Lilley of the field

So this isn't about gardening, but oh well. After writing that post about writing about garden I realized I was almost finished with my last book of summer and I would want to post about them. I am horrible at remembering what books are about and this helps when I write about them. Also, I like to keep track of my favorite books so I can recommend them when people ask. So.... here we go. I first read A Father to the Fatherless: The Charles Mully Story  by Paul Boge. This was given to us by Aaron's mom. She just went to Kenya on  mission trip for 2 weeks and visited the Mully Children Family. Charles Mully is a Kenyan man who went from complete destitution and abandonment by his family to riches. Then he met some street children who had been just like him and felt compelled to help them. He adopted several and that began the MCF. He gave up everything he had for these street children. It is an organization that has grown and now they take street children in and teach them ab...

The emails from the public library were coming into my inbox. Four books total on hold for me. As I checked them out of the library that day, feet sore from a long day, heart heavy, I felt a twinge of guilt thinking that I probably wouldn't read all four books in a month. School had just started. What if there were other people that wanted to turn these pages and here they may be collecting dust on my shelves for a month? I brought them all home anyways. My comfy green couch awaited my presence daily after school. I slid into the corner, curled my feet up on the couch with a pillow in my lap and looked at the stack of books trying to decide which one to start with. My mom recommended each one from her book club, but had raved about  The Language of Flowers  by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. That would be a good place to start. I was more than engrossed after the first page. By the time Aaron had come home from work, I had finished a quarter of the book. In the book, the main char...

This is a quote from a book on tape (well CD, but I guess I still want to call it "book on tape") that Aaron and I just finished on our long car trip. When I picked it out from the library I had no idea that it was going to be a book about healing, miracles, slavery, segregation, kidnapping, Jesus, faith, and humility. I loved it way more than I thought I would. So much so that I rewinded to listen to one quote over and over so I could write it down. I would highly recommend this book. “There was a blessed time when miracles were something not far outside the norm, exceptions to the rules, holy, unexpected. Before Pilotville, he had expected to find persimmons when he asked for them and resurrected blackbirds and believers voices folded together as if one. Before Pilotville he had known no miracles just the constant ways God showed his love which of course were not miracles at all for they were with him everyday- invisible because they were so much i...

I just finished up  Sweeping Up Glass  by Carolyn Wall. My mom let me borrow the book. It was a "Roswell Reads" at her local library in which the author comes and speaks about their book. I really enjoyed it. I read the last half of the book all last night. Couldn't put it down. I cannot wait for summer to begin so I can read more!! Here's a description of it from the back of the book: " Olivia Harker Cross owns a strip of mountain in Pope County, Kentucky, a land where whites and blacks eke out a living in separate, tattered kingdoms and where silver-faced wolves howl in the night. But someone is killing the wolves of Big Foley Mountain–and Olivia is beginning to realize how much of her own bitter history she’s never understood: Her mother’s madness, building toward a fiery crescendo. Her daughter’s flight to California, leaving her to raise Will’m, her beloved grandson. And most of all, her town’s fear, for Olivia has real and dangerous enemies. Now this pr...

I just finished reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. It was a very sad, yet thought provoking book written essentially about racial beauty. In the afterward, Toni Morrison writes about how she wanted to explore the idea of how someone so young and vulnerable can come to wear ugly and believe it, how a an innocent child can take every comment, action, and stare to shame them for things they are not responsible for. I appreciated one thing in particular about the book. It told the book from the perspective of several characters. The people that I hated in the beginning, I gained sympathy for as I read their story of childhood. It reminded me of how we each have a story and these stories make us who we are and yet don't have to define us. Sometimes, we often times let our past determine our future, our upbringing determine our character, our warped perspectives dictate our actions. Two main themes of the book would probably be be love and beauty. On the last page of the book sh...

I just finished  Unspoken and Unashamed by Francine Rivers. You can read each one in about 2 hours. These books are a part of a collection of books about the 5 women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Unspoken is about Bathsheba, an adulterous woman who sleeps with king David, but is forgiven by the Lord and ends up bearing Solomon who becomes king of Israel after David dies. Unashamed is about Rahab, a pagan prostitute, who hides spies when the Israelites come to take over Jericho and claim the promised land. In turn, they save her life and she marries one of the spies who came. She gives birth to Boaz who is in the line of the Messiah. While these books are historical fiction, they are a beautiful picture of the gospel and amazingly the basis of the stories are true. God takes the least of us and makes beautiful things. These Bible stories that I so easily pass over come to life and I realize these were real people, making real mistakes, and making real decisions to choose ...

I love books. I know I should "never say never," but I am quite very much sure indeed unlikely to ever use a kindle or nook. There's just something about books- flipping through them, smelling them, holding them. And I love the library. I love the rows of books- the colors, titles, and images that beckon you to pull them off the shelf and enter their world. I love the quietness. Everyone moves so slowly and carefully. It is an odd thing to be fully aware of all that is going on around you and yet so engrossed in what you are reading, but it is possible at a library. Today, I pulled One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp off the shelf to read. It is an incredible book about her journey from such deep brokenness, despair, and doubt into living life fully through thanksgiving. She writes beautifully of her dare to herself to write 1,000 gfits from God that she is thankful for. I have been amazed at how her brilliant writing makes even the most mundane tasks sound so glorious a...

So this is a funny post to write after just posting my "summer book review," but maybe it's also quite fitting. I am taking a break from books. Weird I know. I love books. They haven't really ever been an issue, but the last book I read and the book I'm reading now keep getting me tense and anxious in my body as I open the pages and enter the story. I've read I think about 10 books in the past month. It takes me about 2 or 3 days to finish a book because I get so into I can't put it down. Now that's happened with other books in the past and it wasn't a problem. Like the Hunger Games in which I demolished all 3 in one week. I realize I am entering the story too much... if that makes sense. When I am reading it's harder to separate my feeling from the book and reality. If I get really sad or spooked because of something I am reading, I have been finding it harder to snap out of that emotion. I have been finding myself thinking how I would put...

So I am on a reading kick this summer. I love reading and didn't have much time this this school year. So the second to last day of the school year, I got myself a lovely library card. So here are the book's I've read so far and a brief recommendation/ description. Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore (Technically, I finished this before school... but I am still counting it under summer reads)  I LOVED this book. It's a must read for anyone interested in homelessness, inspiring non-fiction books, christianity, or anyone who is breathing. I love it. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini  Beautifully written. Page turning. Also a must read. Sad, but sweet. I learned alot about Afghanistan. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini  Wow. A great book about loyalty, friendship, family ties, heritage, and Afghanistan. I love Hoesseini's writing.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak This was a super interesting book. I had no ...