What a lovely, list-y meme. I had to participate, but of course, I’m listing 55 things in keeping with my own personal number of the year.

1. Create my own Little Free Library.

2. Go to a book blogging conference.

3. Have a book-themed party or tea.

4. Host an in-person book club.

5. Meet 20 authors. 20 is an arbitrary number, but I’d like to meet some of the authors whose books I love.

6. Make blog bookmarks.

7. Write thank you notes to authors whose books make a difference.

8. Get 1,000 books donated to Kazembe Orphanage.

9. Read a book about every U.S. President.

10. Read all of the Newbery Honor books and Award books that I can find.

11. Read one book from or about every country of the world. I made this map a couple of years ago but then I forgot about it. I need to add all of the books I’ve read with links to reviews.

12. Record videos of children’s books being read aloud for the internet.

13. Vist as many libraries and bookstores as I can in as many cities as I can.

14. Give out ~~ALL~~ lots of business cards.

15. Read a poem a day. Out loud. For a year.

16. Read the Bible all the way through every year and takes notes in my personal copy.

17. Set up and open a private subscription library for homeschoolers in my home.

18. Visit Oxford and see all the C.S. Lewis/Tolkien/Inkling sites.

19. Read to my grandchildren. I don’t actually have any grandchildren. My adult children are not even married. But someday.

20. Finish writing and self-publish my second book, Picture Book Around the World.

21. Finish writing and self-publish my third book, Picture Book Science.

22. Inspire a non-reader to love books by helping him or her to find the perfect gateway book.

23. Have a book of the month club for my adult children and other relatives in which I send them each a book every other month especially selected with that person in mind.

24. Abandon books after 50 pages if they don’t capture my interest—unless I want to keep reading.

25. Travel across the U.S.A with Engineer Husband while listening to audiobooks. This travel is a part of my retirement plan.

26. Actually listen to at least one audiobook all the way through. I have a short attention span when it comes to audiobooks, but I might be able to change that. See #25.

27. Go on a weekend reading retreat with just me, myself, and my books. No tech.

28. Go to a book signing.

29. Go to a poetry slam.

30. Read at least one book in Spanish all the way through. I did this in college, but I’d like to do it again just to prove that I still can.

31. Give away books on World Book Night. I actually did give away books for WBN last year (Peace Like a River by Leif Enger), and I’m set to give away again this year (The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan). But I’d really like to do this every year.

32. Read a book out loud with Engineer Husband. We did this when we were newlyweds, but now that we’re almost senior citizens, I think it’s time to renew the practice.

33. Continue to keep a record of what I’ve read here at the blog. Continue blogging. I will celebrate my tenth anniversary for Semicolon in October of this year. I’d like to celebrate twenty or thirty years someday.

34. Go through all of the books on my bookshelves and give away all the books I don’t want to own anymore.

35. Have a year where I actually read one book every day. The author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair does this, and I think it would be loads of fun—after I get all the urchins raised and out of the house.

36. Have a year when I actually watch NO TV, not because I think television is evil or even a waste of time. I would just like to see what effect it would have on my life to go an entire year without television or movies. Maybe this would be the same year as #35.

37. Finish reading the books on my Classics Club list.

38. Complete the 40 Trash Bag Challenge. Bookish? Yes, because some of those “trash bags” need to be boxes full of books to donate.

39. Meet 20 Texas book bloggers. If I did #2 I might be able to meet lots of book bloggers. That would be so much fun.

40. Finish reading, or at least checking out, all of the books on my TBR list. I can only complete this action item before I die if I quit putting more books ON the list at some arbitrary time. Maybe when I celebrate my 90th birthday? Then, I just read books I’ve already put on the list.

41. Invite 100 bloggers to participate in the Saturday Review of Books link-up. Anyone can participate. If you are reading this post and you blog about books, you are invited.

42. Build a window seat in my house for reading.

43. Read every single thing C.S. Lewis ever wrote. Carefully and thoughtfully.

44. Host a book-to-movie book club for teens in which they must first read the book and then we watch the movie together.

