this has been a long month...
and you had to read all about it.. sorry about that...
so i am taking it easy on you today.
someone asked me to write on my blog some of the books that have changed my life. i think they meant as an adult...
so today is books that changed my life when i was a CHILD. because i am passive aggressive (i will do the “changed my life as an adult” list later, i promise...)
i read ALOT when i was a child. my family thought i was weird (and it probably wasn’t the book reading, but i like to think that it was because it make me feel all genius like and superior... note to self-see yesterday’s entry on the results of pride).
OH and speaking of yesterday... here is an update.
my daughter was able to take a retest in spanish and because the teacher went back over the first test with her and showed her what she had done wrong...
millie made an ‘a’ on the retest. but i am NOT about the grades. but i am about her coming back after failing and learning something new...
back to our regularly scheduled blog (in other words BACK TO ME)...
favorite books that changed my life when i was a child...
this was the first time i can remember crying (no, it was more like BAWLING) while reading a book. i had never realized that books could make you feel things so deeply. i also remember thinking, “WHY WHY WHY couldn’t it have been different? it isn’t fair”! and i wanted the author to have made a different choice with a character and later realizing that the same substitutiary principle applied in Christ’s death on the cross for me. i think i was 6 at the time.... just kidding. i just realized that now...
millie read this book when she was 7 and said, “that was o.k.” i almost disowned her...
this is still my favorite read aloud of all time and the basis of everything i know about raising children. again, i just made that connection right now...
i wanted to do magic so badly after this book, even half magic. i made up magical wishes that could be halved and do what i wanted them to do... notice that i am only half as pretty as i wanted to be, again a realization that i made JUST NOW...
from the mixed up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler
imagine me locked in the metropolitan museum alone at night... it was my deepest desire. no wonder i didn’t have many friends (again, i made that connection JUST NOW)...
i wasn’t too far into this one when i gasped and went, “OH MY GOSH, that is noah’s family” (in rereading it years later i realized that she outright tells you this fact, so i wasn’t really that smart). i thought is was so cool to write about going back and being involved with the whole flood thing and meeting people that you knew from the Bible. warning... she isn’t exactly Biblically accurate with some things, so don’t take this as really conservative religious reading. but i LOVE this book to this day and love the verse she takes the title from...
song of solomon 8:7
Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.
and then there were ALL these perry mason mystery paperbacks. my grandmother had all of these upstairs in her room at the beach and she let me read them ALL (and i am fairly sure that my mother would NOT have approved). they used to have scantily clad women pictured on the front (of course nowadays they wouldn’t even be called scantily clad, they would be called totally classy women appropriately dressed). she explained that the covers were racy but the books were totally clean. i think i have patterned my blog entries after those novels (notice the enticing photos at the top of the pages, doesn’t that just draw you into the mystery that is every blog entry?) i read so many perry mason mysteries that i could tell you from the end of the first 5 pages who was the most likely suspect. i should have gone to work as a private investigator. as long as i had della street and paul drake to help me, i would have made it for sure...
and the children’s book that i read as an adult that is my FAVORITE children’s book EVER (and would make my adult favorite book list too)....
The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread
i could read this aloud to children (or silently to myself) the rest of my life and my love for that little mouse would never wane. it was my favorite read aloud with my children (followed closely another book by the same author that i love too, the miraculous journey of edward tulane) and it was my favorite book listened to on audio CD and the opening lines are my favorite opening lines ever which kind of sum up how i feel about stories and books and reading...
“The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.”
i mean it’s no “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. but it is really good...
and just in case you need MORE book suggestions... you can visit...
i have updated it with all the books i want to read this summer (a mere 75 or so books, i better stop blogging and start reading). some are for myself to read and some are for my children to read and become so much wiser than i was at their ages. i will request them from the library, buy some, and yearn for the others. feel free to purchase any or all items and have them shipped directly to me. yes, feel free to do that. keep feeling free... are you feeling so free to do it that you are clicking the “purchase now and ship them directly to lea” button... let’s hope so.
if this was half magic, i would have to wish that you bought me twice as many books as were on my wish list...
see how good i was at half magic.