Books

3 years (and 3 days) ago, I wrote my Nightstand post from a hospital bed while trying to stay pregnant as long as possible.

Today, I write celebrating Tirzah Mae’s third birthday – and our longest healthy pregnancy yet.

My reading life has undergone some pretty significant changes in the past three years – but I’m still reading (even if it’s mostly picture books that aren’t listed here!)

Books for Growing:

• Learning to Talk by James Christopher Law
  Part of the “Johnson’s Everyday Babycare” series by Dorling Kindersley, this short glossy book describes normal speech development in infants and children and how parents can facilitate healthy language development. Nothing groundbreaking, but I think it’s still a helpful resource for parents who are wondering “is my child normal?” and “am I doing what I should do?”
• Free to Learn by Lynne Oldfield
  An introduction to the Steiner Waldorf model of early childhood education – a model that focuses on free play (without trying to force “education”), encounters with nature,
  and regular rhythms of life. I found Steiner’s discussion of rhythms to be particularly helpful in organizing my family’s daily routines. This book by Oldfield is a nice introduction to the method.

Books for Knowing:

• North America’s Favorite Butterflies: A Pictorial Guide by Patti and Milt Putnam
  We picked this up while I was browsing the adult nonfiction stacks because it fits Tirzah Mae’s exacting criterion for titles meant for grown-ups: it is small and it has an orange cover. But unlike the many such books we have brought home from the library, this one managed to sustain both Tirzah Mae AND her mother’s attention throughout the entire 3 month checkout period. We’ve spent many an afternoon poring over the full-color photographs of butterflies and reading the accompanying text describing a bit of the behavior or habitat or habits of that butterfly.

Books for Enjoying:

• Big Appetites by Christopher Boffoli
  Another book that fit Tirzah Mae’s criteria for checking out, this particular title is a series of photos of tiny toy people set amongst larger-than-life food. Each photo is accompanied by a title and a wry subtitle. So a picture of tiny men pushing around cherries and pitting them is titled “Cherry Pitters”, with the subtitle “The team was driven by their desire to negate years of PR damage from cherry-flavored medicines.” Moderately amusing.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

My busy summer is apparently not quite over – at least not as far as reading goes. Between starting “school” with Tirzah Mae (which means LOTS of picture books, but not a whole lot of grown-up reading), trying to put extra meals in the freezer (at least a couple a week), weeding the gravel driveway (possibly a fool’s errand, but we’d rather not spray more than we need to), canning applesauce, and attempting to get that porch railing done before the baby comes… Well, I haven’t finished much reading this month. In fact, I’ve only finished TWO books!

Finished this month:

• The Midwife by Jennifer Worth
  I checked this memoir out of the library because it was in the pregnancy/birth section and I’ve read all the clinical and “how-to” stuff in that section. I figured since I haven’t done any pregnancy reading this pregnancy, maybe I’d glean something from the birth stories within. Turns out that wasn’t to be – there’s not near as much about pregnancy and birth as you’d expect from a book called The Midwife. But, this was a fascinating story nonetheless – a coming-of-age and coming-to-faith story of sorts. I enjoyed it greatly.
• Keys to Toilet Training by Meg Zweiback
  At the point I checked this out of the library, I was starting to wonder if my “wait until she’s obviously ready” strategy for toilet training Tirzah Mae was going to backfire. Maybe I needed to step things up and get her trained before the baby comes. Turns out, the author of the “keys” is pretty into relaxed potty training herself – and I was about two chapters in when Tirzah Mae up and trained herself, with only minimal input from me. I finished the book, which I thought gave generally good advice (mostly consisting of “relax, give it time, keep at the gentle process”). Tirzah Mae asked me once what the book was about and I told her – and periodically since, she’s been asking if she could read “Keys to Potty Training” (of course, I let her!)

Actively in Progress:

• Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley
• For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage by Tara Parker-Pope
• The Weekend Homesteader by Anna Hess

Passively in Progress:

• Free to Learn by Lynne Oldfield
• HypnoBirthing by Marie F. Mongan
• Learning to Talk by James Christopher Law

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

Postscript: For those wondering about my pregnancy – thank you so much for praying! We had a doctor’s appointment today and all is well so far. My blood pressure remains low, my weight gain is appropriate, and there’s no protein in my urine. Baby is quite active, with a good heartbeat and good uterine growth. Praise God! Please continue praying for health, yes, but also that we would have grace to trust God with the uncertainty that comes along with the last trimester for us.