45. Interview some authors for my blog. This item is rather non-specific, but I’d really like to do this and learn how to do it well.

46. Work in a bookstore just for a little while, just for fun.

47. Finish re-reading Les Miserables. I got stuck in the middle. I think I need a paper copy instead of my ebook Kindle copy.

48. Finish “reading through Africa.” This goal relates to #11, but it’s different because I’m exploring a different part of Africa each year. In 2012, I read books set in Northern Africa. This year I’m reading books from West Africa. I have three more regions to visit, and then I might turn around and start again because I didn’t hit every country.

49. Develop a habit of reading the Bible in the mornings before I do anything else. I’m not a morning person. Maybe this goal isn’t workable, but I’d like to try.

50. Go back to the Texas Book Festival in Austin. I went several years ago, but it just hasn’t been possible in the last few years. The 2013 festival is scheduled for October 26-27. Maybe this fall.

51. Write a poem. A good poem that I’m proud to share with others.

52. Visit the Library of Congress.

53. Visit the New York Public Library.

54. Read all of the books I want to read.

55. Give away all of my books to people who will enjoy and appreciate them. This last thing I will do when I’m old and when I enjoy giving the books away more than I enjoy loaning, recommending, re-reading, and looking things up.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Mar25

At first, there’s just darkness and silence.
“Are my eyes open? Hello?”
I can’t tell if I’m moving my mouth or if there’s even anyone to ask. It’s too dark to see. I blink once, twice, three times. There is a dull foreboding in the pit of my stomach. That, I recognize. My thoughts translate only slowly into language, as if emerging from a pot of molasses. Word by word the questions come: Where am I? Why does my scalp itch? Where is everyone? Then the world around me comes gradually into view, beginning as a pinhole, its diameter steadily expanding. Objects emerge from the murk and sharpen into focus.
I know immediately that I need to get out of here.

Unfortunately, the after-effects of Susannah Cahalan’s rare and newly discovered auto-immune disorder, Anti-NMDA-Receptor Autoimmune Encephalitis, lasted much longer than a month. Patients with this disease are often misdiagnosed and given psychiatric treatment when they really need a neurologist. And sometimes they go into a coma or die from the disease. As you can see in the video, Susannah Cahalan was given a miracle: a correct diagnosis and treatment that brought her back from madness and near-death.

The book is fascinating. Ms. Cahalan does get bogged down in some of the medical details for a few pages/paragraphs here and there, but she always comes back to human interests and how this illness affected her, her family, and the friends and colleagues who witnessed her descent into what can only be described as insanity. The fact that this disease is a physical, neurological condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the brain could be a source of hope for others who are suffering from the same disease. However, Ms. Cahalan is careful to say that the disease is rare, although maybe not as rare as originally thought, and certainly does not explain all or even the majority of cases of schizophrenia and schizoid behavior.

Brain on Fire is a readable, riveting entry in a genre that is one of my guilty favorites: memoirs of madness and people on the edge of mental illness or simple eccentricity. I don’t intend to take pleasure from someone else’s misfortune, but it helps and interests me to read about people who are “outliers”. From them, I believe we can learn what sanity and wisdom and even outlandish creativity really look like.

Saturday Review of Books: March 23, 2013

Mar22

â€œBooks are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.â€ ~Oswald Chambers

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 (Three Times Lucky)
2. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Carney’s House Party)
3. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown)
4. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (
5. DHM, several free Kindle books and deals
6. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Falcon at the Portal)
7. The Common Room; Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden
8. Helene@maidservantsofchrist (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy)
9. Beth@Weavings (Emily of Deep Valley)
10. Joseph R. @ Zombie Parents Guide (Doctors of the Church)
11. Hope (Give Me This Mountain – missionary biography)
12. Janet (The Castle of Llyr)
13. jama’s alphabet soup (World Rat Day)
14. jama’s alphabet soup (Tiger in My Soup)

