A friend asked me recently which books have changed my life.  I've been thinking about that question more since that conversation, and I want to share a few of them.

The Bible.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing.  This book is the amazing true story (much of it told through the journal entries of the survivors) of Shackleton's attempt to reach the south pole.  This book-- along with Annie Dillard's essay "Polar Exploration"-- started my fascination with polar voyages, and I read multiple others... none as good.  Despite Shackleton's crushing disappointment, he is able to change his goal.  This changed how I look at my own goals. 

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard.  She writes about about childhood, but this book is also about the topography of our inner life.  (My dad's most groaner joke also makes an appearance in this book, which endears it to me.) Dillard's ability to capture the moments in which we as children wake up "midstream" into ourselves and the world takes my breath away.  Again and again.

For the Children's Sake by Susan Shaffer McAuley.  This book began our journey toward home schooling.

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott.  Her desciption of the persistence of Jesus in pursuing her is beautiful and has stayed with me for years.

Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire.  I reviewed it here but will just add that it is a book about forgiveness and redemption-- without ever trying to say that things weren't as bad as they really were.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver.  More on this book here, but it was the book that jump-started our stalled process of eating locally again.  Deep Economy and Kingsolver's book continue to come to my mind as I seek to live responsibly and gratefully with all I've been given.

Streams of Living Water and The Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster.  The first is a book about the different streams of focus and tradition that form the river of the Church over history.  It gave me a good framework to house my understanding of the strengths and weakness of the "evangelical movement" and the "social justice" movements within the Church.  The Freedom of Simplicity speaks to me on so many levels... in fact, I think it's time for me to reread it.

What books have changed you?

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I read Katherine Patterson's wonderful novel Bridge to Terabithia in fourth grade.  I loved it then but was sad for days.  Mourning.

Sam likes to listen to books on tape while he drives, and a few weeks ago I got him Bridge to Terabithia.  Every night he came home raving about it, how I have to read it again, how wonderful it is, yada yada yada.  I'm not any nearer to wanting to read it again yet (I'm still mourning), but J asked to listen to it when he finished.

J has been loving it.  Unlike books he reads himself, the CD-book slows the pace down so he gets more out of it.  So this has lasted a few days, with J raving about Jesse & Leslie's imaginary world...  Now I'm just waiting-- feeling a little guilty-- for the moment when he finishes it and comes flying down the stairs in tears.  Mourning.

But mourning for the right thing.  It's that kind of book.

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In my earlier post On the Third Day of Christmas, I mentioned the company that makes the blank board game.  The CORRECT company is Bare Books.

If you had trouble finding the board game with the other link, please try again!

Blessings.

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Have I mentioned how much I like Explode the Code?

With J, I used Phonics Pathways, on the recommendation of The Well Trained Mind.  And it worked-- he learned to sound out words... but it was painful.  The lay-out of the book is too busy, and each day's phonics lesson was a struggle.  We had tears and pouting and resistance on almost a daily basis.

I switched to Explode the Code to use with O.  We began sometime last year (at 4 and 3/4) when he wanted to "do school" (i.e. have workbooks).  I thought it might be too early, but no.  He loves these books. 

I rip apart all our workbooks and put a page of math, a page of phonics (and whatever else we're studying-- Latin, or grammar, etc.) in their "daily work notebooks" so they can get started without me, in case the morning is crazy.  Every day O has a page of ETC and a page of math.

Phonics Pathways made a big deal of the fact that some kids aren't ready to write their letters when they are ready to read them, and they didn't want to link the two necessarily.  Both my boys have been ready to write at the same time as they're starting to read (though the reading definitely took off more quickly than the writing for J).  ETC links the two processes pretty closely, using exercises with writing and reading in an alternating fashion.

Every day, O goes to his notebook and eagerly does his ETC page.  And his ability to sound out words-- both to read, and to write them-- is progressing steadily.  Today M asked if she could do ETC, too.  So I pulled out Book 1 to try with her. She isn't as confident of all her phoenomes yet, but with some help, she sat on my lap and did three pages (the pre-test) at the beginning of the book.  She loved it.

Two thumbs up to Explode the Code.

"r-r-r-ock."

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I've mentioned before that my son likes to read fantasy.  He's a very good reader, but he's only eight.  The benefit to his young age is that he misses a lot of the content (or context) of what he reads, so something that I might find questionable as I read passes right over his head.  The con is that it's very difficult to find appropriate reading material for his age.  I like fantasy literature to a point... unlike J, I'm not into the monsters or fantastic planets.  I enjoy a powerful, well-written story that is not bound to space and time.  But I have to preview (or at least keep up with) what he's reading, so we can discuss it together.

My husband read this series by Susan Cooper several years ago without our son's particular needs in mind.  So when we picked it up again on CD for a recent road trip, I felt compelled to read it myself. 

I found myself sneaking into J's room at night to take the books away from his bed so I could read ahead while he was sleeping.

Susan Cooper writes beautifully.  We've read a few other things recently that interested J more, but these books are so well written.  I wanted to keep reading just to see England and Wales from her perspective.  The characters-- of very different ages and backgrounds-- were vividly portrayed, and even the ones who appeared on the side were believable.  I wish I could write like she does.

