The Nerdy, Wordy, Reading Life
This is the last of Geises books that I plan to read this year. I’ve really enjoyed their trilogy about medieval life and am looking forward to doing more reading from and about the Middle Ages. I’m so glad to live in our day and age though I think that there were definitely some good [...]
I’m really enjoying these “Life in a…” books. The writing is engaging and the information seems well rounded. The Geises seem to be well aware of the difficulty of making generalizations about a time that is so far removed from our own and yet they do draw reasonable conclusions and paint a clear picture. I [...]
I just finished Joseph and Frances Gies’ Life in a Medieval Castle last night. Jared and I went out on a “date” to a coffeehouse to sit and read. It was actually a lot of fun (especially the no-bake cookie). I loved reading the book, partly because of the lovely edition I have. This one: [...]
Father Joe by Tony Hendra was a sweet and interesting read. I didn’t cry as several of the “jacket commentators” claimed they did, but I did thoroughly enjoy the book. Having inclinationstoward a monkish existence myself I really just enjoyed the narrative about the cloister. I also really enjoyed the commentary about the horror of [...]
This was my first re-read of the year. I love this book by C.S. Lewis. It is short but very, very rich. The moral knowledge packed into it’s 127 pages is astounding. I read it almost every year for a reminder of how not to let selfishness and pride shape my existence. Highly, highly recommended [...]
I’ve got one hundred pages left in The Iliad and all of The Odyssey. I’ve really never understood those that find these works hard to follow. I mean yeah, they are long, and the structure is not straightforward, but still, just getting into the rhythm of the poetry doesn’t take too long and all the [...]
Walden is almost finished. I took a huge dose of Thoreau in one day and am not sure I’ll survive. Beans and rice are looking better and better. Seriously though, though he may be promoting a good life for a hermetic philosopher and while some of the concepts he preaches will bear out in a [...]
I got a lot of reading Saturday morning before doing the girly shopping thing with my friend Kayla. I finished the last of the four R.K. Narayan novels I had been reading (all highly recommended!) and got started on the complete works of Kahlil Gibran. I think I need a little weed to help me [...]
Both Election Day and Joan Didion’s Politcal Fictions are over. Hurray! I do quite seriously recommend the Didion book though. Very clever, very insightful and quite thoughtful. However, I am very happy to be over the politics ‘though pleased at the way the election and my reading coincided. Home hasn’t been much fun lately…kids are [...]
So we had spent the entire day inside. Cooped up, avoiding the cold and damp. Finally we were just too restless, so I dressed the boys up nice and warm, got into jeans and shoes and headed out to the front yard to rake leaves. And the clouds just opened up. We had been outside [...]