15. jama’s alphabet soup (Yummy!)
16. Thoughts of Joy (Suspect)
17. Annie Kate (10 Christians Everyone Should Know)
18. Annie Kate (Sonrise Stables series #3, 4)
19. Beckie @ ByTheBook (At Every Turn)
20. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Lord Is My Shepherd)
21. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Fatherless)
22. Lazygal (Invisibility)
23. Lazygal (Al Capone Does My Homework)
24. Lazygal (Baker Towers)
25. Glynn (Making Manifest)
26. Glynn (Being a Blue Angel)
27. Becky (Comforts from the Cross)
28. Becky (Love’s Long Journey)

29. Becky (Anne of the island)
30. Becky (Faro’s Daughter)
31. Becky (Treasure Island)
32. Becky (The Other Countess)
33. Becky (The Queen’s Lady)
34. Becky (The Inimitible Jeeves)
35. SmallWorld Reads (Expecting Adam)
36. Brenda (The Seven Wonders: Colossus Rises)
37. Brenda (The Seven Wonders: Colossus Rises)
38. Ruth (Bread and Wine)
39. Becky (Secret Thoughts of An Unlikely Convert)
40. Amber Stults (Some Girls Bite)
41. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (A Walk in the Meadows at Rosings Park)
42. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (For All the Wrong Reasons)

Les Militaribles

Mar21

The South Korean Air Force does a parody of Les Miserables:

No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer

Mar20

I’m definitely a fan of Golden Age detective fiction—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey—but I’ve read all the books I can find by those authors. And I’ve tried a few others that are supposed to belong to that particular club, Margery Allingham and John Dickson Carr in particular, and I just didn’t care for them. So, Georgette Heyer’s mysteries have that Christie/Golden Age flavor, and I’m pleased to find another writer from that era that I can recommend and enjoy myself.

No Wind of Blame has lovely, interesting characters, somewhat stereotypical but still memorable, and that’s what makes the book. There’s a fortune hunting Russian (or perhaps Georgian) prince with an impossibly long name, a histrionic and very wealthy Aunt Ermyntrude, a dogsbody poor relation with a pleasant personality and a pretty face, a very pretty daughter who tries on a new persona every time she descends the stairs, a smarmy neighbor who’s involved in some dubious business deals, and a police inspector with a refreshingly normal, down-to-earth take on the whole case. The case itself, a murder of course, is not the focus of the novel, and the solution is beyond my understanding and limited mechanical abilities. However, I didn’t care that I didn’t understand exactly how the murderer did it because I enjoyed the company, the dialogue, and the interactions between the characters so much.

I’ve read one or two of Ms. Heyer’s Regency romances, and although the wit and good characterization are still there, I don’t much like straight romance novels. An element of romance is good, but I prefer my love stories mixed up with something else, perhaps a good mystery. I plan to look for more of Ms Heyer’s mystery novels and see if they’re all as good as No Wind of Blame.

A list of Georgette Heyer’s “thrillers” or detective novels:

Footsteps in the Dark (1932)
Why Shoot a Butler? (1933)
The Unfinished Clue (1934)
Death in the Stocks (1935)
Behold, Here’s Poison (1936)
They Found Him Dead (1937)
A Blunt Instrument (1938)
No Wind of Blame (1939)
Envious Casca (1941)
Penhallow (1942)
Duplicate Death (1951)
Detection Unlimited (1953)

For a while Ms. Heyer published one thriller and one romance every year. However, her British publisher and her American publisher both disliked the book Penhallow, published in 1942, and she mostly stuck to romances with some historical fiction after that.

More Barbs from Author to Author

Mar19

I once wrote a post on Mudslinging Authors, authors dissing other authors. Today for your entertainment or for vindication of your opinion on one of the following authors, I present another edition of Mudslinging Authors and Literary Daggers:

Anatole France on Emile Zola: “His work is evil, and he is one of those unhappy beings of whom one can say that it would be better had he never been born.”

G.K. Chesterton on Emile Zola: “I am grown up, and do not worry myself much about Zola’s immorality. The thing I cannot stand is his morality…. Zola was worse than a pornographer, he was a pessimist.”

George Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare: “With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his… it would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.”

Israel Zangwill on George Bernard Shaw: “The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.”

