Harry & Andrea

Just a few of the 33 boxes of books Harry and I left behind in storage.

6

Books I’ve started this year (and want to finish.)

One of the only good things about being sick is finally feeling like you’ve got time to read and getting to read fiction and not having to apologize for it! And it just feels like there’s more time for reading here. (Not that I’m any better at keeping up with email, responding to FB messages or sending out our newsletter on time!) A life without books is such a lonely life, but it seems like it’s so easy to forget to make time to read.

Since we’ve been here I’ve read 8 books. That is a new record for the adult-me. I think it takes awhile to recover from being an English major in college and an English teacher post-college. I’ve read the Harry Potter series* by JK Rowling, Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God, Noel Piper (I highly recommend this for some encouragement!) and See You in a Hundred Years, Logan Ward (This was a really interesting memoir, especially as we are learning to live simply. It doesn’t get much more simple than living without electricity and eating only the food that you grow or kill yourself!)

And…books I’ve started, but haven’t finished yet…

• Passage to India, E. M. Forster (a classic)
• Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott (a book about writing)
• Future Grace, John Piper (a book about living your life in hope of the future grace that God promises)
• White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (a book about India)
• Conversational Hindi (this one is more symbolic of learning the language)
• Isaiah, The Bible (a book about God’s judgement and redemption and faithfulness to His people that I’m reading with a small group of Christian women here)

Now the number of books that we left behind but wanted to bring with us is an entirely different list and too long to put here.

*I know that there has been some controversy over the Harry Potter books. And I started the first one in 2001 and have just now gotten around to reading the others. I think if you’re curious, you should read them for yourself and be discerning, but I wouldn’t recommend the later books for younger children — even middle school. They get pretty dark at times and definitely don’t communicate my worldview, but I really enjoyed the story of Harry Potter. I’ll be happy to talk more about them if you have questions, but since this is in honor of my birthday, I’m going to stop analyzing them now.