Bookish

I’ve been tagged for this book meme by Ben at Marriages Restored. Ben and I attend the same church. We became acquainted with Ben and Ann one night over a marriage ministry ham dinner. They are an extraordinary, hard-working, and fun couple.

Total number of books owned.

What happens when two English lit. majors get married? They unite not only their hearts, minds, bodies, and lives, but their books. Because we had several classes together in college, many of our books are duplicates. Neither of us wanted to give “our” copy away because they had underlined portions, highlighted portions, and notes. What if I need to read Light in August again? I guess that is my incredibly wordy way to say we have about a thousand books, including our kids’.

Last Book I Bought.

Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. It was highly recommended by several friends as a great study in sorrow and joy, but I found it impossible to tolerate the style in which it was written.

The Last Book I read.

Where Is God When it Hurts? by Philip Yancey. This was another post-loss trying-to-get-a-handle-on-my-pain read. It was excellent, fascinating, and I am grateful I took the time to read it. Yancey explores the physiology of pain—how the mechanisms work in the body and the purpose of physical pain. His account of Dr. Paul Brand’s research into leprosy was really interesting. Then Yancey moves on to emotional and spiritual pain and where God is in the midst. Yancey uses examples of both famous and ordinary people and how they dealt with pain in their lives. I highly recommend this book.

Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me.

This question kept me up last night. Rather than listing five books that mean a lot to me at this moment, I will list the five books that marked milestones in my reading life since childhood. They meant a lot to me.

All the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

The obscure short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written very early in his career. Not a book, but it was one of those works of fiction where you swear you are reading about yourself—I had an eye-narrowing moment once too as a young woman and I never looked back.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. I read this as part my senior seminar class. The topic that semester was Southwestern lit. I hated most of the novels on the syllabus for trying too hard (don’t get me started on the horrors of Bless Me, Ultima). This novel was the best of the bunch and lingered in my mind for a very long time. This class was another class hubby and I had together. We played footsie under the table whilst discussing it. Memories…

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. All parents should read this great book. Then again, if you are the kind of person who would read a book about reading, you probably already do a good job reading to your own kids. This book just reinforced beliefs I already held. Plus, it includes a nice guide to children’s literature.

Now I am supposed to tag five bloggers to answer. Nini at nini’s ramblings, jasmine at Between the Rinse and Spin Cycle, re-tagging Lexie at Lexical Light (because barbaracurtis already tagged her, and I’ve been waiting for Lexie’s answers, I am giving her further motivation to do it already), doodle at her brand-new baby of a blog general thoughts, and “the other Gretchen” at A House Full of Boys.

Thanks, Ben. That was fun!