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Tolkien’s World
My daughters are becoming pretty knowledgeable Middle Earth historians. Last night at supper they were discussing why Elrond’s brother Elros may have chosen to become human rather than an an elf. Then there…
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Caught Up In a Story
I started Sarah Clarkson’s Caught Up In a Story in 2018, but I ended up setting it aside. Picking it up again recently, I found the time was right. The book reminded me…
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Leaf by Niggle
I struggle to find the time to write about my reading these days. I’ve been rereading, as always (Safely Home, Love Thy Body), and reading (The Mabinogian, Le Morte d’Arthur, The Inklings and…
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Read-alouds and the moral imagination
I’m reading Live Not By Lies, by Rod Dreher. It’s a discussion of the “soft totalitarianism” spreading in America, and how people in general, and Christians in particular, can be alert to it…
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Audiobooks, Physical Books, and David vs. Goliath
Recently, reading Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath, I found myself coming to terms with my audiobook angst in a new way. Audiobooks are a phenomenon woven into our family life since my children’s…
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Deconstructing Penguins
I learned about Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading in the blogosphere, where some homeschoolers have used it to great benefit as a springboard for literary study. It offers the…
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Norse Mythology
I was curious about Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology partly because of a recent reminder that C.S. Lewis was fascinated with “Northernness.” A shared interest in Norse mythology was one of the common bonds…
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Epic
I’ve had a great experience reading this little book by John Eldredge aloud to my two daughters. Epic: The Story God is Telling and the Role that is Yours to Play takes up…
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The Fellowship
What then, were the Inklings? Was John Wain right to call them (as we reported on the first page of this study) ‘a circle of instigators, almost of incendiaries, meeting to urge one…
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Beauty in the Word
Though Catholic schools are the ostensible audience, Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the subject of education — or worried about current trends. The book…
