Deb Nance
Charles R. Smith Jr. uses photographs to celebrate the people in poet Langston Hughes' brilliant but simple poem, My People. The reader vividly sees the beauty of the night in the faces of the people. The reader vividly sees the stars in the eyes of the people. The reader vividly sees the sun in the souls of the people.
A beautiful celebration.
Paula Young Sheldon relates the stories of her childhood with her extended family, the people who worked together to establish civil rights in the segregated United States of the 1960s, people who included Andrew Young, Jean Childs Young, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy, Randolph Blackwell, Dorothy Cotton, James Orange, and Hosea Williams. The story begins with stories of visiting restaurants with her family and being refused entrance, continues with marching together peacefully, and culminates with the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The author concludes by reminding all of us that the baton has now been passed to the next generations.
A girl is assigned a project to trace her family's roots, but she is sad to realize she does not know her family's roots. But her Grandma does, and she tells the story of a proud and happy clan in the Kingdom of Ndongo. Grandma reveals the rich culture of the people of Ndongo, and then she explains how the people were stolen from their land, taken from their land and their culture, and enslaved in a new place. She shows how the people were determined to create a new home, to make new lives for themselves in the strange new place.
The girl has a new understanding of her people and her place in the world from the stories she hears from her grandmother.
Dorothy Gale returns to Oz in this third book in the series, and this time she meets mechanical man Tik-Tok, Billina the chicken, Wheelers, the Nome King, and Princess Ozma. This time she goes with her friends to rescue the royal family from the Nome King.
This is my favorite book in the series so far...
This is the perfect book for anyone who is learning about birds. Birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma includes QR codes for the songs of each bird he includes in the book.
What I learned:
Not all songbirds sing, and not all singing birds are songbirds.
The long winter is called the “Big Silence.”
It is usually the male who starts singing in spring.
Songs are distinguished from calls.
Some birds sing only one song while others sing many.
Some birds are born knowing a song, and others mimic others.
Conrad, a seven-year-old boy created and trained in a factory, arrives at the home of Mrs. Bertie Bartalotti. Conrad has been taught to be a quiet and respectful child, but what is he to do when he is asked to do things contrary to his training?
A silly book on the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read list. I was delighted to find a copy of this book at the Houston Public Library last week.
Our four children head to the lake for the summer, and what do they find there? Ah, more magic! This time the magic arrives in the form of a turtle who can tap into the magic of the lake. The magic needs to be watery magic, and the kids go wrong a few times there. But they manage to have some lovely adventures. And there is the huge problem of their new step-dad's struggling bookstore...Could the magic possibly help with that?
The Fourth Quarter of Your Life is a workbook for planning out the last twenty-five years of a life, a workbook to help a person develop, with God's help, what the author defines as the twelve virtues of a good person, a person who tries to be honest, humble, generous, responsible, empathic, selfless, patient, kind, moral, courageous, ethical, and grateful.
Benjamin Taylor opens this memoir of a year in his life with the day he and his mom met President John Kennedy after a speech in Ft. Worth, Texas, a day that ends with the shocking assassination of the president. Taylor tells about the events, both personal and in the world at large, that shaped his understanding of himself during a critical coming-of-age year. His life, like all our lives, is ordinary yet also extraordinary.
Susan Casey first came to my attention when a man in our book club suggested we read The Wave. Who knew a book about surfing, a sport I know nothing about, could be so compelling?
I thought The Wave was very good, and The Underworld is even better. Somehow I had the idea that the ocean depths were... well, empty. Wrong. Not only are the ocean depths not empty, but they contain forms of life that are novel and unique to the depths.
Scientists do not know much about the depths—it is very difficult for humans to visit the deepest parts of the oceans—and Casey urges us to put off proposed mining ventures until more can be known about these parts of the world.
I loved reading about the explorers of the ocean floor. I think I might be a Susan Casey fan.
There is a bookshop on a street in Dublin. Or so Henry has been told. He thinks he saw it on his first night in town. But did he? And where is it now?