This month turned out to be a good month for reading, probably because I was exhausted enough that I let everything go to seed while I read (I did stop to change diapers and to heat up leftovers for the kids for lunch). I’m expecting that, as my energy returns (we’re definitely in the second trimester now, so any day now?), my reading will decrease but maybe my house will get a bit cleaner and my husband will be able to relax when he comes home from work instead of having to pitch in to clean the house, make dinner, etc. etc. Fingers crossed.

Fiction Read:

• The Secret Warning by Franklin W. Dixon
  I picked up the 17th volume of the “Hardy Boys” series after a long break from the series (I read #11 in 2013). Fast-paced, formulaic, and a blast straight from my childhood :-)
• The Tournament at Gorlan and
  The Battle of Hackham Heath by John Flanagan
  I thought about resisting the siren call of Flanagan’s prequel series to “The Ranger’s Apprentice” – and then succumbed. I was not disappointed with the first two books of this series.
• The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer
  Unlike many of Heyer’s novels, this book is not set in the Regency period. Rather, it is set around the time of the Jacobite rebellions in the 18th century. A brother and sister pair travel to London, intending to lie low as they await their father’s arrival. All three had participated in one of the recent rebellions (at the behest of the rather flamboyant father), and the young people are eager for respectability and to escape notice. To this end, they each masquerade as the opposite sex, the son being rather excepionally short and the daughter rather exceptionally tall. But their goal of respectability and escaping notice is rather quickly thrown to the side as they get embroiled in London society and each their own little love affair. An enjoyable read, although not my favorite Heyer title.
• Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
  Orphaned young people head off to London to live, intending to set up a place for themselves despite their elderly guardian’s apparent distaste for the scheme (he’d told them by letter to stay put in the country.) But they’re in for a shock when they discover that their guardian is actually quite a bit younger than expected. As is often the case with Georgette Heyer’s novels, I enjoyed this romp through Regency high society.
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
  I came down with a case of what I’m guessing was food poisoning that left me horizontal for several days, long enough to run out of library novels to read – so I started reading from my own collection. And, just like when I first read these books, I could barely put them down. This time, reading as a mother, I am absolutely baffled as to when I will think it’s appropriate to let my children read these (mostly given the moral ambiguity throughout – I may change my mind later but I’m less worried about the “tense scenes”.) I’d love to hear thoughts from moms who are ahead of me in the process :-)

Nonfiction Read:

• Prenatal Tests: The Facts by Lachlan De Crespigny and Frank A. Chervenak
  This was the most difficult book I’ve read in a long time. de Crespigny and Chervenak take a highly clinical tone as they describe the various prenatal tests offered women. They discuss what each procedure is like, what the procedure tests for, risks and benefits of one test over another, and who is generally offered each test. That’s tough reading because of the tone, but what really makes this book difficult is the basic assumption behind the whole thing. The same calculus is offered on every page, for every test: what test should be done and when in order to ensure that you can kill the baby you don’t want without harming the baby should you decide you do want him. It’s tragic. I cried. A lot. I cry just thinking about it now.
• The Complete Organic Pregnancy by Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissu
  Are you terrified by potential toxins lurking everywhere? Are you convinced that pregnancy means you should quit absolutely everything and move to an organic cotton yurt in the middle of an organic pasture where you spend your day drinking filtered water and doing yoga (but not on one of those yucky plastic yoga mats)? Then this is the book for you. It’s a primer in just how dangerous absolutely everything on the face of the earth is. Really, it’s safer to just not get pregnant than to try to deal with all the potential dangers lurking in your office chair, your water bottle, your cosmetics, your local park, everywhere, really. (In case you haven’t yet figured it out, I think this particular book is worthless. Also, while I don’t necessarily think “natural” birth is for everyone – I’ve ended up with two c-sections with spinals despite hoping for a natural birth – I do find it interesting that a book that tells women to avoid absolutely everything during pregnancy due to the potential for minute amounts of chemicals to leach into the mother’s body and then make it to the baby suddenly switches gears when asked about, say, narcotic painkillers during delivery – we wouldn’t DREAM of telling you what to do, that’s a personal decision!)
• The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
  A history of the London cholera outbreak of 1854 – and how a moonlighting epidemiologist and a curious curate tracked down the source of the spread: the Broad Street pump. Daniel and I listened to this in the car and enjoyed the history of the epidemic and of the two main characters. What we didn’t enjoy were the lengthy, repetitive monologues about the wonders of cities and the metropolitan world. We’re guessing that we might not have minded so much if we were reading silently, since we could have skimmed through the monotony of those passages. We also wished that the author could have chosen some word other than “sh*t” to indicate human excrement. Have mercy on us audiobook listeners who happen to listen with our children in tow! Thankfully, while the word appears several dozen times, it’s pretty much confined to the first chapter – so, if you plan on listening to this one, listen alone for that section!
• Parkinson’s Disease and the Family by Nutan Sharma and Elaine Richman
  This “Harvard University Press Family Health Guide” is a general introduction to the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease, how disease progression is assessed, various treatments for Parkinson’s and issues affected individuals and their families experience. At just over 200 pages, this is not too long for the less-avid reader. As a health professional, I am ill-equipped to evaluate the readability of this book for a general audience; but I found it to be understandable and informative (as well as generally free of the “woo” that way too many “health” books for a general audience are prone to.) Recommended.
• Stokes Bird Gardening Book: The Complete Guide to Creating a Bird-Friendly Habitat in Your Backyard by Donald and Lillian Stokes
  Helpful ideas for creating a bird garden. Based on the information from this book, I feel that I have a good idea of how to move forward in creating a bird-friendly habitat in our yard. My one complaint was that little information was given about areas of the country, growing zones, etc.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

