A Light Shining by Glynn Young

Feb2

I thoroughly enjoyed Dancing Priest, Mr. Young’s first book about Michael Kent, Olympic cyclist, Edinburgh student, Anglican priest, and orphan with a mysterious past. Of course, it’s also the story of Sarah Hughes, American artist and also a student in Edinburgh, whose lack of faith throws a kink in the developing romance between her and Michael.

In this sequel, I was pleased to read more about Sarah and Michael and their growing families, both nuclear and church families. Michael’s and Sarah’s Christian testimony through lives lived openly and vulnerably is fresh and un-jaded. I loved the way that in their youthful enthusiasm they just did the next thing that God called them to, with prayer and thoughtfulness, yes, but without that too long attention to possible problems and hesitation that many of us (I) are prone to allow to derail our best intentions.

Mr. Young’s writing is simple and unadorned, easy to read and follow. The e-book edition of the book that I read sometimes needed some more spacing indicators to show when the point of view was changing from one character to another. There’s a shadowy terrorist villain in this second book, and I sometime couldn’t tell when I was leaving the mind and viewpoint of Michael Kent and entering the mind and world of the villain. I find this problem frequently in my Kindle reads, and it’s a little bit annoying, but not overwhelmingly so.

I would recommend these companion novels to anyone with an interest in well-written Christian-themed fiction, Anglican church fiction, adoption and street children, Olympic cycling, or the politics surrounding the British royal family. Read them in order, first Dancing Priest and then A Light Shining. No spoilers her, but all of these subjects are elements in the these two books about a vibrant young couple coming to terms with their faith in Christ and their journey to follow Him through difficult circumstances.

Saturday Review of Books: February 2, 2013

Feb1

â€œI was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.â€ ~Anne Tyler

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Moffats)
2. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Emily of New Moon)
3. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (thoughts on 2013 ALA Youth Media awards)
4. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (From the Good Mountain)
5. Harvee@BookDilettante (A Tainted Dawn)
6. Barbara H (The Tenth Plague, review and author interview)
7. Barbara H (Emily of New Moon)
8. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Evolving in Monkey Town)
9. Girl Detective (Finder v2 GN)
10. Girl Detective (Les Miserables)
11. Girl Detective (Arcadia)
12. Girl Detective (Wonder Woman: Blood)
13. the Ink Slinger (The Children of Men)
14. Winsome Reviews (Dante in Love)
15. Thoughts of Joy (Wife 22)
16. B & B Chronicles (Spark and Hustle: Launch and Grow Your Small Business Now)
17. georgianne (Praying With the Psalms)

18. georgianne (The Valley of Vision)
19. Becky (Becoming Lucy)
20. Becky (Final Curtain)
21. Becky (Skating Shoes)
22. Becky (Party Shoes)
23. Becky (Secret Garden)
24. Beth@Weavings (Looking for Anne of Green Gables)
25. Beth@Weavings (Anne of Green Gables)
26. Glynn (Hurt)
27. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes)
28. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden)
29. Hope (Books Read in January)
30. Annie Kate( The Tutor’s Daughter)
31. DebD (Bleak House)
32. Lazygal (The Time Fetch)
33. Lazygal (Loki’s Wolves)
34. Lazygal (Scorch)

35. Lazygal (The Reluctant Assassin)
36. Lazygal (The Wrap-Up List)
37. Lazygal (Dead is a Killer Tune)
38. American Dervish by Ayad Aktar (Books in the City)
39. SuziQoregon @Whimpulsive (Fables Vol. 3: Storybook Love)
40. SuziQoregon @Whimpulsive (Kill You Twice)
41. Katy Manck (BooksYALove)
42. SmallWorld Reads (Blue Shoe by Ann Lamott)
43. Jules’ Book Reviews – The City & The City
44. Jules’ Book Reviews – On Chesil Beach
45. a barmy bookworm (Virgil’s Doomed Love)
46. Shonya@Learning How Much I Don’t Know (My Hands Came Away Red)
47. CREATE WITH JOY (Art Activities For Groups)
48. CREATE WITH JOY (Keeping Christ In Ministry)
49. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Austensibly Ordinary)
50. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Emma graphic novel)
51. Amber Stults (Troll or Derby)

Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris by Marissa Moss

Feb1

Time travel at its most historically teach-y. I learned a lot about the Dreyfus affair, but the time travel elements of this story were too unbelievable. Mira keeps traveling back and forth from our time to various times in the late nineteenth century, and she meets many of the same people at different key points in their lives: Degas, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Emile Zola. The problem is that none of these people seem too surprised or inquisitive when she stays the same age, but shows up at five and ten year gaps in their nineteenth century lives.

