Pondered In My Heart

Saturday Stack II & III (reading right now)

Catching up with some book posts from the last few weeks. 'Saturday Stacks' are my attempt to capture what everyone is reading at a particular time each week, but does not represent all the books that have been read or that people are currently reading.

Book stack, week two - January 15. On the bottom there is Albert Marrin's Sitting Bull and His World. Lydia received this for Christmas, as we usually like Marrin's work and she has a liking for things of the old west. She liked it better than Russell Freedman's The Life and Death of Crazy Horse, though she reckoned this one had a great deal of chopping up of things (starting with buffalo to desensitize you and progressing to fellow humans). Freedman's book focuses on mainly Crazy Horse, while Marrin's presents a more extensive overview of the times and shows more of both sides of the story. Also of note is a photograph of Sitting Bull with his children and his mother, and unusual portrayal of him. 

Jonathan is reading Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc by Joseph Pearce. He reads a great deal of Belloc, so he borrowed this biography from the library. He's also reading The Lion of Münster: The Bishop Who Roared Against Nazis Fr. Daniel Utrecht which I gave him for Christmas.

Jonathan reports:

In October of 1933, before his consecration as bishop, to fulfill the requirements of the concordat between the Catholic Church and the German government, Clemens August von Galen swore an oath of loyalty to the state in the presence of Herman Goering: "In the dutiful care for the good and the interests of the German State, I will, in performing the office entrusted to me, seek to ward off any dangers that could threaten it." Contrary to what you might think, Bishop Von Galen would proudly cite this oath to those who would complain of his actions, saying: "When people would seek to shake the inherited Christian faith of our People, that, in my most holy most inward conviction, is the greatest danger that could threaten the German State."

As soon as Jonathan finished reading it he lent it to a friend, so the rest of us have to wait a while to get our hands on it. Must be good.

My husband is continuing in the third volume of Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples. He is very disciplined and won't read anything else until he finishes the set. Mary Rose continues in Finding a Hidden Church, regarding the persecution of the Greek (Byzantine) Catholic Church by the Communists in the former Soviet Union. The Catholics were forced to convert to Orthodoxy or face persecution, oft times unto death, while their churches and monasteries and convents were confiscated and given over to the Orthodox. I hope I am next in line to read it after her.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys is the best-selling novel of a Lithuanian teenage girl captured by the Russian Communists and sent to a work camp in Siberia. I admit I had a little trouble 'getting into' the book as we are accustomed to reading non-fiction and hearing the true stories of those who have survived the horrors of the World War II era. My brain was inadvertently yet constantly comparing it to The Hiding Place, particularly the train transport of prisoners at the beginning of the book, although it's not quite fair comparing fiction to reality. It's a decent read, and I'm very glad it was written and has done so well, introducing the subject matter to a generation of young people who might not otherwise read about this time in history. Much attention is given to the Nazi Holocaust and so little to the far more widespread genocide perpetrated by the Soviets, so the book tells a very important narrative. I suppose the book fell a bit flat for me as the girl's faith, while occasionally mentioned, is so inconsequential. I tend to think that if you had a weak faith it could very well be obliterated by the sufferings of war and imprisonment, or it could be strengthened into the bedrock that enabled you to persevere in the wake of such pain and evil. But to have faith that is just mentioned as an aside, a Christmas-and-Easter sort of cultural nicety even in the midst of a Siberian work camp doesn't seem to hold water for me. I also am not used to books targeted at a young adult audience, so that aspect made it feel a bit simplistic and contrived to me as well. There are maps included in the front of the book but they are 'not meant to accurately represent all country borders or locations.' So all in all I thought it was definitely worth reading, but not sure how it got to be a NYT Bestseller. (Although maybe that's just me, as I don't understand how the Nobel prize in literature is awarded either...) I tried to find a copy of the memoirs used by the author as one of her reference books, but alas even interlibrary loan failed me there. The author interview at the end of my copy was interesting, but I wish I could just read the actual stories she compiled while interviewing survivors and doing research for the book.

Kateri is taking another read of Understood Betsy, while Josiah is enjoying a nice vintage hardcover of Tremendous Trifles, a classic collection of Chesterton essays Anna found for him. On top remains Christmas with Anne and Chronicles of Avonlea.

 

Week III - January 22 Stack

Michael is now on the the fourth volume of Churchill - The Great Democracies. Mary Rose is reading Fingal's Quest by Madeline Polland about Irish monks in the sixth century, to go along with her history studies. She's the one reading The Hobbit in there as well.

Jonathan is reading 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle by Warren Carroll The point of the book is to emphasize, describe, and give the context of the year 1917, in which there happened simultaneously the Communist takeover of Russia and the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. Written in 1981, the book has an interesting perspective in that at the time, Soviet Russia was still going strong with no end in sight. Also, there is mention of a secret told to one of the children in the apparitions, but there is no hint of the controversies that are now so common regarding this.

Kateri is enjoying a lovely vintage Alice in Wonderland she received for Christmas, from about 1900 with classic illustrations by John Tenniel. Eliza is dabbling in the dearly loved The Middle Moffat. I am just now returning to George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss after taking a break from it over the holidays.

Saturday Stack (reading right now)

Here's a peek at what everyone in the house is reading right now. Not all the books we're reading, of course, but a stack.

