March has always been one of my favorite months. All during my childhood, March meant spring break and birthday month because both of my sisters also have birthdays in March. The whole month was one big party, and my birthday wraps it all up on the 31st.
This year, I spent most of the day sitting in my messy house, drinking Dr. Pepper, eating pizza and chocolate, and reading books instead of cleaning. Now, this wasn’t different from any other day of the year except that I felt a smidge less guilty about it. [grin] Russ ended up taking the kids out for the evening while I cleaned the house for a few minutes and then spent the rest of the time reading in peace. It was lovely.
I finished The Chosen by Chaim Potok earlier in the day, after reading aloud a few chapters from A Tale of Two Cities and Peter Pan. But then I began reading several books, one chapter at a time—mostly because I cannot read sentences like “Let education release his inviolable personal ideal and not impose the arbitrary and stultifying restraints of an extrinsic tyrannizing image” [Norms and Nobility] for more than about 5 minutes before I need a sentence such as “His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola” [Whose Body?].
As you can see, I’ve finished a few books, started several, and added some to the original list (which I’ve marked with *).
And, yes, I need to start writing up reviews.
The 2015 Book List Challenge
Novels
Lila: A Novel
Hood
The Sunday Philosophy Club
A Girl Of The Limberlost (ChocLit Guild)
The Brothers K
The Road
Dune
The Once and Future King
The Chosen
Beloved
The Book Thief
*Whose Body? [in progress]
Clouds of Witness
Catch-22
Lord of the Flies
The Great Gatsby
Invisible Man
The Return of the Native
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
The Grapes of Wrath
Slaughterhouse-Five
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Signature of All Things
*Godric: A Novel
Merry Hall [in progress]
Classics
Pride and Prejudice
Gulliver’s Travels (An abridged re-telling)
Moby Dick
Paradise Lost (ChocLit Guild)
The Brothers Karamazov
The Lord of the Rings
Frankenstein [in progress]
No Name (Or something else by Wilkie Collins. ChocLit Guild)
Hamlet (CC Moms Book Club) [deep reading in progress]
Ancients
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Children’s and YA Novels
The Door in the Wall (CC Challenge A)
A Gathering of Days (CC Challenge A)
Crispin: The Cross of Lead (CC Challenge A)
Where the Red Fern Grows (CC Challenge B)
Non-Fiction
Biography/History
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (ChocLit Guild)
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (ChocLit Guild)
The Hiding Place (CC Challenge B)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Faith, Culture, and Education
The Pursuit of God (ChocLit Guild) [in progress]
Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human in an Ideological Age (CiRCE Conference) [in progress]
Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (CiRCE Conference) [in progress]
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
The Soul of Science (CC Parent Practicum)
Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art (CC Parent Practicum)
Honey for a Teen’s Heart
Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You’ve Always Wanted to Read
Re-Reads
*The Bronze Bow (CC Challenge A)
*The Question (CC Moms Book Club) [deep reading in progress]
*A Tale of Two Cities (reading aloud) [in progress]
*Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
*Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie [read-aloud in progress]
*Heidi by Johanna Spyri