Bounded by Books - To List or Not to List?

Reading lists. I usually view them askance, as something akin to required reading, which isn’t fun like the liberty of an unbounded field of choices. I usually don’t know what I’ll read after my current book until I’m finished, and I like the suspense and the freedom (not to sound silly, but it does feel a little like setting out on a road trip where your boundaries are suddenly expanded hundreds or thousands of miles). In high school, I was part of a homeschool literature club (one of the most fun things I’ve ever done—I’ll have to write about it sometime!) and we read a classic a month. Sometimes it took me the whole month to read it (The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Last of the Mohicans, anyone?), so while I loved reading classics, I felt like I never had the chance to read whatever I wanted. My route was always mapped out for me (I wouldn’t trade it for any other reading experience, however!).

A Giant Stack of Books in Germany - wikimedia commons

So I’ve never made anything more definitive than an “I’d like to read this someday” list; until this month that is, when I had to assemble one for the Read-to-Win program … it was my duty as a participating author. To see a photo of me with books stacked as high as my chin (okay, I’m not that ambitious—I was holding them) and my full list, click here. (I got a kick out of Katie Lynn Daniels' description of her reading list, too!)

But now that I’m committed to this list, I feel a sense of calm and orderliness. The task of deciding what I’ll be reading in the next three months is accomplished ahead of time, and accomplishing things early is a nice thing to do, isn’t it? These are books I’ve wanted to read for some time, and I still have the liberty of picking what order I read them in, so I don’t feel unduly confined.

So, are you as rigid a list-maker as a college professor? Or are you free-spirited and like the adventure of not knowing what book is around the corner? What books do you definitely want to read this summer?

Read-to-Win

I am very excited to be participating in Homeschooled Author’s summer reading contest, Read-to-Win, where readers compete to win a $100 Amazon gift card by writing book reviews. Thirteen authors will be featured over the summer, each week sharing a video or a photo of themselves. Also each week one author will have the digital copy of one of his or her books on sale for $0.99 so readers can purchase them, read them, and write a review for Amazon. Want to know more? Go here.

It’s the tiniest bit stressful to make a video of myself, especially since I’ve never done it before; but it’s also fun, because I enjoy seeing videos of people I know only online. I get to know them a little more; I can hear their voice and see their mannerisms. So maybe other people appreciate the opportunity to see me … (at least, that’s what I tell myself to boost my confidence.) So if you’re curious, you can go here to see the video introducing me. Check out the other authors’ videos, too! They’re only about a minute long each.

But wait, there’s more news to accompany all of this! This first week of Read-to-Win just so happens to be the week my eBook of Family Reunion (Six Cousins, Book 1) is on sale. I encourage you to keep up with the Read-to-Win challenge, because you’ll get a lot of fun eBooks for $0.99 apiece, help authors out by writing reviews, and potentially win a $100 Amazon gift card to buy even more books! (That’s what I’d do with it, anyway!)

Coffee Cake, Anyone?

Today I am thrilled to participate in author Amanda Tero’s blog tour to celebrate the release of her newest short story, “Coffee Cake Days”!

I have been so blessed to have gotten to know Amanda Tero online. Her heart for God is inspiring, and I’m excited about the impact her stories (as well as her music and the other things she does!) will have on people. We all need to be returning to God’s Word and making Him our life, which is what she encourages!

My review: “Coffee Cake Days” was short and sweet with a powerful lesson. The main character, Meg, is fully relatable and even though I’m not the oldest of several siblings, I was able to imagine myself in her position. The principle of servanthood is something that we can all take to heart, no matter our place. I especially loved how the Bible verses that Meg reads teach her the right thing to do. This story was at once both heartwarming and convicting!