Valdimir Nabakov on Ernest Hemingway: “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”

Gore Vidal on Hemingway: â€œWhat other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?â€

William Faulkner on Henry James: “One of the nicest old ladies I ever met.”

Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe: “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

Dame Edith Sitwell on Virginia Woolf: “Virginia Woolf’s writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere.”

Virginia Woolf on James Joyce: â€œ[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.â€

Willliam Thackeray on Jonathan Swift: “A monster, gibbering, shrieking and gnashing imprecations against mankind.”

Thomas Carlyle on Percy Byshe Shelley: “Poor Shelley always was, and is, a kind of ghastly object; colourless, pallid, tuneless, without health or warmth or vigour.”

John Keats on William Wordsworth: “Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity and bigotry.”

H.G. Wells on Joseph Conrad: “One could always baffle Conrad by saying ‘humour’.”

Oliver Goldsmith on Samuel Johnson: “There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.”

Duck Dynasty and The Duck Commander Family

Mar18

Other than K-dramas, the other culture I’ve been exploring via television lately is that of redneck Louisiana and duck-hunting as portrayed in the A&E series Duck Dynasty. It’s just as fascinating, if not quite as foreign, as Korean drama culture.

Duck Dynasty is a “reality TV” series starring the Robertson clan, owners of a multi-million dollar business that creates products for duck hunters, including duck calls, hunting videos, and other hunting paraphernalia. The company is called Duck Commander, and there’s a companion company, Buck Commander, that sells stuff for deer hunters. The show, however, isn’t about hunting so much as it is about the Robertsons and their weird and wonderful family dynamic.

Meet the Robertsons:

Phil is the family patriarch, the man who founded Duck Commander, a fanatical and skilled duck hunter, designer of the double reed duck call that is Duck Commander’s featured product. Phil wants everyone to be “happy, happy, happy” without bothering him too much, and he doesn’t have much use for “yuppies” and modern technology.
Ms. Kay is Phil’s wife and mother to the four Robertson boys. Ms. Kay can cook anything and make it taste great; her speciality is fried squirrel and squirrel brains. She says the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and squirrel brains make you smart.
Three of the “boys” are featured in the TV show:
Willie is the CEO of Duck COmmander. He spends most of his time on the TV show trying to get the rest of the family to work and build duck calls instead of taking naps, going hunting, and generally goofing off.
Jase is Willie’s older brother, but he’s more interested in working in the duck call room, designing duck calls and testing them. Jase and Willie have different,complementary roles in the business, but outside of business hours they are highly competitive in everything from fishing to sports to cooking to outwitting one another.
Jep is the baby of the family, kind of quiet, but according to the book he does a lot of the filming for the hunting videos.
The other main character in the TV shows is Uncle Si, a Vietnam veteran who has the best and funniest lines in the show. Uncle Si makes the reeds for the duck calls. He also drinks sweet tea by the gallon from a plastic Tupperware glass that he carries with him everywhere. Uncle Si reminds me of a combination of Engineer Husband’s two brothers: the storytelling, the exaggerations, the beard, the eccentricity.

After I watched most of seasons one and two of Duck Dynasty, I wanted to know how much of the show was true and how much was put-on. So I read The Duck Commander Family: How Faith, Family, and Ducks Built a Dynasty by Willie and Korie (Willie’s wife) Robertson (with Mark Schlabach). The book isn’t a classic, but it serves the purpose of giving more information about the Robertson family background. Each TV episode closes with the entire clan gathered around the table, and Phil prays a blessing over the food and the family. The book tells how the family came to have such a strong heritage of faith in God. It wasn’t easy. Phil and Kay married young, and Phil became an alcoholic and deserted the family for a time. After God brought him to a realization of his need for Christ and his love of his family, Phil returned to Ms. Kay and his sons and became a strong man of God, still a little quirky but grounded in the Bible and faith in God’s provision.

I highly recommend the TV series, and then the book if you want more information about this wacky, unconventional, and inspirational family. Warning: the Robertsons are NOT your typical rich, sophisticated family. They like to blow things up, shoot animals and eat them, and generally run wild. It’s a great TV show to watch with the young men in your family, older men, too.

