Island of the Blue Dolphins

So, I think I have mentioned before that I am returning from a long, dead period of my life where I did absolutely no reading.  An avid reader all of my life, I went through about a decade of nothing.  Wasteland.  No books, no desire for books, no growth.  That is a story within itself that is beside the point, but in January, 2010, I declared 2010 to be the "Year of the Book."  And it was! I probably shouldn't have said "year" though...I feel my soul returning and my insatiable appetite for the written word has once again taken over.

In the process, I am catching up on some old books that I missed during my desert sojourn.  So, even though you have probably read many of the ones I am just now discovering, thanks for bearing with me as I delight in uncovering even the older treasures...

Today's book is "Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell.  Based on a true story, it captivated me.  It is an easy read--one that is recommended reading in middle school.  But the tale it tells is one as old as time and should be required reading regardless of age.

It is one of survival and amazing discoveries of the true capacities for survival that lie within each of us.  Set on a deserted island in the 1800's, it details a story of resourcefulness, discovery, and hope in the face of what most of us think would destroy us.

Get it.  You can finish it in about 3 hours. It's worth it.

Merry Christmas, 2010!

So, about 150 Christmas cards are still stacked by my chair, waiting to be addressed and mailed...   Sad.

Merry Christmas from The Homeplace!

(consider yourself officially greeted!)

Time is not the enemy

Not that I would be so presumptuous as to think anyone has missed me, but I am the one who has suffered from my absence.  The need to write and process and progress verbally through the wonderful and challenging roads which I am being privileged to travel requires that I write. To those of you who claw your way through the process with me...well, thanks! Let's move on down the road a bit...

Having already been involved in several major events in this short year (including 15 days in the Philippines) my mind keeps returning to a sign that hangs on the door in a humble home of one of our Filipino pastors:

Indeed.

More than any other temptation in my life, the temptation to control my time is the greatest one I fight.

He knows the number of my days and the plans he has for me.

My prayer is that I may not thwart them by careening full speed ahead with what seems good to me and not asking Him if that is His plan for me.

My prayer is that I give God all the seconds of this day. He knows how to multiply them.

Are you well-rounded? (What does that mean?)

A friend sent this list to me on Facebook and I found it very interesting how much I had NOT read!  Of course, this list is just someone's personal opinion as to what constitutes a well-rounded reader and if I had been making the list, I would have definitely taken out some titles and added in a few others.  Still, it's interesting to see where you fall on someone else's reading list.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.  You are supposed to copy the list and bold or italicize the ones you have read.

I haven't read nearly as many of these as I would have thought, but I have read tons that are not on here.  Does that count?

Next on my list: "The Bell Jar" #76.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible 

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams  

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding  

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Annie Dillard

So....I'm just now reading Annie Dillard.

Where have I been?  Why have I not read her before?

Presently reading "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek."

I have only just begun, so am not in a place to totally recommend it.

But her writing is mesmerizing.

Have you read her?

2011 Book List

Here is where we will share books for our 2011 reading list.

My startup pile includes:

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me by Bruce Feiler

Faith Begins at Home by Mark Holmen

Gilead: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (I have started this book twice and can't get past the first chapter. I'm going to give it one more shot.)

On Earth as It Is in heaven: How the Lord's Prayer Teaches Us to Pray by Warren Wiersbe

Raising the Dead: A Doctor Encounters the Miraculous by Chauncey W. Crandall

The Lineage of Grace series by Francine Roberts  (It has 5 volumes)

Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by William Forstchen

Operation Daybreak by David Norris

Thou Shalt Keep Them: A Biblical Theology of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture by Kent Brandenburg, Editor

Every Prayer in the Bible: Discover God's Patters for Effective Prayer by Larry Richards

How To Read a Book by J. Adler Mortimer and Charles Van Doren

Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp

Instructing a Child's Heart by Tedd and Margy Tripp

The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene Peterson

As you can see, if I am going to read 52 books next year, I have 38 more to go.  So please post your comments with any suggestions.  (Or, if I'm going to be like Rick Warren, I have 349 more to go for 2011!)

reading and such

I am beginning my annual "season of reflection" which will last throughout the month of December.  I do not travel during December and try to keep any speaking to a minimum.  It is my time to draw close to the fire and reflect on the good and bad parts of the year that is ending and make resolutions of what to do better in the year that is ahead.

My resolution for 2010 was to make it "The Year of the Book."  Although I'm an avid book lover, various circumstances had forced reading to the back burner on way too many occasions for several years.  I felt stifled and felt as if a part of me was dying and knew that I had to return to a steady diet of books in order to see past the sameness of the every day.  I resolved to try to average one book per week in 2010.

So, my reflection has revealed that I actually averaged one book for about every 10 days.  I was very pleased about that until I read a tweet from Rick Warren yesterday that said:  "In January, I'm starting a Christian Leader's Library webcast.  For much of my life I've read a book a day."

A BOOK A DAY!!!

What kind of book?  Dr. Seuss or a 300-pager?  Retention rate?  Who pastors the church?  When does he find time to write?  Has his wife seen him lately?  Does he eat?  Does he sleep?  That may be it.  I could read a book a day if I didn't have to sleep.  Is he a speed reader?  A genius?

That just floored me.  Boggled my mind.  Did he mean a book a week?

Well, I will definitely be listening to his library webcast.

In the meantime, check out the Book Club label to get my thoughts on some of the books I have read this year and to add yours to the 2011 list.

A book a day.  How in the world...?