The stately volume on the bottom is one of Milton's Poetical Works, in which Jonathan is reading Paradise Lost. It's a lovely facsimile edition of the 1674 text, and he greatly enjoys the antiquated spellings and typography, with copious notes on the text. It's borrowed from the college library, where it was a gift from the class of ‘23 (!). That link is to an exorbitantly priced set, but it has some photos so you can see the beauty of the text. Jonathan notes that he was inclined to read Milton after reading Hilaire Belloc’s book on the same. A quote from Belloc:

A man having read Paradise Lost as it should be read, from beginning to end; a man having had the sense not to interrupt that reading by the reading of other fiction, history or verse; a man having taken it as a great meal (it is a meal that will take him a day or two), does find that he is nourished. He has continually regarded the sublime, and he has followed a slow but living sequence which leaves his mind furnished with an air of satisfaction; he has been filled with sufficient beauty and dignity. Throughout all those thousands upon thousands of lines you feel the fashioner at work, you are dealing with something made and with its maker; you are in communion with an achieved, creative effort of the human mind.

Next up is The Age of Revolution, the third volume  Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples which my husband is reading. He reports that he is now slightly less confused about British history than he was previously. Also, there were lots of world wars before the World Wars.

Hot Water was a Christmas gift for Josiah. I somehow have been remiss in not giving him any Wodehouse before in his life. He promptly offered his deep and profound remarks on the book: 'Got any more?' I actually took the picture on Saturday - I think he's reading Laughing Gas now. Incidentally Leila recently linked to an article in the New Yorker, and here are her own thoughts on the Inimitable P.G. Wodehouse.

I set aside some other books during the holidays and picked up in the middle of Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow Daybook where I had left off some months ago. I enjoy reading her simple, straightforward prose on all the ins and outs, peace and perplexities of everyday country life. You never know if the next paragraph will bring you more antics of the cocker spaniels and the joys of strawberry shortcakes for supper or musings on the necessity of poetry or how it is that man brings himself to go to war. A taste:

Having been raised with poetry, I am astounded at the lack of it in young people nowadays.  Although we began in school reciting “The snow had begun in the gloaming-and bus-ily all the night-“ and went on to “Lars Porsena of Clusium by the nine Gods he swore,” still we did learn that words went in form and pattern sometimes. But recently a young man asked me, “just what is a sonnet anyway?”

“A sonnet is a moment’s monument,” said I, quoting Rossetti rapidly, “Memorial to the soul’s eternity” –and then I wondered -is that Rossetti and then I saw the blank stare on my listener’s face and I sat down and folded my hands and said meekly, “a sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, and it has to be fourteen lines, and it has a definite rhyme scheme, either English or Italian- Now the Elizabethan-” But he wasn’t listening anymore. Quatrains and sestets meant nothing to him, he was pulling a bur out of the Irish ear nearest him, and I thought, well, that is practical and constructive anyway and Dante is still Dante and Shakespeare is still Shakespeare and always someone-as long as we are on this odd little planet-someone will read “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone bewail my outcast state.” Or “Life has no friend; her converts late or soon, Slide back to feed the dragon with the moon.”

The sky is wonderful in July….

Lydia is reading The Alley, an Eleanor Estes that we had never read. I gave it to her for Christmas, as she is so fond of Janey Moffat and the like. Melancholic child heroines and all. She is finding it delightfully amusing, although the 'modern' setting is slightly alarming at times. Being so accustomed to the Pyes and Moffats, that is. Illustrations by the illustrious Edward Ardizzone of the small feet.

Mary Rose is dabbling in The Pink Fairy Book. She's also just started Finding a Hidden Church, 'The wondrous tale of the underground life and revival of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church in the former Soviet Union.' The brutal persecution of the Catholics at the hands of the Communists is relatively little known and little discussed. I am very much looking forward to reading this too.

We didn't seem to fit in my usual seasonal read aloud of A Christmas Carol so Kateri is reading it herself. Can't let a Christmas go by without the Dickens. As noted in the title, I snapped the stack picture on Saturday. Today she's on to Hilda van Stockum's delightful A Day on Skates, the perfect book to read with cocoa and a candy cane at hand. 

Up at the top of the stack are Christmas with Anne, a collection of seasonal stories which Eliza is currently reading, and Chronicles of Avonlea, an L.M. Montgomery I gave Anna for Christmas as we didn't previously have it.

Bonus book: One of our current read alouds is The Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton. I read this myself for the first time last year and knew it would be great fun to do aloud one year. Set in an English town in some quaint and distant past, it's the tale of a young man's gallant attempts to woo his desired fair maiden. Francis is sincere but not romantic enough for the starry eyed Annaple until he gets some tips from her siblings and really puts his mind (and plentiful wealth) to it. The story starts on St. Nicholas Day and follows the twelve days of Christmas along with charming traditions, customs and carols, some real and some fictional, sprinkled throughout. The wonderful pictures are by Shirley Hughes, one of our most favorite children's book illustrators of all time. It's a perfectly cheery little book for the season.

Nikola and the Monk - Announcing Lydia's new book!

Announcing the publication of Nikola and the Monk, written by Dessi Jackson and illustrated by my daughter, Lydia Grace!

