June & July Book List

I am ever-so-happily reading again, after a 6-month hiatus!  And I am so enraptured with words (how I love them!) and sentences and thoughts and descriptions and characters and stories and good writing all over again.  I love to read.

So.  Let's start with July, shall we?  The photo above shows the books I discovered in my room today that I've been reading.  We'll work from the top down, and then I'll get to any others I've read that aren't pictured here, then we'll move on to the books I read in June.

Daily Light on the Daily Path - I struggled early in the summer to find a Bible study and selected this off our shelf "in the meantime", until I settled on a study.  But this treasure has remained by my bedside.  It is a collection of daily readings: one for each morning and one for each evening, so each morning before I get out of bed I read the morning entry, and each evening before I turn out the light I try to read the evening entry.  This is purely Scripture and I am loving it.

(The Bible study I settled on is Stone Soup for Five's Colossians study.  I am writing all of Colossians out in my journal and slowly making my way through it, also using commentaries found here and studying key words and all of that fun study business.  I love it.)

Anne of Avonlea -  {happy sigh}  Ella began and finished the whole delightful Anne series a couple of months ago, and as she was reading, she often mentioned characters or places that I had entirely forgotten. (*gasp*)  I am usually not fond of reading books over again-- or, at least not until it's been a good long time, so that the story still feels somewhat fresh to me.  But last week I picked up this second book in the series and plan to read my whole way through.  Dear friends, I am enchanted all over again with L.M. Montgomery's characters, words and descriptions.  I just love her.  I have always said she is my all-time favorite author and she is reminding me why.

Own Your Life - Sally Clarkson's newest book.  I admire Sally, and consider her a mentor of sorts as I have read and gleaned from her books and blog over the past several years.  This may be my favorite book yet. The copy I have is a library copy, and I keep on renewing it so that I can slowly read through it and glean all I can, copying down portions into my journal, thoughtfully journaling through the questions she provides at the end of each chapter, thinking and dreaming and reflecting on how I can be intentional in the life God has given me.  An excellent read.

The Help - This book by Kathryn Stockett is a re-read for me, and this time I am reading it aloud to my Ella, so we have a little Thursday date set aside where we will settle somewhere together-- out in the yard in the sunshine, or on my bed.  I put on my best Southern drawl, and read aloud a couple of chapters, editing as I go.  We plan to have a movie night when we get to the end of the book and watch the movie together! 

Water from My Heart - This is Charles Martin's newest book, and while it wasn't my favorite book of his, I love the way he tells a story, and I will read every single thing he writes.  This is a story about Charlie Finn, a man who has an isolated existence, working in the dangerous and very lucrative field of drug running.  He has very few attachments and even fewer regrets in life, no matter his line of work.  When he travels to Nicaragua and witnesses the fall-out of one of his early business deals,   Charlie is for the first time affected by the choices he has made and the devastation he has helped to cause in the lives of others.  Read it to find out how it changes him.

What Katie Ate -I found this one as I perused the cookbook shelf at our local library.  I love cookbooks and find great inspiration from them in my own meal-planning and meal-making endeavors.  Although I was not familiar with Katie or her blog, her photographs of food wooed me, as well as the fact that she's Irish-born and lives in Australia and was formerly a graphic designer.  That all makes for a fine looking cookbook complete with good recipes of good comfort food.

Another book I read this month that is not in the above photo:

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet -by Jamie Ford.  From my Goodreads review:

"A very good novel about Japanese families from the Seattle area who were sent to internment camps during World War II.

The story centers around a Chinese boy named Henry and Keiko, his Japanese friend. Both children were sent to school by their parents and subsequently treated poorly by their peers, so a unique friendship is forged. Henry proves to be a loyal friend to Keiko, even though Henry's father is particularly hateful towards the Japanese."  

*This is a good living history book for an older child studying this time period.  It's very clean.

For the month of June, these are the books I read:

The Secret of Pembrooke Park -by Julie Klassen, another author whose books I usually read.  This was a satisfying summer read. 

Wonder - by  R. J. Palacio.  I forget where I saw this book recommended, and then again.  Then again. So I decided I would check it out at the library and see what all the fuss was about.  This is not really my genre, but I did enjoy this story of a boy growing up with a severely disfigured face and how he and his family copes with that.  I think stories like this have the opportunity to grow compassion in us for those who have been created differently than we are.  As I was reading it, one of Ella's friends recommended it to her, so I passed it on to her when I was finished with it. 

And.  I doggedly worked my way through this book:

The Sword in the Stone - by T.E. White.  That's some sort of classic, apparently, and is on the Ambleside Year 7 list for two of my kids for next year, so I wanted to pre-read it.  Let me just say that I am genuinely proud of myself for finishing this book. It is very well written and imaginative and descriptive, it's just not at all my genre. ;) So there were some days I had to tell myself, "Okay, 10 minutes of this book and then you can read whatever you want to read." 

That said, I loved the character of Wart, and Merlyn is a kind and lovable old wizard. The last several pages were excellent.

***

Do tell: what are you reading?


This post contains affiliate links.  (Which basically means that I've linked these book titles to Amazon, and if you happen to click on those links, I get some sort of a kickback, as in approximately four cents each click ;), that all adds up to about eight or eleven dollars once per year or something, truly.  While it's not much, I'll take it to support my love of reading.)