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman and King 2 Hearts

Mar17

War and peace is a recurring theme in literature, in movies and television, and in history. Seraphina, winner of the Cybil Award of 2012 in the Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy category, is about trust and mistrust between two different species, dragons and humans, in the kingdom of Goredd. My latest (second) K-drama, The King 2 Hearts, is about war and peace, trust and mistrust, between North and South Korea. Both the book and the TV series share some commonalities:

Tough-as-nails, but tender on the inside commoner girl meets insecure, but charming prince. Romance ensues.

Cultural differences create misunderstandings and lead two nations to the brink of war.

Evil villain tries to provoke war between the two groups.

Relationship between the girl and the prince mirrors the uneasy relationship between the two countries. Danger lurks everywhere, and almost all of the main characters come near to death multiple times in both Seraphina and King 2 Hearts.

There are also differences between the two stories. In the book, the dragons are emotionless, mathematical, and super-rational, unless they have taken on human form in which case they must be on guard against getting tripped up by human emotions. Yes, the dragons can transform into human bodies. (No, the humans can’t get dragon bodies–which doesn’t seem quite fair.) And Seraphina, our young protagonist, has a very special problem: she hides a secret that would, if revealed, turn everyone, both dragon and human against her and perhaps cost her life.

So, there’s a lot of interplay in Seraphina between the supposed opposite ways of viewing life: artistic and emotional or mathematical and rational. Unfortunately, Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk did it better. The idea of bridging cultural differences and making peace by bringing together two cultures is more interesting. Seraphina brings together the two cultures in the book because she has a unique identity, (POSSIBLE SPOILER) half dragon and half human. In King 2 Hearts the attempt to bridge two cultures is embodied in the proposed marriage of the South Korean prince to a North Korean bride. Of course, reconciling two disparate cultures is difficult, whether it’s an internal conflict or recurring discord and confrontation between two people who actually love each other.

It’s the conflict that keeps the story fresh and compelling. King 2 Hearts consists of 20 episodes, a length that I’m told is common for Korean dramas. It probably could have been improved by being shortened by about five episodes and tightened up. Some of the characters—the “psycho” super-villain, his stoned hired assassin, and the U.S. government official with the speech impediment, in particular–were rather unbelievable and cringe-worthy. But the series itself was addictive; I kept thinking I’d watch just one more episode, then one more, then one more . . .

If you want some (mostly clean) romance embedded in a story with Important Stuff to Say about war and peace I’d recommend Seraphina if you have a few hours to read a fantasy novel, and King 2 Hearts only if you have about twenty hours to invest in a roller-coaster of a TV show, with sub-titles and loads of Korean politics, mores and traditions. Consume both if you’re a glutton for political drama, fantasy, spy thrillers, romantic sparring, and a surprising but satisfactory resolution.

I hope to write more about King 2 Hearts and the other K-drama that I’ve watched, Queen In-hyun’s Man, soon. Suffice it to say I think I already have a K-drama problem, and I can’t, can’t, can’t start any more shows anytime soon or else I might be accused of family-neglect.

With an Accent: The King 2 Hearts.
The Common Room: A Few of my Favorite Korean Dramas.

Saturday Review of Books: March 16, 2013

Mar15

â€œIf anyone finds that he never reads serious literature, if all his reading is frothy and trashy, he would do well to try to train himself to like books that the general agreement of cultivated and sound-thinking persons has placed among the classics. It is as discreditable to the mind to be unfit for sustained mental effort as it is to the body of a young man to be unfit for sustained physical effort.â€ ~Theodore Roosevelt

