The Unread Library

One of the blogs that I follow (Jules at Pancakes and French Fries) recently posted the contents of her summer reading list, and entitled it The Unread Library. She had moved through her dwelling, collected all the books that she had purchased but had not read, and put them in one place where she would see them every day. She has vowed not to buy another book until this task is completed. I had already been building my summer reading list, but I have now decided that not purchasing any more books for awhile could be a good thing for me, too. So, below are some pictures of my summer reading shelves, and the entire list can be found at the bottom of this post. Let me know which ones you've read and enjoyed, or are planning on reading.






Now for the list!!

Mansfield Park (Austen)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
Godric (Buechner)
A Dead Man in Deptford (Burgess)
The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton)
Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
The Awakening (Chopin)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
The Stranger (Camus)
Walking Across Egypt (Dickinson)
The Triumph of Deborah (Etzioni-Halevy)
*The Perfectly True Tales of a Perfect Size 12 (Gold)
The Power and the Glory (Greene)
*At Break of Day (Grimes)
*The Road to Paris (Grimes)
*The Monsters of Templeton (Groff)
Jude the Obscure (Hardy)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
The Odyssey (Homer)
*The Reluctant Heiress (Ibbotson)
Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy (Jourdain)
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
Ulysses (Joyce)
The Red Queen's Daughter (Kolosov)
A Swiftly Tilting Planet (L'Engle)
A Grief Observed (Lewis)
The Great Divorce (Lewis)
The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)
Til We Have Faces (Lewis)
*Lilith (Mac Donald)
*Phantastes (Mac Donald)
The Ragamuffin Gospel (Manning)
John Adams (McCullough)
*In His Right Mind (McDonald)
Evidence for Christianity (McDowell)
*In Quiet Light (McEntyre)
Blue Like Jazz (Miller)
Searching for God Knows What (Miller)
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (Milton)
*We Were the Mulvaneys (Oates)
Monster (Peretti)
The Oath (Peretti)
The Prophet (Peretti)
Don't Waste Your Life (Piper)
The Dracula Dossier (Reese)
The Mark of the Lion Trilogy (Rivers)
The Unlikely Disciple (Roose)
Nine Stories (Salinger)
Gaudy Night (Sayers)
*Murder Must Advertise (Sayers)
*Strong Poison (Sayers)
*The Bastard of Istanbul (Shafak)
The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Shakespeare)
Hamlet (Shakespeare)
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare)
*Oral History (Smith)
Liberty's Promise (Stockton)
Dracula (Stoker)
Letters to My Children (Taylor)
The Myth of Certainty (Taylor)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
Descent into Hell (Williams)
War in Heaven (Williams)
Fireproof (Wilson)

I warned you.

I did. Honestly. A long time ago, I made that statement that I am the worst blogger EVER. And the fact that I have been absent for 3 weeks proves this. My sincerest apologies and a big post to make up for it!!
I didn't manage to upload these pictures in a cohesive order, so you're going to have to deal. :) But we still love each other, right? These are a little bit of what's been going on in my life in the last three weeks.

So, the summer of MAKING has gone almost halfway by and I haven't made very much. :( However, I now have a solution!!



I've been printing off new recipes, patterns, etc. and putting them here for easy access. Yay!

Then, there is this beautiful thing:



Which may, or may not be, a carseat/carrier blanket for a beautiful kid named Izzy.



I super love this yarn!!

I finally made the Italian burgers left over from my meatball foray.



These gorgeous puppies are dressed with sauteed onions, cream cheese, a fresh tomato, and spinach. Yum! They were so good.



I found a turtle in the yard! I named him Turtle.



I was in a wedding! This is a picture of her gorgeous cake.



I celebrated the 7 year mark for this beautiful kid here.



Most of the time, she looks like this:



I completed two summer courses, and read 12 books in two months with > 150 pages.



I made my first meringue! So beautiful. And so yummy.



That is all for the update. I promise, more book reviews coming!! And (hopefully) a finished shot of the baby blanket.

Anarchy, Undercover Cops, and Deceit. Oh My!

Before I begin talking about the book I want the whole world to read, I need to notify the blogging universe that I just sneezed and scared the poo out of my dog. She ran out of the room. It was hilarious.

Anywho.
Remember the whole promise about blogging about the making and the reading? Well, I'm here to try and fulfill it!
For my Faith and Imagination summer course, we started our reading with G.K. Chesterton. I've used Chesterton's commentary in research papers and the like before, but I hadn't read any of his fiction until now. Our first book was/is The Man Who Was Thursday.
Like me, the title probably puzzles you a little bit, but within the first two chapters, that clears itself up just a little bit. The basics of the book are anarchy, undercover cops, and an ongoing discussion of the merits and downfalls of poetry and philosophy. There are also a lot of Biblical parallels. I don't want to give anything away, but the book is SO. FUNNY. Seriously. I have had so many "laughing out loud" moments (usually in awkward places). So, if you're looking for a quick read (maybe less than a week if you're disciplined), then this is definitely for you.
*Tip: I would recommend keeping a list of characters. Just a thought. :)
I have to finish this book within the next couple of days and start reading our next Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Annnnnd I have to write a paper about them. Before next Monday! Woohoo, summer classes!
Happy reading!