Five on Friday

1.

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965); Philosopher, Physician, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

2. "What to do when your shirt label says made in Bangladesh" is definitely a must read.  We are a global world and what we do/eat/wear/use does affect others.  Click through to the survey about slavery - my results were startling!  I like the suggestions offered so I can help change the world.  Thanks to Heather for sharing this link.

3.  Jenae at I Can Teach My Child shares her list of Top 10 Reading Apps for Kids.  I've been wondering about how to find good apps for little ones and I trust her opinion so I will have to explore some of these myself.  

4.  Check out this list of popular novels for book clubs that my friend shared on Pinterest.  I think I've read 14 of them - still lots to go!

5.  Photo of the week:

Body Art

Lists of 2012 - #49

Listography 2012 - #49 - Books I Read This Year

For book club:

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Purge by Sofi Oksanen

A Walk Across the Sun by Corbin Addison

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

The Virgin Cure by Amy Mckay

The School of Essential Ingredient by Erica Bauermeister

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Others:

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

Earth's Children (re-read) - Jean Auel
       Clan of the Cave Bear
       Valley of Horses
       The Mammoth Hunters
       The Plains of Passage
     
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

7 : An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother  by Amy Chua

Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

Bloom by Kelle Hampton

The Girl in the Blue Beret by Bobbi Ann Mason

Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis

The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck

In progress:

Priceless by Tom Davis

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

24 - that's 2 a month!  Wow - I didn't realize I had read that many.  If I had to pick only one to take with me to a desert island, I don't know which one it would be!  The book club reads were all good. (There was 1 book I didn't read this year - long story - I moved on!)  And if you only read one book in the next year, pick The Five Love Languages - it's relationship changing.

Thank you to Shelfari for helping me to keep track of this year's list!  I don't think I would have remembered all of them on my own.

Favourites

Just a little idea today from my friend, Linds, who recently wrote about some of her favourites.

Favourite Movie: I have a few that come to mind:
- Mary Poppins was the first movie I saw in a theatre when I was about 8 years old.  It came to the old theatre in Wetaskiwin and I went as a guest of Daphne Ludwig, our pastor's wife, who was very British.  I loved everything about the movie - and going to the theatre for the first time - and can still sing many of the songs by heart.  
- Love Story was the movie Bob and I saw on our very first date!  There are so many things to remember and smile about when I reflect on that night.  It was a double date with our closest friends at that time (R died just a short time later after a motorcycle mishap) and we were even stopped by the police on the way into the city!!  Many, many years later Bob found a copy of the movie and gave it to me on Valentine's Day.  
- Dr. Zhivago still is a favourite with its beautiful scenery, dramatic love story and timeless music.
- Any movie that stars Julia Roberts is at the top of my favourites list whether it's Pretty Woman, Erin Brockovitch or My Best Friend's Wedding.  She's such an amazing actress!

Favourite vacation/holiday: If you know me, you will know that I love traveling and would be gone monthly, if I could!  And because I love it so, every trip is one-to-remember!
- When our children were younger, we took a two-week trip to southern California, going via Montana, Yellowstone National Park, Bryce Canyon in Utah, the Grand Canyon in Arizona and on to San Diego and Los Angeles.  It was truly the trip of a lifetime and we had so much fun together.  I'm looking forward to going to Disneyland with our grandchildren someday.
- When Darrin was just a baby we went to Jamaica for 10 days with friends.  That was the first of many great vacations with many sets of friends. 
- Visiting the Great Wall of China, the commercial district of Hong Kong, Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, Innsbruck and Vienna in Austria, Prague in the Czech Republic, Krakow in Poland, Manaus in Brazil, Iguassu Falls on the SA borders, and Buenos Aires in Argentina - we have been so incredibly lucky to see so many wonderful places in the world.  Each place had its own unique beauty and interesting people.  
- Traveling to Africa, driving on safari through Kenya and Tanzania, seeing Mount Kilimanjaro, cruising the Nile River and visiting temples and burial sites in Egypt, and then finishing in Zanzibar was an incredible month long adventure.  I still am in awe that we actually did this trip!

Favourite Book:  The list of possibilities is ever increasing in this category!  These come to mind:
- The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
- Earth's Children series by Jean Auel
- A Walk Across the Sun by Corbin Addison
- Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah
- Year of Wonder by Geraldine Brooks
- Still Alice by Lisa Genova
- The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
- The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rawling
- The Silver Chalice by Thomas Costain

Favourite Hymn:   The hymns learned in my childhood are mostly committed to memory from singing them for years and years.  Some of these were favourites of my grandmother too - she loved them and often sang in her native tongue, German.
- What A Friend We Have In Jesus
- Children of the Heavenly Father
- I Come to the Garden Alone - one of my Dad's favourites
- Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven - sung at our wedding
- Saviour Like a Shepherd Lead Me
- Just a Closer Walk with Thee

Favourite Colour:  I love colours - the brighter the better usually!  Sometimes when I look around a group of people gathered, I wonder about myself in that way.  
- orange is my all time favourite
- followed by yellow and green
- in combination, I love teal and brown, grey and yellow, and red and black.  

