has been very interesting, and often my perception of them is completely different as an adult/mother. For example (*”Little Women” spoiler alert*), when I read “Little Women” as a child, and even reread it as an adolescent/young adult, I was devastated that Laurie and Jo did not end up together. I hated Amy for “stealing” the guy who should have married her sister. Listening to it now with my girls, they are having the same reaction to the Jo/Laurie/Amy drama that I had back then, but I am seeing it completely differently. I absolutely love Laurie and Amy together now, and I completely agree with Marmee that Jo and Laurie would not have been good together. This has shocked me, as Amy has gone from being my least favorite March sister to my probable favorite!!

Having this experience of changed impressions of some of my favorite books, I considered rereading some books I didn’t like the first time around to see if I might appreciate them upon revisiting. However, I quickly decided that one slog through “Anna Karenina” was enough in my lifetime, and thinking about rereading “Slaughterhouse-Five” makes me want to cry. So I’m sticking to previously loved stories for this category:

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
Watership Down – Richard Adams

CATEGORY 4: Catholic Books

I’m always reading Catholic books. I usually have at least one or two I’m working through at any given time. Here are five that I have in my lineup:

Fabiola or the Church of the Catacombs – Nicholas Patrick Wiseman
The Day is Now Far Spent – Robert Cardinal Sarah
Eucharistic Miracles and Eucharistic Phenomena in the Lives of the Saints – Joan Carroll Cruz
The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience – Christine Watkins
A Catholic Soul Psychology – Randolph Severson

CATEGORY 5: Books to Read Alongside my Kids

I mentioned that my kids are reading great books as part of their curriculum or sometimes what they choose to read for fun. I have found some great books by reading theirs. “The Wilderking Series,” “The Wingfeather Saga,” “Hatchet,” and “Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes” are just a few of the books I have loved through reading them with or to my kids. Honestly, I could probably write a lengthy post just about this, but I’ll narrow it down to only five for today, and keep it just to those books that I want to read for myself, not just those that I’m reading to my kids, since this challenge is supposed to help me to increase my grown up reading.

The Giver – Lois Lowry
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster – Jonathan Auxier (also the author of Peter Nimble)
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
Island of the Blue Dolphins – Scott O’Dell

So that’s it. I know it’s so dorky how much I’ve enjoyed planning my categories and books. If you’re a nerd too, I highly recommend it. I’ll give an update at the end of the year to let you know how it goes!

A Dorky Reading Post and a Challenge (part 1)

Posted on April 8, 2021April 29, 2021 by Amy

Disclaimer: This is a really nerdy post about books and reading. If if that’s not your thing, probably just skip this one.

I’ve written a lot about my love of reading to and with my kids (check out the “books” label in the Topics drop down menu on the right). As my girls get older and books get bigger, both in size and subject matter, I’m enjoying reading many books with them that I never read when I was younger.

I have come to realize that, though I have been an avid reader my whole life, there’s a whole lot of great literature I was never exposed to. I never read a single classic book all through my elementary, middle, and high school years. At the public school that I attended, in our literature classes we had textbooks. So we probably read excerpts from classic literary works, though I don’t really remember which ones (except randomly I recall “The Pearl” from elementary school). I took a Shakespeare class in high school during which we halfheartedly read through a few of the Bard’s plays (“Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest,” I think). In college, my poorly chosen “literature” class (or maybe it was a writing class?) was something having to do with “Women’s Studies,” and the only book I remember reading in that class was Paula Kamen’s “Feminist Fatale.” It was capital-A Awful. I took one European Literature class during a short summer session my senior year, in which I read Camus’ “The Plague,” Goethe’s “Faust,” and Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund.” You guys, Shakespeare aside, these are the only three classic works of literature that I read for a class in my entire school career. Three.

That’s not to say I never read good books on my own in my younger years. I did. “Little Women” and “Little Men.” “Anne of Green Gables” (the entire series). All of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. “Gone With the Wind” was a favorite. I read “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” at some point. Probably quite a few more. But nothing in school, and as I see all these amazing books that are popping up in our curriculum now, I’m so excited for the girls to read them.

As an adult, I have at various times made an effort to expand my reading horizons to include more excellent literature, rather than just the mass market suspense novels I blew through like crazy in my twenties. Here and there I have even had some success with this. I have mentioned in previous posts a list from Time Magazine of the best 100 English-language novels from 1923 (when Time Magazine began) to 2005 (when the list was published). I’m not all that sure that the list really includes any kind of true consensus of great literature from the time period it reflects (um, “Slaughterhouse-Five”????). It was compiled by just two Time Magazine writers, after all. But there are a lot of great titles on there, and it gave me a great place to start, so I set a goal at one point to read through those (I had read three of them when I started), and I managed to get through 17 of them. (For fun, check out the list here and see how many you’ve read. I would love to hear about them, as I am weirdly obsessed with this list for some reason. I’ll put mine at the bottom. And for extra fun, here’s another top 100 of all time to check out. I’ve only read 10 of those.)