Martha is running away from an abusive husband. She finds refuge in working as a housekeeper to an eccentric old woman. She meets Henry and he shares his quest to find a missing bookshop and to locate a missing Emily Bronte manuscript. Can Martha dare to reveal her secrets to Henry?
Opaline leaves London to flee an arranged marriage in the 1920s. She eventually makes her way to Dublin to run a thrift shop.
The Lost Bookshop weaves the stories of these three characters together, and draws in the stories of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, rare book dealers, and reclusive authors who may have hidden away a second book no one is aware of. There are also mysterious tattoos and the appearance of books on a shelf made from a tree that forms in a house and the lost bookshop itself.
Prairie Up is a textbook for people who want to design and create a natural garden. I want to design and create a natural garden, but I really, really, really don't like textbooks. Whenever someone tells me there are three ways to do something, I want to shake my finger in that expert's face and say, Three things? Only three things? Sorry, but I don't think so. And this author does a lot of three-thing-ing. And I'm aware that most people like textbooks, especially when they are going to do something new. This is a good textbook, if you like that sort of thing. And it has lots of lovely lists, which I do like.
I was way behind in my BOTM Club orders, and I ended up ordering five books right after Christmas. I researched what I wanted to order a bit, and this book was high on others' lists of favorites. I was prepared to be disappointed. But I was not.
Lady Tan's Circle of Women took me right into the life of a woman in fifteenth-century China. Tan Yunxian is our main character, and the story carries us through all the stages in a woman's life in that time—Milk Days, Hair-Pinning Days, Rice-and-Salt Days, and Sitting Quietly. Yunxian suffers all the agonies of girls and women despite being born into a family of high rank, and her story, along with the side stories of all the other women in her life, is deeply compelling.
A few quotes:
“Friendship is a contract between two hearts. With hearts united, women can laugh and cry, live and die together.”
“It takes a lifetime to make a friend, but you can lose one in an hour,” she recites. “Life without a friend is life without sun. Life without a friend is death.”
“I wish I were a giant gingko tree hundreds of years old, with the deep roots it takes to stand strong against mighty winds. Instead, I feel like a sapling in a typhoon, desperately trying to hang on.”
“After all, having a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law in the same room is like tying a weasel and a rat together in a sock. The weasel and rat are enemies by nature. The weasel may be larger and have sharper teeth, but the rat is smarter and faster.”
“What surprising pleasure I get from imparting words alongside my mother-in-law. ‘Always respect your mother-in-law,' I say. ‘Always obey.' Lady Kuo hears this, folds her hands together, and adds in a sweet—mocking?—tone, ‘Listen to your mother-in-law, but follow your mother's example: Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.'“
“But happiness is transient. Yin and yang always struggle for balance, with the darkness of yin sometimes winning and the brightness of yang striving to bring things back into balance.”
“All the sorrows of the world arise from parting, whether in life or by death.”
Oh, yes, you will want to ride along with Blythe Roberson as she travels to as many national parks as she can manage in her (borrowed) Prius. Roberson is snarky and has a heart for Justice and What is Right, and she shares her views on most everything as she stops at national parks and madly hikes and fills in word searches to collect all the Junior Ranger badges she can manage.
I've just finished this book that I started reading, really reading—lost in the story, lost in the wondering about what was going to happen next, lost in what this story makes me want to do now that I'm finished—this morning, and I'd like to start taking those actions provoked by reading this story—hugging everyone I know and love and telling them all that I love them and don't squander it all and then hugging them again...
I didn't think I was going to like this book; I was afraid it was going to leave me feeling depressed. Instead, I feel completed elated, in love with the world and all that's in it.
I knew the story was about a boy, the sole survivor of a plane crash, a crash that took the lives of his brother and his parents. We readers get to know the boy, of course, but we also are let into the eyes of the boy's parents and his brother and many of the people on the plane. They are a mix of people—some happy, some sad; some rich, some poor; some about to move forward, others retreating; some delighted with the way their lives have gone, others with regrets.
The book alternates beautifully between the story of the boy, who was Eddie and is now Edward, and the ways he deals with life after the crash, and the stories of the people on the plane before the crash.
