Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 58

"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien (again)

Friends, a miracle has happened.

I read The Hobbit out loud to my kids over the past few weeks, and I enjoyed it!!!  For real!  I did!  I didn't merely like it the way I did last time I read it, I flat-out enjoyed it.  It was fun.  I looked forward to reading more.  That has never happened for me with this book, and I am so excited that it did now!  At last!

And I think it's totally because I was reading it out loud.  So I was hearing the narration...

"Together at the Table" by Hillary Manton Lodge

I got this from the library not knowing that it was book three in a trilogy.  Oooooooops.  In my defense, the library barcodes and such had totally covered up all but the numeral 3 on the back cover, and that's the only place the cover mentioned it was part of a series, so I thought it was a stand-alone like Jane of Austin . 

But it was totally okay -- I figured out what was going on with no trouble at all.  Lodge is too good a writer to let new readers who stumble into the...

"The Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis

My latest book for my quest to read lots of C. S. Lewis this year was... very unusual.  Kind of a long pondering on the nature of heaven versus hell, but written as a fable-like story.  It reminded me a little of things like Pilgrim's Progress, but without the heavy-handed and repetitive obviousness.

While I tend not to be a big fan of stories with a lot of symbolism or allegory to them, I did actually enjoy this story -- maybe because it was fast-paced?  It didn't bog down in...

"Daddy-Long-Legs" by Jean Webster (again)

This is such a perfectly chummy book!  I'm glad that @shapedbystoriesdiane and @ahatforeveryread chose it for this month's #KindredSpiritsNetwork group read on Instagram -- I can't wait to discuss it with everyone there!  It was so delightful to reread it, a perfect pick-me-up in the midst of a fairly hectic month.

Judy Abbott is an orphan with few hopes for the future, but endowed with a sparkling wit and fierce intelligence.  One of the trustees of the orphanage...

"The Princess Bride" by William Goldman (again)

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here before that I teach literature and creative writing to some of my homeschooled nieces and nephews for high school.  I teach them over the internet because they live so far away, and I love it.  I'm working on converting our studies together into a format I could share with other parents too, so watch the "Lit and Writing Resources for Homeschoolers" page here on this blog for that to show up this spring.

Anyway!  This year, I'm teaching a...

"Hello, My Name is Single" by Adriane Dorr Heins

Let's be clear:  I am not single.  I didn't suddenly ditch Cowboy and not tell you about it.  But I wanted to read this book anyway because I do have friends who are single, and I'd like to be a better friend to them.  I thought this book might give me some insight into the particular struggles that Christian singles face, struggles I haven't had to deal with for almost two decades, that I might be forgetting.

I was right.  This book is VERY insightful.  And...

"Hawksmaid" by Kathryn Lasky

Hawksmaid is a retelling of the Robin Hood legend that focuses on Marian and imagines her as a nobleman's daughter with a love for falconry.  She and Robin Hood grow up together, and the story follows them from preteens to young adulthood.  I found that nifty, as most Robin Hood retellings don't span such a lot of years, especially not ones aimed at kids.  

I liked the characterizations in this, for Robin himself felt light-hearted, yet could be serious-minded, which...

When Do You Read?

People ask me that a lot.  I read about a book a week, which is not a lot compared to some people I know, but for a homeschooling mom of three who also writes books, blogs, co-leads a homeschool co-op, teaches Sunday school, etc... it feels like a goodly bit of reading.

So anyway, a bookstagram friend of mine, Beth Anne @bookworm_baggins (a fellow homeschooling mom) gets this question too.  In her stories on Instagram last week, she shared pictures of how she fits reading into...

"The Secret in the Tower" by Charity Bishop

Well, Charity Bishop has done it again.  She's made English history so engrossing in her latest Tudor Throne installment that I put down the other two books I've got going at the moment so I could concentrate on this this one.

The Secret in the Tower focuses on Katherine of Aragon, widowed wife of the late heir to the Tudor throne in England.  She was married to Prince Arthur to build an alliance between England and her native Spain, but Arthur's death in a previous book...

"The Bones Will Speak" by Carrie Stuart Parks

Yay!  I've now read all four Gwen Marcey mysteries by Carrie Stuart Parks!

I read them all out of order, but oh well.  I really enjoyed all four of them -- they were all engrossing and the sorts of stories I can inhale in just a couple whirlwind days.

This might have been my favorite of the four, actually.  Maybe because it has a rescue aspect to it too, not just solving a crime or stopping one.  And because her daughter Aynslee isn't quite as grating in this one as some of...