I really don't like to admit that summer is almost over, but facts are facts.  I wanted to recap the Challenge using an easy evaluative question: "Would I read this book again?"

COMPLETED

Temperament, The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle
by Stuart Isacoff. - No, too weighty.  I copied quotes into my journal and will read those occasionally.
The Summer of My Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L'Engle.  - Definitely, after I've loaned it to several friends.
The Man Who Was Thursday
by G.K. Chesterton. - Yes, for the writing, not the plot.
The Tolkien Reader
by J.R.R. Tolkien. - parts of it, yes. 
1776 by David McCullough - as a reference, yes.
Every Living Thing by James Herriot. - I'm not sure.  Maybe read aloud to the grands?

ABANDONED AFTER TWO CHAPTERS

I Know This Much Is True
by Wally Lamb - no.

STILL READING SLOWLY

The Imitation of Christ by
Thomas a Kempis, translated by William Griffin.  - highlighted parts, yes.

AUDIO BOOKS THIS SUMMER

My kids are mostly grown; thus I have more time alone.  I love to listen to audio books, lectures and sermons while I'm cooking dinner, ironing, cleaning the bathrooms, and canning, and driving around.

Devices and Desires, PD James - no, but I'd like to read more PD James
1776, David McCullough (yes, I read and listened to this one)
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff - yes! and see the movie
An Old Man's Love, Anthony Trollope - no, but I'd like to read more Trollope
Death of An Expert Witness, PD James - no, but I'd like to read more James
Low Country, Anne Rivers Sidon - no, I confused this book for another
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins - no, but I enjoyed listening to this one

BOOKS RECOMMENDED FROM BLOGS/FRIENDS/SON

The Fat Flush Plan, Anne Louise Gittleman - hopefully for many years to come??!
Imagined London, Anna Quindlen - yes, before my dream trip to the UK
The Secret of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton - once in a while, maybe
The Red House Mystery,  A.A. Milne - oh yes! 

Janie at Seasonal Soundings has issued a Autumn Reading Challenge.  I greatly admire the way Janie plans her reading year by year, season by season.  I have enjoyed and grown from the Summer Reading Challenge (recap soon) and I can't resist another....

You know what I like about a reading challenge?  I like the **challenge** part.  I'm wired in such a way that I find it impossible not to read.  If there wasn't reading material handy I'd start reading the small print about riboflavin on cereal boxes.  So I don't need external motivation to read. 

What I find most helpful is the focus and selection of  which books I will choose.  The external motivation to read the difficult books is very helpful. Writing down my plan to read a book is a committment that gets me over the hump of laziness. I have too many books on my shelves which haven't been read for the simple reason that they aren't easy to read; they require a little effort.  If I can in one season, four times a year, read one challenging book my life will be so much the better, so much the richer.

Several books that I read this summer came from reading the blogs of other participants in the Summer Reading Challenge.  Their writing inspired me to buy that book and read it.  Amazon.com must love bloggers!  (Although www.fetchbook.info is my favorite book price comparison site.) 
 
The question, "Which will be my Challenge book?" got me thinking about categories for all the books for this next reading challenge.  I got as far as the framework: now I need to fill in specific titles.  My job as a homeschool teacher involves stacks of reading so I need to incorporate those books into the challenge. Here are my categories in the order of this season's priority:

CURRICULUM - reading for homeschool
CHALLENGE - on the scholarly side, requires concentration
CULTIVATING - books that nurture my soul
COMFORT & JOY - lighter reading for relaxation
CREATIVITY - about music, art, poetry; the process and the people
CURIOSITY - biographies about people or who interest me, history

Anyone interested in joining in?  I think it would be more wonderful to have 20 people sign on to read one challenging book than to have five people committed to read 20 books (nothing wrong with that - my point is to encourage quality over quantity).  Sign up at Seasonal Soundings. 

Curt and I have been having a little tug-of-war with this book.  I started it and read two chapters before I left for Chicago.  While I was gone, he read five chapters. 

When I had returned and after our kids went back to college, we both reached for it one night. "I'm reading it," he exclaimed. "Well, I'm reading it too, and I started it before you did," I retorted. (I promise I didn't stick out my tongue.) So we compromised: he went back to the third chapter and read it aloud but -- alas! -- I fell sound asleep.   A few nights later I had read through the fifth chapter and started to read the sixth chapter aloud to him.  Alas, he fell asleep!