NaBloPoMo #6

NaBloPoMo #6 - Talk about the opening of your favourite book.

I have so many wonderful books that I could write about today.  Several years ago (actually I just looked inside the front cover and it was in 2000!),  the mother of one of my students gave me Ken Follet's first book, The Pillars of the Earth, as a Christmas gift.  She was a former English teacher who loved historical fiction - we were kindred spirits in that way.  All of this was long before the book became wildly popular.  I read it over the Christmas holidays that year and enjoyed every page!

The book is set in medieval England and opens with a prologue where in 1123 AD a hanging happens in the village square.  As a young man hangs, a teenaged pregnant woman places a curse on a knight, a monk and a priest, who were at the court when the young thief was convicted.  From this scene, the book jumps to 1135 and begins to trace the career of Tom, a builder and his son, Alfred.   Tom has a dream to work on a cathedral but suddenly finds himself out of work.   Moving on with his family, while travelling through the woods, they are attacked by thieves who steal the family's pig.  It's in the woods that they meet Ellen, the young woman who had delivered the curses earlier, now has a son and is considered a witch.

The novel continues to follow the paths of these first characters and the author skillfully interweaves their stories to give us a glimpse into the people who lived and worked in England at this time.  The  first theme we see is how the power of nobility and church resulted in much social inequality and hardship for common classes.  Another theme that the author creates is the development of trade guilds and the creative thinking of builders, using new ideas and ways of building.  The use of the arch revolutionized building techniques, especially in cathedrals being built at this time.   The story has several strong women characters and they are developed in ways quite contrary to the social norms of the day ( a theme that I always enjoy).

Follett is an excellent storyteller and always holds my attention, in this case through 983 paperback pages.  The word pictures he paints are vivid and full of rich imagery.  He brings his characters right to life and continually surprises readers with the interconnected weavings of people, events and buildings. To paraphrase the back cover, intrigue, power, passion and romance form the outline of the story.

I loved it 12 years ago - and I still love it!

Lists of 2012 - #29

Listography 2012 - #29 - (Just Some of the) Books I Want to Read

1.  The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean

2.  Gold by Chris Cleave

3. Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater

4.  Chocolat, The Girl With No Shadow, Peaches for Monsieur le Cure' (2 more books that continue the story begun in Chocolat) by Joanne Harris

5.  Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

6.  The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

7.  The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal

8.  Earth's Children #5 - Shelter's of Stone by Jean Auel

     Earth's Children #6 - The Land of Painted Caves by Jean Auel

9.  Lipstick in Afghanistan by Roberta Gately

10.  Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

11.  Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof

12.  Cinderella Ate My Daughter:  Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein

Five on Friday

1.  The amazing Kelle Hampton, over at Enjoying the Small Things, wrote a wonderful Hallmark post called It Takes a Village, this week.   My daughters and their friends do things like this all the time and I am so proud of the ways they support and love each other.  And Kelle's new book, Bloom - Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, is available for pre-order now - I can hardly wait to read it!

2.  The youngest of our grandchildren is just about ready to start walking on her own!  She's getting very brave about pulling herself up and letting go of the furniture.  It's so hard to believe that she will have her first birthday in just a bit more than a month - and that her Mama is getting ready to go back to work after a year's maternity leave!

3.  Happy Birthday to our son who celebrated his birthday yesterday.  It's been an amazing year for him - and the one ahead promises to be even more exciting!

4.  I joined the 30 Days of Lists project for this month.  I'm looking forward to challenging myself with some extra creativity.  Please come over and join us!

5.  Our Bible study group is reading Heaven is for Real this month.  

Movie Review

Some time ago our book club read "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen.  It's just been released as a movie starring Reese Witherspoon so tonight our group headed out to see it at cheap Tuesday movie night.  It was a great evening!!

When Jacob, a veterinary school student, is orphaned during the Depression, he jumps on a passing train and ends up with the circus.  He is given odd jobs, eventually ending up in charge of Rosie, a newly acquired elephant.  Right from the beginning, he is attracted to Marlena, the beautiful horse trainer and wife of the circus owner.  As time goes on, cruelty to animals and cruelty to people by the owner take their toll on everyone.  The close knit family of performers and workers look out for Jacob along the way.  