Unfortunately, my efforts to read through the list books, and a lot of others pretty much fizzled out when homeschooling got more involved, and I started having to work a lot harder to find time to read for pleasure. I also began reading books related to helping me deepen my faith and my understanding of Catholicism, so what time I was finding for reading was mostly spent on titles in that area (I wrote a post about my favorite Catholic books back in 2016, and will do another updated one in the not too distant future).

Frankly, in the past few years I have been pretty bad at setting aside time for myself to read for pleasure.

So, to bring things full circle in my long-winded summary of my life as a reader, as I find that my children are reading great books for school that I have never read, I discover that I want to read them too. I want to get back to trying to read more great, classic literature again. I want to learn to appreciate some beloved authors, whom I’ve just never gotten into.

I want to be a reader again.

So, to that end, I’m starting a fun reading challenge for this year. It’s called the 5X5 Reading Challenge and it’s from the Schole Sisters blog/podcast. You can check it out here.

In a nutshell, you choose five categories of books, to give breadth to your reading (these can be subject matter, author, genre, or anything really), then choose five books for each category, to give depth to your reading. I’ve been having so much fun coming up with my categories and books! (I told you I’m a nerd.)

This post has already gotten too long with my possibly-annoying over-share of my lifetime of reading, so I’m not going to go into detail about all of the books I’ve chosen for my challenge, but big dork that I am, I will compose a post with excessive bookish detail very soon.

Here are the books I’ve read from the TIME list:

An American Tragedy

Animal Farm

Brideshead Revisited

Catch-22

The Catcher in the Rye

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Gone With the Wind

I, Claudius

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Lord of the Rings

1984

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Power and the Glory

Slaughterhouse-Five

The Sun Also Rises

Things Fall Apart

To Kill a Mockingbird

The ones in blue are the overlap with the Modern Library list. Which ones have you read?

For the Love of St. John…

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Amy

I just have to do a super quick share today. I recently got the book “Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family,” and have been poring over it and using so many ideas for liturgical year living already, just since getting it at the beginning of Advent (I highly recommend it!). One thing I love about it is that it was originally published in 1955, so the feasts and celebrations in the book are very traditional and come from a time before all the liturgical and calendar changes of the Church from the 60s/70s. As I’ve learned about lots of things in the past few years, it seems to me that many beautiful old traditions from our Faith have been lost to time and changes in the Church, and I love to learn about them and try to bring them back in our home.

One of these I learned about from the Von Trapp book is the celebration of the Feast of St.
John the Apostle. Tradition tells us that enemies of St. John gave him poisoned wine in an attempt to kill him, but when he made the sign of the cross over the wine, the cup split in half, spilling all the poisoned wine and saving him from drinking it. So, on his feast day (which was yesterday) many traditional churches have a wine blessing after Mass. I discovered that our parish was offering the wine blessing, so I went to Mass and got a bottle blessed (incidentally, most other, more seasoned people took many bottles/gallon jugs of wine for the blessing… next year I think I’ll take more than one bottle!). My main purpose in doing this was to have blessed wine for our St. John’s Blessing before dinner last night.

Here’s what we did, straight from Maria von Trapp’s book:

I poured a small glass of wine for everyone at the table old enough to be able to do the blessing as instructed (so not the two little boys!). The girls got no more than a tiny splash in their glasses, enough for two small sips. We told our kids about St. John and the poisoned wine and then my husband began the blessing. He turned to me and said, “I drink to you the love of St. John,” and I replied, “Thank you for the love of St. John.” We then clinked glasses and each took a sip. Then I turned to Miss (as the oldest child), and she and I did the same. Then she and Lass, and so on until Sis completed the circle by drinking “the love of St. John” to my husband. Then we sat down to eat, the girls got full glasses of sparkling blueberry juice, or “kids’ wine” as they call it, and we continued most of our dinner conversation discussing St. John.

It was a fun new tradition, and we will continue to do it every year.

On Reading to My Baby

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Amy

A couple of days ago, I had a moment of mom-panic. I realized in a rush, while looking at my son playing with the books I had placed in his playpen with him, that I had hardly read any books to him in his short life. He has books in his little area that he likes to chew on, but I had not sat down with him and actually cracked the cover to read said books to him.

I promptly pulled him onto my lap and read Where is Baby’s Bellybutton?, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and The Ear Book to him. Then I took him up to his room to grab some more books.

My son is almost nine months old. Yesterday I read Goodnight Moon to him for the first time.

Yes. You read that right. I was kind of horrified to realize my neglect of such an important thing.

