The Chasm at the Edge of Eternity

The Chasm at the Edge of Eternity

When I opened Randy Alcorn’s latest book, The Chasm: A Journey to the Edge of Life, I had some idea of what I’d find. The Chasm, I knew, would be the gulf that separates us from God — and the bridge over it, the Cross.

But The Chasm is a lot more than just a little book expounding on that apt illustration. It is a modern-day version of Pilgrim’s Progress in the style of Lewis, Tolkien, and Peretti…

Books About Books

Books About Books

I have a special section for them on my bookshelves: books about books. As if I don’t have enough books already, I have books full of more book titles to find!

There’s Books Children Love: A Guide to the Best Children’s Literature by Elizabeth Wilson. And of course, Jim Trelease’s ever-popular The Read-Aloud Handbook, along with Terry Glaspey’s Book Lover’s Guide to Great Reading: A Guided Tour of Classic & Contemporary Literature…

Reading

The Reading Balance

Years have changed a lot of things for this bookworm. The responsibilities and demands of life have shifted my priorities: I don’t read as much as I use to read, and for a while, I read almost nothing at all. In part, many moves that kept books tucked into boxes for months or years at a time were to blame. But that wasn’t the only reason.

I doubt that over-reading in general is something that much of the population today has to worry about. But sometimes I wonder if we take time to find balance in our reading, in what we read, how we read and yes, even how much we read…

What’s a Girl to Read?

I love reading. Books are beautiful – the covers, the pages, the words. The smell of the paper and the ink, too. And then there’s the story!

But what’s a girl to read? The choice of books is vast. And although it’s tempting to judge a book by it’s cover and read a book that displays a gorgeous picture or an intriguing title, that’s not always wise—not for a girl who loves Jesus.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life…”

One Thousand Gifts

One Thousand Gifts

I’m really not one for “inspirational” books. Too many of them seem fluffy, unsubstantial, or fake, written by people who seem to not realize that life is actually really hard sometimes.

When I first heard of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp, I wasn’t even planning on reading it…

you read what you are

I was at another meeting of homeschool moms. Tonight, the discussion topic was a book that only half of us had read.

I hadn’t read it. And I’ll admit, I was slightly prejudiced against the book and the authors.

But listening to one mom, I thought it sounded like a fabulous book on parenting.

Hearing another, though, I was afraid it might be filled with too many rules and not enough grace.

I laughed as I concluded that you could easily think you were hearing reviews of ten very different books when in a room full of ten homeschool moms who were talking about only one book…

Snapshots of Favorite Books

Snapshots of Favorite Books

Maybe it’s dog-eared and underlined and well-read. Maybe it’s a beautiful antique volume you found in the back corner of a used bookstore. Maybe it’s special not so much for what it is but for who gave it to you. Maybe seeing its cover brings back memories of a special bookshopping trip. Maybe it’s the inscription on the fly leaf that makes it incredibly dear to you.

Whatever it is, it’s your favorite copy of a favorite book. And even if you found a brand new, pristine hardback of the same edition, you wouldn’t ever get rid of this beloved volume.

Books

Can’t judge a book by its…review?

Some people read dictionaries for the fun of it; I read book catalogs. I’d spend hours absorbing the brief peeks into the stories, my vivid imagination fed by those few lines under each book cover. Even the black and white catalogs devoid of pictures kept me drooling over the titles!

Writing book reviews for school was such a boring, technical process — guided by rules, not to mention an outline. But then I began publishing a newsletter, and couldn’t contain my enthusiasm for reading to just a column or two: I decided to put together my own favorite book list. The tri-fold brochure had rave reviews that read like the pages out of book catalogs.

When I started to receive copies of books specifically for review purposes, it seemed only fair to put the book in its best light…

An Old Fashioned Girl

An Old Fashioned Girl

I can’t think of too many works of fiction that I’ll read at all, let alone read again; but I am continually inspired and encouraged by almost every book I’ve read by Louisa May Alcott.

Thanks to a site I discovered a few years ago that offers a variety of LMA books for online reading, I was finally able to read Little Women in its entirety. And how I laughed and cried as I did! Then I got my own copy and read it again and again — always finding treasures for my own life tucked into the pages.

Little Women read, I turned curiously to some of the other books listed under Louisa Alcott’s name…

The End.

The End.