Wednesday, February 10, 2010

What I've read and will be reading

Visit Life as Mom for other bloggers who are Booking It.

Here is a quick summary of what I've read so far in 2010. I keep updating my 2010 books post (see below), so this is really a bit of a repeat.

What I've read:
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Mark of the Lion series (3 books)
The Hidden Art of Homemaking (Jan. book club selection)
Her Fearful Symmetry
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
True Colors
The Baker Street Letters

What I'm reading (or about to):
365 Nights
The Painted Veil (Feb. book club selection)
A Perfect Mess (for Bible study)
La's Orchestra Saves the World

The rest of the pile:
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families
Sweethearts (YA)
Twenties Girl
The Cruelest Month
The Whole Life Adoption Book

Of my lists, I really enjoyed Francine River's "Mark of the Lion" series. Wow. It's very well done Christian fiction. The best part is that my church is currently offering a class on Sunday afternoons over Ancient Church History. It adds so much to my understanding of that time period.

"The Hidden Art of Homemaking" was not a hit with my book club, though the discussion was great, and I think we all left with some good ideas. The book itself is not particularly well written.
I had too high of expectations of "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie". And I had no idea what to expect with "The Baker Street Letters", a mystery in the style of Sherlock Holmes (or so it says). "True Colors" by Kristin Hannah was okay, a love story requiring plenty of tissue.

And, in the interest of not making this post too terribly long, I'll stop there.

Friday, February 5, 2010

The minimum

I can't seem to walk out of the library with just the book I went in to pick up. Today, I stopped at the library to get two books I had on hold. (After my last trip, I'm sure you're wondering why I would have put more books on hold. Good question).

So, the two books I intended to leave the library with were:
1. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective FAMILIES
2. Sweethearts by Sarah Zarr (YA)

But, as soon as I walked in I felt the pull of the new release shelves and off I went. I did better than last time. Just two books in my pile are 14-day loans and one of those is a cookbook.

So, the extras that have been added to my rather large pile:

3. Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
4. Martha Stewart Dinner at Home
5. The Cruelest Month by Louise Penney (the third in a series I've been enjoying)

The thing is, I also ordered two books from Amazon today. It's starting to sound like I have a problem. They're both non-fiction, though. And one is for my small group.

So, the other two books added to that crazy pile:

6. The Whole Life Adoption Book
7. A Perfect Mess by Lisa Harper

Whew.

One other note - I returned "How to Buy a Love of Reading" today without reading it. I read a few chapters this morning and decided I wasn't interested and didn't want to invest the time to become interested. So, I just have two more 14-day loans to finish before next Friday. (And 2 more for the following Friday.)