We read aloud a lot here. Really. A. Lot.

Every day, I am reading aloud books to the girls for school. I sometimes read books over breakfast and/or lunch. We listen to audiobooks in the car. We have a family read aloud we do a chapter from almost every night before bed (currently working our way through the Chronicles of Narnia).

My dear little boy has heard many, many books read aloud. But until yesterday, I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t sitting down and reading just to him, the sweet board books that I read over, and over, and over to his sisters. They are all neatly lined up on his shelf in his bedroom. I hadn’t read any of them with him. My girls have read him a few, but not me.

I was recently feeling a little guilty because of thinking that my youngest daughter might be getting cheated a bit on picture books, since most of our read alouds these days are chapter books. We do still read picture books, just maybe not quite as much as we did when they were all littler, and none were quite ready for books like Redwall or Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

So I’ve been trying to bring in some more picture books for her benefit.

But her baby brother, bless his little heart, has really been neglected as far as reading goes.

And of course, he wasn’t the only one missing out. When I picked up Goodnight Moon yesterday and sat down to rock him while reading it before his nap, I felt like I had come home to the sweetest, most comfortable place… That old book, as annoying as it sometimes got after the tenth time in one night, brings back so many precious memories. Of course, I can still recite it by heart. Of course I still have the same tempo and inflection to my voice that I used every time before. Of course he grabbed the pages and tried to eat them, and I still powered through to the end.

“Goodnight noises everywhere.”

How many times have I read that? I had forgotten about the rip on the binding that makes the pages open funny on the “Goodnight Room” page. But I still knew every word and every illustration like the back of my hand. I think I could be eighty and still recite those favorite words.

And there are so many more favorite books that I haven’t read in years: I Love You Stinkyface. The Napping House. Dr. Seuss’s ABC.

Reading to my babies was always one of my very favorite things to do. It still is.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

A Summer Reading Adventure

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Amy

Last week we finished our Read the World Summer Book Club. It was based on the book “Give Your Child the World: Raising Globally Minded Kids One Book at a Time” by Jamie Martin. We used a chapter a week to go through different areas of the world, selecting books to read and activities to do as we went.

Some weeks we were more into it than others. Some books were better than others and sparked more conversation and exploration. All of it was an exercise in learning about the wider world. Geography, language, customs, history. We talked about all of it through the stories told in the books we chose, all of which were recommended in Jamie’s book.

We began with gusto with Multicultural week, focusing on exploring lots of different cultures all over the world. We picked several books with this emphasis, and started out coloring each country that we read about on the map that was provided in one of Jamie’s first posts about the book club.

After doing this for a few days, the girls lost interest in the maps, which we dropped, but not the stories.

We rolled right into the second week focused on Africa with books and movies from the library about Kenya and Mali and Madagascar. We read about cassava plants and how tapioca is made from the starch of these plants, so I got tapioca pudding for them to try. They didn’t like it (neither do I), but they found it “interesting,” for sure.

After Africa, we moved to the chapter on Europe. There were lots of books in the Europe section of Jamie’s book (and the Asia section) that we have read already, but there were still plenty to choose from that were new to us. One that my girls and I especially enjoyed was “Boxes for Katje.” I had grand plans to make something European for dinner one night that week, maybe from one of my French or Spanish cookbooks, but I flopped on that one.

Next up was North America. Jamie suggested lots of good books, but our favorite that we read was “Jingle Dancer,” about the Native American traditional dance performed in a dress with metal “jingles” on it. We ended up going down a YouTube rabbit hole after this book, watching video after video of jingle dancing and various other types of traditional Native American dance. It was absolutely fascinating, and the girls just kept begging for more.

Our zeal for the book club hit its low point during the Middle East week, when we only read one book from those I checked out of the library. We quickly rebounded with Asia week though. I don’t know what it is about reading books set in Asia, but we have always loved reading about this region of the world. From our old books, “The Story about Ping” and “A Pair of Red Clogs” to the many new ones we read during this week of the book club, we just really enjoy the richness of Asian culture as we experience it through picture books.

One of our favorites during this week was “Bee-bim Bop!” which included a recipe that we promptly made together, and which led to the girls’ first experience with Korean food (including kimchee!!).

The other favorite of the week was this:

The original name of this book was Little Black Sambo, and my grandma used to read it to me when I was little. I didn’t realize this was the same story when I reserved it from the library, but inside the jacket it explained the original title. The memory of my Gram reading it came rushing back, and I was so excited. I can vividly remember the distinct voices she used for Little Black Sambo and the tigers. I tried to replicate them in my reading of the story, but I didn’t do it justice. My girls enjoyed it anyway, of course, and so did I.

The next week was Latin America week, during which I picked a couple of books set in Brazil and made a lame attempt at an Olympic connection, but because we don’t have TV and weren’t really able to watch much of the Olympics, it didn’t really resonate.

