Words on Wednesday: a Peek at what i've been reading

  Lately i've been skipping around.  Several books are unfinished.  Here is a selection:

- A Season in the Desert: Making Time Holy, by W. Paul Jones  Some practical devotional advice, some of Father Paul's personal jouney, some frankly too metaphysical for me to follow, it's fascinating.

- various Agatha Christie stories: Hallowe'en Party, The Clocks, Passenger to Frankfort, Come Tell Me How You Live, "The Water Bus."  There may have been some other of her novels; these read quickly for me.
   Come Tell Me How You Live is different.  It is a "faction" of her life as an archeologist's life in Syria.  It's a much more leisurely read, with insights on how people in the area think.  For example, Jezebel is wicked not because she painted her face, but because she looked out the window.

- Jill Paton Walsh's continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane stories, The Attenbury Emeralds.

- i picked up a summer issue of The New Yorker at Borders' going out of business sale & have been enjoying it.

- i keep poring over, not actually reading, some scrapbook magazines and an art book on collage and another on sketchbook journaling.  i'm getting started in the latter.  Learned some fascinating stuff about the Halifax explosion of 1917, where one of the artists grew up.

- i seldom read it on the right day, but i read The Indianapolis Star.  Apparently they still consider me one of their education bloggers.  i just got an assignment from them.  i'd set the required article aside to read later, so i needed to find it and still have to read it.  But i already have opinions.

- When i worked the Discipleship walk last fall, i met a wonderful lady named Carlene Crum.  She was our prayer warrior, and she had written a book about her experiences in the 1980s raising a special needs child.  Last week i bought a copy of her book, Something of Value: a mother's spiritual journey with a special needs child, and it also is onmy reading shelf.  The short chapters make Ben's disability real while dwelling more on Carlene's journey that made her the person she is today.  i'm reading it slowly and digesting the thoughts that Carlene lived through in the 17 years of Ben's life.

- Another quick read was was Henry vanDyke's novella, The Story of the Other Wise Man.  Based on a dream he received at the end of a year of pain, it tells how a 4th wise man kept getting distracted in his journey to visit the Christ Child by people in need.

- i'm not familiar with Smith Magazine, but when i saw the library book compiling responses to their six word memoir challenge, i had to check it out.  They vary from funny to stupid to profound - actually the gamut of human experience.  It's called Not Quite What I was Planning.

- Could be a pipe dream, but i'm hoping to get a family vacation to Florida in the next couple months.  So there's a few planning guides on the shelf too.

- oh yes, and enough PTA stuff to make me go deer in the headlights.

Time to stop talking about BOOKS and get to work.  Any hot reading tips out there?