Nikola and the Monk is Dessi and Lydia's third collaboration. Written in Dessi's familiar old world storytelling voice, this simple tale tells of an old monk who lives alone on a mountain, and what happens when he meets a boy named Nikola. The characters in Nikola and the Monk are Eastern in their spirituality, reflecting the author's rich Byzantine Catholic traditions.

You can purchase books directly from the Quis Ut Deus Press website and have them signed and inscribed by the illustrator, but they will not arrive until after Christmas. You can also purchase from Amazon here: Nikola and the Monk.

Congratulations to Dessi and Lydia!

Yarn Along: 19th Century Sortie Caps

This past weekend the kids had a gig playing at a Civil War encampment, so we did our best to suit them out in something akin to period dress.We are not Civil War reenactors so we were rather starting from scratch on the 19th century garb. I ended up making a day dress and skirt for the girls to wear, which turned out to be more complicated than I expected due to a challenging pattern. The caps however were simple and a delightful finishing touch to their admittedly somewhat farby but not totally out-of-place outfits.

I used the Sortie Cap pattern, which is an original vintage pattern out of the April 1858 Godey's Lady Book and Magazine. They were a quick and easy knit, basically just a small rectangle. The fun part comes when you drop every other stitch at the end, procuring a unique textured look, and then gather the sides to form the cap. I trimmed them with matching bows and some pewter buttons for the final embellishment. (my Ravelry Link here)

The knitting fit right in as Little House in the Big Woods is one of the books I'm currently reading aloud at our afternoon teatimes.

Now it was summertime, and people went visiting...Sometimes a neighbor sent word that the family was coming to spend the day. Then Ma did extra cleaning and cooking, and opened the package of store sugar. And on the day set, a wagon would come driving up to the gate in the morning and there would be strange children to play with...Ma and Mrs. Huleatt visited and looked at a Godey's Lady Book which Mrs. Huleatt had brought, and Pa and Mr. Huleatt looked at the horses and the crops and smoked their pipes. - Little House in the Big Woods, chapter 10

Of course the girls had to have suitable hair to complete their ensembles. Anna was reading the chapter on the Dance at Grandpa's out of the book as she did her sisters' hairs, in which Ma and the aunts are getting ready for the big party -

Laura sat on their bed and watched them comb out their long hair and part it carefully. They parted it from their foreheads to the napes of their necks and then they parted it across from ear to ear. The braided their back hair in long braids and then they did the braids up carefully in big knots.

They fussed for a long time with their front hair, holding up the lamp and looking at their hair in the little looking-glass that hung on the log wall. They brushed it so smooth on each side of the straight white part that it shone like silk in the lamplight. The little puff on each side shone, too, and the ends were coiled and twisted neatly under the big knot in the back. - Little House in the Big Woods, chapter 8

We called them Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby for the rest of the day. :-)

The event itself was a lot of fun. They played their music after dark while lantern carrying reenactors gave tours of the encampment by torchlight. At each stop along the tour reenactors gave a short talk or demonstration, and groups of visitors progressed from place to place by firelight. It was lovely to be out listening to music in the cool dark amongst the flickering flames. Fall is definitely in the air.

Joining Ginny at Small Things for Yarn Along with lots of books and yarns.

Yarn Along: Hello! and Twin Wee Bonnets

Well, Hello!

I'm really, really trying to remember how to blog. How to find the time, how to spare the mental energy, how to make sentences... So I thought I'd start small with a little Yarn Along. Here are two Bonnie Wee bonnets (pattern here) I made recently for some newborn identical twins at church. The pattern was pleasant to work with, and I like the twisted cords for the ties. It was fun to make two the same, but different.

I have lots of books going at present and we just started a new read aloud this evening. By popular demand (and requested by my husband) I'm reading The Pushcart War to the whole family. This one is a classic in our house, and it had been a while since I last read it aloud (maybe 2013?). You have to love a book with characters like Frank the Flower, General Anna, Harry the Hot Dog, and of course Maxie Hammerman the pushcart king. I am also happy to see that it is back in print and published by The New York Review Children's Collection in a lovely hardback edition, very appropriate as The Pushcart War is set in New York City. Our vintage ex lib copy is getting quite dilapidated and it's nice to know it can now be replaced if necessary. I may have woken up the dog yelling in my Albert P. Mack voice, but so be it.

"Oh," said Wenda Gambling. "Well, I think that there are too many trucks and that the trucks are too big."

Professor Lyman Cumberly has suggested that except for Wenda Gambling's innocent remark, there might never have been a Pushcart War. Instead, says Professor Cumberly, the trucks would have simply gone on taking over the city, crowding out the taxis, buses, cars- and finally the people themselves. No one would have challenged them until it was too late.

-Jean Merrill, The Pushcart War

Do visit Ginny for more books and yarn. And thank you to all who have emailed and nudged me to get back into this little online space. You are very kind!

Yarn Along: a finished vest and novels for Lent

I knit this vest in February as a birthday gift for Josiah. My first actual knit garment! I had wanted to make him a vest for years now, as he always wears wool vests in the winter. I think I may have even bought the yarn before I knew how to knit, but never could find a crochet pattern I liked. It took me a while to find a suitable knit vest pattern, something rather rustic with cables but not too fancy, and well written as I'm still a novice knitter. I kept coming back to the Matthew's Vest pattern and finally bit the bullet and bought the Green Gables collection. If you don't want the physical book it's a little less expensive as a Ravelry download, which is what I got as I like to print out the patterns and make my notes on it. I also needed it in a hurry in order to get the vest done in time. I'm very glad I went with this pattern as it was very straightforward and easy even for a beginner like me to follow. I'm looking forward to trying a few other patterns in the collection as well.

