Seeking Solace

2019 A Year in Review: Book Edition       

This has been a pretty fantastic literary year.  I read from a wide variety of categories, including a nice amount of fiction, which is the category that tends to get put on the back burner during the school year. I also have a tendency to intensely focus my reading in one area: health and fertility, theology, and most recently, educational philosophy.  The intensity can border on obsessive, I admit! This year was different, though, and I finally feel like the pendulum returned to a nice resting place and my reading became more balanced.  I tried to honor Charlotte Mason’s advice to mothers to have a “stiff book”, a moderately easy book, and a novel going at the same time. In addition to my own personal stacks, for a number of years, I have chosen to pre-read a selection of my big kids’ schoolbooks and given that we follow a Classical/CM approach, we generally have a lot of books going at one time.  I've included these because they were also part of my reading rotation throughout the year.

Novels

• Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis (re-read)
• Father and I Were Ranchers by Ralph Moody (re-read)
• Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
• White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• O Pioneer by Willa Cather
• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

FAVORITE: I absolutely loved all of these reads.  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was a re-read for a literature class that I am taking, and Angelina took us on a journey with that book! I’ve always loved Narnia, but she opened up Lewis to me in new and touching ways. A close second was A Lantern in Her Hand; it was beautiful and heartbreaking and redemptive and just so very good.

Education/Philosophy aka “Stiff Books”

• Forming Character in Adolescents by Rudolph Allers
• Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott
• Beauty for Truth’s Sake by Stratford Caldecott
• The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain (re-read 3^rd time for a class I took last school year)
• For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (re-read—not a stiff book, but I read it during my “stiff book” reading time) along with Charlotte Mason Volume Six, Towards a Philosophy of Education (my book club used Brandy Vencel’s Start Here Guide to dive into Charlotte Mason’s 20 principles and these two books were the spines.  Brandy’s guide is excellent!)
• Only the Lover Sings by Josef Pieper

FAVORITE: Who can pick between Caldecott, Mason, and Pieper?  Such a tough decision, but if pressed to pick one, it would be Pieper.  The man is brilliant.

“Moderately Easy”

• Cooking for Hormone Balance by Magdalena Wszelaki
• Introverted Mom by Jamie Martin
• Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins (Re-Read)
• Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie (Re-read at least once a year, so I’ve lost count as to how many times I've read it)
• When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan
• The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Susan Stabile

FAVORITE: These were all great reads that provided their own unique encouragement, information, and/or insights.  Choosing a favorite from this category was easy, though.  I simply adored When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan.  I laughed, cried, reflected and stayed up way too late on a few occasions reading this book.  If you need a book to help pull you out of a reading slump and like memoirs, I’d recommend this!

Spiritual Reads

• Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love by Patrick Ahern (re-read)
• The Story of a Soul by Therese of Liseux (re-read)
• Articulating Hope by Deacon Vernon Dobelmann 
• The Power of Silence by Cardinal Sarah
• Come, Lord Jesus by Mother Mary Francis (re-read)

FAVORITE: The Power of Silence by Cardinal Sarah was amazing. Everything about it resonated with my introvert self who longs for silence but struggles to quiet my mind enough to rest in solitude with our Lord.  It took me two years to read and I commonplaced 23 pages of quotes. Absolutely wonderful!

Read Alouds

Hubby does a lot of the reading aloud to the kids from novels and catechesis books, but these are ones that I read during our school days to the whole family or are ones that we listened to on audio while driving to various lessons.

• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis
• Man of the Family by Ralph Moody
• The Home Ranch by Ralph Moody
• Mary Emma and Company by Ralph Moody
• Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
• Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim's Progress by Oliver Hunkin
• King of the Golden City by Mother Mary Loyola (re-read)
• Julius Casear by Shakespeare
• Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
• The Story of Beowulf (Retelling) by H.E. Marshall
• Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation: this was a re-read for me and read to the older two)
• Acts of the Apostles for Children by Merigold Hunt along with the Ignatius Study Guide

FAVORITE: We all adore the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody. We listened to these on Audible and the version narrated by Cameron Beierle is superb.  I highly recommend them!  

Pre-Reads

This list does not include every book that we used in our schooling in 2019.  There are just too many to list!  These are the ones that I invested extra time in each week by pre-reading and writing out narrations. Also, these books were pre-read in the second semester of last school year.  Our first semester books from this year are still being worked through and will show up on the 2020 book list.

• Famous Men of Rome by John Harren
• Augustus Caesar’s World by Genevieve Foster
• Story of Civilzation, Volume One by Phillip Campbell
• Aneid for Boys and Girls by Alfred Church
• Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
• Rocks, Rivers and the Changing Earth by Herman and Nina Schneider
• All About the Changing Earth
• Apologia's Anatomy and Physiology by Jeannie Fulbright
• Storybook of Science by Jean Henri Fabre

FAVORITE: I enjoyed all of these books (Ok, I didn’t really like the Anatomy and Physiology book and was reminded why I don’t care for the Apologia books for younger kids), but Genevieve Foster’s Augustus Caesar’s World was interesting and engaging. Campbell's Story of Civilzation was a close second.

I am looking forward to 2020 and plan to follow along in my non-committing way to the 20 in 2020 reading challenge in the Literary Life Podcast Discussion group.  They have put together some fabulous categories that will stretch me as a reader.  As Lewis says, "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." Here's to a full cup of tea and a stack of books!