Reading Year in Review - 2019

I was in transition for most of the year so I wasn't able to read as deeply as I usually do. But being in the U.S for eight months meant I had access to a greater variety of books. Out of the 90 books, these are the ten that made the biggest impression on me.

Hardest to read but worth the effort: Island of the World by Michael D. O'Brien. An achingly sad and beautiful book. I appreciate the ability of Catholic authors to include suffering in their fiction without facile answers. But I struggled at times to identify with the more mystical elements of Obrien’s book. Still, this is some of the best storytelling you will ever read.

Not my favorite, but the one the made the biggest difference in my thinking: The Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield (reviewed here)

Another book that deeply affected my thinking: The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher (reviewed here)

Favorite non-fiction: The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller (reviewed here)

Favorite vintage novel: Fair Harbor by Joseph Crosby Lincoln (reviewed here)

Favorite re-read: The Damerosehay Trilogy by Elizabeth Goudge. "Loving well is true artistry."

Biggest surprise: Poetry as Means of Grace by Charles Grosvenor Osgood. The poets, in this case, are Dante, Milton, Spenser, and Johnson. Osgood wrote to men preparing for ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1940, and he asserts that the writings of these four men will "illustrate, reinforce, verify, and illuminate" the Bible.

Absolute favorite of the year: The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (reviewed here)

Honorable mention goes to the C.S. Lewis titles that I read along with blogging friend, Carol B: Miracles and The Great Divorce

What about you? What were your favorite books of the year?

Blessings,

Kindle Unlimited Titles for Thoughtful Readers

Most titles for Kindle Unlimited are junk. You have to scroll through hundreds of trashy books to find the gems. Since I first tried it, in 2017, I've learned a few tricks. Now whenever I'm browsing for books, I make a separate list of the ones available through KU. When Amazon has their end-of-the-year deal for KU, I join and read the books on my list in a month or two and then unsubscribe. If you plan to take advantage of the discount, here are some suggestions for better quality books. (Amazon offers millions of fluffy romances, but I prefer the better writing and characterization of  vintage author D.E. Stevenson and Miss Read.) I have also discovered that the titles rotate in and out so some are available on KU for a limited time.

Non-Fiction:
The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill (beautiful non-fiction, reviewed here)
On Reading Well by Karen Swallor Prior

The Crucified Life -  A.W.Tozer

Time Management is Really Life Management by Roy King

The Tech-Wise Family - Andy Crouch
The Trojan Mouse - An interesting title about Disney's effect on popular culture.

Fiction: 

Bel Lamington and Fletcher's End by D.E. Stevenson (reviewed here)
Whose Body? mystery by Dorothy Sayers

Amberwell and Summerhills - D.E. Stevenson (2-part Ayrton Family series)

The Tall Stranger - D.E. Stevenson

Katherine Wentworth and Katherine's Marriage by D.E. Stevenson's (reviewed here)
(There are at least 8 other D.E. Stevenson titles!)

I have not read the Harry Potter books, but all 7 were free for Kindle Unlimited during the time I subscribed.

What about you? Have you made any discoveries with KU that you want to share?

Blessings,

Children of Heaven - Worthwhile Movie #18

I was a surprised to see that I haven't done any "worthwhile movie" posts since 2017. If you read my blog, you know that I enjoy films, but rarely do I come across anything that I highly recommend.

That changed last week when we watched the Iranian film, Children of Heaven, a heartwarming story of two children working together to overcome hardship. I purposely did not link to any trailer because it's best to go "blind" into this story. The clips I watched in order to give you a preview made the movie look silly.

Ali and his sister come from a poor family that can barely make ends meet. When he loses a pair of shoes, it creates a minor crisis. He spend the rest of the film trying to redeem himself, but since he chooses not to consult any adults about his problem, he makes some painful mistakes. These difficulties are what keep the movie from being too saccharine and also explain its PG rating.

I appreciated the movie for its lovely filming and for letting me peek into the daily life of an Iranian family (shopping, worship, school, etc). Because you can only understand it by reading the subtitles, be careful not to look away from the screen. My husband looked down for a second near the end and missed a crucial plot element, leaving him quite bewildered as to the final scene. 

This story of the triumph of a brother's love was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998. (It lost to Life is Beautiful, another excellent film.)

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in November

We were crazy busy, but I found time for five films and five books. The movies were unusual.

1) First, was The Fencer (Amazon prime), a slow-moving, beautifully filmed movie about a young fencing instructor trying to build a life for himself in post-WWII Estonia. It was loosely based on a true story and won an Oscar for best foreign language film of 2016 (Finnish with subtitles).
2) Then we watched Harriet in the theater and loved it. I was glad to have been forewarned about the moments of intense violence and profanity. They did not predominate, but kept the movie grittier than my usual fare. The acting, singing (Negro spirituals) and filming were phenomenal. Surprisingly, Tubman's faith was shown in a realistic and respectful way.

I watched 3 Hallmark movies and I paid attention to the titles (for once!) because they were so unlike the typical Hallmark flicks.

3) I watched the cheesy, unrealistic Angel in the Family (2004) and was amazed that the family was dealing with REAL issues. And, unlike current Hallmark offerings, nobody was eye candy.
4) Then I watched The Christmas Card (2006), which was the movie that put Hallmark romances on the map. The acting was nothing to write home about, but I enjoyed the normality of the family's Christmas decorations. (The preponderance of lights, wreaths, and snow globes in the present productions borders on the ridiculous.) Who knew that Hallmark used to make movies about normal people?
5) I never meant to watch A Godwink Christmas: Meant for Love, but it came on after The Christmas Card and started playing before I got my hands on the remote. The whole idea of a "Godwink" nauseates me because it reduces God to a benevolent, jolly Father Christmas figure and ignores his majesty and authority. I'll get off my soap box long enough to say that this movie really surprised me because the protagonist didn't have a trivial problem like choosing between boyfriends or jobs. She had a serious illness and there were no easy, fluffy solutions. Based on a true story.

