You know when you read someone else's books...books they love, books that moved them, it is similar to reading their personal journal.  You learn so much about the interior world of that person, because they in some way identified with the author.  It is intimate really, because we are a part of what we read.

There are some books I treasure that I have yet to find people who "get" that author but when I read the work I  think "Yes, yes, that is exactly how I think and feel!" 

"We read to know that we are not alone"     --C. S. Lewis

I love the curves and waves in the pictures below reminding me of the movement of thought within the pages.  Whole worlds can be hidden in there.

Recently, a friend of ours who is in seminary said to us, "The thing about being in seminary is that you have time to think things through to the end.  It is your job as a student to turn it over on all its sides and come to conclusions. After seminary, life comes at you so fast that you never have this chance again."

I have been thinking about that all week.  How as a mother I live in fragments, everything is broken down to increments, and even those increments get interrupted. Chores, conversations...life.

I write my thoughts on scraps of paper... key words to remind me of things I want to get back to, studies I want to do, things I am curious about.  What has me so inspired is thinking "What do I want to invest the time thinking through to the end?"  I so, so agree with what my friend Rachael's dad said: "At the end of the day, we did exactly what we wanted to do."  I can make time to think things through...to see a thought to the end if I really wanted to.  That is what books are, the author, on some given topic, did not give up.

I was just reading about Alexandra Stoddard (in her book Grace Notes) when she was a teenager, her Aunt who was a world traveler wanted to take her and her two cousins around the world.  The summer before their big trip the aunt mailed her two cartons of books to prepare her for the trip.  Her aunt did not want to waste her hard earned money on taking anyone on the trip who was uneducated.  So Alexandra read the fifty two books that her Aunt sent in the four months time that she had before the trip.  I would love to know what the titles of the fifty two books were!   Even more fun to think about... what books would you send if you were the Aunt?

I have been keeping a list of every book I read since the mid 90's .  My hardbound journal shares the pages not only with my lists but also the lists of other people.  This year Jeff asked if he could start a list in my book, so I let him--as long as it is a real chapter book.

I have a list from my dad on the top five Christian books every one should read, he said he would get back to me on number five but hasn't yet, I think he wants to keep the possibility open.

1)Pilgrim's Progress

2)Screwtape Letters

3)Calvin's Institutes (he says they read like a devotional, they also preach and are practical ministering to your soul)

4)Spurgeon-Treasury of David what my dad calls Spurgeon's Magnum OpuS

Another list from Jennifer the first "soul sister" I ever met who shared my deep love of reading.  Here are some of hers:

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

Night - Elie Wiesel

The Brothers Karamozov - Fyodor Dostovevski

Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Native Son - Richard Wright

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

She introduced to me to many of her literary friends who I now call friends.

A children's book list from my dear friend Louise, (she is the friend who introduced me to Glaskill) This is just a sampling of her list:

The Secret Garden - Francis Hodgson Burnett

Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

The Swiss Family Robinson - William H.G. Kingston

The Jungle Book and Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling

The Paddington series

Five Little Peppers -Margaret Sidney

I have my list of books that Lewis talks about--he talks about many authors but ones of particular interest I jot down, because C.S. Lewis is at the top of my top five list, and so I like to follow his rabbit trails and see where they lead.  Here are some of the bits I have from things he wrote on other authors:

"I love Edith Nesbit, I think I have learned a lot from her about how to write stories of this kind."

"I have been reading Pride and Predjudice on and off all my life and it doesn't wear out a bit.  Charles Lamb too, you'll find his letters as good as his essays."

The thing with Janet and I, we are six years apart but have often read the same books growing up.  This time I was reading one of hers and left it overnight in a rainstorm.  Not a big deal at all, I went out and bought her a new one at Borders the very next day.  The hardest part was all her notes were in the original.  We both treat books like journals, writing all over the margins and on the blank pages in the back, so I sat down page by page underlining in the new book where she had underlined in the old book and transcribing her thoughts in the margins.  Making the new one personal and more alive like the old one was.  I still liked the old one better with all its ripples and curves and her handwriting.