What I've Been Reading Lately

I've been a little tired out from the current events cycle right now. I know it's important, I know I should be informed to be a good citizen, but sometimes one needs to let the worries of the world not become the predominant thoughts of the day.

Thankfully, I'm a fickle reader. My husband likes to tease me about how many books I have going at once. I just like to spread out the love to many genres! Here's what I have been dabbling in lately.

1. The Little Oratory by David Clayton and Leila Marie Lawler

I've liked this book for a while, and keep coming back to it. If you are a Catholic convert or just a Catholic wanting to make Catholicism a stronger part of the weave of your family life, then this book gives you all the details you might need (and those that never occurred to you to need.)

I love how it addresses that it can be really really hard to get kids to participate in reverent prayer, but it is still worth doing. Even when I regularly have to say things like "do not put your whole arm in the holy water!"and "rosaries are for hands, not for feet or mouths."

David Clayton's brother and sister-in-law also attend our parish and I get to go to a potluck with him tonight. *happy dance* I'm only nerding out a little bit and will try really really hard not to act like a Catholic groupie. Not like Easter vigil. I did not succeed in the non-groupie impression then.

2. Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum by Laura Berquist

This book is the basis for the type of homeschooling and learning that clicks for me. The book itself really starts with it's recommendations for the Kindergarten level, but I like to have the road map in my head for what we what to do with education and where we're going with it. It really helps me withstand the playground anxiety that manifests with the constant concern other moms have about what I'm doing.

No, my kid is not in preschool.
No, I don't intend to start later.
No, I'm really not concerned about socialization at all. If you notice, he is currently socializing with your kid just fine.

I'm thinking of putting it on a laminated card. It would save me a lot of time. I'm only kind of joking...

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Just in case you thought this was going to be a post all about Catholic stuff, nope! I really like the Harry Potter books. I like to re-read them pretty much every summer.

I've decided that our Halloween party this year is going to be Harry Potter themed and I figured it would be good to go through the books again and see if there was stuff I had forgotten about. Did anyone else forget there was totally a school song in the first book?!  Dumbledore puts up the words and everyone sings this song to whatever tune they want. It never comes up again. What happened with the song?!

If you are concerned about the whole Harry Potter and witchcraft thing, Haley over at Carrots for Michaelmas has a pretty great post on why it's not really an issue (and I tend to agree with her on this one).

4. ISIS: The State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger

So I'm not totally avoiding the whole current events thing. I often will randomly grab a book from the non-fiction new books section at the library just to keep me from getting too squared away in a literary comfort zone. So far this book has been good for getting a clearer picture of the IS timeline and it grounds all of the moving parts for me.

I am not the best gleaner of information from electronic sources. I have a much easier time remembering things I have read on paper. Books like this help me tie in the news stories I have seen over the past year into a coherent story in my mind. This will almost certainly not be the only book on the topic I'll pick up. My general rule of thumb is to read three (if possible) books on any particular topic because even things that seem to be just history facts will be filtered through a lens of some sort. The clearest picture will come from one formed from many.

5. Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin 

So I have to keep trying to read this book. It falls squarely in the self-help category, and can sometimes seem so 1950's, but a lot of it is pretty true. I like how it gives you action items at the end of each chapter. I could really do without the testimonial "this book is so awesome" stories that get scattered in the earlier chapters though.
This is the book to read if you want to work on your marriage/relationships and are acknowledging that you might need to change some habits of your own in order to change your relationship habits.

Sometimes it can be a little too true, and I feel like throwing it across the room, but slow and steady wins the race right?


So that's what I'm reading at the moment! What have you been up to in the reading department?