I am back...

I haven't written anything on this blog since April. I really do want to use it for my weaving projects. I just have to get the pictures I took of my shawls on off the camera and on the blog.

In the meantime, I have read all these books since February:

Becoming Fully Human

Edge of Impropriety

When the heart waits

Monster of Templeton

Cracking India

Seeing Gray

Guernsey

Threshold

Nefertiti

too many cooks

Finding Your Own North Star

Learning from the Heart: Lessons on Living, Loving, and Listening

Into the forest

Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible

Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters--and How to Talk About It

Moonheart

The Elegant Gathering of White Snows Puppet For a Corpse

Show Me Your Way: The Complete Guide to Exploring Interfaith Spiritual Direction

To Taste Temptation (The Legend of the Four Soldiers)

Between Heaven and Earth: Prayers and Reflections That Celebrate an Intimate God

The Lay Contemplative: Testimonies, Perspectives, Resources

The prayers of Peter Marshall

Little Girls In Church

death on demand

A Whole Life's Work: Living Passionately, Growing Spiritually

Not becoming my mother

Summer by the sea

Fifty to one

Water from the Well

Nothing to be frightened of

To seduce a sinner

Close her eyes

Bread and wine: readings for Lent and Easter

Life with God

American Eve

Uncommond Reader

Indian Summer

Instant Attraction

Frozen Thames

Lord of Scandal

Ghosts in the Garden

Dockside

Flat-out Sexy

Case Histories

Uncatalogued

Murder at the Vicarage

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

more pages read

12 books read this month for 3324 pages. Hurrah!

Total number of pages read so far 8803

At this rate I won't make my goal, but summer is coming and I have two weeks at the beach.

Books I read in February:

Dress your family in corduroy 272 pages
Bright side of disaster 256
Something borrowed 336
Stupid and contagious 317
It seemed like a good idea at the time 334
For the love of Pete 384
Best American short stories 2002 (talking book)
Zookeeper's wife 323
Embarrassment of mangoes 305
Love as a way of life 256

It has been almost a month since I posted last. Apparently it is not vital to my very existence to post here. However, I really do want to keep this blog going in case I do come up with a reason to use it.

So today I took pictures of the beginnings of a new weaving project. When I get a few more pictures, I will post them here.

In the meantime, here is the review I wrote for my favorite book of this month.

An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude
by Ann Vanderhoof

Ann and Steve work hard at their jobs in Canada. They like what they do and fortunately for them they get to work together as well as be married to one another. They have carved out a good life for themselves. However, they have come up with a plan that will change all that - they are going to escape wintery Toronto with a sailboat adventure.

This is the story of a dream. And it is a book for anyone who worries about whether they should attempt their dream. Without giving away the tale that Ann tells, I think she would say go for it.

I have no desire to do what Steve and Ann do in this book, but it was a fun read. For a couple of days, I got to visit the Caribbean and live the dream of sailing away from "regular" life.

Since today is the first day of February, I am listing the books that I read this month and the pages read. These are books I started and finished in January. This puts me behind a bit in my total page count, but only seems fair.

Slice of Heaven 400
Last Lecture 206
Perks of Being a Wallflower 213
Not the End of the World 244
Yiddish Policemen's Union 414
Solidier's heart 256
Piano Lessons 250
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist 184
Love is a mix tape 240
The Soloist 289

Total 2696 pages!

Reading challenges

CHALLENGES 2/1/9 - 2696 pages in January
3/1/9 - 2783 pages in February

I have decided that I will do a pages read challenge this year. I often wonder about challenges with number of books (50, 100, etc.) because, of course, I could just sit down a read a bunch of juvenile or YA novels and my total would skyrocket.

So, to keep my blog going, I am going to see if I can read 50,000 pages. It sounds like a lot right now, but at this moment, I have read 38,999 and the year is not quite over.

I will be counting the pages that I read on talking books and my Kindle by using the page count for the original edition of the book. Hopefully that works for the moderator of this challenge.

I will continue to review my books at Shelfari and Good Reads, so I will have to figure out something else that I will do with this blog. But for now, this is my challenge for 2009.

I have been racking my brain for the last book for the Book a month Challenge. The theme is light and could be light reading, festivals of light, the science of light, titles with light in them or even something else. I don't know why it was so hard. I definitely did some light reading this month and I often read something during Advent about light.

However the book I have ended up with is A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation. I have been reading this book since some time in November so it should have popped into my brain before this. Luci Shaw has put together a wonderful compilation of religious poetry. I found poems by people I knew like C. S. Lewis and Madeline L'Engle and many poets that I had never encountered before.

These are amazing poems; they are well written, thoughtful and thank goodness not sappy. My mental definition of religious poetry is always rhyming and not very deep. Not flattering, but that is what is stuck in my head. This is not at all true of this anthology.

This is an excellent book to end the year on. I once again want to thank Katie for her idea. It did help focus my reading a bit this year. I am not sure I will do another book challenge this year, but I will probably start one for work during our next fiscal year. We shall see... the best laid plans.