And finally, Australia, Oceania, Polar Regions, which we wrapped up last week. I found these two reading “Diary of a Wombat” in our swing set tower the other day.

As I walked away after taking this photo, I heard them bust out in giggles over the silliness of the story. I love sharing special moments over books with my girls, and even more seeing them sharing the love of books with each other.

My Big Fat Curriculum Post

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Amy

It’s that time of year again. Back to school is coming. At our house it will be upon us in about two weeks. Miss will be in second grade, Lass in first, and Sis in PreK4.

I’m simultaneously very excited and sort of scared to death. I’m not sure how it’s going to work to homeschool with a newborn in the mix. I’m banking on the possibility that he may nap every morning between 9 and noon. If that doesn’t happen, I’m screwed.

BUT, either way, I have my curriculum all lined up on my brand new pretty shelves and I’m so flipping excited about it I have to share.

I’ll start by telling you why we changed our curriculum from what we had last year, which was Sonlight. I picked Sonlight, hoping for a literature-based curriculum. Unfortunately, it turned out to not actually be what I consider literature-based. Usborn books about space and history don’t really qualify, in my opinion. A lot of the books were more textbook-y, and they seemed to bore my kids. I ended up ditching a lot of their selections in order to add in Five in a Row and The Story of the World. We didn’t like the math or the handwriting programs that came with it either. Plus, though I knew that their curriculum was not Catholic and that I would need to add in some religious studies to make it more in line with our faith, I wasn’t expecting to be so uncomfortable with the religious elements they did have. I ended up not using any of their religion choices and completely replacing them with Catholic Heritage Curricula’s study and lots of our own books.

By the end of the year, I was hardly using any of the sources that came in our Sonlight box.

So. That’s what we are not doing again this year.

Instead, I switched to Build Your Library as our main curriculum, and then added a bunch of stuff on to that. BYL is a secular curriculum that comes with literature, science, history, copy work, narration, and art study. You can check out BYL’s second grade package, which is the one we’re using, here.

I’ll do the science, history, art study, and literature read alouds with all of the girls together before they split to do their individual skill work.

Which includes:

Math – Miss hated doing math in a workbook. So this year I’m switching to Shiller Math, which uses a lot more brief lessons and hands on activities. I’ll also use Life of Fred from time to time and the IXL app for a fun change of pace.

Reading – We’re sticking with All About Reading. We all like it and it works. Miss is a pretty fluent reader, so mostly she just needs practice reading and reminders to sound out the words she doesn’t know. But I’ll finish up the AAR Level 3 with her and continue Level 2 with Lass. Later in the year I may start Level 1 with Sis, since she’s already finished the Pre-reading program, but I’m not in any hurry (she’ll mostly be doing typical preschool ABC, counting, sorting, coloring, cutting, pasting activities).

Language Arts – We’ll be doing lots of reading, narration, copy work, poetry memorization, etc. as part of our BYL curriculum. I’m also using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Level 2 for Miss and Level 1 for Lass, as well as possibly including some of CHC’s Language of God for Little Folks. We’re using All About Spelling and My Catholic Speller Level A for Miss and My Very First Catholic Speller for Lass from CHC for spelling.

Religion – We use the Faith and Life Series from CHC for Miss and Lass. I added some books for Miss since she will be receiving her First Holy Communion this year.

If you click the images above it will take you to an Amazon page where you can read more and/or purchase the books (They aren’t affiliate links, I’m just trying to make your life easier).

Handwriting – Most of Miss’s handwriting practice will be copy work, either from BYL or from the Catholic Heritage Handwriting Series Level 2. She has expressed an interest in learning to write in cursive, so I’ll start having her do that a little later in the year as well. Lass has CHHS Level 1 for handwriting, and Sis has an old Seton handwriting book that I never ended up having Miss do.

Morning Time – Our morning time will start with singing a hymn, prayer, the Pledge, calendar, and then read alouds (like science, art study, and literature; we’ll mostly listen to Story of the World in the car). This year I’m also going to include nature study, SQUILT music appreciation, some easy art projects, the Bedtime Math app, and the occasional poetry tea time. I’ll alternate these activities throughout the week. I got awesome ideas from the podcast Your Morning Basket for making morning time more rich and more fun for all of us.

There are a few more odds and ends here and there, things I hold onto to add in and change things up a bit from time to time, but that’s the gist of it.

I love this time of year. We have new notebooks and pens and binders. I’ve stocked up on lots of new art supplies. I’ve reread Teaching From Rest. I even got some brand new PlayDoh. We’re basking in the last few weeks of summer, and I’m looking forward to the excitement of our new year.