Review of “Maggie’s Hope Chest,” another short story by Amanda Tero: I read “Maggie’s Hope Chest” twice so the spiritual message could fully sink in … and it was more touching the second time through. What Maggie learned is something that really hits me because I have had to constantly regulate my attachment to my possessions.
I enjoy how Miss Tero makes Maggie’s Bible study, prayers, and conscience-wrestling the drama of the story. It’s realistic to whoever has searched out God’s will on a matter or been trying to avoid something God wanted them to do. The joy that comes at the end is real!
This little story will get you thinking: “Have I really given God all that I have?”

Amanda Tero is a homeschool graduate whose desire is to provide God-honoring reading material.

Her current projects include short stories and novels-in-progress. When she was a young teenager,

Amanda was obsessed with writing. However, the Lord helped her to realize that she was writing for

her personal pleasures and purposes - not His. For several years, she put away “pleasure writing" and

wrote mainly Biblical articles for several years (which she still continues). She found the time of writing silence beneficial in gleaning from God's Word and strengthening the focus of why she writes. Since 2013, the Lord directed her to begin writing fiction again. Her desire is to glorify and exalt God in all of her writing. She desires to challenge girls to focus on their relationship with God and grow in Him and His Word. If something she has written draws an individual into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, it is worth it!

Website: www.amandatero.weebly.com

FaceBook: www.facebook.com/amandaterobooks

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/AmandaTero

Blog: www.withajoyfulnoise.blogspot.com

Amazon: www.amazon.com/Amanda-Tero

Book Review: Alice in Wonderland

“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!”

Maybe what Alice said of the Jabberwocky poem in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland isn’t entirely accurate for my experience reading this book and its sequel Through the Looking Glass, but it’s cute to start out articles with quotes.

Arthur Rackham's illustration - wikimedia commons

This was another children’s classic that I visited this year for the first time, quite different from Heidi … but still about a little girl. Although I understand why some have reservations toward it, I wanted to see what it was like for myself and so tried to come at it with no preconceptions; and I enjoyed it for the most part. To me, it read like a dream you would have in the middle of the night, a long, unbroken dream that you don’t remember when you wake up but would read very much like Alice’s experiences if you could write it down. It was quirky and made me laugh, because dreams morph nonsensically from one thing to another and yet still maintain a sort of plot, just like these two books. In dreams, people say things that don’t make sense, and objects and issues that you ponder in your waking hours often appear, albeit in surprising forms. Alice in Wonderland was like that. Childhood’s imaginative ramblings play a big role in the plot—cards and flowers and chess pieces could talk and have adventures—as did mixed-up school lessons, in history, grammar, and the like, At times the nonsense got to be a little too much for me, but then came amusing wordplay and logical (or illogical!) reasoning to save my good opinion.

The quotes you can take from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) were one of my favorite parts; these books seem made for snipping out phrases and sentences that put a different spin on a variety of topics. One of my first exposures, long before I read Lewis Carroll’s classics, was this quote on my Wordly Wise vocabulary workbook:

“‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’”
(Appropriate for a vocabulary book, no? She’s talking to Humpty Dumpty about his misuse of words—he thinks a word “means just what [he] choose[s] it to mean—neither more nor less.”)

Here are some others I enjoyed:

“‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ [asked Alice.]
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.” (So true!)

“Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” - The Duchess 
(I find this to be true, and even good advice for living! It makes you contemplate the choices you make daily.)

“I don’t see how he can ever finish it, if he doesn’t begin.” - Alice, of the Mock Turtle 
(Good advice for procrastinators, especially for writers, since Alice was waiting for him to begin a story)

“‘Begin at the beginning,’” the King said, gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’” 
(Works for my brain, but granted, there are writers and other creative individuals who must do things differently)

“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!” - Alice, of the Jabberwocky poem 
(I can say the same of several poems I have read)

Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland? What do you think of it? Too weird for your tastes, or delightfully peculiar?

When I Read, I Dream

Books and dolls make a lovely pairing, in my opinion at least. Have you ever heard of the “When I Read, I Dream” series by Mattel? I received this set of four dolls inspired by four heroines of children’s literature when I was ten or eleven or so, and I’ve treasured them ever since. I pulled them out of my closet for a photoshoot to share on my blog today.

