What I am Reading

I have decided it is better to make a blog post every so often about what I am reading, rather than keep it loaded on the sidebar, where it is less permanent. I am reading a book of memoirs by Louis L'Amour, and he saved lists of what he was reading from the 1930s on. I am not a prolific and effective writer like Louis L'Amour, but still, perhaps I might want to look back someday, and I don't know how permanent is a blog post in the ether of the internet, but if I wrote my booklists on paper, I surely would lose them.

Like I said, I am reading Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour, a really good book. He was self-educated, and a lover of books, and his memoir also provides insight into the decade before the Great Depression. Apparently, the economy was in bad shape all through the 20s, but many people didn't realize it. The workers knew, though-- the number of wandering laborers grew throughout the 20s. He said when the Crash of '29 happened, he and his laboring friends hardly noticed it. Work had been hard to come by for years for them.

I set aside the Pickwick Papers (Dickens) in order to read L'Amour. I find Pickwick Papers slow going, although I have finally found my 'friend' in that book-- Samuel Weller. It's funny how I have to get almost through a book before the point of it begins to dawn on me. A little slow on the uptake, I guess.

Aravis and I have finished The God Who is There (Schaeffer), Macbeth (Shakespeare) and Marcus Brutus (Plutarch). We are now reading Postmodern Times (Veith), Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) and the Life of Dion (Plutarch). Mariel reads Plutarch and Shakespeare with us too.

We are still working slowly through Trial and Triumph (Hannula), Understanding Your Bible (Gowens), Ourselves (Mason) and Brightest Heaven of Invention (Leithart). We read between a chapter per week and a chapter per term in each of these books. The Gowens and Leithart books are commentaries on other things we are reading.

Cornflower and I finished Children of the New Forest (Marryat) and began The Jungle Book (Kipling) last week. Mariel and I are now reading Be Ready to Answer (Gowens) to go along with the comparative religion study she is doing in some of her other books. We also just started The Sea Around Us (Carson), which I haven't yet read in its entirety.

Our moms' book group is reading Toward a Philosophy of Education (Mason). We just discussed Chapter 5, The Sacredness of Personality. I finished rereading For the Children's Sake (Macaulay) a couple of weeks ago, and am now trying to get interested in Children are Wet Cement (Ortlund), which I found at a thrift store, along with Kay Arthur's How to Study Your Bible and Dickens' The Life of Our Lord, which he wrote for his children. But I just started The Gift of Fire (Mitchell) at the recommendation of the DHM, who is currently writing some amazing posts on education, and I think it will trump the Wet Cement book, at least for awhile. (The advantage of the Ortlund book is that I can keep it in the van and read while I am waiting for someone, and I have to read the Mitchell book on the computer.)

I haven't updated my Bible reading list in the sidebar for awhile, but I have continued my reading. I need to get over there and update it. I just finished Romans in the New Testament, and am in 2 Chronicles (just finished the reign of Josiah) in the Old Testament. (I have so many thoughts running through my head from sermons and Bible studies I have heard lately, and I have tried two or three times to write blog posts on them, but nothing is congealing at this point. I think I just need to write stream of consciousness on those things for awhile and maybe then thoughts will come together.)

So that is what I am reading.