There’s a bit of romance thrown into the mix when Mira gets a crush on Degas’s assistant, Claude, but this element, too, is spoiled by the time lapse time-traveling that Mira does. Claude gets older Mira doesn’t. Her main mission, to find a way to motivate people to defend Dreyfuss and nip French anti-Semitism in the bud meets with mixed success at best, probably because history didn’t really turn out that way, did it?

Marissa Moss is the author of the very popular Dear Amelia series of diary/graphic novel/picture books for younger readers. This diary, the first in a projected series, is for older middle grade young people, and the fact that it has a Jewish protagonist is refreshing. However, I don’t think I can get my middle grade readers to try this one on the basis of their love for the Amelia books. It’s just too different, even though it does have some drawings included in the text since Mira is an artist. The sequel to Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris is Mira’s Diary: Home Sweet Rome, due out in April, 2013. In this second one, Mira goes time-traveling again and meets the sixteenth century artist Carvaggio, so the art theme carries on through the series.

Days I’m Planning to Celebrate or Observe in February

Jan31

All of February: Letter-Writing Month. The challenge is to “mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.” I want to do this with my girls. Such an encouragement to the people who receive a REAL letter or card in the mail.

February 2: Candlemas. We’re not Catholic, but it would be fun to light some candles and talk about how Jesus is the Light of the World. Like Mother, Like Daughter on Candlemas.

February 2: Groundhog Day. Check the weather. Watch the movie.

February 7: Charles Dickens’ Birthday. I will start reading Bleak House.

February 12: Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

February 12: Shrove Tuesday. Pancakes or maybe beignets!

February 13: Betsy-Bee’s Birthday. My next-to-the-youngest baby will be 14 years old. How will we celebrate? Not sure. I know she wants to go to Fuddrucker’s.

February 13: Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. For the past several years I have taken a blogging break during Lent. This year I’m thinking about “giving up” something different for Lent: sedentariness and prayerlessness. I think that for the forty days of Lent I will go for a daily walk and spend my walking time in prayer. How’s that for a lenten discipline? I’ll let you know how it goes. Observing Lent.

February 14: International Book Giving Day It’s also the day for announcing the winners of the Cybils Awards.

February 14: St. Valentine’s Day. Well, here are 100 suggestions for celebrating Valentine’s Day. I think we’ll listen to some love songs, watch a movie, make a few valentines for friends and strangers who need a little love.
I’m also planning to fill a large jar with Valentine candy, probably M and M’s, at the beginning of the month. Everyone in the family can have two guesses as to how many candies are in the jar. On Valentine’s Day we’ll open it and count. The one who guesses closest wins a prize–not the candy. We’ll share that!

February 18: President’s Day. Work on my Presidential Reading Project. Start reading either my Andrew Jackson book or my Harry Truman book. Hang out our U.S. flag for the day. President’s Day for Kids.

February 22: George Washington’s Birthday. We will read this poem, and maybe I’ll make something with cherries in it.

February 23: Purim begins at sundown. Purim takes place on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar, the twelfth month of the Jewish calendar. I would like to have a family Purim party and read the book of Esther together.

February 27: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s birthday. Read some Longfellow: maybe The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere or The Village Blacksmith or The Children’s Hour or The Wreck of the Hesperus or other poems by Longfellow. Post lines from Longfellow on Twitter and Facebook.

Two Thrillers with Punch and Pride

Jan31

The Terrorist by Caroline B. Cooney.
Exciting, plot-driven young adult fiction with little or no sex or gory violence. Why can’t it all be written so well and so cleanly?

Laura and Billy are American ex-pats living in London with their working-in-the-UK parents and having the time of their young lives. Eleven year old Billy, especially, is outgoing, adventurous, and busy, charming everyone he meets as he explores the British culture and landscape in London. Laura is busy, too, mostly assessing the attractiveness of the boys in her international school. Then, Billy is handed a mysterious package in a London Underground station, and their lives are forever changed.