As for reading, a couple of us have just finished Louis de Wohl's The Spear, a historical novel set during the time of the end of Christ's earthly life. It is told largely from the perspective of Cassius Longinus, the Roman soldier present at the Crucifixion. While it is fiction, it gives a great deal of historical context to the events of the time and really makes you think about what it might have been like for the people living through it from a distance. We are now reading The Glorious Folly, the sequel set during the life of St. Paul. I have two copies of The Spear but only one of The Glorious Folly, so we have to share. More time for thinking between reading.

Visit Ginny for lots more yarns of all sorts!

Yarn Along: new shawl and book for Lent

I've started a new shawl so I could have something very simple to work on while at chorister practice with the girls. This is the Tess of the D'Ubervilles Shawl and it's very straightforward - straight knitting, no purling, and doable for when my mind is elsewhere. I may end up calling it the 'O filii et filiae Shawl’ as it will be associated in my brain with the Easter chants. (So strange to be hearing the Easter chants ahead of time, but alas that's the life with musicians in the house.)

For my reading, I'm looking forward to digging into Sigrid Undset's Catherine of Siena. I got it for myself for Christmas and have been saving it for Lent. It was published in 1953 after Undset's death, it has an Imprimatur, and I of course was happy to find an old vintage copy. ;-) We did Louis de Wohl's novel Lay Siege to Heaven about St. Catherine of Siena as a read aloud during Lent a few years back, and I'm glad to be revisiting the life of this great saint once again.

The shawl pins pictured were made by Josiah on his new lathe and they are available in the Etsy shop. He's been working hard making all sorts of things, actually. Find them all at The Fig and Thimble.

Visit Ginny for lots more books and knitting. Blessings to you on this first day of Lent!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - Bookshelf Edition

The other day Leila posted a great piece entitled 'To educate children, you need books on the shelves.' I highly recommend it as Leila always articulates so well the things about which I only manage to rant to my family. (There's also good discussion in the comments.) As it says right up there in my tagline, our family culture is largely centered around books and we believe books should be made of paper. We enjoyed the peek at Leila's bookshelves and she has followed up with a bookshelf themed {p,h,f,r}. It seems very appropriate to show some of our shelves seeing as my last post was about the vast quantity of books we got for Christmas. So without further ado-

These new bookcases are definitely the Pretty as well as the pride and joy of our bookshelf collection. Josiah made Five ! of these beautiful modular bookcases for us this summer. They are made of pine and are constructed with blind template routered dados. That's fancy woodworker speak that means the end pieces are grooved so the shelves fit in and there is no hardware used.

Three of the shelves are in the office along the wall behind a huge desk:

So pretty!

The shelf on the left has our collection of Landmark books on the top shelves, followed by a shelf of Bethlehem books. Next comes a shelf of Cornerstones of Freedom that Eliza was so thrilled to acquire. The bottom shelves contain some history and geography along with Eliza's favorite history picture books. The other two cases in the office are quite a mix.

The other two bookcases are in the foyer in this little area alongside the stairway. It was rather unused space and thus perfect for books. We like how these bookcases were made to fit the areas so they look like they are built in, but they aren't, so they can come with us if we ever move. (In our last house we had a huge bookshelf built along a wall at the top of the stairs but alas it was Built In.) Also note all five of these are strategically placed to maximize unused spaces behind things and thus are also safe from toppling dangers.

We have rather random books on these shelves and also jestingly refer to them as 'rental shelves'. Mary Rose keeps some of her extra books down here and Lydia has some of her bird books on a shelf.

And look! Empty shelves are a happy sight too as there is room for more books some day. ;-) We do also have some Recent Acquisitions on here so folks know where to look for new books.

Also in the foyer we have this shelf of books acquired from a Catholic school library that closed along with some oversized goodies on the bottom. Some folks wanted to keep all of the 'books from the free library' all together, like so.  The little table there under the holy water font is a collection of Really Old Books; most are from my mother-in-law's house and most are well over a hundred years old.

Things like a Princess and the Goblin from 1913, Black Beauty from 1898, The Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allen Poe circa 1902 - that sort of thing. There used to be a nice vintage doily-type cloth under the books but I reckon it disappeared somewhere.

They say your entryway should reflect the family's interests and décor so that guests get an immediate feel for what your home is like. I think we have that covered pretty well with the Sacred Heart, holy water, and a bunch of bookshelves. :-)

On the landing halfway up the stairs we have another bookshelf with several collections. This one is a rather rustic job from the thrift store, but it is made of Real Wood. We have vintage My Book House books on the top shelf, wonderful old books of fairy tales and all sorts of stories. Next are books from the American Heritage Junior Library series on various history topics. We also have several sets of Churchill's History of the War. Several folks here have enjoyed the whole series and they are very good so I admit we always grab any we see at library book sales. And yes, that's a little paper doll of of Churchill giving a V for Victory! on the bottom shelf there.