This movie is an excellent depiction of the book and was a wonderful watch.  There were some 'jump-out-of-your-seat" moments and Jacob's rapport with Rosie, especially when he discovers she understands Polish(what a surprise this was!), is amazing.  The depiction of a traveling circus from the 1930's, scenes of the train meandering along to the next town, and Reese Witherspoon as Marlena all add to the appeal of the movie.  Definitely a must-see, especially if you've read the book!

Lists of 2011 - #15

Listography #15 - Books I Could Read Over and Over

The key word in this title is "could" because I've really only read a few of these books more than once.  But I love all of them and if there were no other books to read on that deserted island, I would be thrilled to read these again!

1.  the Bible

2.  The Silver Chalice by Thomas Costain

3.  Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

4.  The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon

5.  Children of the Earth series by Jean M. Auel

6.  Heidi

7.  Black Beauty

8.  any Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling

9.  Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah

10.  any books that my grandchildren request!

Have You Read - -

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. 
Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.


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 The Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

19 The Time-Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

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

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 Graeme

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 - A.A. 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 - L.M. Montgommery

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 Inferno - Dante

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 - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. 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 St. 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

How about you?


Thanks for sharing, Rhonda!  I thought I was an avid reader but  I've only read 23 on this list!  That's not even 25% - I definitely need to read more!! 

Have you read many of these?

The Strong Life Test for Women

Holly blogged about this book today and I thought you might like to take a little test.  

P.S.  I came in as a teacher - no surprise there!

Ten on Tuesday

1.  This little special issue came to my house today - and it makes me very happy :))  At the same time, I'm sad that it's the second last issue ever.  I loved Simple Scrapbooks!

2.   I ordered more than 200 wedding pictures, taken mostly by Jonathan, tonight!  It was fun looking through them again - lots of smiles!

3.  I am thoroughly enjoying my week of subbing.  The visiting with colleagues and the energy of kids makes me very happy.

4.  Tonight I noticed that the sun has already moved about 25 degrees to the north - what a huge change in just a few weeks!

5.  I love children's literature!  This picture speaks for itself :))

6.  And on the same note, Beatrix Potter is such a wonderful author, especially to read in the springtime.  Did you know that The Adventures of Peter Rabbit was first published in 1902?  He's been around a very long time, my class concluded today.  And there's an actual site called Peter Rabbit where you can learn more about the author!

7.  Writing a career summary is really hard!  More on this at a later date.

8.  I love driving through the countryside and seeing all the new baby calves running and playing alongside their mothers.

9.  Here's a site just to make you smile!  Found it in my new magazine - see #1.

10.  It's the last day of my 53rd year!

Please come back for book reviews of some really fun kid's books tomorrow.  

Book Discussion

Over the Christmas holidays, I read Three Cups of Tea - One Man's Mission to Promotoe Literacy One School at a Time , the true story account of Greg Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan.  As a teacher, I'm always interested in reading about schools around the world, especially where girls are not afforded the same opportunities as our girls have in Canada.  And this book is the incredible story of one man's humanitarian work that really is making a difference!

This book provides details about the political reality of life for everyday people in Pakistan - and I had no idea about many of the details.  He talks about money not getting out of the big city and down to schools that are far out in the provinces.  He talks about local warlords and outsiders controlling the population and young people who are uneducated.  And he talks about how village fathers made a difference and provided hope for their own daughters and all the children in their communities.  

Mortenson's desire to get involved started after his unsuccessful attempt to summit K-2 in the Himalayas and his subsequent time spent convalescing in a village in the Karakoram mountains.  Near the end of his time in the village, he was trying to think of a way to help the villagers and asked to visit the local school, thinking he'd spend the last of his money to buy supplies or textbooks to send back.   He saw  82 school children (78 boys and 4 girls) kneeling on the frosty ground because they had no school building.  He heard that the government didn't supply a school teacher (the village couldn't afford to pay the salary of $1 a day) so they shared one with another village and he was only there 3 days a week.  He marveled that the students practiced lessons on their own while the teacher was away, writing in the dirt or using slates with a mud and water mixture instead of chalk or ink.  And he knew that he could do something more so he promised his host that he would build a school for the village.  

The book goes on to describe the subsequent fund raising, letter writing, evening presentations and enormous efforts that Mortenson spent the next 10 years doing  in order to raise funds and build 55 schools throughout the Northern Areas of  Pakistan.  Spending months every year in Pakistan away from his own family, he continues to find opportunities to help more villages realize the dream of educating their children and changing their futures.  Inspiring to say the least!

One of the things I loved about this book is that after the acknowledgements, David Oliver Relin (the journalist who collaborated with Mortenson to tell his story) presents 9 suggestions for readers who might be inspired to do more.  One of the suggestions is to blog about the book to increase the 'buzz' and awareness of education and literacy, especially for girls.  Please consider reading the book, visiting the website Three Cups of Tea and carrying the torch!!!

