Finished for 2014

31 books, garden whimsies I don't know what to do with and a pallet flag that's on my porch.  Also a flower garden that was completely overgrown with weeds by the end of the summer.  That's everything I accomplished in 2014.

Two More Books

Reasonable Doubt and Forever and Ever, Amen probably the last two books I'll finish this year.  Reasonable Doubt went fairly quickly, and, unusual for me, by the time I finished it I didn't believe the father was guilty.  I looked online and he was acquitted in, I believe it said 1991, so someone else thought so, too. ;)

Forever and Ever Amen wasn't a well-written book.  Lots of testimonial letters and very little actual writing.  I did manage to finish it, though, and now I'm listening to some of the songs I enjoyed from my teenage years when I was falling in love with Country music. :)

Holy Curiosity

Holy Curiosity

I loved this book. 

Proverbs 24: 3

 By wisdom a house is built,
    and through understanding it is established;
4 through knowledge its rooms are filled
    with rare and beautiful treasures.
(Knowledge as housekeeping)

p. 104 "There is something grounding about fixing a toilet or scrubbing floors.  The activities create an attachment to your immediate environment, a way to cultivate the sacred in the ordinary by tending thoughtfully to your holy space."

P. 14 "At the very beginning, while morning stars and angels are rejoicing in respectable ways, wisdom is turning cartwheels."  (Prov. 8:22-31)
<purpose of artistry> "...to link God with people and draw them closer together."

p. 28 inspiration - the drawing of air into the lungs

p. 56 "But the creative personality isn't shrouded in black and combing the moors any more than it is housed in the right side of the brain only.  Wisdom is playful, not burdensome, she does not drive to madness those she endows, as if that were the exchange rate for genius, like some soul-pact with the devil."

p. 97 "In the Hebrew language the word delight doesn't just translate into pleasure of joy; it connotes a stong positive attraction for something... [It] emphasizes subjective involvement; feeling welling up from within.  It even has a kinesthetic dimension...no wonder the old guests gamboled, Aleck springs to his feet and wisdom turned a cartwheel."

p. 110 "Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness" wrote Meister Eckhart, so that drawing close to God means being still.  Being still is...an active posture of mindful reflection, contemplation, and prayer."

Home, Julie Andrews

Home

It starts off really good, then it kind of bogged down into a lot of lists of names that might mean something to someone, but not me.  She went to parties with a lot of famous people, okay, got that.  Don't know who they were, but I guess she did.

26 and 27

Finished 2 more books this month: Practicing Extravagant Generosity by Robert Schnase and The Stalking of Kristin by George Lardner Jr.

I found Practicing Extravagant Generosity difficult to understand, because of spiritually abusive teachings I grew up with.  Please know, I do not use the term "spiritual abusive" lightly.  I'll need to re-read it and go over my notes in more depth later.                                                                             

The Stalking of Kristin was interesting, but kind of droned on about outdated statistics and that made it difficult to wade through at times.                                                                                                       

24 and 25

Not remembering which I finished first, I'll just pick one and go:

Dear Mr. Ripley is a collection of photos and oddities from Ripley's, of Believe it or Not fame, files.  Interesting stuff.

Next Door Savior by Max Lucado was really good starting out.  In the middle it seemed to turn into a series of Easter Sunday sermons, and I got bogged down a little, but the first few chapters made up for it.                                                                                                                                                       

Twenty-third Book

Stop Dating The Church by Joshua Harris.  It was small and cheap (free).  That's my only explanation.