At the very top of the stairway is another thrifted bookcase housing my Lucy Fitch Perkins Twins books on the top shelf. The remainder of the books were gifted to us from a family at church. It's an interesting assortment of old Catholic books with some craft and how-to mixed in, and again my kids insist on housing all the books from the M family together. I should probably sort through them and cull some of the craft books and such, but for now they all live together on here.

Here's a little thrifted bookcase in my bedroom containing some of my personal fiction books - Elizabeth Goudge, Tolkien,  Janet Holt Giles, Jane Austen etc. (Some have pesky stickers that I need to go at with the hair drier to remove, ahem.)

Back downstairs we have a little shelf of some of our picture books, with a special place on top for Lydia's Roses in the Snow. ;-) This is another rather rustic specimen but one we can't part with as it goes way back in our history: this one we actually pulled out of a dumpster at the apartment complex we lived in when we were first married (that's nearly thirty years ago!). :-) Our little Beatrix Potters are here in a clementine crate as the box they came in pretty much fell apart from overuse. This works out handy as Eliza likes to take the whole box to the couch to read through a bunch at a time. These are some of our most favorite children's books - I think a child could go a long time on a desert island with just Beatrix Potter and Winnie-the-Pooh. You definitely want the little individual hardcovers of these if you can get them rather than one of those collections done all in one volume - some of their charm is lost when multiple illustrations are placed on one page and the stories aren't in their own individual books.

Back downstairs we have a nice little shelf with our collection of Mary Fabyan Windeatt saint stories and Vision books old and new. These are Catholic homeschool standards that have been read over and over throughout the years. There are other saint books as well on the bottom shelves, and you can see some folks keep their missals and prayer books on top.

Here we have the pair of built in shelves in the music room, and these are looking rather real with the doors that never close just right. On one side we have historical fiction arranged in chronological order, starting at the top of the shelves, along with a couple shelves of biographies. The last shelf is history picture books, again arranged by time period. In the closed cupboard below are two more shelves, one with music and one with picture books for the very young. As this is the music room there is usually random sheet music left about there in a friendly fashion.

On the other side of the room is the same configuration. The top shelf is actually empty as we moved the Landmarks to the new shelves in the office. The next shelf is our We Were There, Dear America, and vintage Childhood of Famous Americans. Then we have some of our field guides and science picture books.

We have two more of these built in pairs in the living room as well; one side holds a good deal of our kids' fiction collection and the other side is religious books. There are toys in the cupboards below as we don't have a separate playroom in our house and we like the young children to spend their playtime on the main level, not up in the bedrooms.

So that's probably plenty of bookcases for a blog post. We do have more bookcases elsewhere and the children have shelves in their own bedrooms. As a visitor once said while glancing around our house, "There are books everywhere." That's quite the way we like it. ;-)

Don't forget to visit Leila for more Bookshelf {p,h,f,r}! It's fun to peek at everyone's shelves. 

Books We Got for Christmas

When your family culture is deeply centered around books you naturally center a lot of your Christmas gift-giving around books as well. (It also comes in quite handy for achieving this thing we call home education.) Ever since our children were little we have been adding to our family library by gifting each person with a stack of books for Christmas. I can still remember those early years when each child's pile consisted entirely of lovely picture books. Most of the kids are grown but our reading and book gifting habits continue. Some years it's fewer books, some years it's more substantial stacks; this year ended up being the latter. :-)

We do a fair bit of book buying throughout the year, particularly in the months before Christmas. Some titles are new, some are special finds from used book stores or online sellers, and some are from library book sales or even the thrift store (such bargains!). As you can see, each person has a wide variety of interests and books on curious subjects are always welcome. If one is looking for a small, inexpensive, perhaps humorous or quirky gift for a stocking-stuffer quite likely one can find a book to fit the bill. And we all tend to operate on the principle that an old book is always better than a new book.

So here is this year's collection gifted between this family of nine bibliophiles...

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them- peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. - Winston Churchill

Starting off with my husband's pile- He's done a lot of WWII reading this past year so I was happy to have found him a few more titles along those lines. World War II in Their Own Words, An Oral History of Pennsylvania's Veterans is a collection of stories told by the veterans themselves, some of whom we have met. It is always good to read history straight from those who lived it, so this should surely be a good read. He read Eisenhower's own memoir, Crusade in Europe, last year so when I found Letters to Mamie at a book sale I thought it might be a fun read. Beyond Band of Brothers is Dick Winters' own memoir. Unbroken was another book sale find. I don't normally go for popular or NYT bestsellers but it was inexpensive (dirt cheap), and some veterans we know said it was pretty good, so I thought I'd give it a try. The above marvelous quote about books is from The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill, a perfect stocking-stuffer for one who has read all of Churchill's six volumes on the war. He also received the wonderful big hardcover Peanuts Treasury from Anna, and most everyone in the family has had their turn reading through it all. She also gave him A Living Treasure, a beautiful coffee-table style book with seasonal photographs of Arlington National Cemetery. Rounding out his collection of books he also got Light of the World from Jonathan, as he greatly enjoys reading Pope Benedict XVI and I gave him God or Nothing by Cardinal Sarah which several of us are looking forward to reading. (House rules are that the owner always gets to read a new book first, however long that takes. Within reason.)

