2011 Reading Challenge~~Update

Man of the House and I are reading Oedipus the King together. It's his very favorite book of all time, so I'm hoping to benefit from his knowledge and enthusiasm. But we didn't get very far this week, so I'll just keep it posted as the current book until we do finish along with the book I'm reading by myself. Hopefully next week I'll have two books to write about. :-)

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} ~ July 28, 2011

{Pretty}

Remember when I showed you the living room newly put together and said I needed to do something more for a centerpiece on the dining table? This is what I did:





I already had these three little vases (there is a fourth one, but it hasn't emerged from the box it was packed in yet). I bought the flowers at Jo-Ann Fabrics on clearance. I think they were 75 cents. I got the candlesticks in a shop in a nearby town that specializes in gift-y type things but had some antiques too. They were $6 for the pair. I know brass isn't "in" right now, but I like brass and thought they would look good with the yellow walls. I was right! The candles came from my mother-in-law. She gave me a big box of them when we were helping clear out their house before a move. I like the twistiness! I'd still like to get or make a table runner, but this is much better than the cakestand alone, don't you think?

{Happy}

I bought this today! Isn't it great? I've wanted something like this for a long time. Man of the House and I spotted it at Michael's for half off, so we got it. You can't really tell in the picture, but the background is chalkboard green. Now to find just the right place for it . . .



{Funny}

Know what this is? Take a guess; I'll wait. *waits*



Nope, it's the insert for a clerical collar. Man of the House calls it a plastic smile. LOL I suppose they were made of linen at one point, and I suppose you can still get them in linen, but the manufacturer includes two plastic ones with every clerical shirt they sell. I guess they tend to get lost so the company sends two, but Man of the House never loses anything so he has quite a pile of them in his sock drawer now.

{Real}

This is the kind of picture I get when I hurriedly try to snap a shot of Girl of the House before she ducks and runs for cover. I obviously failed to achieve my goal. :-(





Vist Like Mother, Like Daughter for more {Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} fun!

My Family

I was tagged for this by Girl of the House. Bear with me. ;-)

I'm supposed to give what I think are correct answers for each family member for the following categories:

MAN OF THE HOUSE

Favourite book: Oedipus the King by Sophocles
Favourite song: "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"
Favourite hobby: Brewing, reading
Favourite movie: The Godfather Trilogy
Favourite colour: Black
Favourite animal: Cat, turtle
Favourite pet name: Capn Salty

GIRL OF THE HOUSE

Favourite book: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Favourite song: "Defying Gravity" or that "loathing" song from Wicked
Favourite hobby: Writing, reading, quilting, making graphics
Favourite movie: Harry Potter series
Favourite colour: Blue
Favourite animal: Cats and dogs
Favourite pet name: Boo-boo

GIRL OUT OF THE HOUSE

Favourite book: Harry Potter series
Favourite song: Something by Nightwish
Favourite hobby: Reading, cooking
Favourite movie: Pan's Labyrinth
Favourite colour: Green
Favourite animal: Cats
Favourite pet name: Anne-girl from us, Sunny from That Boy

THAT BOY

Favourite book: The Odd Thomas books by Dean Koontz
Favourite song: That song from the video game that he asked Girl Out of the House to learn on the piano for him
Favourite hobby: Designing video games, playing with the cat
Favourite movie: Iron Man
Favourite colour: Red
Favourite animal: Cat
Favourite pet name: That Boy lol

So, how'd I do? :-)

2011 Reading Challenge~~Books #28 and #29

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is not the kind of book I normally read voluntarily. I don't like delving into the intense suffering of others. The world can be very, very bleak ~ why should I read about it when I don't have to? Don't I get enough of that in that daily news? But wow! Am I glad I read this book. Solzhenitsyn is a master storyteller.

The book really does depict just a single day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. It's a slice of life but not of a life any of us would want for ourselves. Through Shukhov's eyes we are given a view of a Soviet forced labor camp in the last days of Stalin's rule in 1953. We see how the prisoners contrive to survive cruel Siberian winters, overwork, and underfeeding. They develop their own micro-society, including a class/power hierarchy and an economy based on personal property. Nevermind that two main tenets of socialism abolish those societal structures.

Solzhenitsyn wrote this book based on his own experiences in a Soviet labor camp. Solzhenitsyn's camp is Shukhov's camp. One Day was the first widely distributed account of such a prison and was specifically mentioned when Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. The writing is clear, plain, and powerful. The author gives us many subtle insights into the prisoners' methods of survival under such dire circumstances as he relates the happenings of the day. Though this type of book is not usually my cup of tea, I found it engaging and thought-provoking. I give it a definite thumbs up.

