#OpenBook for January 2024

 

Happy New Year! Welcome to #OpenBook. I'm joining up with Carolyn Astfalk who hosts an #OpenBook Linkup on CatholicMom.com. Here's what I've been reading this past month. The dates indicate when I finished the books. Thanks for stopping by!

 

12-1-23 The Heart of Christmas - Victoria Magazine - I've been a fan of Victoria Magazine since I was a teenager. This was one of their early books, published in the 1990s, that focused on Christmas. I found it at the library and appreciated both the historical traditions that they shared as well as what now seems historic from the 1990s! One thing I found interesting was that the now defunct Lord and Taylor store in New York used to create intricate windows with miniature scenes for the Christmas season. Primarily, though, I enjoyed looking at the pretty pictures.

12-9-23 Sew Sister: The Untold Story of Jean Wright and NASA's Seamstresses - Elise Matich - This is an inspiring picture book about the women who sewed the white material onto the outside of the space shuttles to protect astronauts from heat and radiation.

12-10-23 The Christmas Quilt - Vanetta Chapman - Once I started reading this one, I realized I had read it before. I still enjoyed it a great deal! It's a story about an Amish woman who is expecting twins and must be hospitalized to give the twins the best chance at being born healthy. Her best friend visits her often to help care for her and work on a quilt for the babies.

12-13-23 When the Lord Speaks to Your Heart: Daily Devotions - Fr. Gaston Courtois - Fr. Courtois was a French priest who died in 1970. He kept notebooks in which he wrote down how he felt the Lord was speaking to him, writing as if the Lord himself was speaking. In this new book, excerpts from his writings are combined with Scripture and reflection questions to create a daily devotional. It is a lovely book that offers much to ponder. If you are looking for a daily devotional for 2024, I recommend it.

12-13-23 Murder at Penwood Manor - The Harwood Mysteries, Book 5 - Antony Kolenc - The Harwood Mysteries continue with this excellent installment set against the backdrop of the Crusades. Xan, Lucy, and Christina are all back in this new adventure which explores the sin of envy and touches on the lingering consequences of trauma. This award-winning series is great for middle-grade and up (I enjoy it as an adult) and will keep readers turning pages, but I definitely recommend starting the series at the beginning. While Kolenc does provide some backstory, it is good to have the foundation of having read the other books. 

12-15-23 Love Him Ever More: A 9-Day Personal Retreat with the Sacred Heart of Jesus - Fr. Joe Laramie, SJ - This book designed to help you open your heart to unite with the heart of Our Lord. It is a follow-up to Fr. Laramie’s previous book, Abide in the Heart of Christ (which was excellent), but you don’t need to have read that one to benefit from this book. This at-home retreat can be done over nine days or nine weeks, alone or with a group. Each “day” begins with a spiritual quote, an essay that pulls from the author’s life or the lives of others, a contemplative prayer rooted in Ignatian spirituality, questions for personal reflection or journalling, and a short prayer.

12-17-23 The Christmas Doll - Elvira Woodruff - This story about two orphans in London at Christmas long ago reminded me of a Charles Dickens' tale or The Little Matchgirl (except with a happier ending). It is a touching story about a two sisters trying to survive on the streets of London and the youngest one's longing for a doll or her own.

12-17-23 Image and Word: Art and Art History at Smith College - Assorted Contributors - I recently visited the Smith College Art Museum in nearby Northampton, Massachusetts. This book combined three of my favorite things: art, history, and colleges. It was written for the opening of Smith College's new art museum in 2003 and discusses the history of art education at the college. I found it fascinating! 

12-19-23 A Paper Snowflake Christmas - Maddie Evans - This was a perfect quick Christmas read. It features a second-chance romance and a young child who is in need of some Christmas healing and magic.

 

12-21-23 A St. Nicholas Eve Carol - CatholicTeenBook.com writers - The CatholicTeenBook.com writers are an impressive group of talented writers! Each Christmas that combine their talents to write a short story/novella. Ebby's been paired with Bear, a kid with Down's Syndrome, for the St. Nicholas Eve Confirmation retreat. One minute she's scheming how to ditch Bear and the next she and her friend Pastelle are transported into a twisted version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This was an excellent short  Christmas story!

12-24-23 Amish Christmas Twins - Shelley Shepard Gray, Rachel J. Good, and Loree Lough - This was a collection of three novellas. "The Christmas Not Wish" by Gray was about an Amish couple adopting a sibling pair of foster children. "New Beginnings" by Good featured a second chance at love and parenthood. I enjoyed both of those. I just couldn't get into the third one, but that's fine. Two out of three isn't bad!

12-28-23 Christmas Blessings - Katherine Spencer - This was my last Christmas story for the season. It featured a woman caring for and trying to make peace with her mother before she dies and an adopted son struggling to prove to his father that his dream is worth pursuing. It included a bit of romance as well. It was an enjoyable story.

12-31-23 Where Grace Appears - Heidi Chiavaroli - I wrapped up my year with this Little Women inspired novel that I absolutely loved. The Martin family has long had an obsession with Little Women, even naming their children after the March girls (plus a boy - Bronson). Jo returns home from graduate school unexpectedly pregnant and decides to help her mother fulfill her long-standing dream of opening a literary-themed bed and breakfast. This pro-life inspirational fiction is the first book in a series and I am looking forward to reading the other installments. 

1-1-24 Cheap Old Houses - Elizabeth and Ethan Finkelstein - I read this one mostly to look at the pictures of old houses that have been lovingly brought back to life. 

1-1-24 A Different Way to Learn: Neurodiversity and Self-Directed Education - Naomi Fisher - This was a book about unschooling neurodiverse children, but it also featured some helpful advice on parenting children with anxiety. I recommend it to anyone struggling with parenting/educating their neurodiverse child. You may not want to take all the advice in the book, but it offers a different way of approaching the challenges inherent with parenting children who think differently than the "norm."

 

 

And a bonus book:

The Charter Class - Anne Faye - This is one I had the pleasure of working on. It tells the story of the founding of The College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee, Massachusetts, in 1928 and the first class of young women that attended. If you enjoy historical women's fiction, you might enjoy this tale.

 

Since spring of 2019, I have been making my way through the Great Books Curriculum of Thomas Aquinas College (I'm currently working on the readings for junior year). 

Two New Sciences - Galileo - I skimmed this book. Both the math and science were far beyond my intellectual capabilities. It was published in 1638 when Galileo was seventy-four years old. It was his last work. He was a professor of mathematics in Padua. In this work, he focused on the problems of motion and mechanics. It is written in the form of a dialogue which reminded me of reading Plato except that this book has a lot more proofs. It is based heavily on Euclid (which I didn't understand much of when I attempted his geometry) and Aristotle. Galileo was trying to show how math is useful for understanding physics.

My thirteen-year-old daughter and I read the following book this month:

 
12-25-23 Falling Out of Time - Margaret Peterson Haddix - This is the sequel to Running Out of Time that my daughter and I read earlier this year. It is unusual to have a sequel written over twenty-five years later than the original book, but the author did a great job. This time, it features Zola, a relative of Jessie Keyser (the main character in the original book), who is living in a "perfect" society set in 2193, but all is not what it seems. It offers a lot to think about concerning the role of technology in our lives.

 

 

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