Ms. Cooney did an excellent job of sustaining the suspense in this mystery thriller and also showing us how an older teenage sister might react to terrorism that impinges on her world and her own family. Laura is so typically American, ignorant and oblivious to the danger and the politics swirling around her. I’m just like her in many ways, and certainly most of the teens I know are quite unaware of the political nuances of international enmities and alliances. The Terrorist demonstrates just how gullible we Americans can be, but it doesn’t show scorn for the United States or its people.

If We Survive by Andrew Klavan.
This YA novel, also about terrorism and American teens confronting the world of evil people who want to kill us, is a bit more violent, and there are a few plot holes. (Really, Will could learn to fire a machine gun from a moving truck within a few minutes when he had never even held a gun before?) In the book, high schooler Will Peterson and three friends, along with their youth director from church, go to some unspecified country in Central America to build a school. While they are there, a revolution takes place, and Will and his group are caught up in the violence and politics of the country.

One of the youth group characters, Jim, sympathizes with the socialist rebels who are intent on killing the Americans, and he believes that he can convince the rebels to let them go if he can just talk to them and show them how much he supports their cause. Again with the American naivete. A few bullets convince Jim that the rebels aren’t much interested in his revolutionary bona fides.

Klavan writes good fast-paced fiction for a hard-to-please audience—teen boys. Not that girls wouldn’t also enjoy If We Survive, especially since the real heroine of the story is Meredith, whose courage and faith in God sustain everyone through their ordeal. But boys will enjoy this one just like they did The Homelanders series. I’m looking forward to giving a copy of If We Survive to my fifteen year old, Karate Kid, and watching him rip through it.

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Jan30

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

One of my children used to be particularly interested in naming and researching the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. This book about the life, presidency, and assassination of President James Garfield would have been above her reading level since she was only 10 or 11 years old when she had the fascination with assassinated presidents, but it definitely is full of information about Garfield and would be absorbing for anyone with a similar interest.

Like Lincoln, Garfield grew up in poverty. He became an educated man by dint of hard work and his widowed mother’s sacrifice. He married a woman with whom he shared at best friendship, and only many years later, after Garfield had an affair and then re-committed to his marriage, did the two of them become partners in love in the truest sense. This part of the story alone is fascinating, a good example for our age of love’em and leave’em. (This breach of trust and reconciliation is documented in letters that Lucretia, his wife, kept and later left to his presidential library.)

But there are several other fascinating stories in this book:
the story of Vice President Chester Arthur and his conversion from party hack to presidential promoter of honesty and civil service reform.

the saga of Alexander Graham Bell’s desperate attempt to invent a medical device that would locate the bullet lodged inside President Garfield’s body before Garfield died.

the history of medical sterilization techniques that had not yet been accepted as standard practice in the U.S., contributing to the infection that eventually killed the president.

the sad (and currently relevant in light of the attention that is being focused on random shootings after Sandy Hook) story of the assassin, Charles Guiteau, who was obviously as mad as March hare but nevertheless cunning enough to plan a successful presidential assassination all by himself.

Candice Millard also wrote the book I read a couple of years ago about Theodore Roosevelt’s trip into the Amazon rainforest, River of Doubt, and my plan is to read anything she writes in the future. Ms. Millard, by the way, got her master’s degree in literature from Baylor University. Destiny of the Republic won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde

Jan29

I loved Deadly Pink. This one by the same author was just so-so.

Giannine is trapped in a virtual reality video game when protestors from the group Citizens to Protect our Children (CPOC) vandalize the gaming center where she is playing. Because of the damage the protestors caused, the only way for Giannine to get out of her game is to survive and win it by becoming the next king of the game’s fantasy world. Unfortunately, true to the game’s rules, every time Giannine makes a mistake and “dies” in the game, she goes back to the beginning to start all over. And soon if she doesn’t finish the game, her brain is at risk of fatal overload, or Real Death.

I never felt as if I knew who Giannine was outside of her game world, so I was never really invested in her success. In Deadly Pink, a book with a similar plot, I really identified with the two main characters and wanted them to be O.K. because they had issues and personalities that made me care. In Heir Apparent there are hints at issues and themes of family conflict and father-neediness, but those themes are never developed. Giannine remains a funny, witty character, but rather flat with little or no growth or change in her life and personality by the end of the story.