My pile is much smaller but I did get some goodies. My husband gave a few encyclicals for stocking-stuffers and I got Benedict XIV's Deus Caritas Est. My other books are all from Anna, who seems to enjoy buying books almost as much as I do. She found me a lovely copy of John Toland's Battle: The Story of the Bulge. I had read the excellent kids' Landmark version, (also by Toland) last January in preparation for the reenactment we attended and had wanted to read the full version, so I was very happy to get an elusive vintage hardcover copy from Anna. She also gave me Return to Thrush Green for my collection. (Some of Miss Read is very good, and some definitely veers more towards comfort-twaddle, but she is always entertaining and sometimes just what is needed for a light read.) Best of all Anna gifted me with a beautiful hardcover vintage copy of Sigrid Undset's Master of Hestviken, along with a matching Kristin Lavransdatter! I read Kristin in the fall and truly loved it, and am much looking forward to reading Master of Hestviken. (Thank you, Anna.)

Jonathan received quite the variety. He got Spe Salvi by Benedict XIV in his stocking, along with a neat little vintage book expounding on the Creed and Confiteor. The Tolkien Quiz Book was in his stocking as well but turned out to be full of really obscure trivia. I also gave him the little vintage books on composers from the New York Philharmonic Symphony Society - Wagner and His Music Dramas, Schubert and His Work, Tschaikowsky and His Orchestral Music and Johann Sebastian Bach. Other books include a vintage hardcover (the hidden grey book) of the classic Fulton Sheen's Life of Christ, Pennsylvania's Best: The Story of Pennsylvania's Contribution to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for Students of History, Librarians, Armchair Travelers and Everyone who is proud to be Associated in any way with Pennsylvania (how could I resist a title like that?), and Dante's Purgatorio (I mistakenly thought he didn't have a copy, but he is pleased to have this edition with parallel Italian and English). There's also a 1928 edition of Pilgrim's Progress, just in case someone wants to read the book everyone in books reads, a Christmas carol book that turned out to be not so great, and The Illustrated History of Helicopters as watching military helicopters is a bit of a thing in my household. I also gave him a lovely vintage hardcover of the Pulitzer Prize winning Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A life of Christopher Columbus (not pictured, as he's currently reading it). Anna also gave him the fantastic little Bugle Signals, Calls and Marches from MCMXVI (!) as he sometimes plays calls for us on an old trumpet we have. Another fun little find was Mend Your Speech, as Jonathan has some interest in linguistics and vintage books on speech are always a hoot. A taste:

nice. A much-abused word that originally meant "foolish," "simple," "ignorant." Then it came to mean "particular," "fastidious," "finical," "foolishly hard to please." Now it has acquired the sense of "agreeable," "dainty," "pleasing," or "refined," and is applied indiscriminately to a pie, a sermon, a young man - in fact, to almost everything.

(This rather cracked us up as it called to mind the dear priest who once told us "nice" is a Greek word that means "stupid.")

  On to Josiah's goodies. He has long enjoyed reading about divers skills thus we have Chapman's Piloting, Seamanship and Small Boat Handling from his brother (a nice 1943 edition formerly owned by a member of the USCG), Making Useful Things of Wood, and How to Develop, Print and Enlarge Pictures from his sister. His brother also gave him The Worse-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, a delightfully entertaining book full of unusual but potentially life-saving skills that you will quite likely (and hopefully) never need to use: escaping from quicksand, fending off sharks, identifying a bomb, wrestling an alligator - that sort of thing. The Big Trick and Puzzle Book from 1929 is a nod to Josiah's fondness for vintage kids' books of this kind. Letters to Lanah is a collection of letters written by a drafted Union soldier to his wife and family members and published by the keeper of those letters. War Stories: A collection of 150 little known human interest stories of the campaign and battle of Gettysburg and Inside Lincoln's Army: The Diary of Marsena Rudolph Patrick, Provost Marshal General, Army of the Potomac round out his gifts of first-person Civil War accounts. Also pictured is Airplane Boys on the Border Line because a little vintage boys' fiction is always fun, and a nifty little Catholic Prayer Book for the Army and Navy from 1917 because a little vintage prayer book is always good.
Josiah received Lilith, a George MacDonald title that we didn't have, from his brother and I gave him Magic City, an E. Nesbit I found that we didn't have. It's always fun to find that there are yet more books by favorite authors that we haven't actually read yet. Josiah is our big Dickens fan, thus Anna was delighted to gift him with a really old copy of David Copperfield she found, apparently from around 1867 or so (old enough to not have a publishing date). (Also, the only Copperfields we previously had in the house were abridged, gasp.) Josiah notes that the collection of Dickens Christmas stories that snuck  into the picture was not a gift this year - it just happened to be out with his new books as he was reading it. He's always enjoyed tall tales so I gave him Ol' Paul the Mighty Logger, and Military Small Arms: 300 Years of Soldiers' Firearms is an interesting reference book for all. He also received Caritas in Veritate in his stocking from Pa, and I gave him Mother of the Savior and Our Interior Life, highly recommended by our priest. (You have to love a guy you can give Glenn Rounds and Garrigou-Lagrange to at the same time, no?)

