Reading

...one of several reading areas in our house

In a good bookroom, you feel in some way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.
Mark Twain 

Never judge a book by its movie.  (Rick Warren)

We raked books off the shelves by the dozens and hauled them along on picnics, to haylofts, up oak trees, to bath and to bed. The one terrifying possibility wasof finding oneself without a book                          (Kathleen Norris, 1941)

 The time to read is now, not hereafter. We must make time or miss our joy. George Holbrook Jackson

"Reading a great work of literature can truly be likened to having a conversation with a great mind." -Jennie Chancey

 .. said Grandfather.  "In my experience when people once begin to read they go on.  They begin because they think they ought to and they go on because they must.  Yes.  They find it widens life.  We're all greedy for life, you know, and our short span of existence can't give us all that we hunger for, the time is too short and our capacity not large enough.  But in books we experience all life vicariously."  A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge

            2012
Resolved:  to read more books in 2012! 
*Rural Free:  A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living, Rachel Peden
*Real Love for Real Life, Andi Ashworth 
The Beach House, Jane Green
Woman in Red, Eileen Goudge 
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, Alexander McCall Smith 
Gatsby's Girl, Caroline Preston
A Testament of Devotion Thomas R. Kelly
My Connemara Paula Steichen (SO good after visiting Carl Sandburg's home)
This Momentary Marriage  John Piper.  (Read on way home from vacation.  A lot of repetition from chapter to chapter, but some good stuff here.)
Vittoria Cottage, D.E. Stevenson.  Simple, English tale
Elizabeth and her German Garden, Elizabeth Von Arnim  (REALLY good!)


 

 “Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, 

my pile of books is a mile high. 

How I love them! How I need them! 

I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” 

~Arnold Lobel

"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."  C.S. Lewis

 

              2011
A Trick of the Light,  Louise Penny
Minding Frankie, Maeve Binchy
The Lady in the Palazzo:  At Home in Umbria, Marlena De Blasi
My Reading Life, Pat Conroy
God's Guest List, Debbie Macomber 
The Olive Farm, Carol Drinkwater
The Charming Quirks of Others, Alexander McCall Smith
The Pure Joy of Monastery Cooking, Brother Victor-Antoine
Heaven is for Real, Todd Burpo with Lynn VincentAches and Pains, Maeve Binchy
Twenty Wishes, Debbie Macomber
The Red Sea Rules, Robert J. Morgan
Leaving Church: a memoir of faith, Barbara Brown Taylor
The Pastor:  A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
An Unfinished Marriage, Joan Anderson (finished on our 40th anniversary)
*The Reluctant Tuscan, (How I Discovered My Inner Italian), Phil Doran - fun & funny
*A Cottage in Portugal Richard Hewitt - another good one, illustrations in each chapter by his wife, Barbara
*A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France, Betsy Draine & Michael Hinden
   *I came upon  these when I googled to find books in the Peter Mayle genre.  I was NOT disappointed!
A Killing in Antiques, Mary Moody.  Good mystery taking place at Brimfield Antique Show.  I enjoyed it.
The Paris Wife, Paula Molain.  SO very good!   8/27/11
The Lady and the Poet, The story of Ann More and John Donne.  Another excellent love story 8/30/11
A Cluttered Life:  Searching for God, Serenity, and my Missing Keys, Pesi Dinnerstein

Now I am surrounded by books all the time: my bedroom alone has five bookcases in it, not counting the entire wall I converted to shelving when I first moved in. I love it. The smell of ink and paper, the rustle of pages turning, the stateliness of a line of titles standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a shelf. That magic contained in a book goes beyond just words on pages. A book lives through time; it doesn't just exist the way an appliance might, and it collects readers the way a reader might collect books. It keeps a piece of every reader with it: a bookplate, a signature of ownership, a dog-eared page or underlined passage, a hint of wear on the jacket. Books can change lives, and they do. (from THIS POST)


Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, 

for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it,
except sitting in a corner by myself...
with a little book. Thomas a Kempis

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building more bookshelves." ~Anna Quindlen

2010 

Composing a Life, Mary Catherine Bateson
Crossroads, Belva Plains
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith
A Good Distance, Sarah Willis
Stillmeadow Daybook, Gladys Tabor
Agatha Christie at Home, Hilery Macaskill
The 3,000 Mile Garden, Leslie Land & Roger Phillips
Mrs. Fytton's Country Life,  Mavis Clark
Prayer's Apprentice, Timothy Jones
Imperfect Birds, Anne Lamott
Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes
Sin Boldly, Cathleen Falsani
Walkiing with God, John Eldredge
If the Church Were Christian, Philip Gulley
The Journal Keeper, Phyllis Theroux
Bravo, Valentina, Adriani Trigiani
Secrets of a Family Album, Isla Dewar
The Vintage Capers, Peter Mayle
The Diary, Eileen Goudge
Why I Stayed, Gayle Haggard
Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Playing by Heart, Deborah Raney

Several more....I just failed to record them.