My Favorite Catholic Books – From Conversion and Beyond

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Amy

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. It keeps expanding, and I keep putting it off. Recently, Kelly has published some posts on this subject (part 1 and part 2), and the other day a friend texted me asking for recommendations on this very topic. Plus, Lent starts next week, which means I’m especially thinking about and wanting to talk about great, spiritually-stimulating reading. So I think this is just the right time to finally put my thoughts together and write a post about my favorite Catholic books.

I love books. I love Catholicism. I especially love books that help me understand and/or practice Catholicism better. I’m sharing some of my favorites here.

These first four are the books that I found especially helpful at the very beginning of my conversion process:

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis – This isn’t a specifically Catholic book, but it was the very first Christian book I read when I first started thinking that maybe I wasn’t an atheist. When I began reading it, I thought God was probably real, but didn’t believe in Jesus as the Son of God. This book helped me see otherwise.

The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom – Again, not a specifically Catholic book, and not necessarily written as a spiritual book either, but the simple and profound faith of the people in this book was so inspiring and powerful, I couldn’t help but be moved toward belief.

Rome Sweet Home, by Scott and Kimberly Hahn – Scott Hahn was an anti-Catholic, Presbyterian minister, his wife Kimberly is a Protestant minister’s daughter. This book lays out all the reasons they both eventually came to see the truth and beauty of Catholicism and to convert. Once I started to believe in the basic tenets of Christianity in general, this book helped me to understand the Catholic faith in particular and to realize that I wanted to become Catholic.

150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know, by Patrick Madrid – It seems like a common criticism of Catholicism is that it isn’t very Biblically based. This book shows that in fact it is, pointing out specific scripture passages to support things like the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the Catholic emphasis on faith and works as the means to salvation, not just faith alone.

After I got the basics of Christianity and Catholicism, I started really delving into understanding the Faith more and deepening my spiritual life. More favorites from the past (almost) three years:

A Biblical Walk Through the Mass: Understanding What We Say and Do In the Liturgy by Edward Sri – This book is fantastic. I learned so much about the Biblical basis of everything we do during the Mass, what everything means and why we do it. For anyone who ever feels lost or unsure what the point is, or even just wants to feel more connected to what is happening during Mass, it’s a must read.

My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir, by Colleen Carroll Campbell – This book helped me learn about how the saint are present and active in our lives and can lead and inspire us. I’ve read this book twice and gotten so much out of it both times.

Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, by Therese de Lisieux – A beautiful story of an imperfect soul striving for sainthood and finding it with her “little way.” I love the stories of her struggles to be unselfish and to show her love of God by doing little things every day.

33 Days to Morning Glory: A Do-It-Yourself Retreat in Preparation for Marian Consecration, by Fr. Michael Gaitley – This is a guided retreat book. It has short readings for each of 33 days, focused on consecrating oneself to Jesus through His Blessed Mother. It is so rich in insights about Mary’s role in leading us closer to her Son. I have read this book three times and gotten more out of it each time. The first time, I read the book. The second time, I read the book and completed the retreat companion workbook that goes with it. The third time, just recently, I got together a group of people at my parish and led a group in doing the retreat together, with the book, workbook, and DVD series by Fr. Gaitley. Each time, it was an enlightening experience.

Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves, by Jason Evert – Looking at the life and teachings of Saint John Paul the Great by examining the things he loved the most: young people, human love, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, and the Cross, is a profound way to understand him and his amazing life and mission, as well as these beautiful elements of our Faith. This book moved me in so many ways, and made me really wish that I had been Catholic when he was the pope.

The Real Story: Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible, by Edward Sri and Curtis Martin – These authors bring the Bible together in such a way that it becomes one startlingly clear, cohesive story of God’s perfect plan for salvation. It’s a short and very easy-to-read book that left me feeling like so much I had read and thought I understood suddenly made so much more sense.

The Examen Prayer: Ignatian Wisdom for Our Lives Today, by Timothy M. Gallagher – I had heard of the examen prayer a few times, and really wanted to learn how to do it. My parish offered a few opportunities to learn about it through classes, but I wasn’t able to attend them. I asked my husband to get this book for me for Christmas, and I am so happy I did. I love this method of prayer and have been practicing it daily since completing the book. The book clearly teaches how to do it and why this powerful prayer is beneficial. It is a wonderful way to turn ones focus toward recognizing God’s will and trying to pay attention to and follow the stirrings in our heart that are God’s promptings throughout each day.

I’m always looking for new books to read to help me grow my Catholic knowledge and faith. If you have any must-reads in this area, please share them in the comments! AND, Kelly is hosting a link up with lots of others’ favorites as well, so check out those posts for even more wonderful books, just in time for some Lenten reading.