On to Lydia's loot, starting with the picture books: King of the Birds is full of curious illustrations of all sorts of interesting birds. Silent Observer is the unique memoir of a deaf girl in 19th century Nova Scotia; she grew up to become an artist and the book is illustrated with her own lovely watercolors. Naughty Nancy was a perfect little stocking stuffer because John S. Goodall! And mice! Delightful. Her sister also gave her Black Beauty illustrated with beautiful paintings by Lucy Kemp Welch (it's not this exact edition, but with the same illustrator). Also with pictures is Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens fabulously illustrated by Arthur Rackham. In the Civil War department, a favorite time period of hers, she received Who Comes with Cannons, a Patricia Beatty we somehow never had, Undying Glory: The Story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, and I gave her Muddy Road to Glory by Stephen Meader, a favorite historical fiction author. I like to collect vintage hardbacks of his books. In the scientific department she got Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe and The Insect World of Jean Henri Fabre to add to our Fabre collection. She also received The Fireside Book of Dog Stories from me and A Dog for Davie's Hill from Anna. Lydia is also fond of western and pioneer stories, thus I gave her A Lantern in her Hand and No Life for a Lady. Being a girl of diverse interests she also was happy to receive Modern Fighting Helicopters.

  Here we have Anna's gifts.  The Long Road to Gettysburg by Jim Murphy is one I remember borrowing from the library when the boys were little and Abraham Lincoln From His On Words and Contemporary Accounts. Cowboys of the Wild West is by the favorite Russell Freedman. A Treasury of Western Folklore is a huge collection of 'Stories, Legends, Tall Tales, Traditions, Ballads and Songs of the People of the Great Plains and Far West.' Also present is a vintage 1895 Stories of Great Americans filled with marvelous little stories of all sorts of interesting folks and terrific old illustrations. The Key to the Constitution of the United States is a neat little book with the text of the Constitution and Amendments along with explanatory commentary and illustrations all done in that nifty 1940 style. Midshipman Lee (1938) is a vintage boys' book about Navy life. The Cave by the Beech Fork, A Story of Kentucky 1815 by Fr. Henry Spalding has recently been reprinted by St. Augustine's Academy Press but I found a hardcover from 1901. ;-) I am really looking forward to reading Toward Morning:A Story of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters a story set during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as told by favorite author Alta Halverson Seymour. Told Under the Christmas Tree is a lovely vintage 1941 anthology of tales. Tales Told in Holland is a delightful collection of poetry and prose beautifully illustrated by Maud and Misha Petersham, copyright 1926.  A first edition 1930 hardcover of Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives is self-described as 'A sparkling commentary on American life and manners during the most colorful period of our history, magnificently illustrated.' It's one of those large format books with heavy cream paper, interspersed with full page illustrations.

Finally, as requested, Anna received a set of twenty-seven volumes of the Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Encyclopedia from 1931 (actually, two of them are from 1937, she wanted you to know). She had her eyes on these in the book shop for quite some time, and seeing how it was Christmas and there was a sale... (I can't look at them without thinking of James Herriot that time his wife sent him to market, hee.)

Now for Mary Rose! As fond as she is of the WWII era she is by no means a one trick pony, thus a diverse collection of books for her as well. She is actually writing a novel about a WWI soldier, so we have some goodies here along those lines. Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross was a very interesting bookshop find about which I knew little when I picked it up. Turns out Edith Van Dyne is a pseudonym of L. Frank Baum, and he wrote the book in 1915,  later revising it to reflect the US involvement in the war. Fascinating.  History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War is a comprehensive volume from 1918, while The Hundred Days Offensive is a modern 'snapshot' book with lots of photographs. She also got Randy Starr After an Air Prize and Randy Starr Leading the Air Circus, a series from the thirties that falls into the category we fondly refer to as whiz-bang vintage twaddle. Along similar lines we have Sally Scott of the Waves with a fabulous dust cover. The Tangled Skein, post WWII period fiction, and When the Dikes Broke, set during the 1953 Holland flood, are both by Alta Halverson Seymour. To Far Places: The Story of Francix X. Ford is by Eva K. Betz and John Neumann, The Children's Bishop is a vintage Vision Book by Elizabeth Odell Sheeham. Poems of Patriotism is a lovely vintage book Anna found for her sister. She also received They Loved to Laugh and Fear in the Forest, a couple of Bethlehem Books we didn't have.

Eliza received a nice mix of picture books and books about her favorite subject - American history. The Goat Lady tells of a dear eccentric elderly lady who keeps goats, and the neighbors who befriend her. When John & Caroline Lived in the White House is an intimate look at what the children's daily lives were like during the time their father was in office, as well as a glimpse of how the events surrounding the assassination affected them. The White House: An Historic Guide is another book from that era, commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy as a guidebook for visitors to her home and originally intended for the children but grew to "a book that could be of profit to adults and scholars too." I quite agree with Jackie as she notes, "it never hurts a child to read something that may be above his head" and Eliza is quite delighted with this book filled with photos and descriptions of that famous home. Eliza loves to read biographies of her favorite characters and thus she was very happy to receive America's Robert E. Lee  by Henry Steele Commager and illustrated by Lyn Ward (yay), the Landmark Thomas Jefferson, Father of Democracy, Meet George Washington, Meet Thomas Jefferson, The Story of Abraham Lincoln, and Clara Barton. These old treasures are just the sort of living books we like for studying history; Eliza has already read them all and likes to tell us about them. I couldn't resist a Dover Abraham Lincoln Coloring Book. The Golden Book of America is another nice tome from a bygone era, filled with pictures and all sorts of curiosities. I've already mentioned Lincoln and His Boys by the terrific combination of Rosemary Wells and P.J. Lynch. Finally, a couple of airplane books: Military Planes and the vintage 1938 Airplanes in Action: Planes of the Navy, the Army, the Coast Guard, and Commercial Airlines, illustrated with Official Pictures (!). Oh and The Fireside Book of Folk Songs because Eliza loves to sing and it's wonderful.