Ten on Tuesday

1. What glorious weather we are having this week!! Sunny, warm and bright - even at night with a huge full moon!

2. This little one is such a lot of fun these days. A leaf pulled off made a perfect cabbagehead hat - and got the biggest giggles from her! The next project was rolling up pieces of the leaf and making pretend cabbage rolls. The imagination of a two year old is truly a boundless thing!



3. It's been a long time since I read a really good mystery book - and The Thirteenth Tale is very well written.

4. The freezer is now stocked too! I picked up some fresh chickens from the local Hutterite colony today and Chicken Cacciatorie is on the menu for tonight.

5. Driving through the countryside these days presents another beautiful view, no matter which way you turn. I took a scenic route today and it did my soul good to view the amazing world God has given to us.

6. Our laptop has gone to the local Apple dealer for a minor repair but it means that my computer access now has to be shared with Bob. So I might be missing a bit until it comes back. And I am thankful that we bought the extended warranty since we are 90 days past purchase and that's all the original covers.

7. Alphabet Soup - Morning Glory at Seeds From My Garden has started this fun activity again so I'll join in and share some thoughts too. Today's letter is "A" and here are some "A" things that add joy and pleasure to my life.



Ancestors - I wish that more of the stories and personalities of these important people were preserved but still I am in awe of who they were, what they did and the legacy they left our family.

Apricots - one of my very favourite fruits - especially in pies and jam!

Airplanes and air travel - the world is so easy to enjoy and appreciate when we can travel anywhere, after saving up for fare of course!

Apples - and all the marvelous ways they can be enjoyed!

Architecture - especially in other countries. Doorways, windows, rooflines, columns - cathedral, hut, home or business - marvelous to observe and appreciate.

8. The crunch and taste of fresh carrots from the garden is one of autumn's best things.

9. Here is another blog that I think you might enjoy. Mama Hen over At A Hen's Pace has the most delightful explanation of her blog name. And she writes about Christian parenting in a very real way.

10. I love my camera!! I took it with me on a drive today and stopped several times to capture some colorful scenes.

Back at Home

We're home, the camper is emptied out, laundry is going, and these pictures from last week are still making me smile!



Peaches and apricots




2 batches of jam and 1 of chutney

I finished the apricot jam today (it's so yummy - definitely my favourite!) and wiped off the jars of tomatoes so everything's ready to go down on the shelves in the basement. Most of the jam is freezer type so it's frozen and tucked safely away. I think I'd still like to can a batch of pears so I'll try to find a box of those next week and the apples are ready for a day of applesauce making. I do declare, I'm feeling a little like Ma in the Little House on the Prairie books with all this summer work!

This morning I finished reading The Shack (Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity) by William Young, the August selection for our book club. Oh, my - what a read! I'm really looking forward to the discussion this month but I'm still sorting out my own reaction.



Cover illustration

"In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant THE SHACK wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him." (from back cover)

Something to Read

I'm a little late with this but I still wanted to share a book recommendation for Morning Glory and Lei's discussion board. While we were on holidays, I read Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper
. It is an amazing book, very thought provoking and in parts, gut wrenching. I think every mother will relate to the decisions made by the parents. Written from the perspective of each of the 5 family members, I empathized with each of them and was drawn into the family dynamics. Our book club is discussing it next week and I'm really looking forward to the discussion. I've also read The Pact by this author and it was equally gripping. My sister has read many of her books and recommends all of them. Let me know what you think if you decide to read it!

Bringing Home the Books

I said I would show you the books that I've packed up and brought home from school.



These are the picture books - yeah, just the picture books - the ones that I think Meadow, Helayna and any other grandchildren we might one day have would enjoy. I left the kids chapter books in my bookshelf for the new grade 4 teacher to use and my teacher resource books (the tried and true ones) are in a box from a microwave oven (yeah, there's a lot of them too!!). If you know me, you will know that I love books and I simply can't bear to part with these right now. There were others (maybe 3 paper boxes full) that I shared with other teachers at school. For now these will go into the basement and when the little ones come, we'll bring them out. That clear container on the left has a stack of Berenstain Bear books, some of which were loved by our kids. Maybe I should start one of those mobile library delivery systems that takes books out to where kids are. There's actually a book in the bottom long clear tub called "My Librarian is a Camel" that chronicles libraries around the world. It's cool - but then again most of these books are cool!!

I promised Nic Howard that I'd give a shout out for her new scrapbooking inspiration book, That's Life. If you go over to her blog, she's giving away a free one to a lucky reader. And then you will get happy mail, all the way from New Zealand! That explains why I like reading her stuff - someday I will get there to visit!!