I haven’t been keeping my Nightstand posts up-to-date (or more, haven’t been posting them when it’s time), but I want to end April and May on a clean slate so that maybe I can pick things up again for June (hope springs eternal!)

So here’s [a little of] what I’ve read in April and May:

Gardening Books:

• Starting from Seed by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
  This book focuses on the environmental impact of monocultures and sees starting from seed as a way of maintaining genetic diversity in the garden (and in our world.) As such, it spends a lot of time talking about how to obtain heirloom seeds, how to protect against unwanted hybridization, and how to collect your own seeds.
• Seeds: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Successfully From Seed by Jekka McVicar
  The subtitle should be “the ultimate guide to successfully starting seeds”. This book has instructions for starting virtually any seed you can imagine for your garden or yard – but it doesn’t have much information on how to go about transplanting those seeds into their final locations, which I think is kinda important.
• The Backyard Orchardist by Stella Otto
  A readable, if somewhat dated (published in 1993), introduction to growing fruit trees. The general growing and pruning instructions are applicable, but there are TONS more varieties and rootstocks available now than there were then.
• The Gardener’s Peony by Martin Page
  Until I read this book, I had no idea that peonies were a collector’s item, something people get excited about like they do about roses or orchids. But there are hundreds of different cultivars of peonies and people do indeed go crazy over them. This book gives something of the history of peonies and has what seems like endless pages describing the history of various cultivars and their characteristics. In the last chapters, Page gives some advice on raising peonies and on selecting cultivars (which was really what I was looking for.) I think this is probably more a reference work for the serious gardener and enthusiast, not necessarily for a dabbler like me – but it was fun to go down the rabbit hole for a little while :-)

Relationship Books (Marriage, Parenting, etc):

• Everyday Creative Play by Lisa R. Church
  Lots of the activities seem either seem “duh” obvious or overly didactic. But sometimes a reminder of those “duh” activities is worthwhile, so it wasn’t time completely wasted.
• 150+ Screen-Free Activities For Kids by Asia Citro
  Lots of sensory activities – doughs and clays and oobleks and the like. Tirzah Mae had fun with whipped shampoo (colored baby shampoo whipped just like whipped cream or egg whites.) I’ll be checking this book out again sometime when I’m not in my first trimester of pregnancy and therefore have a little more energy for making sensory activities (for now, the kids are making do with playdough, baths, the sandbox, and the garden :-P)
• Show Them Jesus by Jack Klumpenhower
  A fantastic book about sharing the gospel with children. Klumpenhower writes as a Bible teacher, but gives plenty of suggestions for parents and others who work with children. I reviewed this book here.
• Success as a Foster Parent by the National Foster Parent Association with Rachel Greene Baldino
  I’ve finished this at last and consider it to be a great introduction to the process for someone who’s interested in fostering but who wants to learn a little about it before they start juggling schedules to actually get certified.
• Your Time-Starved Marriage by Les and Leslie Parrott
  A short, quick read about making time to invest in your marriage. I think if I’d read this six months ago, it would have been helpful; but we’d already started implementing many of the suggestions they made by the time I got around to reading this. I would recommend this, though, for couples who are feeling the crunch of busyness and who don’t really know what to do about it. Like I said, it’s a quick read and has some helpful suggestions.
• The RoMANtic’s Guide by Michael Webb
  The “World’s Most Romantic Man” gives lots of romantic ideas. I thought it would be fun to get some ideas for how I can show Daniel love. Unfortunately, pretty much all the ideas involve ridiculous public displays of affection or spending money on trinkets and food. We are NOT trinket people. And heaven knows we don’t need more food. Basically, we’re just not the romantic types.