Fern

Jo

Heidi

Anne

I would have enjoyed it if they had produced more girls for the series ….They could have made Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (Barbie did one for the movie); Alice from Alice in Wonderland; Laura from Little House on the Prairie; Rebecca from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; Sara from A Little Princess; Mary from The Secret Garden; Wendy from Peter Pan … my list goes on! (Perhaps it was best that they stopped, for my bedroom’s sake.)

What about you? Do you have any dolls or other figurines inspired by literature?

A Heidi Life

Today is a very special blogging day … because it is the 200th post on my blog! Two hundred? How did I get that far? What did I write about? I especially wonder that on weeks when I have no clue what I’m going to write, which happens more often than I’d like to admit. But it just so happens I have an idea this week … which I came up with on Monday (I usually come up with my blog post ideas a day in advance … though sometimes it’s the selfsame day … yep, I’m a procrastinator ….)

I read Heidi for the first time in April. While I think I would have been more captivated with it as a young girl, I found plenty of things to enjoy now. Heidi, a little girl, comes to live with her bitter, hermit-like grandfather in the Swiss Alps above the village of Dorfli. Because of her sweetness, she gradually melts his heart into repentance for his angry, standoffish ways. Others come to depend on Heidi for companionship—Peter the goat-herder and his blind, lonely grandmother. But then Heidi’s aunt Dete takes her away to Frankfurt to be the companion to a wealthy invalid girl, Klara, who has everything but happiness and health. Her governess/nurse/housekeeper Fraulein Rottenmeier doesn’t appreciate Heidi, but she is the one in charge when Klara’s widowed father is away, thus causing Heidi some grief. Two very distinct sets of people, miles apart, love and need this little beam of sunshine named Heidi … but what does Heidi need? Will she ever go home to the mountains she pines for? And how can she help all of her friends and loved ones at once?

wikimedia commons

Heidi’s mountain home seems to embody the simple and idyllic way of life, one that many (especially we dreamy types) wish we had. Living on a quiet mountain away from the bustle, though within walking distance of a village for occasional stimulation. Few possessions, only what is needed for convenient living. Wholesome, simple food, requiring little preparation, and healthful mountain air. Breathtaking beauty every time you look outside your window. Whole days spent doing nothing but exploring nature, rejoicing in it, and watching some goats. Lots of stillness for prayer, reading, and whatever creative pursuits are yours. Ministering to those who love you and need you nearby.

Something like this is what I imagine as being in store for God’s people when the Messiah reigns in the new heavens and the new earth, when all creation shall be at peace (Isaiah 11:6-9, 65:17-25; Micah 4:4; etc.). And while it would be lovely to have it now, we aren’t necessarily promised that (John 16:33; Psalm 73; Romans 5:1-5; etc.). In fact, what makes Heidi’s idyllic mountain home so satisfying and rewarding is that she returns to it after she perseveres through an unpleasant sojourn in the city. We have work to do for our Lord and Savior and shouldn’t strive to make our earthly life a paradise at the expense of our real tasks.

So while we can’t expect a Heidi-like, perfect existence in the here and now, I think we can use the spirit in which she lived her life as inspiration to make our sojourn on this earth more in line with God’s ideals, thus making it easier for us to serve Him. Things like living our lives for others’ sakes and helping those in need. Simplifying—discovering, like Heidi did, the truly essential things in life and concentrating on them. (I read Heidi during a time when I was sorting through clutter, and the contrast between her life and mine, how she had to spend very little time taking care of physical stuff, was more than a little convicting.)

I love it when a book speaks to my life! What fictional book have you read recently that impacted your life? And if you’ve read Heidi, what did you think of it?