Last but not least we have Kateri's new books. I was happy to give her her own copies of All-of-a-Kind Family and More All-of-a-Kind Family, classics that her big sisters enjoyed years ago. (I had forgotten that More isn't actually second in the series; I'd like to find hardcovers of Uptown and Downtown for Kateri as well.) Set in New York City during the early twentieth century, these tales of immigrant family life are delightful. She also received Five Little Peppers Midway, next in that old fashioned series. Anna gave her In American Vineyards: Religious Orders in the United States, an old Vision book, and Our Amazing Birds. One Hundred Best Loved Poems for Boys and Girls is a dear little book from 1930 and I can never resist vintage children's poetry books. The big oversized Gallery of North American Game has beautiful full color plates of all the animals along with descriptive text. Speaking of books bought for the illustrations, she also received East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon; I haven't read it yet but it's P.J.Lynch.  Another folk tale book is the illustrated Wonderful Adventures of Nils. We've had the hardcover text version for years and so were surprised and intrigued to find this illustrated version at a book sale; it's done in real photographs showing the locations of Nils' travels for a unique version of the book. Kateri also got Legends and Stories of Italy, which I hope to read aloud, and a wee vintage picture book of Saint Therese, one of the old 'First Books for Little Catholics' series.
A peek at St. Therese, the poetry book, and the picture book of Nils in his red cap.

Here are two more I forgot to photograph as Kateri keeps them on the shelf with her purse to take to daily Mass and Holy Hour. The Sacred Art Series, Gospels of Luke and John is a gorgeous book featuring the gospel texts generously interspersed with the finest classic religious artwork to go along with the stories. It's a very beautiful book, with gilded edges and a ribbon marker, and makes for lovely as well as meditative Bible reading for young and old. We also gave her Welcome: Holy Communion Before and After by Mother Mary Loyola; the fact that it is already dog-eared tells all.

Bonus: I guess I was on a bit of an Alta Halverson Seymour binge as I also gifted the family with these three in her Christmas Around the World series. I read A Grandma for Christmas aloud during one teatime and it was enjoyed by all, and we're looking forward to Kaatje and the Christmas Compass and The Top o' Christmas Morning. Tales like this of life in simpler times in faraway places are always a delight.

And Snoopy. There was lots of vintage Peanuts in the stockings this year, much to everyone's delight.

Thus endeth this colossal post of our Christmas book gifting. I reckon if you've read this far you must really like books too! Nice to meet you. ;-)

Yarn Along: finished knits and a trilogy begun

Linking up with Ginny for current yarns of both kinds.

With the start of (home)school and the cooler weather I have been doing some knitting. I tend to avoid yarn crafts during the warmer months but once the weather turns I'm ready to get back to the hooks and needles, and I need to have something to keep my hands busy while I'm helping Eliza with her school work.

I am very pleased to have finished my first little knitted shawl. The pattern is not too complicated and good for a beginner like myself, although I freely admit I had to watch this very helpful video tutorial to figure out how to do the set up row at the start. I am still very much new at this knitting thing and I'm excited to have done this little bit of lacy work. 

I also finished a simple cable scarf done up in a bulky weight natural color wool. It's rather short, just long enough to use up one skein I had on hand and get in some cable practice. (I'm TeaDrinkingFool on Ravelry)

For my current reading I've just begun on Kristin Lavransdatter, an epic trilogy of novels set in 14th century Norway, writtenby Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset. I am only about a dozen pages in but I am already finding the writing style beautiful and very much to my liking. I have a vintage set of three hardcover books, with the original English translation by Archer and Scott. I had actually purchased the modern paperback without really thinking about what version it was, but realized it was far too unwieldy due to its hefty size. Being always fond of vintage books I then got a nice old slipcovered hardback set. Reading this article on the two translations makes me realize I will indeed much prefer the older translation, as 'modern' anything is not my cup of tea. Alas, it will probably take me a hundred years to read - we shall see!

Isrid and Arne gathered heather and dwarf-birch and cast it on the blaze. It crackled as the fire tore the fresh green from the twigs, and small white flakes flew high upon the wisps of red flame; the smoke whirled thick and black toward the clear sky. Kristin sat and watched; it seemed to her the fire was glad that it was out there, and free, and could play and frisk. 'Twas otherwise than when at home, it sat upon the hearth and must work at cooking food and giving light to the folks in the room.                                   -Kristin Lavransdatter

PS An amusing book-buying tip: if you're looking for the books on ebay there are some listed as Kristin Labransdatter. The 'v' in the fancy gold lettering on the cover looks a lot like a 'b', and you can find some inexpensive copies searching that way. :-)