Oh, and Harry Potter ~ what can I say? I wanted to read and/or listen to the book before seeing the final movie installment, which didn't happen as we saw it when I was about halfway through. Oh, well. I stilled enjoyed both book and movie immensely. Do I need to say more? Those of you who love HP can get much better reviews elsewhere, and those of you who hate it are glad it's finally over and don't want to read more about it! So I'll say no more. lol

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real ~ July 21, 2011

{Pretty}

Rainbows were a semi-regular occurance in our old house. There was something about the angle of the light in the evening and the situation of the front porch that made seeing rainbows not uncommon. I've seen more rainbows from our front porch in fifteen years than I've seen in the rest of my life combined. This one is a double!



{Happy}

Sheets on the line make me happy. The fragance of sheets fresh from the line makes me happier still.



{Funny}

The "funny" category is hardest for me each week because we don't have cute little kids doing amusing things anymore. However, we do have an amusing cat who likes to sleep in the weirdest positions. Being black, he's hard to photograph, though!





{Real}

The thermometer at our kitchen window. The heat has been record-breaking this week.



Man of the House, Girl of the House, and I manned the Lutherans for Life booth at the county fair for three hours today ~ three hot, sticky hours. But we survived and helped to keep the pro-life message before the public. The discomfort was a small sacrifice . . . though I am happy to be home in the air conditioning once again!



Join the fun at Like Mother, Like Daughter and see an oh-so-adorable baby!

From My Commonplace Book

"People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it."~~G.K. Chesterton

"There is a good deal to be said for excluding literature from school curricula altogether. I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be to forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you."~~C.S. Lewis

"The ordinary arts we practice everyday at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."~~Thomas More

"To live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security-whether it is the order of the soul or the order of the community. Without order, indeed the life of man is poor, nasty, brutish, and short."~~Russell Kirk

"Gargantuanism and the care of souls cannot coexist."~~Thomas Chalmers

"I am always hopeful that the pendulum will swing back and that women will see again not only the necessity of a mother's being at home, but also the infinite and rich choice in that occupation for women of all ages. Some will complain of monotony, but how few going out to a paid job have the opportunity to make their own schedules, to choose the routine of their week's labor, to follow up creative interests that women have within the home. Our ever-present disciplines, the pattern of creaturely necessities-cooking, laundry, decently clean houses-are a blessing. Beyond the physical care of the family, for better or worse we are shaping souls and characters. women learn slowly the magnitude of their influence. Perhaps we would be more contented if we could realize that one of the few remaining free prefessions is that of a housewife. If a woman resents being just a housewife, let her be called an artist . . ."~~Josephine Moffett Benton

2011 Reading Challenge~~Book #27

Sixpence in Her Shoe by Phyllis McGinley is a book after my own heart. I loved it! In it, McGinley sings the praises of domesticity, and though I didn't agree with her in every little point, I did agree heartily with the major thrust of the book ~ that caring for home and family is an endeavor worthy of our best efforts and expenditures in time, intelligence, and creativity.

McGinley divides the book into three main spheres of a woman's domestic life: the wife, the house, and the family. In chapters with such titles as "How Not to Kill Your Husband," "What Cookbooks Don't Tell You," and "Keeping Up with the Joneses, Jr.," she covers everything from how to be a good car passenger, how to buy good furniture on the cheap, and what to look for in children's literature, plus much, much more. What most intrigued me about Sixpence in Her Shoe was the time it was written: 1960, just a few years before The Feminine Mystique was published but far enough into the modern feminist movement that the author frequently writes to defend the domestic woman who still wants to cook dinner for her family and take care of her babies herself. She also writes about contemporary trends she sees as dangerous, including children being smothered with too many material possessions, schools divvying students up according to rigid standardized test results, juvenile literature that has been dumbed down and stripped of anything interesting, and kitchens that serve more as showcases than as places to do the often messy work of preparing food. (Okay, that last one is probably not dangerous, but it is foolish, in her view . . . and mine too.) What struck me is how these trends have grown in spades since 1960. What would the author think if she were alive today?

McGinley was a well known writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961. Sixpence in Her Shoe is skillfully written and is also a pleasure to read from a literary standpoint. She makes many allusions to the Bible and classical literature that I'm afraid would be lost on most of today's audience, but sadly, I don't think this book would have been published in today's climate anyway. However, I rank it as one of the best books I've read all year, right up there with Keeping House by Margaret Kim Peterson (#13 on my Reading Challenge list). I value books that value me and my role as wife and mother. Happily, Sixpence in Her Shoe does just that.