Book Reviews
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
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East of Eden: A Book Review
Maybe it was November when I started it. I know I have finished a dozen other novels between then and now. I had to read about a hundred pages to really begin to get into this one. East of Eden. I am not exaggerating when I say this was a THICK novel. The longest I’ve read in ages. 778 pages. To be exact. Small print. (Every time I picked it up I thought, “Oh no. I guess I actually need reading glasses.”) John Steinbeck. I was on my routine of trying to read a classic in between my modern or non fiction reads. I’m not drawn…
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The Weekend Ramble (but do you salt your watermelon?)
Why is it already a billion degrees inside this house for the love? I’m just not ready to turn on the air conditioning yet – I wanted a buffer month in my electric bill, you know. Can’t spring give me that? This weekend the kids put in a little farm labor at a local fruit and vegetable farm. It was just supposed to be the big kids but Piper was eager to work too and she found a job that fit her particular skill set beautifully – welcoming the berry pickers and instructing them where to pick their berries. (Truth be told, that ten year old had a dramatically…
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Five Finds Friday (a couple short finds and a funny video)
The weather this week has been spectacular. Blue skies and sunshine. And I’ve been so happy about that. The list of things to do this week has been regularly long – but starting with the mindset that my life is full and not busy has been surprisingly so helpful. Hasn’t changed the to-do list but it has shaped my attitude. Also – I can’t come up with all the fives this week. What can I say? I’ll give you what I’ve got and we’ll have to choose to be satisfied with that. funny Tripp and Tyler have a new video out and it makes me laugh.…
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The Weekend Ramble
I’m going to stop using the word “busy”. (For real, you guys can help me. Call me out. But, you know, can you say it with gentle words when you do?) Instead I am going to use the word “full”. My life is full. And, like all lives, it is full of beautiful and beastly moments. Of good things I like doing and mediocre things I have to do and rotten things I must endure. This week we picked strawberries. I love picking our food from the ground or the tree or the whatever. (I mean, it’s fine to pick it from the grocery store shelf too and I…
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farewell mr. potter.
Tonight I finished the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. I’m more than a decade late to the game I guess. I’d love nothing more than tossing my thoughts and theories and opinions all over this blog post to hear what you guys think too about the plot twists and the last line and the entire last chapter and Neville and Dumbledore and Dobby and everything else. But I imagine others are late to the game too and I don’t like spoiling good stories so I’ll wait to talk to you in person. It took me until Book Five to really feel engaged and…
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It’s Like A Road Map to Cooking With a Plethora of Detours: Supper of the Lamb Book Review
If not for it being “assigned” as a Book Club choice, I would probably have never heard of it. The Supper of the Lamb. I don’t even know what category it falls under. Cookbook? Culinary read? (Is that a category?) Memoir? It’s parts all of the above. And more. A little parenting advice. Memoir-ish. A picture of the author’s life. (A slice of it, anyway.) Non-fiction. Directions for a specific meal. Recipes. Dinner party plans. Life help. Social commentary. Amusing. Downright hilarious at moments. Poignant. Is that too much to ask from a book? Probably. But he’s delivering it anyway. It’s a little like…
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Inside Out & Back Again: A Book Club Book Review
Reading books with my kids is one of my simplest joys. Years ago I started a Mother-Daughter Book Club with my older girls. Since then Piper Finn has been begging for her turn at a Book Club. We’ve been meeting for several books now and this week we gathered again to discuss the beautiful story in Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai. My friend Addy chose the book and I am so glad she did. I had never heard of the story before. It’s the story of a young girl and her family who were living in Saigon during the Vietnam War. The family is…
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Visual Latin: A Review
Teaching a foreign language to my children is simply not going to happen from my skill set. We’ve played around a little with a program called DuoLingo that helps to teach Spanish, plus a handful of other languages you might prefer. The kids like it – it’s a free online program. It’s just an introduction sort of situation, not a thorough education, but they enjoy acquiring a few words and I think it’s mildly helpful. Although I’ve heard other parents sing the praises of having their children learn Latin, somehow it has never been on my radar. But this year, after hearing positive reviews from several homeschooling friends, I decided…
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Five Finds Friday (quelf the game, oatmeal in the Instant Pot, kind words)
We’re back to school this week. It’s been good to be back to routine but it’s been painfully difficult to get out of bed on these cold mornings. It was also a four day school week and that has me thinking that ALL weeks should be four day school weeks. Can I start a utopian society where people only work for four days a week for about five hours each day? I think we’d all be more productive and just embrace working harder for a short time, knowing you had lots of free time coming. Who wants in on my future society? Happy Friday y’all. funny …
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reading and literary journals and your suggestions
There’s a lot of details I’ll get wrong in education. (Same was true when I was employed in mainstream education too.) Ideas shift. Trends in education rise and fill. Diagramming sentences matters in one decade, not so much in the next. I started farming out math to tutors and computer “textbooks” at about the third grade. Science isn’t my jam. At home we don’t raise our hands and sometimes we do history class in our pajamas. We travel as much as we’re able for the best sort of learning and no one calls roll each morning. The one long standing, enduring, hasn’t changed detail that I do manage to…
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Wonder: A Book Review
“Thank you God for good books to read,” London prayed in our before bed family routine. And the good book she was talking about on this particular evening was the book called Wonder. Actually, the specific book was a sequel – or companion book really – to Wonder called Auggie & Me. We started with Wonder – maybe a month or so ago. It’s a novel that’s been out for more than five years I think but now that there’s about to be a movie released based on the story, it’s reappearing on the front shelves of book stores. I sort of hate that I am only…
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Dr. Bonyfide, Science Books: A Timberdoodle Review
This was the year that I knew our science would take a giant shift in the Wildwood Halls of Ivy. London started high school which means the rules all change and there is a particular order and type of science that she has to cover. She’s taking Biology this year but I didn’t want to have all of the kids take high school biology because, of course, my elementary students couldn’t keep up with that. We’re still doing a weekly Nature Study together because it’s important to me, but this year I decided to have London take biology and Bergen and Mosely (7th and 8th graders) are trying a…
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a state of being
I am altogether too often guilty of choosing Busy in my Soul (and Busy in my Life) so I can comfort myself with a bit of Numb. The distractions keep me from feeling all the stuff that threatens to drown me. (And. Some days, some moments, there is just So Much Stuff.) What is it all anyway? Why is it so easy to forget what I believe? To push aside what I know to be true? To look at the hill in front of me and to see a mountain I think I’ll never cross? To forget where I’ve been and what I’ve become? To forget that my legs…
