My audacity is abundantly clear when you hear what I have decided to do. For the first time in some months, I have gone back to trolling through blogs... I sometimes read Susan Wise Bauer's blog - there are many things about her that I love. She homeschools her four kids (with her own mother, who homeschooled Susan); she teaches Literature and is currently working on a 900-plus-page history of the world. And she is going to read a book a week this year. The challenge is to read books that are not "work-related" (but seriously, almost anything can become work related if you try hard enough). And I've bit.
I don't know what I'm getting myself in for, but on this icy and miserable day, I have decided to go for it and try to read a book a week (but not 52 in 52 weeks since I am a month behind). Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. But I have missed the delights of reading for fun. So, here goes...
No, wait! How do I decide? This has always been the hardest part of reading: making the decision. Do I read a children's book? George MacDonald's The Princess and the Curdie or E. Nesbit's Five Children and It? Both authors were great influences on C.S. Lewis, and really, I could even re-read the Chronicles of Narnia today... always winter and never Christmas. Isn't that just what January feels like? I have often thought I would like to re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but have never quite managed to get my nerve up to start the series again (and with me, that it is usually how it goes).
Or I could read some fascinating history. Joseph Ellis' American Sphinx that I got in 2002, on recommendation from my history prof; we were still reeling from the Clinton presidency in those days, and the similarities between Jefferson and Clinton were supposedly great... and I brought the book with me precisely because I now live in the land of Clinton. I have a biography of John Brown I've long meant to read; the Kansas abolitionist, who raided Harper's Ferry and later hung for it as well as giving us the phrase, "Bloody Kansas", has always fascinated and frightened me. As of right now, the book holds the prescription for my glasses. I don't think I have any Arkansan history here with me, and as it is frighteningly icy outside, that may need to be for a later date.
How about theology? For Christmas, my dad gave me his six-volume complete works of Flavel so that I could The Mystery of Providence but we then realized that there is no room in my house for six more books of that size, so he sent me home with the Banner of Truth paperback. Henry Nouwen's The Wounded Healer is another choice, feeling the need for some balm of encouragement.
Dorothy Sayer's comes to mind, too. I brought as many of the Peter Wimsey novels as I had; Tolkien's Ring Trilogy beckons me each time I lay eyes on it; I left the first two-thirds of Lewis' Space Trilogy in St. Louis or I would start that up.
What do you read on a cold and dreary winter's day?
3 comments:
You can read all of those books, so just grab one and start. ;)
I guess you have to limit your books by size - unless you are a fast reader or have a good deal of free time.
I would make a suggestion, but most of the books I would suggest are either already mentioned by you, or else they are like 1,000 pages long. :P Good luck!!!
I usually read the Space Trilogy. Those are good for all kinds of weather : )
I, myself, have restarted the Harry Potter Series in an attempt to get to read the seventh book again.
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