Bookroo Review and a Discount for You

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Amy

I love books. I especially love finding good books for my kids. I read to my girls every day, at least at bedtime and during school, and usually at other times of the day too, like over lunch or breakfast, and any other time they pick up a book and ask me to read it. I just love how reading sparks their imaginations and gets them thinking and talking about all sorts of things.

Children’s books are kind of my thing.

Sooo, when Jane from Bookroo contacted me and asked if I’d be willing to do a review of the Bookroo service, I was pretty intrigued*. I know there are a lot of crafting and activity subscriptions for kids out there, but I had never heard of a book subscription. Um, yes please. That is right up my alley. I looked into it, and I really liked what I found out.

Bookroo is a small, family run business. I like small businesses, and I like the mission of the people at Bookroo:

Our mission is to enable and empower parents to build their children’s book collections in an affordable and exciting way through curated monthly book deliveries. We believe in the power and impact of the written word in the life of a child, and believe it’s never too early to start reading to children!

Amen to that!! (You can read more about the company and the people behind it here.)

The service works like most other monthly subscription programs. They offer month-to-month, three-month, and six-month packages. You can choose to get board books or picture books, and they guarantee that the retail price of the books you receive will always exceed your monthly fee (you get three board books or two picture books per box).

It’s that simple.

I really loved the idea of trying the service, but I have to say that I was a little worried that we would end up getting books we already have. That was the only thing that caused me to hesitate when considering Jane’s invitation. We have a lot of books, and I didn’t want to get stuck paying for books we already have. But, how exciting is it to look forward to a package every month, which may contain fabulous books you’ve never heard of?

I’m sure you can guess that I decided to take a gamble and go ahead with trying out the service. I figured if we got books we already have, I can just hold on to them to give as gifts.

I chose the month-to-month picture book package, and our books arrived last Monday.

My older girls were at camp all day, so it wasn’t until fairly late in the evening that I was able to bring out the packages and let them open them up. Surprise books are the best!

The books we received were Squid and Octopus: Friends for Always and Harry and Horsie. Happily, we don’t own either of these books! My girls were excited to see the Squid and Octopus book, which we got from the library a few months ago. But the real winner of the package was Harry and Horsie. My girls requested that I read it right away, and they absolutely loved it.

It was a very cute book that provided many opportunities for theatrical reading and suspense. We were all laughing at several points in the book, and after I finished reading it, my girls began to fight over who would get to keep the book in her bed that night (they all like to sleep with books).

At least one of them has requested it every night for a week, and Miss even took it with her on the bus to her camp field trip last Wednesday. The book has some wonderful lines that the girls all love to say together with me, and we’ve even added in a few things for dramatic effect.

Daddy has even enjoyed reading it.

So, the bottom line on the books we received is that they’re wonderful. Neither of them is an extremely popular picture book that everyone already has, and one of them I had never even heard of before. I like that in our first package we were able to discover a fun new book that we may not have run across on our own. The books are fun for me to read and enjoyable for my kids. Win-win.

The only bummer is that they don’t have a chapter book package too (yet??). I think I’d even love a grown-up package!

Clearly, the verdict is thumbs up on this service. I think a Bookroo subscription would be a fantastic birthday or Christmas gift for any young child, or a perfect baby shower/new baby gift.

Now, here’s the fun part. Bookroo provided me with a link that I could give to all of you to get $4 off an order of any package. To get your discount, just click HERE and the $4 will automatically be taken off when you check out.

I highly recommend, and if you give it a try, let me know how you like it!

*I received a discount on a Bookroo package in exchange for writing a review, but all opinions about this company, the service, and the books are mine.

My Year in Books

Posted on December 29, 2014December 29, 2014 by Amy

Last night while I was on my computer:

Husband: “Did you get your blog post done?”

Me: “No” (complete with grumpy face and growling sound of sorts)

Husband: “What’s wrong? Writer’s block?”

Me: “No. Goodreads screwed me over.”

Husband: “Wha? What’s Goodreads?”

Me: “Goodreads is supposed to keep track of the books I read, and the books I want to read, and when I got my Year in Books email it said I only read 20 books but I’ve read way more than 20 books and Goodreads didn’t do a good job of compiling my yearly reading data for me!!!!!”

Husband: “Why do you need that?”

Me: “I don’t. I just like to have it.”

Husband: “Oh. Okay. G’night…”

I wanted to write a post for today about all the books I read in 2014, my favorites, my least favorites, etc. I had it in mind to do so, and then Haley wrote a post of the books she read this year, and I thought it would be swell to list the books I’ve read and tell you all about them. Fun, right? Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is fascinating…

But Goodreads, my favorite reading/bookish app/social media thing, has failed me this year. I’m grumpy about it.

I have read many more than 20 books this year. And I have spent way too much time trying to sort through the 292 books on my Goodreads “Books I’ve read” shelf to see which ones I did read beyond the 20 Goodreads decided to keep track of.