Bookshelf Tag

What book-lovers don’t like to talk about their books, their own personal collection that they can pick up whenever they have a hankering for their stories, or sort them with rapt and dreamy attention in stacks or on shelves? This one sure likes to. And what book-lovers don’t like studying other people’s shelves? (Marielle does this at Mrs. Parker’s house in England Adventure as a matter of fact.) So when I saw “Bookshelf Tag” on Elisabeth Grace Foley’s blog, The Second Sentence, I wanted to participate myself and share it with my blogging friends. It originated from Natalie on Raindrops on Roses & Whiskers on Kittens. And also, because of time constraints, I’m not including all the questions … so please, check out Natalie’s blog to find the whole list! Without further ado:

Describe your bookshelf (or wherever it is you keep your books—it doesn’t actually have to be a shelf!) and where you got it from (you can include a picture if you wish):

I consider four bookshelves as mine. Two match: tall, brown, with sliding doors concealing two shelves of books on the bottom; those are in my bedroom and decorated with knickknacks. Two others, in the library/study/craft/old school room, are also the same size, with three shelves each, but one is brown and the other is maple-ish. The two tall, brown shelves have been in my family longer than I have; the small ones came from Walmart, I think.

Do you have any special or different way of organizing your books?

Probably not in any way no one has thought of before … I try to organize by subject, author, and size.

What’s the thickest (most amount of pages) book on your shelf?

An old Bible—1712 pages!

What’s the thinnest (least amount of pages) book on your shelf?

That’s hard to say because I keep a lot of children’s picture books behind the doors in my tall shelves. But I think the winner may be one of a tiny boxed set of Beatrix Potter tales … topping out at ten pages.

Is there a book you received as a birthday gift or a Christmas gift?

Probably quite a few of them I received that way … such as my Anne of Green Gables boxed set, Chronicles of Narnia, Jesus Freaks, Dear Princess, Queen Victoria’s Sketchbook …

What’s the smallest (height and width wise) book on your shelf?

Any one of my miniature Little Golden books. They measure 2 ¾ by 2 ¾ inches—so cute!

What’s the biggest (height and width wise) book on your shelf?

The Jews in Their Land, conceived and edited by David Ben Gurion. It measures 12 inches tall by 8 ½ inches wide and barely squeezes onto its shelf.

Is there a book from a friend on your shelf?

Yes! In two different ways: some have been published by friends, and some have been given to me by friends, like Queen Victoria’s Sketchbook mentioned above.

Most expensive book?

Not sure … I buy most of my books secondhand.

The last book you read on your shelf?

A Secret Gift, a book about stories of the Great Depression, by Ted Gup; I read it in January.

Do you have more than one copy of a book?

I do, actually. Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John. One is a vintage hardback from 1950 and was given to my aunt when she was a little girl and the other, a white paperback, is from the 1990s (I’m estimating).

Do you have the complete series of any book series?

Several. Anne of Green Gables, most of the American Girl six-book series, the History Mysteries series, Little House, the Royal Diaries … and perhaps more. I love having whole series.

What’s the newest addition to your shelf?

I think Little Hood is one of them, illustrated by my friend E. Kaiser Writes!

The oldest book on your shelf (as in, the actual copy is old)?

A beautiful edition of Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott, which seems to date from 1888.

A book you won?

The Experiment, by Morgan Huneke.

A book with a special/different cover (e.g. leather bound, soft fuzzy cover, etc.)?

A leather-bound Bible that was my dad’s from the 1960s.

A book that is your favorite color?

There are several that are blue, so I’ll go with Emily Climbs, because that has the prettiest cover of all the blue ones, I think.

Any signed books?

At least seven! In Search of Adventure, From the Dark to the Dawn, and Remembering the Alamo by Alicia A. Willis; The Experiment by Morgan Huneke; The Sparrow Found a House by Jason McIntire; Journeys of Faithfulness by Sarah Clarkson; and Behind the Stories by Diane Eble—signed by Bodie Thoene, whose story is included in the collection.

If you would like to participate, consider yourself tagged! And don’t forget: if you want the complete list of questions, check out Raindrops on Roses & Whiskers on Kittens.