I was feeding my fascinations, even during my Lenten blogging break.

Book Lists:
Top 50 Books for Children by Lorna Bradbury at The Telegraph (British).

The 50 Best Books for Kids by Elizabeth Bird.

World Literature That High School Students Actually Want to Read at The Reading Zone.

John C. Wright: 50 Essential Authors of Science Fiction. I’ve read only a handful of these authors, and I don’t really feel a need to read all of them, since some sub-genres of sci-fi (cyberpunk, military sci-fi) are not to my taste. The ones I have read and can recommend on some level are Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1984 by Orwell, Brave New World by Huxley, Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky or Stranger in a Strange Land,, C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, Perelandra in particular, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, and Dune by Frank Herbert.

Historical fiction set in Russia from Sarah Johnson at Reading the Past.

Language:
An Indigenous Language With Unique Staying Power by Simon Romero. Mr. Romero writes about Guarani, the native language of Paraguay, which is enshrined in the Paraguayan constitution as one of two official languages along with Spanish.

Why bilinguals are smarter. I knew my Spanish was an advantage in more ways than just being able to understand what they’re saying when they think I don’t know.

Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Songs
Thanks go to The Headmistress and Zookeeper at The Common Room for the link to this site, Psalms in Metre, which allows one to match metrical psalm paraphrases with their tunes in a sort of mix-and-match sort of template. I love to sing psalms, and I’d like to teach my children to sing them, too.

Straight Talk:
Every single teenage girl who is considering “hooking-up” should read this post by a Catholic mom who has more courage to speak out than I have. And sometimes I’m rather blunt, but I’d have to pray for the presence of mind and courage to say what she said, even though it’s true.

Bookish and Wordie Humor:
For straight talk with a quirky and humorous bent, try this blog post about advertising roof tiles in Zambia. I can’t imagine how this advertising campaign would go over in the U.S., but it seems to be working in Zambia.

President Obama’s Young Adult Novel Economic Plan. This plan, on the other hand, could definitely work, folks.