Since I am quite simply a selfish person, I broke the unspoken covenant and read ahead. Last night I had one chapter left and he was occupied with his bow and arrows (archery hunting season begins today).  All day I enjoyed the anticipation of completing a good book.

What a quirky, wonderful, strange, charming, odd little book!  I wish I had the opportunity to re-read it this week, and catch more nuances and clues the second time through.  Chesterton has challenged me to think of the playfulness of God.  It's a quite different way of thinking. I plan to pick this Chesterton gem up a few more times in my life. Random quotes:

Girl Reading by Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (1861-1933)

www.leicestergalleries.com

You can read more about him here. 

Happy Friday, all!

This was taken at an abandoned mine during the annual family backpacking trip earlier this month.  They look happy don't they?  They're getting married at the end of the year, Lord willing.  Yay!

Edit - Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday DS#2, Happy Birthday to you!  May God bless you beyond all that you could ask or think in the year ahead.  We love you, dear boy!

A quaint little family story, gleaned from my recent visit with my sister:

I grew up the youngest of seven children.  Guests were a part of every Sunday dinner and we probably averaged 15-20 people around the extended table.  At times our family lived hand to mouth, (or prayer to prayer) but my mom was a pro.fess.ion.al. at making enough food to fill everyone up.  However, occasionally it appeared that there might not be enough to go around.

When that happened, FHB was whispered and passed from kid to kid.  It was a code for "Family Hold Back", an signal to take smaller portions or pass the bowl by to make sure the guests were served first.

As with many of our family stories, I can't remember this; but I love the story!  I don't know anything about Lorraine Russell's book - just found it on Google images!

I make it a habit to read books that help me in my role as homemaker in August.  September is a sort of New Year with school starting back up, and August is my month to try to get the house deep-cleaned, or the month to tackle a time-consuming project.  So over the years I have read books about frugality, organization, cleaning, laundry, healthy eating, etc. in August.

My husband shakes his head back and forth and sighs.  You see, he is a doer.  He bounds out of bed in the morning (usually) and has "the list" in his head, written down at home and written down at work.  He excels at prioritization, is realistic about the time it takes to accomplish a task, and hasn't an ounce of procrastination in his body.  To his logical train of thought: if the house is dirty, clean it!   Just do it!
 
Well, um, my philosophy is more along the lines of Read About It First, Think Deep Thoughts, Talk about Doing It, before actually doing it.  This works well with a major lifestyle change like deciding to homeschool, but is probably overkill for dusting under the bed.

Nevertheless, I find that well-written books rev up my engine and get me excited, even if it's about a new improvement such as using a squeegee to wash my windows instead of an old diaper or the good old newpaper-and-vinegar method. It recalibrates my brain and gets me on the right path again. My batteries get charged and I'm motivated to start ticking away. 

This August, thanks to Dana, I'm reading Edith Schaeffer's The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Creative Ideas for Enriching Everyday Life.  What a treasure chest of thoughts, ideas and inspirations!!  This book is so much more than cooking, cleaning and laundry. 

I'm encouraged to search for beauty in all aspects, every medium of my everyday life and find ways to bring that beauty to the surface. Reading through it reminds me of my SIL Kathie, who is always putting a vase of freshly cut flowers on her table or arranging food to be served in an aesthetically pleasing manner. 

I'm thinking about ways of implementing some of the ideas I've read about so far.  Do you get into a rut of "same-ol-same-ol" like I do?  Like any improvement there is a time of intense focus and concentration and then the dreadful "slippage" starts, and, before you know it, it's August again!

How do you *cultivate* beauty in your life?

(Does reading "Mr. F" remind you of Sense and Sensibility <grin>?) 

I got another package this week from my friend, benefactor and kindred spirit, Mr. F. 

This man has retired from *several* illustrious careers: he worked as an engineer on equipment that went on the moon; as a district attorney he successfully prosecuted every homicide case he was given; he sat as a federal judge; he taught high school after he "retired".  