The "theology"-- though I don't think you could call it that-- was not Christian.  J, at a young eight, missed all of the brief mention of religion.  The protagonists are "Old Ones," creatures of the Light who live forever and whose only purpose in the world is to fight The Dark.  I liked the good v. evil motif, and the idea that we have to choose one or the other (this is also why I like the Harry Potter books), but at one point she says that the Light v. Dark battle has been going on outside of Time, and before even God.  So be warned that these are not Christian books.

My husband heard an interview with the author about the recent movie.  Apparently the movie is significantly different from the books.  I don't think I'll rush out to see it.  These books fit in the category of those books I see so vividly in my mind, I don't want to share them with a big screen-- I don't want anyone else's vision of this imaginary world to change how I see it right now.

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Eighteen months ago, I purchased this beautiful book on Chagall at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.  I have been itching to get to it ever since, and although I had the resources prepped in the spring, Chagall had to wait until now.  I love his colors, and his lack of perspective, and the crazy blue goats in his photos.  His painting is so vivid, so evocative of dreams.

Our library has these Chagall books as well, which tell his story in bright colors.

What Color Is Paradise? and Life is a Dream  both use Chagall's own paintings.  The Paradise  book shows his Biblical paintings (Chagall was Jewish) and is lovely.   This last one, I am Marc Chagall by Bimba Landmann, is the kids' favorite.  The art is fabulous: photos of three-D (think dioramas) depictions of Marc Chagall's life and paintings. 

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I love my book group.  We're small (just 5 of us) and very laid back, but we have good discussions.  This month's book was Kristin Lavrensdatter by Sigrid Undset, who won the 1928 Nobel Prize for literature.

The book is mammoth.  It was initially published (in Norwegian) as a trilogy.  The titles in English are translated The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross.  Two of us read the 1929 translation, which reads like the King James Bible.  (I like to call it the King Magnus translation.)  The other two read the 2001 translation, which was much more readable. 

The book is the story of Kristin, Lavrens' daughter (hence her name), in the middle ages in Norway.  It is an amazing chronicle of the history of the time.  The writing is evocative: I could see the dale and feel the cold.  Initially, I didn't like the book, but my response was really a reaction against Kristin's poor choices.  (She is seduced and throws off her fiance to marry her seducer.)  But once I pushed through this, the rest of the story really held me captive.  I followed her life as Erlend's wife, the mother of many sons, and finally a widow.  The characters were all so complex and true to themselves-- "integrated personalities", as my friend likes to say-- that I believed them all.

It's a lot of reading, though I suspect the new translation is a quicker read.  I learned a ton (relative to my previous ignorance, that is) about Norway's history in the middle ages.  And I learned about myself and my own stubbornness through the lens of Kristin.

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Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief is a fun read.  A friend recommended it for J, as the book is full of Greek mythology.  We've raced through it, as well its three sequels, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, and The Battle of the Labyrinth.

The story is about a boy, Percy Jackson, who lives in New York with his mom.  He is shuffled from school to school, never able to fit in or stay in one place, which is eventually explained by his being a Half Blood (like Hercules or Perseus.)   Initially, J didn't like it-- it was either too realistic (he doesn't like scary things to happen to real people) or maybe, the school descriptions were too far outside his experience to be interesting to him.  I'm not sure.  But the second time we picked it up, J was hooked and read the first book in a day and a half. 

The story is engaging and humorous.  The author names the chapters: "I accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher", "Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death", a device which I love.  The allusions to Greek mythology are entertaining.  It was a fun read.

But I wouldn't call these living books.  There weren't any passages I just had  to read aloud to my husband because of their beauty.  The writing doesn't sing.  And if you are uncomfortable with mythology trying to cross the line of religion, you might have to debrief your reader on a few passages.   J hasn't gotten to the fourth book, but I didn't enjoy its desciptions of ghosts and trying to "raise the dead."  These ideas are prevalent throughout Greek mythology, but somehow imagining them happening in New York in the 21st century made me uncomfortable.  I think any child who has been brought up knowing God would not be confused in any way by this book's talk of gods, but you should pre-read it and decide for your own children. 

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Helen and Scott Nearing wrote two books, The Good Life, and Continuing the Good Life, which are now available in one combined volume.  I picked it up for vacation reading, sort of as another take on the local lifestyle.

The Nearings left the US wage economy in 1932 and became Vermont homesteaders, living as much as they could exclusively in a use economy.  For them, this meant living without debt, buying on credit, etc., and producing as much of their own food as possible, building their own homes with found materials as much as possible, and having a small cash crop they produced to buy the necessities of life which they couldn't grow or produce themselves.  They did not work for wages or pay others for wages whenever possible, but bartered their labor when they could.  They lived this way for nearly more than 60 years-- from 1932 until their deaths.

It is a very interesting book: an odd combination of their philosophy (e.g., why they are vegetarians) and handbook (e.g., the measurements of their concrete forms for building their stone buildings and fences).  I'd recommend it as an eclectic-homesteady read, though it didn't change my life.

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Several years ago, my friend Bill recommended this charming children's book. It became a favorite-- not just because the story and iillustrations make us laugh, but because it sparked a game: Daddy makes pizza.

Here's Daddy making strombolis (like a pizza, but with the fillings rolling inside the dough.)  Daddy makes the best strombolis.

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