Apples Are from Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins

Jan28

Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared by Christopher Robbins.

Apples, tulips, golden eagles, nomadic horsemen, caviar, Genghis Khan, Scythians, Sarmatians, steppes, and lots of oil, uranium, natural gas, coal, iron ore, manganese, chrome ore, nickel, cobalt, copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, bauxite, and gold; they’re all from Kazakhstan, a country that is larger than Western Europe and well on its way to wealth and modernity since becoming independent in the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Robbins, a British journalist who first became interested in Kazakhstan after talking to an Arkansas man who was traveling to Kazakhstan to meet his internet girlfriend, spent three years exploring the country and talking to its people, including many interviews with President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The book is very pro-Kazakh, and Mr. Robbins ends up with a great admiration for Mr. Nazarbayev, who has been president of the republic for over twenty years (ever since independence). Internet sources imply that Nazarbayev is either dictatorial or slightly crazy, but Mr. Robbins’ book has none of that. He presents President Nazarbayev as the architect of Kazakhstan’s growing economic prosperity and of the country’s burgeoning democracy.

In addition to the stories of Kazakh apples and the life of President Nazarbayev, the book chronicles:
the shrinking of the Aral Sea which has been called “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.”
the imprisonment in Soviet or czarist gulags in Kazakhstan of some of Russia’s most famous exiles and “criminals”, including Leon Trotsky, Feodor Dostoyevsky, the entire nation of Chechnya, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
the Polygon in northeastern Kazakhstan, the principal test site for Soviet nuclear weapons.
the Baikonur cosmodrome and the Russian space program that launched most of its rockets from Kazakh territory.
the clash and the harmonization of the more than 100 ethnic groups that make up Kazakhstan today: Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukranians, Koreans, Tatars, Germans, Uighurs, and many others.

I found the book fascinating, a look at a land that is very much “off the radar” for most Americans but that may play a huge role in future world economics and geo-politics.

My interest in this country was first aroused because I have friends who several years ago adopted two children from Kazakhstan. Now I am interested because it’s a huge nation with a compelling and important history and current influence in world affairs.

What do you know about Kazakhstan?

Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction: What’s In, What’s Out

Jan27

Some observations from my Cybils reading:

What’s In
Clockwork/mechanical animals, birds, monsters, objects, steam-punk: The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, Above World by Jenn Reese, The Brightworking by Paul B. Thompson, Goblin Secrets by William Alexander.

Ghosts: Tilly’s Moonlight Garden by Julia Green, The Whispering House by Rebecca Wade, A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle, 13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau, The Mapmaker and the Ghost by Sarvenaz Tash, On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming, The Ghost of Graylock by Dan Poblocki.

Time travel: Caught by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Hortenâ€™s Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery and a Very Strange Adventure by Lissa Evans, A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner, 13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau, Time Snatchers by Richard Ungar, The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman, The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris by Marissa Moss, Beswitched by Kate Saunders, The Time-Traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antionette by Bianca Turetsky.

Portals to other worlds: My Very Unfairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewski, The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, Storybound by Marissa Burt, Iron-Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill, Horten’s Incredible Illusions by Lissa Evans, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente, Winterling by Sarah Prineas, Summer and Bird by Katherine Catmull.

Fairy tale re-tellings: Snow in Summer by Jane Yolen, Whatever After: The Fairest of Them All by Sarah Mylnowski, Twice Upon a Time: Beauty and the Beast by Wendy Mass, In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz, Iron-Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill, The Cup and the Crown by Diane Stanley, My Very Unfairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewski, Twice Upon a Time by James Riley, The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin, Seeing Cinderella by Jenny Lundquist, The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy, The Hop by Sharelle Moranville, The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards.

Orphans and street urchins: Orphans are always in season. The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, Time Snatchers by Richard Ungar, Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz, Goblin Secrets by William Alexander, The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen, Storybound by Marissa Burt, Winterling by Sarah Prineas, The Spy Princess by Sherwood Smith, The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards, Earwig and the Witch by Diana Wynne Jones, The Rock of Ivanore by Laurissa White Reyes, Sword Mountain by Nancy Yi Fan, Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey,, The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons by Babara Mariconda, The Fire Chronicle by John Stephens, Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan.

