I'm just trying to walk myself home.
Browsing Tag
Hello 2020. I’m grateful you’re here. I am already pumped for all that’s coming in 2020. It’s going to be an AMAZING year, I can feel it. But before we get too far into 2020, I want to I want to take a minute to record some favorites from 2019. So here are some of …
I just need a couple of hours to myself. Do you ever feel that way? Since Spring Break, it feels like we have been in catch up mode. Since my husband works at a church, sometimes Holy Week is really busy. I have to be super intentional to pay attention on Easter Weekend or sometimes …
Since reading The Orphan Master’s Son, I have picked up several other books on North Korea. All of a sudden it’s like I CAN. NOT. LOOK. AWAY. I am obsessed. The escape stories. The starvation in camps stories. The day to day COMPLETE LACK OF FREEDOM. Every time I think I have read the worst …
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson is a thrilling, stay-up-until-you-can-not-hold-your-eyes-open tale of a young boy who is searching for meaning (and just trying to stay alive) in the most repressive nation of our time. Set in modern day North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son reads like a futuristic George Orwell novel. I kept …
In January I joined up with a fellow blogger who was hosting a read-along of Bonhoeffer’s biography by Eric Metaxas with the understanding that we would post our thoughts on the first half of this book today and then do the same for the second half of the book on March 15. I’m so grateful …
I finally finished The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson last week and I cannot recommend it highly enough. The Great Migration is such an important (and much overlooked) part of American history. So many individual stories of leaving gathered together into a movement that changed America. Isabel Wilkerson has taken apart the movement …
I am still working my way through The Warmth of Other Suns. I even read a few stories aloud at dinner this week. I am in the middle of Part 4, which is the is the largest section of The Warmth of Other Suns. The section is entitled The Kinder Mistress, from the Langston Hughes‘ …
It’s important to me at all times of the year to be reading about a culture that makes up half of the town I live in here in Arkansas, but especially during Black History month, I try to introduce some new aspect of African-American history at the Chino House. This year we are looking at …
A few of my favorite reads of 2012 The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer The City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell Peace Like A River by Leif Enger The Fiddler’s Green by A.S. Peterson (sequel to The Fiddler’s …
Are you looking for something to read this Christmas? Here are my Advent Readings for this year. My six year old, Simon, is counting down the days until December 1st. He remembers fondly that even though there is currently no evidence of the coming season in our house, we usually start Christmas on December 1st …
Last week I read Seven: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker, and thinking about this book is taking up the better part of my brain. The book is the storytelling of her efforts to do a fast of sorts for seven months, from seven different things. One month she eats seven foods. One …
I borrowed Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, at the beginning of the summer from a friend. And I still haven’t returned it. It’s one of those books that you can read in one sitting if you don’t stop yourself, so after I read about half of it, I sort of …
I picked up Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire by Rafe Esquith about his years of teaching in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood because I am always intrigued by stories about teachers who are able to have success in schools where the odds are against them. Some of my favorite movies have a similar storyline. …
Every year I give the kids a new book on the first day of summer. I picked The Great Wide Sea by M. H. Herlong out for Ben because in addition to the appealing cover and exciting storyline, the main character’s name is Ben. He read it the first day of summer, handed it to …
I bought The Fiddler’s Gun for my boys a while back because it’s an adventure story set during the American revolution. And because there are some pirates. So when I was packing for our trip, I grabbed it for them to read but then I ended up starting it. Completely taken in, I stayed up …
A Beauty To Unveil A woman in her glory, a woman of beauty, is a woman who is not striving to become beautiful or worthy or enough. She knows in her quiet center where God dwells that He finds her beautiful, has deemed her worthy and in Him, she is enough. She exudes a sense …
This week I’ve been reading a memoir about reading. I’m all inside of books within books within books. My mind is sort of a wonderful twist and tangle of titles and quotes and all the ways books relate to life and characters mirror friends. Nina Sankovitch decides she is going to read a book a …
A few weeks ago, I happened upon a collection of short stories by Julie Orringer called How to Breathe Underwater. The last story, entitled Stations of the Cross, drew my attention and so I read it first. I was enraptured. The story drew me in and has haunted me in the weeks since. I flipped …
Currently Reading: Books about World War II in China and Russia The Distant Land of my Father by Bo Caldwell The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean In the last several days I’ve experienced World War II from the cell of a Japanese war prison in China and from the cellar of the Hermitage museum …
A sweet friend who knows me well put City of Tranquil Light in my hands over a month ago and when I texted her early this morning saying I had finished it and loved it so, so much, she replied, I knew you would love it. I read a lot of books. I read stories …