I first met his daughter in a women's Bible study - when I saw Mr. F at our new church the resemblance was so striking that I had no doubt whose father he was.  Over the years that we worshiped together he made a wonderful hobby of  building up other people's personal libraries.  He bought  leather bound editions of Spurgeon's Morning and Evening by the case to cheerfully give away. 

Our family has been the grateful recipients of many gifts and even more loans of books that Mr. F thought we might enjoy.  We'd get photocopies of articles and essays from Mr. F's reading.  He has a 100% track record for good stuff. 

He has introduced us to (a partial list):

~ coracles and and the Welsh Prince Madog thought to have come to America centuries before Columbus;
~ Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island
~ Paul De Kruif's Microbe Hunters  (science history that was fascinating)
~ Conan Doyle's The White Company
~ alternate theories on the identity of William Shakespeare
~ Shackleton's Endurance
~ Confederate coinage and currency
~ Roger Ascham's Toxophilus (Ascham was Queen Elizabeth I's tutor)
~ Dava Sobel's book Longitude (the first glimmers of hope that I could enjoy science)
~ stories of the Oregon Trail, vividly told
~ Long's English Literature and American Literature
~ Adam Nicholson's book God's Secretaries about the making of the KJV

So many times information he had uncovered and enthusiastically shared coincided with our home school studies.  He always took an interest in what we were learning and the boys' plans.  We both enjoy Puritan authors and have compared notes on Burroughs, Boston and Watson. 

Since he has moved away our conversations have been greatly reduced, but I still get treasures in the mail and occasional emails with recommendations. 

This package was a hardbound first edition of a book published in 1912 by Harper and Brothers called The Greatest English Classic, A Study of the KJV of the Bible and It's Influences on Life and Literature by Cleland McAfee.
 
In an accompanying letter Mr. F wrote:

I admire and appreciate his curiosity and inquisitiveness, his thirst to keep learning, and his instinctive generosity.  What joy it is to have such a friend.  Thanks, Mr. F!

        The Village Wedding by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes

My son and his fianceé have been spending their last week before school starts with us.  We've been working on loose ends for their December wedding.  I wanted Fine Art Friday to reflect this week and thought of Fildes picture. I love the way aspect of community in this celebration and the cross-generational participation.   (Aside -  I love seeing younger children at weddings and wince whenever I read "no children please" printed on invitations.)

Happy Friday, all!

One of my high school girlfriends coined the word ro-tic (pronounced ROE-tick) for all those situations and settings that were so romantic, minus the man.  You know, a boat trip, a sunset, or a lovely walk in the woods - that would be perfect if a man who loved you was participating, if you were a couple instead of a single.

That's the word that came to mind when I arrived home yesterday afternoon.  My husband, three sons and some friends are on our annual backpacking trip; thus, I came home to an empty house.  The white board (the command center of our home) had a message waiting for me - lyrics to a song - that let me know, um, that my absent husband is looking forward to seeing me soon.

It's good to be home.  Funny, both directions of this trip were home-comings.  The Chicago area will always be home to me, the repository of my childhood memories.  But the people, the places, even the most fixed of landmarks, change while you are gone and only part of it is the familiar place you remember. 

Home is this space where God has placed me. Home is the people I love, the jobs I've been given. It's a good place to be.

The summer I was 18 was a betwixt-and-between summer.  I felt dislocated and dangling.  I was estranged from my father and step-mother, not welcome at their house.  I had a place to go in the fall, but three blank months before me. I was in California without transportation nor the money to go to a sibling's house in the Midwest. I worked at four or five different summer camps, traveled to play the piano in friends' weddings and filled in wherever there was a need -  really, wherever I could stay.

One week I was at a friend's cousin's mom's house (a stranger to me) and broke down in tears, lamenting my "homeless estate".  I cannot remember this woman, her name or her appearance; but her words are burned into my brain. "You are in such a great spot, Carol," she began.  "You have nothing to hold onto but the Lord. Look at me - I have a nice home, a good husband,  my children, etc.  These are gifts but they can also be temptations to place my hope and my security in, instead of trusting God. God is your home, God is your refuge." 
 
Now that I'm home, I need to catch up on many things.  My next year of school is sketched out, but I need to work on the details, type up schedules, revisit Algebra II, make sure I have all the books I need. Soon. Only after I sit on the deck with my man and talk and talk and talk and listen and listen and listen.