Talking animals and talking animal worlds: Neversink by Barry Wolverton (Arctic birds), The Secret of the Ginger Mice by Frances Watts (mice), The Hop by Sharelle Moranville (toads), Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy by Tui Sutherland (dragons), The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde (dragon), The Prince Who Fell from the Sky by John Claude Bemis (bears, wolves, and others), Sword Mountain by Nancy Yi Fan (birds of prey), Mr. and Mrs. Bunny: Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny and Polly Horvath (rabbits and others), Darkbeast by Morgan Keyes (ravens, rats, and snakes), Signed by Zelda by Kate Feiffer (pigeons), Malcolm at Midnight by W.H. Beck (rats), The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate by Scott Nash (birds).

What’s Out
Space Travel: The Prince Who Fell from the Sky by John Claude Bemis sort of fits into this genre, but it’s really more about a journey with talking animals through a dystopian future world. Gary Schmidt’s What Came from the Stars is more of a high fantasy combined with an encounter between good and evil than it is about exploring outer space. Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan is the only real space travel book of the lot that I can remember.

Zombies and vampires: Maybe the zombie/vampire fad is still going strong in YA, but in Middle Grade fantasy/science fiction, I only remember a couple of books with zombies or vampires, The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody and Benjamin Franklinstein Meets Thomas Deadison by Matthew McElligott and Larry Tuxbury.

Saturday Review of Books: January 25, 2013

Jan25

â€œEvery man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.â€ ~Aldous Huxley

1. SuziQoregon@ Whimpulsive (Orange Crush)
2. SuziQoregon@ Whimpulsive (Tallgrass)
3. Janet (A Place for You)
4. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Sempre by JM Darhower)
5. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Elfin by Quinn Loftis)
6. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Hopeless by Colleen Hoover)
7. Mental multivitamin (Reading life review)
8. the Ink Slinger (The Creedal Imperative)
9. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Chomp)
10. Barbara H. (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking)
11. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Adventures of Beanboy)
12. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (January reading in review)
13. Lazygal (Telling the Bees)
14. Lazygal (Murder at the Lanterne Rouge)
15. Lazygal (The Woman Upstairs)
16. Lazygal (The Little Book)
17. Lazygal (The Ice Princess)
18. Lazygal (Dead Scared)
19. Lazygal (Stonemouth)
20. Lazygal (Dead is a Killer Tune)
21. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (The Racketeer)

22. Hope (Jim the Boy)
23. Glynn (Every Riven Thing)
24. Glynn (What Poetry Brings to Business)
25. Thoughts of Joy (The Future of Us)
26. Alex @ Alex in Leeds (The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh)
27. Alex @ Alex in Leeds (Cheerful Weather for the Wedding)
28. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Tainted Coin)
29. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Bury The Lead)
30. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Tutor’s Daughter)
31. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Angel Eyes)
32. Becky (Found: God’s Will)
33. Becky (How You Can Be Sure You Will Spend Eternity with God)
34. Becky (To Win Her Heart)
35. Becky (The Dilemma of Charlotte Farrow)
36. Melinda @ Wholesome Womanhood (Joyfully
37. Melinda @ Wholesome Womanhood (Joyfully At Home)
38. Word Lily (Lilith by George MacDonald
39. Word Lily (Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King)
40. Girl Detective (Where’d You Go, Bernadette)
41. Shonya @ Learning How Much I Don’t Know (Unplanned)
42. Jules’ Book Reviews – Canada Reads 2013

43. Jules’ Book Reviews – Away
44. Jules’ Book Reviews – February
45. Jules’ Book Reviews – The Purchase
46. Jules’ Book Reviews – Indian Horse
47. Becky (Beauvallet)
48. Becky (The Real Mother Goose)
49. Becky (Miss Moore Thought Otherwise, Noah Webster & His Words)
50. Becky (These Old Shades)
51. Becky (Case of the Worried Waitress)
52. Becky (The Giant and How He Humbugged America)
53. Becky (Heidi)
54. Becky (And the Lamb Wins)
55. Lisa (Help, Thanks, Wow)
56. Thoughts of Joy (The Dog Stars)
57. Becky (L.M. Montgomery Short STories, 1904)
58. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Dear Mr. Darcy)
59. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Austentatious)
60. Cindy(Ordo-Amoris) January Selections
61. Guiltless Reading (Hollywood Buckaroo)
62. Guiltless Reading (The Marriage Mistake)