1. Becky (Child’s Story Bible/Vos)
2. Becky (Note to self)
3. Becky (Gospel focus of Charles Spurgeon)
4. Becky (Gods at War)
5. Becky (Jeremiah and Lamentations)
6. Becky (The Little Prince)
7. Becky (The Corinthian)
8. Becky (Lord Edgware Dies)
9. Becky (Case of the Late Pig)
10. Becky (Hamlet, Revenge)
11. Becky (The Golden Road)
12. Mental multivitamin (Reading life review)
13. Hope (The Carved Lions – Victorian Novel)
14. the Ink Slinger (A Bookish Hodgepodge)
15. Barbara H.(The Last Superhero)
16. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee)
17. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Wait for You by Jennifer Armentrout)
18. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Of Triton by Anna Banks ARC)
19. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Let The Sky Fall by Shannon Messenger)
20. Glynn (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
21. Glynn (The Crime of Living Cautiously)

22. SuziQoregon @Whimpulsive (Saga Vol. 1)
23. SuziQoregon @Whimpulsive (Voodoo River)
24. Shonya@Learning (Abel’s Island)
25. Shonya@Learning (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert)
26. 10 Books That Screwed Up The World And 5 Others That Didnâ€™t Help
27. Mystie (Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert)
28. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (What I’m Reading Now)
29. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Why We Get Fat)
30. Janet (The Black Cauldron)
31. Janet (How Much Land Does a Man Need?)
32. Annie Kate (Art and the Bible)
33. Thoughts of Joy (Missing Mark)
34. Thoughts of Joy (Talking to the Dead)
35. jama (tamalitos: a cooking poem)
36. jama (Teacakes for Tosh)
37. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Invisible)
38. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Strand of Deception)
39. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Full Disclosure)
40. Girl Detective (Gone Girl)
41. Brenda (The Genius Files)
42. Girl Detective (Death Comes for the Archbishop)

43. Amber Stults (Wolf Hall)
44. S. Krishna (The Imposter Bride)
45. S. Krishna (The History of Us)
46. S. Krishna (The Sound of Broken Glass)
47. S. Krishna (Sharp Objects)
48. S. Krishna (Friendkeeping)
49. Lazygal (The Bookman’s Tale)
50. Lazygal (In the Shadow of Blackbirds)
51. Lazygal (Nowhere But Home)
52. Lazygal (A Matter of Blood)
53. Lazygal (The Incredible Charlotte Sycamore)
54. Lazygal (This Is What Happy Looks Like)
55. Becky (The Runaway King
56. Yvann @ Reading With Tea (The Silence)
57. Yvann @ Reading With Tea (Until Thy Wrath Be Past)
58. Joseph R. @ Zombie Parents Guide (Alice in Wonderland)
59. a barmy bookworm (Mrs Dalloway)
60. Janie (Ireland)
61. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (The Crooked Branch)
62. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (The Turncoat)

Encouraging and thoughtful links

Mar11

On humility. I wonder what people will say about me after I’m dead and gone to be with the Lord. I pray that my story will glorify Him.

On fearlessness in life and parenting.

I Come to Bury Keats, Not to Praise Him by Doug McKelvey at The Rabbit Room. An excellent essay on truth, beauty, romanticism and meaning.

Bags We Love: A collection of bookstore and literary tote bags, curated by Julie Blattberg (HarperCollins). I actually own two of these bags.

Deb Nance at Reader Buzz on Little Libraries. When Engineer Husband retires, I’m going to beg him to build me one of these little wooden boxes for a Little Free Library of my own. I think the idea is beautiful, such a community-builder.

How To Grow a Man Without Even Trying (Poetry Memorization) Cindy always has such inspiring, yet practical, posts about homeschooling for excellence. Heaven knows, I could use some down-to-earth inspiration about now in my homeschooling journey. Sometimes I wonder if anything I try really gets through those thick skulls, including my own.

10 Essential Books for Book Nerds at Flavorwire. The list includes a couple that I have read (The Book Thief,) and several that I haven’t.

56 Broken Kindle Screens. Art out of broken stuff.

Finally, I don’t want to just link to this sermon by Tullian Tchividjian. I want to embed it here because it’s so true, and so encouraging, and so real. The title of the sermon is God’s Two Words for a Worn-Out World.

Liberate 2013 – Tullian Tchividjian from Coral Ridge | LIBERATE on Vimeo.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

55 Bookish Things I Want to Do Before I Die