It's not a perfect story; it's heavily weighted with optimism. I rounded up when I rated this book, maybe to encourage more people to read it so that it can spark more hugging and life-reflection.
Jayber Crow is orphaned and institutionalized in a children's home early in life. He thinks about becoming a preacher, but instead he returns to his hometown and becomes a barber. Jayber reflects upon all the events of his life, and comes to some wise conclusions.
This book will probably be on my list of favorite books of the year. I adore Jayber Crow and his town and his friends in the town.
Some of my favorite passages:
Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 45). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
By then I wasn't just asking questions; I was being changed by them. I was being changed by my prayers, which dwindled down nearer and nearer to silence, which weren't confrontations with God but with the difficulty—in my own mind, or in the human lot—of knowing what or how to pray. Lying awake at night, I could feel myself being changed—into what, I had no idea. It was worse than wondering if I had received the call. I wasn't just a student or a going-to-be preacher anymore. I was a lost traveler wandering in the woods, needing to be on my way somewhere but not knowing where.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 68). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”
“And how long is that going to take?”
“I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.”
“That could be a long time.”
“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 70). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly. I had almost no sooner broke my leash than I had hit the wall.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 99). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line—starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led—make of that what you will.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 149). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn't see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. They had imagined the church, which is an organization, but not the world, which is an order and a mystery. To them, the church did not exist in the world where people earn their living and have their being, but rather in the world where they fear death and Hell, which is not much of a world.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 176). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
...this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I didn't think anybody believed it. I still don't think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 177). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
I liked the naturally occurring silences—the one, for instance, just before the service began and the other, the briefest imaginable, just after the last amen. Occasionally a preacher would come who had a little bias toward silence, and then my attendance would become purposeful. At a certain point in the service the preacher would ask that we “observe a moment of silence.” You could hear a little rustle as the people settled down into that deliberate cessation. And then the quiet that was almost the quiet of the empty church would come over us and unite us as we were not united even in singing, and the little sounds (maybe a bird's song) from the world outside would come in to us, and we would completely hear it. But always too soon the preacher would become abashed (after all, he was being paid to talk) and start a prayer, and the beautiful moment would end. I would think again how I would like for us all just to go there from time to time and sit in silence. Maybe I am a Quaker of sorts, but I am told that the Quakers sometimes speak at their meetings. I would have preferred no talk, no noise at all.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 180). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
My vision of the gathered church that had come to me after I became the janitor had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on. If you could go back into the story of Uncle Ive and Verna Shoals, you would find, certainly before and maybe after, somebody who loved them both. It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace. And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 221). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
What I had come to know (by feeling only) was that the place's true being, its presence you might say, was a sort of current, like an underground flow of water, except that the flowing was in all directions and yet did not flow away. When it rose into your heart and throat, you felt joy and sorrow at the same time, and the joining of times and lives. To come into the presence of the place was to know life and death, and to be near in all your thoughts to laughter and to tears. This would come over you and then pass away, as fragile as a moment of light.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (pp. 221-222). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 226). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 265). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
I have never lived by plan. Any more than if I had been a bystander watching me live my life, I don't feel that I ever have been quite sure what was going on. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn't stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 338). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 367). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
Even a man of faith knows that (as Burley Coulter used to say) we've all got to go through enough to kill us.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 372). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
Walter Lord explores hot topics related to the sinking of the Titanic in this sequel to one of my favorite nonfiction reads, A Night to Remember. Lord looks closely at the captain and his actions on the night of the sinking of the ship. He examines the watchmen's reports just before the sighting of the iceberg. Lord tries to determine exactly how the iceberg hit the ship and what damage was done. He looks at why one ship saw the emergency flares from Titanic survivors but failed to come to their rescue. Lord explains the trials in both England and America to determine exactly what happened. He shows what happened in later life to the survivors.
I've been participating in a citizen science project for three years about butterflies. This book is the ideal first book about butterflies for kids. (Maybe even for us grownups!)
The book explains the differences between moths and butterflies. It describes the process of change that all butterflies go through. It explains how some butterflies migrate.
It's the illustrations that put this book, and this series, over the top. The illustrations are stunning.