Why do I care? I just do.

Ugh. Goodreads.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and write the post even though it may be slightly less accurate than it would have been if Goodreads had done its job…

I think I actually read something more like 41 books, one of them twice (Something Other Than God), and listened to three audiobooks. Here they are:

Fiction

Tobit’s Dog
The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)
The Wife (Kristin Lavransdatter #2)
The Cross (Kristin Lavransdatter #3)
Treason: A Catholic Novel of Elizabethan England
Still Missing
The Fault in Our Stars
The Secret Keeper
Brideshead Revisited
Catholic Philosopher Chick Makes Her Debut
The Sun Also Rises
The Screwtape Letters
Keeping Faith
Station Eleven (audiobook)
Prince of Thorns (audiobook)
The Darkest Minds (#1 of a trilogy+, audiobook)
Never Fade (#2 of the Darkest Minds trilogy)
In the Afterlight (#3 of the Darkest Minds trilogy)
Sparks Rise (#2.5 of the Darkest Minds trilogy)
Divergent
Insurgent (I’m reading Allegiant, #3 of this trilogy, now)

Non-Fiction

The Liar’s Club
He Leadeth Me
See How She Loves Us
Hail Holy Queen
33 Days to Morning Glory
Pope Awesome and Other Stories
Something Other Than God (x2)
Realer Than Real
Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves
Teaching From a State of Rest
Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Spain
Surprised by Truth
Catholicism for Dummies
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
Rediscover Catholicism
The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic: How Engaging 1% of Catholics Could Change the World
The “R” Father
Joan of Arc
A Biblical Walk Through the Mass: Understanding What We Say and Do in the Liturgy
Desperate: Hope for the Mom Who Needs to Breathe
150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know
Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

44 books all together, almost even numbers of fiction (21) and non-fiction (23). As a great lover of fiction, I have been surprised in recent years by how much of my reading has been non-fiction. But as you can see, I read lots of Catholic and religious books these days, which make up the vast majority of my non-fiction list (19 of 23), and even some of my fiction list (9 of 21). Here are my thoughts on some of the books:

Disappointments: Biggest one? Brideshead Revisited. I liked the book, but having heard Haley refer to it as a highly influential book her conversion to Catholicism, I was expecting something… more. It was good, and I liked it. It just didn’t move me as much as I expected it to. Another disappointment has been the Divergent trilogy. I thought it was supposed to be really enjoyable (for fluff reading), and it has been just so-so. I’ve liked it enough to continue reading all three books, but it’s not as good as I thought it would be. I was also kind of disappointed by the Sister Queens book. I was thinking it was going to be historical fiction (one of my favorite genres, surprisingly underrepresented in my reading this year), but it was just straight-up history, and on the long and boring-ish side.

Better Than Expected: Treason: A Catholic Novel of Elizabethan England. I didn’t expect much from this book, but I ended up really liking it. It had some really beautiful passages and a moving section about an experience with the sacrament of Reconciliation. It was a lovely book. Also, the Darkest Minds trilogy+ was much better than I thought it would be. Young adult dystopian fiction is my go-to these days when I want to read something easy and frivolous. I got the first book to listen to when I drove a few hours for an appointment. I wasn’t expecting it to be anything other than easy and frivolous and mildly entertaining, but it was quite enjoyable and I quickly read the rest of the books too.

Most Annoying Book: Keeping Faith. Historically, I have really liked Jody Piccoult books, even though they get a little predictable in their courtroom drama. This one was just odd, with a little girl seeing visions of God, but in her visions God was a woman. The psychological experts were terrible, and the way Ms. Piccoult described the Catholic Church’s process of determining whether the little girl’s visions were real or not was off, as was a statement about what a person must be like to be canonized a saint.

Weirdest Titles: Desperate: Help for Moms Who Need to Breathe and Catholic Philosopher Chick Makes Her Debut. The former was pretty good, in spite of its melodramatic title. The latter was so-so.

Least Favorite Book: Prince of Thorns. It was absolutely awful. It’s not a book I would have chosen. I needed and audiobook to listen to when I went to Michigan to pick up the puppies. I downloaded the Audible app to use my husband’s account, and I planned to download a book onto my phone when I stopped at Starbucks on the way. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that you can’t download books fro the app, so I had to select from the books my husband already had downloaded. Prince of Thorns is what I ended up with, and it made for a crummy listening experience on my long drive, full of battles and blood and testosterone and a very unlikeable main character.

Favorite Fiction Book of the Year: The Screwtape Letters.

