Wednesday, May 12, 2010

bucket of books

As a wife and mom, I have a bucket list of things I want to do with my family. Stuff like camping and weekend fishing trips in the Keys, mission trips together....the usual. :)

As a woman, I have a different bucket list. and it's full of books. and it's a BIG bucket. I had better live until I'm like 148 or else I may not get through my list.

You can see some of them here. I met Lori when I married Ben. She was in a small group at church with my mother in law. She's incredible. Like I don't even have words to describe how I am inspired by her. She has homeschooled her kids and done lots and lots of reading with them, to them and once they've gone to bed. :) This is a list she compiled. She also has an excellent list of children's books to read with your little ones here. I'm planning on tackling a few from this list during the summer with the kids. The library is about a mile away, and I'm hoping to walk there once a week to get new books to share with the kids.

I am currently reading Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis. In it, he lists several books that helped shape his beliefs and views. I've decided that I would love to read as many as I can. Here are a few:

Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queen’
John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’
George MacDonald’s ‘Phantasies,’ ‘Lilith,’ and ‘The Golden Key’
Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’
William Morris’ ‘Jason’
E.R. Eddison’s ‘The Worm Ouroborous’
E. Nesbit's 'The Railway Children,' 'Five Children and It,' 'The Phoenix and the Carpet,' 'The Story of the Amulet,' 'The Story of the Treasure-Seekers,' 'The Would-Be-Goods,' and 'The Enchanted Castle'
Voltaire's 'Candide'
Dante's 'Divine Comedy'
Poetry of Wordsworth, Tennysen, and Keats
Matthew Arnold's 'Sohrab and Rustum'
Richard Wagner's 'The Ring of the Niblung: Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods'
H.A. Guerber's 'The Myths of the Norsemen"
Laurence Sterne's ' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'
Sir James George Frazer's 'The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion'

...to name a few. I noticed while browsing Amazon for these that a lot of them are available for free to download to your Kindle. Looks like I am going to want one of those afterall! :)

My last list of books (is there such a thing?) comes from my favorite TV show of all time, LOST. In addition to being an intriguing, thoughtful, entertaining show, it has turned many people onto some seriously great books. Look here for a (incomplete, I'm sure) list of the books referenced either in the show itself or by the show's episode titles. I've read several of them already, but I'm hoping to find some other fans to read these with.

"To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare." ~Kenko Yoshida

"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind." ~James Russell Lowell

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." ~Groucho Marx

1 comment:

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