Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 51

"Marsalis on Music" by Wynton Marsalis

I bought this book on Ebay on a whim while looking for something completely unrelated for my kids for school.  I've been a fan of Wynton Marsalis ever since we watched Ken Burns' documentary Jazz (2001) years and years ago.  I'm a sucker for a good trumpet player, and Marsalis is all that and more.  So I thought hey, this might be a cool book to use for my kids.  The seller said it came with the companion CD with listening cues, which sounded cool.

What the seller didn't say?  This book is autogr...

"Aslan's World" by Angus Menuge

I. Loved. This. Book.

This Bible study is broken into six sections that each tackle some part of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the Biblical truths that are presented fictionally by C. S. Lewis in that book.  I learned a lot from it, and I'm going to have my son use it for school later this year.  It's aimed at probably middle school on up, but younger kids could get a lot from it too, with more help from an adult or parent.  

There's a leader guide at the back with some explanations an...

"Tales of the Black Widowers" by Isaac Asimov

My father-in-law recommended Isaac Asimov's mysteries starring the Black Widowers to me because he knows I like mysteries and he considers these some of the best.

Please note that my copy of this book had a much bigger picture of a spider on the cover and I had to cover it with a sticky note so I could read it in comfort.  Ugh.  I wish I would have had this much smaller spider picture, though I probably would have put a sticky note over it too.

Annnnnyway, this was a pretty entertaining collection...

"A Very Bookish Thanksgiving" by Kelsey Bryant, Sarah Holman, J. Grace Pennington, Rebekah Jones, and Amanda Tero

This is a charming collection of five novellas, each revolving around a different classic book, and each centered around giving thanks for blessings, especially on Thanksgiving Day.  If you're looking for something clean and heartwarming to read as you prepare for Thanksgiving yourself, this is a great pick!  I can't think of many books that revolve around Thanksgiving, so it was really refreshing and different that way.

A Promise of Acorns by Kelsey Bryant and A Fine Day Tomorrow by Amanda Tero ...

"Over the Moon" by Natalie Lloyd

How ridiculous of me to have this book sitting on my unread shelves for a whole year.  I kept wanting to read it and always having some other thing I "needed" to read, like a book for a book club or a buddy read, or something due at the library, or whatever.
Well, anyway, I've read it at last.  And I loved it.  I didn't love it for like the first two-thirds of the book, I just liked it a lot, but that ending!  I had tears in my eyes repeatedly during the last couple of chapters.
Twelve-year-old Ma...

"The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Any time I start to feel like my life is horribly hard, I need to reread this book.  Covid and lockdowns and cancelled plans and no vacations are hard, yeah... but I'm not watching my kids slowly starve.  I'm not twisting hay into sticks to keep my house just warm enough so that my family can starve instead of freeze to death.  I'm not facing down day after day of numbing misery while trying to keep the spirits of my children from faltering.

I can barely imagine the kind of fortitude.  I don't th...

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker

An appropriate read for October, don't you think?

I first read Dracula in May of 2000 while on tour in Canada with my college's choir.  I was freshly in love with the TV show Angel and its titular vampire hero, and I decided I ought to read the greatest vampire novel of all time.

Maybe this is not a good book to read while riding on a bus for hour after hour.  Or while missing your first real boyfriend, whom you've been dating for like a month.  Or when you're twenty.  I don't know.  I just rememb...

"A Man Called Peter" by Catherine Marshall

This is a loving tribute of a biography.  Catherine Marshall, famous to us today for her novel Christy, wrote the story of her husband Peter Marshall's life after he passed away, publishing it two years after he died.  It traces his growth from a Scottish boy working in a factory to his calling to become a minister in America, on through his schooling here in the US and his career as a minister that eventually led to his being the chaplain for the U.S. Senate.  
I think both Marshalls had beautif...

"A Grief Observed" by C. S. Lewis

It's been a while since I read one of CS Lewis's books, and if I'm going to make my goal of reading six of them this year, I'm going to have to get reading, as I think this is only number four.  No, wait, we just finished listening to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe audiobook -- so this would make five.
Anyway, so, this is a really hard book to read.  It's excruciatingly personal.  Lewis was devastated by his wife Joy's death, and he wrote down his feelings and thoughts and questions and fe...

"If Only They Could Talk" by James Herriot

 If, like me, you see the title of this book and gasp, "Wait, there's another James Herriot book I haven't read yet?!?!?" let me allay your questions.  When the Herriot books were originally published in the UK, publishers in America thought they were too short to be a hit over here, so they combined short books into bigger ones and retitled them.  So If Only They Could Talk and the next UK book, It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet, were combined into All Creatures Great and Small in the US, basically....