Happy September 1st! We are prayerfully and slowly getting into the groove this week with our autumn homeschooling schedule which kicks into high gear next week. I’m still holding onto late summer though. September has the potential to be a favorite month, EXCEPT if we get extremely humid weather. 🥵 Like yesterday. 😂
My last read for the Keep Me in Suspense Bingo Board. It’s actually turning out to be deeper and more introspective. The mystery is a bit slow and lackluster but the interpersonal relationship dynamics between the older father and his daughter, a 40 yo nun, is fascinating! Welcome, Early Autumn mugs! A favorite spot ☺️♥️Charlotte Mason Co-op prep! Book mail! 📬💌📦📖Very sweet new-to-me series! Husband and wife in small town! The wife is a wee-bit manipulative, but I loved the first for the most part. From Instagram! August was a great month! 🥹🥰😍♥️ I’m amyofhearthridge on there, too, if you use IG! Hubby and I went to Chicago for a quick 1 1/2 day trip! He surprised me with a ticket to see BTS. 💜
Korean pop band! It was an fantastic show!
So proud of myself for making a half eggplant and half noodle lasagna! 😅💜 Next time I need to figure out a better way to prep the eggplant. It was a bit salty.
Hope your week is starting on a high note. I’m still holding onto all the inspiration and beauty from this past weekend. I’m hoping still to make a vision/inspiration board for our new school year! ♥️
{I saw some book questions on an Instagram account called PensandPoison (I like SOME of her stuff, she’s a bit too clickbait-y for me) recently and have been having a lot of fun thinking about my answers. I think she answered them using all fiction, but I’m using everything to answer! I adapted these questions for me. It is a lot of questions and as usual, I can’t have just one answer 🤣, so I’ll be breaking this up into parts! I’d love to hear your answers and I hope you may find a new favorite if you try any of these!}
Lovely collection of nature poems and essays by a wide range of women!
♥️favorite poem~ I have SO many favorites, but Wendell Berry’s collection ‘Peace of Wild Things’ is an absolute favorite. Robert MacFarlane’s The Lost Spells is a family favorite. Currently, Emily Dickinson’s ‘If I Could Stop One Heart’ poem is probably my favorite.
♥️favorite first chapter ~ probably The Hobbit. 🥹😍🥰♥️
♥️favorite closing chapter ~ TheBook of Revelations from The Holy Bible. Wowsers!
♥️favorite literary friendships ~ this is unbelievably hard. Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, Anne and Diana, Molly and Mr. Gibson, I could go on for an hour! 😅♥️
September/autumn buddy reads! 🥰♥️
♥️favorite literary romance ~ (spoilers 😅) Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth, Anne and Gilbert, Darcy and Elizabeth, Laura and Almanzo, Molly and Roger, I could go on and on… there are so many! These are the first that come to mind.
♥️most unforgettable scene ~ the Persuasion letter by Captain Wentworth.
♥️best narrator ~ I’m enjoying Ishmael’s POV of the whaling world in Moby Dick currently. Otherwise, I’ve loved Richard Armitage’s audiobook narration of various classics.
♥️book I wished had a sequel ~ a 5th book in The Mirror Visitor Series would be nice to tie up the ending more.
♥️book that has intimidated me the most ~ anything by George Eliot,Don Quixote, The Divine Comedy, anything Russian 😅, The Odyssey and Iliad. Lonesome Dove!
♥️hardest book I’ve ever finished ~ The Divine Comedy– woohoo! 🎉
I highly recommend this epistolary story between two cousins that has Cinderella and Beauty & the Beast vibes! Very well-written, slow paced. 🥰♥️
How about you? What are your answers to these 10 questions above? What are you currently loving reading? Any good magazines lately? I may get a subscription for Christmas and don’t know what to pick! 😅♥️🥰Happy Reading!
Imagine that you’ve been spending the last few minutes watching a blue jay hide a cache of seeds in a tile roof. Or imagine that yesterday, out on a walk, you passed a dog barking angrily at you. Or think about a special time when you learned to roller-skate, the first time you went to the circus, or a day when a friend moved away.
All of these events are part of life-yours and mine-and when they happen there is always something inside of me that wants to turn what I see or hear into a poem. The picture stays in my mind long after the blue jay has flown away or the dog stops barking. I begin to search for the words that will form themselves to make a picture I can share with others, the words that will re-create themselves experience for someone else.
~Myra Cohn Livingston, Poem-Making Ways to Begin Writing Poetry
I’m furiously working on our homeschool coop lessons and am LOVING this book I found for our older students. It makes me want to prioritize my poetry writing again! ♥️How’s your homeschool prep coming along? Are you all looking forward to autumn? 🍂
Annoying side character and a bit of a slow start, but I enjoyed this cozy mystery! 🔎🕵️♀️
{I saw some book questions on an Instagram account called PensandPoison (I like SOME of her stuff, she’s a bit too clickbait-y for me) recently and have been having a lot of fun thinking about my answers. I think she answered them using all fiction, but I’m using everything to answer! I adapted these questions for me. It is a lot of questions and as usual, I can’t have just one answer 🤣, so I’ll be breaking this up into parts! I’d love to hear your answers and I hope you may find a new favorite if you try any of these!}
The Holy Bible ~ this is not always an easy book to read and I don’t understand a lot of it, but my spirit connects with it. It’s foundational to my life and faith. My favorite books are Psalms and John.♥️🙏🏻🌿
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry ~ this collection of Berry’s poetry speaks to me deeply. It makes me consider time and future generations in a huge way. It makes me think of now. It makes me consider life outside of self. Our lives have meaning for a greater purpose!
Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery ~ my handle online is Amy of Hearth Ridge directly inspired by this book. There’s something to be said for hoping to be useful and a blessing to someone else in your life. How living a selfless life actually is fulfilling. Beautiful story of a daughter and father’s restored relationship bringing healing to those around them.That home keeping can be art.
Wives & Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell ~ I can’t begin to tell you how much I love the characters and journeys they go through! The father-daughter, mother-daughter, father-son, and marriage relationship studies in this Victorian novel are fantastic. This is a beautiful story!
Persuasion by Jane Austen ~ a lovely story of redemption and finally being able to have a voice. How one can live kindly and generously in the wake of S.S. Selfish People. 🚢
Home Education by Charlotte Mason ~ late 1800’s to early 1900’s British revolutionary educational philosophy. This is so very Christ-centric and focused on the personhood of children and mothers. A beautiful life-giving read.
Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher ~ a lovely story of how a child can blossom under loving and listening caregivers.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury ~ a father and son meeting evil together face on! Underlying themes of temptation, fear, and growing older! I’m due for a reread!
Christy by Catherine Marshall ~ beautiful story of a young teacher’s growth and learning in a rural Appalachian school. Gorgeous lessons for her as the very people she came to ‘help’ grow her so much in return. Wonderful female friendships embodied!
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder ~ the sheer bravery and strength of the early pioneers is astounding, convicting, and so inspiring! I often reevaluate my complaints after rereading this one. 😨♥️
I could have put Elizabeth Goudge on this list, Gladys Taber, Susan Branch, and many more poets! How about you? Which books do you think of over and over? ♥️✨🌿📚
The Holy Spirit has descended on this old world of ours, and there’s a Psalm 29 powwow in Elmo (Montana) every day of the year: a grace-revealing gesture, a fresh snowfall, a friend’s forgiveness, the first migrating yellow warbler, a miracle conversion, a truth-telling poem, a pasqueflower in bloom, the good death of a parent, resurrection – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-all the endless permutations of life. The beauty of holiness. And we have ringside seats. Henry James once said that a writer is a person on whom nothing is ever lost. That sounds like a focused Christian identity to me: the men and women on whom nothing, at least nothing that has to do with life-and virtually everything does-is lost. “Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”
Amen.
~Eugene H. Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire , note mine in parenthesis
I happen to notice that I was listening to ‘Swim’ by BTS while reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Serendipity! 😅💦💧🌊 I picked up this narrative poem for Jane Austen July because I believe Coleridge was a contemporary of Austen’s. I think 🤔 it sounds familiar, I may have read it before! The albatross! 😳😂
~watching~ ♥️🌿I did end up watching the 2020 ‘Emma’ film with my daughter and meh. 🫤 It was ok. I liked parts of it. It struck me as sort of goofy. 😂 A n*ked backside right in the beginning was weirdo, too. Oh, well. I liked the actors that played Mr. Knightly and Miss Bates. I’m allowing myself one Booktube video a day in July and it makes me be very choosy. I really enjoyed Chantel’s yesterday.
~reading~♥️🌿 I have massive piles physically and on my kindle, 😂📚 but I’m mostly finishing up The Opt-Out Family and working on Moby Dick. I also just barely dipped into Jane Austen’s Bookshelf of which I enjoyed the first few pages immensely. I haven’t borrowed anything new from public library (July challenge), just reading from my stacks and Kindle!
~noticing~ ♥️🌿
My hollyhocks are wonderful! 😁 I may have mentioned before that they are biannual and these self-seeded, so I forgot about them! 🥰😻😍What happiness!
What are you listening to, watching, reading, and noticing? ♥️🌿📚 Chat below, friends! ~
Is A River Alive by Robert MacFarlane ~ MacFarlane is a beautiful nature writer and poet. He tells the story of three? major rivers interspersed with stories of a small river that he has a personal connection with!
Beneath the Haunting Sea by Joanna Ruth Meyer ~ I remember loving this fantasy years ago and want to revisit this water-based world!
Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery ~ I’m hopeful about a long-time-overdue reread of this series!
Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery ~ slowly making my way through again! Montgomery is my favorite author, so I’m loving it!
Sisters of the Earth edited by Lorraine Anderson ~ I’ve been interested in this nonfiction collection from my shelves for awhile! It’s a collection of prose and poetry about nature by various women writers.
The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge ~ another reread that I’m craving. A older career woman gets a fresh start when an aunt bequeaths her a country cottage.
Into the Heartless Wood by Joanna Ruth Meyer ~ another beautifully written Meyer reread! I really love her atmospheric fantasy! I remember enjoying the tree spirits etc.
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman ~ gorgeous poetry I want to keep plugging away at!
The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas ~ I so enjoyed The Robe earlier this year and want to try this Biblical Historical Fiction about the Apostle Peter by Douglas as well.
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Eugene Peterson ~ nonfiction collection of thoughtful and inspiring sermons by Peterson. He was a wonderful writer/speaker.
Have you read any of these? Do you have a favorite nature-themed read? I’d love to hear!
A.M. Pine - Hearth Ridge Reflections 