Why I Read

Apparently I’m on this quest to analyze everything I do.  The next post will be titled “Why I Breathe.” Won’t that be profound? But I got to thinking about the different reasons for reading. I see two extremes in the approach to reading. The first extreme is to read for purely intellectual reasons. Enter Eustace Scrubb who read books with “pictures of grain elevators or fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools,” as C.S. Lewis said. Eustace was the kind of kid who made himself so dreadfully snobbish everyone who met him had a longing to punch him, or…

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Why I Write

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I’ve started on my next novel. I’ve thought about several different ideas over the past year or two, but none of them seemed to work quite right. So I finally came back to the idea that I’ve had for years now but never felt ready to tackle. Being a writer, I want to write about everything that I’m experiencing. As soon as I have an idea, I want to pour it out into a story. But I’ve learned that it is better to go at it slowly. Because memories become riper and deeper and richer with time. As I grow…

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Autumnal Poem

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Fall is my favorite season for many reasons, one of which is that it always inspires me to write poetry. This is the result of several drafts over the past week or so… Leaves drift like golden confetti, Their skeletons rattling across concrete— Celebrating the slow decline of summer, sun, and life. Birds gather nervously, afraid to miss their Pilgrimage towards that glowing star. The sacrifice of burning leaves on alters to the sun Stain the air with pungent, smoldering ashes. Sunlight seeps through the brave remainder Of yellowed leaves still clinging To the memory of warmth. Cornstalks crackle with…

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Randomness

Well, I wanted to make this a more coherent post, but I couldn’t think of how to make it that way. I haven’t finished any books recently, so I can’t do a book review. And I can’t think of some controversial subject I need to argue about, haha. So instead I’ll just talk about some of the things I’ve been doing and learning recently… I was a little shocked to discover that in my Khan Geometry course I was expected to do algebra! I thought I had left x far behind, but sadly, not. So…I had to do a ton of…

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Book Review: Living for God’s Glory by Joel Beeke

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I heard Joel Beeke for the first time at the Ligonier National Conference in March of 2012 and of course since all the books there were at such an incredible discount, I couldn’t resist purchasing this one. I eventually got around to reading it a few months later. Overall, I really liked the idea of the book. I find that people sometimes think Calvinism can be reduced down to the 5 points or TULIP, and as long as your church affirms salvation by faith alone through Christ alone then you are Calvinistic. Well, maybe that’s true, but TULIP fits into…

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Book Review: Hostage Lands by Douglas Bond

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I’m going to break out of the typical reading/reviewing I do to mention a young adult novel I read on vacation. This is the backstory…my sister and I read the first book in a fantasy trilogy called Aurelia’s Colors. I was ambivalent (one of my most-used words, btw) about it, but my sister loved it. So she was going to buy the other two books online but for some reason, the second one was pretty expensive, but the third one was very cheap. Being my sister, she didn’t want to spend that much on the second book, so skipped that…

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Book Review: What I Learned in Narnia

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Contrary to what I suspected, I actually had quite a bit of reading time on vacation. My family wanted me to make sure everyone was aware that they were not so cruel as to deprive me of my reading/quiet/alone time even while on vacation. So while everyone else was hanging out at the pool I was wandering around until I found a secluded spot by the lake to read. It was really, really nice. So one of the books I got to read was Douglas Wilson’s What I Learned in Narnia. This book intrigued me for several reasons: 1) I…

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Home Again

So my vacation is over and I’m trying to get back into real life. Although some in our group (mainly my little sisters) seemed quite upset that vacations don’t last forever, I was pretty happy by the end of it to just be home again and actually be productive. I’ll be starting on Bleak House this week (yay!), trying to fix my passport photo which Walgreens messed up, maybe getting to The Epic of Gilgamesh, and a few other random projects. I have a few blog subjects rattling around in my head so hopefully I’ll get around to more writing…

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Not Here…

I had hoped to write something this week, but that isn’t going to happen. I’m leaving on vacation this weekend and will be gone for the next week, so I’ve ended up spending a lot more time at work trying to get ahead with my tasks, and then of course packing and preparing for my trip. I know some crazy people who actually pack only hours or minutes prior to leaving, but I simply can’t fathom this. It is proof of my busyness that I didn’t even start throwing things into my suitcase until Saturday and since then I’ve just…

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Quiet

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I got a little carried away with myself this week and ordered about 10 books off Amazon. On some completely random topics. LIke books of poetry, books about writing, a book about Narnia, a collection of ancient Egyptian literature, a book on physics/science, and then the one on introverts. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I started reading that one at the library before I had actually received the book, so that was the first one I read  when my long-awaited package came. Ok, a disclaimer. I had to wait about…

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