We'll try this again. I wrote this post once already, last night and it disappeared on me......

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and is enjoying a Happy New Year.  I had a pretty productive break from school considering all the holiday things. I made several Christmas gifts- quilted placemats, penny wool table runner and table topper, quilted book cover and bag. After Christmas I made new pillow/cushion covers for all the pillows in the living room- it is such an improvement. The old ones were getting ratty enough but the new fabric is so much nicer. We also finally got the wallpaper up in the kitchen. And I did some reading, not just the book challenge but that is what this post is about.

I have finished 3 out of the 5.

Elisabeth Goudge's "A Christmas Book" was exactly what I expected. Each chapter was a Christmas chapter taken from a book- most I had read already and they were good. The last chapter in the book was a literary re-telling of the Christmas story. It was worth the whole book! I have heard Bible teachers say that it is the hardest Bible story to re-tell because it is so familiar to everyone.  It was charming and interesting and fresh. I even read part of it aloud to my kids at our school Christmas party. Highly recommended.

"The Christmas Bower" was dull, I thought. It's a story about a department store that decides to use real birds in its Christmas display. The birds get loose, cause havoc and are finally removed from the store. All but 1 rare pair. A family who works at the store has an odd ornithologist uncle and son who play heavily into the story and are naturally the heroes at the end.

"Once There Was a Farm" was quite good. It is a childhood memoir/tribute to the author's mother. A remarkable story about a pretty unique life set in the warm atmosphere of the early 20th century. It's a hard life full of challenges but you see it through a child's eyes.

I am over half way through "Cross Creek" - autobiography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings(The Yearling). It  is set in rural Florida, I think in the 1930's. She is funny and descriptive of the place and the people. Good reading.

I am also almost half way through Madeleine L'Engle's "The Irrational Season". I read her other two books in the Crosswicks Journals, and liked them better. She usually makes me think but often leaves me frustrated because I want to argue some conclusion of hers or something. I came across something a couple of days ago that I really like and am trying to act on it. She is talking about the love Christians show-or don't show- to each other and others. Here it is:

"When this young man was a boy he had read A Wrinkle in Time, which he said he still rereads occasionally. So I said, "Okay, remember when Meg has to go back to Camazotz to rescue Charles Wallace from the power of IT, the naked brain, she knows that if she could love IT, her love would defeat IT. And she can't do it, so she turns to Charles Wallace because she can love her little brother, and that love is strong enough to defeat the cold intellectual power of IT. I came to this ending from my own experience, because there was someone I knew I ought to love, and with every effort of will I tried to love and I couldn't do it. But I found that if I turned away completely, and thought about those I could love, my husband, my three children, then I could get back into love, and then I could turn with love to the person I had such difficulties with."

"And later I said, "But in A Wind in the Door Meg has to make the next step into mature love; she has to learn to love Mr. Jenkins, and Mr. Jenkins is not an easy person to love."

"We love wherever we can love, and the power of that love spreads until the circumference of the circle of love grows wider and wider. At least that has been my own experience, even though I know to my rue that the circumference of my love is still much too small."

Isn't that good stuff?

Here is one more thing I really liked, it's a quote she includes and credits it to someone called Rilke. It's about marriage. " It is a question in marriage of not creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude, and shows him this confidence, the greatest in his power to bestow..."

I like the intimacy of that- appointing the other the guardian of your solitude.

Tomorrow I'll update you on how Jack & Lily are doing on their stacks, and hopefully share my New Years resolution