Finally, the books!

1) I detested Venetia by Georgette Heyer. I've enjoyed a few of her other books so you'll have to read my review at Goodreads to see why. Next was The Grace of Enough by Haley Stewart, the best book on minimalism I've read to date. Sing a Song of Seasons was a lovely, humongous poetry book with a nature poem for every day of the year. We Refused to Die by Gene Jacobsen was a POW memoir about life in a WWII prison camp that was okay. Lastly, I read Joseph Crosby Lincoln's Cap'n Dan's Daughter, which was, also, just okay. (All links lead to my reviews.)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving week! Have you read or watched anything good lately?

Blessings,

The Grace of Enough by Haley Stewart

Who knew there was a book on minimalism from a Catholic point of view? And why was I surprised when it was much more meaningful than the Protestant books I’ve read on the subject?

Haley Stewart and her husband have an evangelical background (Baptist, I think), but gravitated toward Catholicism for various reasons. In this book she cites the Bible, several saints, and papal encyclicals. (And Wendell Berry and C.S. Lewis!) I found her arguments to be clearly reasoned and compelling.

How do you extricate yourself from throwaway culture and live out the Gospel values in your own home and family? I believe that the key to shifting our worldview, to pursuing less and living more, is to develop virtue by taking on practices that, little by little, transform us. This kind of growth won’t occur if we passively sit and wish for virtue to spring up spontaneously and effortlessly in our hearts. We can and must actively pursue virtue by taking up practices and habits that cultivate it.  (from intro)

Mere minimalism is an incomplete solution to our consumerism. If we ignore a deep generosity to share what we have with others, and if we are unwilling to accept help in return, we have not adopted a Gospel mind-set. The early Church viewed all its possessions as “ours.” (p. 29)

My journey toward generous love – the self-sacrificing love that accompanies motherhood – began with a 180-degree turn from a throwaway culture, which in the arena of sexuality elevates pleasure and convenience above every other consideration….The contraceptive mind-set (that removes fertility from its connection to sexuality) and its tragic sister, abortion, are facets of throwaway culture intended to eliminate the need to embrace this call to sacrificial love. Yet this is a journey we need to take, no matter what our vocation. Whether we’re called to married life or religious life, and whether or not there are children in our future, we are all called to lives of generous outpouring for others. (p. 125,127)

This is a wonderful book that gives a solid theological basis for its opposition to consumerism. Not for everybody, but I appreciated Stewart for stretching my thinking on several, important cultural issues.

Blessings,

Sing a Song of Seasons by Fiona Waters

Most modern poetry for children is twaddle, so I was delighted to find an exception in Fiona Water's collection, Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year. Not only has Waters chosen fine poems filled with rich language, she chose an illustrator who captured the whimsy and wonder of the natural world. (I am troubled by the garish, cartoony figures in most children's books.)

Sing a Song of Seasons offers 365 bite-sized poems that coincide nicely with each season of the year. Several well-known poets are included such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Cristina Rossetti, but most are more modern. The choices are child-friendly without being too silly which shows a surprising respect for young readers. I am very hard to please when it comes to poetry, yet there were very few poems in this collection that fell completely flat. Most had gentle alliteration, beautiful imagery, and rich vocabulary. The entry for February 18:

The round full moon, 
So clear and white, 
How brightly she shines
On a winter night! 
Slowly she rises, 
Higher and higher, 
With a cold clear light, 
Like ice on fire.

Some entries will cause the reader to wonder at their meaning, but in a positive way. Take the July 19th poem for example:

I wish I was 
a dragonfly
hallelujah
in sungleam.

This would be a lovely, painless way to introduce your children or grandchildren to beautiful language. The books ends appropriately with a non-nature poem that emphasizes the pleasure of having poetry swimming around in your brain: Keep a poem in your pocket and a picture in your head and you'll never feel lonely at night when you're in bed.

Highly recommended!

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in October

Seven books and seven movies this month. (Husband out of town for ten days!)

First, the movies. 1) Shazam came highly recommended by our son who said it had Christian themes. It was pretty juvenile, but I appreciated one strong image of a demon devouring a man, a gruesome reminder of what sin does to us. 2) Downton Abbey was beautiful in its painstaking attention to details and there were several happy endings for beloved characters. But it was ruined for me by one of the sub stories. 3) Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor was delightful. 4) The Bookshop was an understated British film about a woman who opens a book store in a little village. The movie is sad, yet somehow triumphant. 5) Tolkien was beautifully filmed, but showed only a slice of Tolkien's early life. 6) I watched a couple of Hallmark movies, but, frankly, I rarely remember their titles because they all run together in my mind.


I'm reading mostly non-fiction these days. 1) Matt Perman's rambling treatise on time management, How to Get Unstuck, 2) Rosaria Butterfield's third book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, 3) The Class Meeting by Kevin Watson, 4) As Long as They're Laughing, a look at a 1950's quiz show, and 5) Poetry as a Means of Grace by Charles G. Osgood (English professor at Princeton in the early 1900s.) 6) A Little Moonlight by Betty Neels was the only fiction title I read. Finally, I read The War Romance of the Salvation Army by Grace Livingston Hill, which took me completely by surprise because it was definitely not a romance.

Blessings,