This one also could have gone under the heading of “Better than expected.” Super Friend told me about this book a few years ago when we were talking about all-time favorite books, before my conversion. I don’t remember exactly what she said about it, but I think her description went a little bit like this, “It’s about a devil who writes letters to his nephew, also a devil, instructing him how to corrupt souls…” I thought it sounded very weird and not at all interesting. This book is now on my list of all-time favorite books. It’s just so clever and it inspires deep thinking. As I’m writing this, it seems like I read this longer ago than this year, so I’m wondering if maybe I reread it this year? I must have. It’s definitely a book to be read more than once.

Favorite Non-Fiction Book of the Year: Pope Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves. This book blew me away. It made me so sad that I wasn’t Catholic while JPII was alive. I didn’t know much of anything about him, because I didn’t care much about what the pope was up to when JPII was in the role. But this book. Oh my goodness. Now I know. He was amazing and he is fascinating. The way Jason Evert writes this book, by highlighting five special loves of JPII as a means of helping readers come to know him and understand his teachings better, is brilliant. By the way, the five loves? Human love, young people, Mary, the Eucharist, and the Cross. Read this book.

There. My Year in Books, in spite of Goodreads. Aren’t you happy I persevered with this post?

Here are just a few of the books that I have lined up to start 2015:

I love to chat about books (obviously). What were your favorites from 2014? Tell me all, please.

Answer Me This – Mmmmm, Cheese!

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Amy

This is the last time Kendra is hosting the Answer Me This link up (at least for now), so I couldn’t miss out this week.

1. What is your favorite picture book?

Oh my. No way could I answer with just one book. I wrote a guest post for the 101 Books blog last year about my favorite fictional picture books. That post included the top 15 books, but I linked it to a post on my blog that had 101 wonderful picture books.

Sooo, yeah. I really love picture books. If I had to choose one favorite favorite fictional picture book, it would probably be:

It is the book I enjoy reading the most, because I love doing the voices of the characters. And it makes me laugh. A close second:

And one more newish book that I love:

Because, obviously.

A couple of favorite nonfiction books include:

We have three copies of ^^ this one ^^. One has been read so much it’s falling apart. Lass used to sleep with it.

Also:

This book is huge, and it is filled with wonderful drawings of so many different animals, several of which I had never heard of before.

Ours has been taped and re-taped. Lass used to sleep with this one too.

2. Are you a boycotter?

No, not really. I did switch to buying Blue Diamond almond milk after learning that Silk (the other main brand of almond milk) is owned by a company that supports Monsanto. But, if Blue Diamond isn’t available, I’ll buy Silk.

On the other side of it, the day after the SCOTUS ruling about Hobby Lobby came out and everyone on my FB feed was in an uproar about how awful HL is, I went there and bought a bunch of stuff. It was stuff I needed anyway (most of it, though I did decide to buy some 4th of July decor I hadn’t planned on), but I made a pointed decision to purchase it from Hobby Lobby rather than JoAnn fabrics a few doors down, because I wanted to show them a little love in the midst of all the haters.

3. How do you feel about cheese?

Oh, I LOVE cheese. I think cheese is just wonderful. Unfortunately, I’m boycotting cheese right now.

I am someone who tends to gain a zillion pounds when I’m pregnant. I start gaining weight practically the very minute the second line turns pink. So, I gained (relatively) a lot of weight in the brief time that I was pregnant recently, and it really sucks to have to try to lose pregnancy weight without the blessing of a baby to snuggle while you do it. So, I need to lose the extra pounds ASAP. The fastest way I know of to do it is to get back to strict paleo eating, including no dairy.

Yeah. I love cheese.

4. How many pairs of sunglasses do you own?

I think three or four. I have a pair that I always keep in my car, and a few more here and there. I think I have two pairs in the cabinet by my back door, and maybe another pair somewhere that is scratched. . .

5. How long has it been since you went to the dentist?

About six months. I need to schedule appointments for myself and the girls, but I am being oppositional and putting it off. My dentist’s office always calls me an absurd amount of times to try to get me to schedule an appointment. I always tell them that I will call them when I am able to schedule it (usually they call me when I’m somewhere that I can’t look at my calendar or at a time when I’m in the middle of something else).

Even after I tell them that repeatedly, they still call me several times. I don’t like to be hounded, so now I’m just not scheduling it because I’m being ornery.

6. If you could visit any religious site in the world, where would you go?

The only religious site I have been to so far is the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help.

There are so many places I want to go. Guadalupe. Lourdes. Fatima. Rome and the Vatican. Cascia (that’s where Saint Rita is from).

If I could choose one place to go right now though, I would choose Jerusalem and the surrounding area. The Holy Land, I guess is a better was to say it. Someday. . .

To see more answers, go to Kendra’s link up.

Tomorrow is Miss’s first day of school outside our homeschool. I’m not sure if I’m going to bawl, or think of it as no big deal, since she’ll be back with me at home next week. I’ll let you know which way it goes.