Miscellaneous Nonfiction:

• The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth
  Part-journalism, part-memoir, this book tells the story of the Nordic (or Scandinavian, depending on how you decide to tell it) countries that so often lead those “quality of life” measures. Booth travels through each country one by one, telling personal stories, bits of history, and describing interviews with economists and politicians and the like. I found this an interesting read and fairly informative (according to Booth, the hygge everyone is talking about this year? it’s actually a stifling set of social conventions that forces one to avoid talking about anything controversial or unpleasant.) For the most part, I found each nation intriguing and different – until I got to Sweden, the most perfect of all the places. There the house of cards crashed. Booth describes a society where all one needs is to declare something modern for it to be accepted, a nation where government care frees one from dependence on anyone else (dependence upon a spouse, a parent, a child). He acts as though this is a utopia,
  but it sounds to me like the worst dystopia I can dream of. Some of the highest divorce rates in the world. The most senior adults (actually, most people altogether) living alone in the world. Eighty-two percent of children in full-time daycare by 6 months of age. Eugenics practiced unquestioningly until the 1970s. If this is happiness,
  I’ll opt for the less-happy (by whoever determines that) but more relational world I inhabit.
• Some of My Best Friends Are Black by Tanner Colby
  The story of the origins and continued existence of segregation in four spheres of American life: schools, neighborhoods, the advertising/marketing industry, and churches.
  This has been on my TBR list forever based on Lisa’s recommendation and I’m SO glad I read it.
• The Gluten Lie by Alan Levinovitz
  A look at the sociology of how diet fads, following a variety of fads through time. This was enlightening, interesting, and so good.
• The Prairie Girl’s Guide to Life by Jennifer Worick
  Instructions for fifty “Little House”-inspired activities, most of which turned out to be… beauty potions (okay, lavender spritzer for your ironing, soap, face cream,
  etc) or terribly ordinary recipes (cherries canned in syrup, rhubarb pie, dandelion greens.) I would have rather learned to make my own sausage and cheese like ma did,
  or to braid a hat out of straw, or… well, any of those things Ma and Pa (or Mother and Father or Laura herself) did in the books. So I was a bit disappointed with this.
  Of the projects listed, I’d either already done them (pretty much all the cooking stuff, embroidery, crochet, quilting, etc.) or have little desire to do them since they aren’t really prairie skills anyway.

Miscellaneous Fiction:

• The Lost Stories by John Flanagan
  A series of short stories (3-5 short chapters each) detailing some of the things that happened concurrent to or in between the previous books in the “Rangers Apprentice”
  series. I wish there were more of these because I found the short story aspect helpful in allowing me to enjoy fiction without neglecting my home and family.
• The Royal Ranger by John Flanagan
  I truly thought I was done with this series – but then the girls who babysat our kids during our foster care class told me that no, there really was a twelfth book. And,
  yes, there is indeed. This was a nice cap to the series, taking place a good fifteen or so years after the books before. I’m debating whether I want to read some of the related series’ (in order to close out this author before he writes too much more!) or if I want to take a break and focus on something else fiction-wise (it’s been a long time since I read any elementary or middle-grade fiction…)
• Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer
  I always enjoy Heyer’s lighthearted Regency romances. And the “spinster takes on a runaway” plotline is rather a favorite of mine, so this was perfect for an escape when things got overwhelming (right after I wrote about how I’d found my rhythm – hah!)
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
  I read this 6-chapter-long novella after Amy wrote about it at Hope is the Word. She wrote that “it deals with the big questions of life in a way that is thought-provoking and sophisticated.” And, boy, does it ever. She forgot to mention that it’s also gut-wrenching. I should NOT have read the last chapter right before bed :-)