First of all, if you follow this series, you know I didn’t post the books I read in October through December. The truth is, I can’t remember all of them! I’m usually very good at keeping track on Goodreads, but we did a lot of traveling, which meant a lot of library downloads to my Kindle, and some of the titles have just gotten away from me. Here are the ones I do remember reading, in no particular order:
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. It was a tome, but well worth the time it took. Berry’s writing is lovely and makes you just want to pack up and go live in Port William.
Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery. After reading Anne of Ingleside in September, I couldn’t wait to keep going, as I’d never read these final few Anne novels.
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.
Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery. I had read this one years ago (and then never finished the series), but I wanted to go back and re-read it to recall some of the details mentioned in the last three books.
The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield. I finished this with our church women’s group. Really fascinating and provided some excellent discussion on everything from homosexuality to denominational differences to classical homeschooling (didn’t expect that last one!).
Farewell to Fairacre by Miss Read. Because I wanted something really light, and I picked this up in the fill-a-box sale at the library.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. This was sooo good. Beautifully written. It was definitely a slower paced piece of fiction (and there are no chapter divisions, which I think makes it seem even slower), but absolutely worth the read. It was so good that, when it was due at the library, I ended up buying it for my Kindle so that Scott could read it too. (Has been recently on sale for $4.99 for Kindle, so snatch it up.)
There were probably a few more, but these are the ones that I can remember at the moment.
Okay. So here are the books I have on my list to read in 2016. I kept it to 25 books, because I know that I always find other books along the way, I pre-read a lot of what my kids want to read, etc. And I may not get to all of these, which is okay too.
Fiction
The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge
Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge
Father Brown: The Essential Tales by G.K. Chesterton
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Children’s Fiction
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (I read these when they first came out, but I’m now reading them as a pre-read to see if they’re acceptable for my kids.)
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (The title’s been recently changed to The Eagle because of a movie, but we have an older edition.)
Non-Fiction
An Owl on Every Post by Sanora Babb (a memoir)
The Woman Who Was Chesterton by Nancy Carpentier Brown (a biography)
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Self-help? Practical Living? Housekeeping? Something along those lines.)
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Classics
The Iliad by Homer (I still haven’t decided if I’m going to re-read one of the translations I own, like Fagels or Lattimore, or read the new translation by Caroline Alexander.)
Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney
The Confessions by Augustine, translated by Maria Boulding
Christian Living
(Augustine’s Confessions could go here too.)
The Lifegiving Home by Sally and Sarah Clarkson (I’ll be reviewing this for Tyndale.)
Mood Tides by Ronald Horton
Fit to Burst by Rachel Jankovic
Seasons of a Mother’s Heart by Sally Clarkson
Education and Culture
Norms and Nobility by David Hicks (I’ve read parts of this but put off the whole thing because I’ve heard that it’s hard going. I need to just do it. And yeah, it’s crazy expensive. I got a used one, but still.)
Mind to Mind: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason and Karen Glass
Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen (I’ve started this a few times and enjoyed it as far as I got and then never finished it.)
A Biblical Home Education by Ruth Beechick
About Becky Aniol
Becky holds a bachelor's degree in English literature and music, a master's degree in Christian education, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Christian education. She taught classical upper school grammar, literature, and history and lower school composition and grammar for two years, elementary school music for one year, and Kindermusik classes for four years before the birth of her children. She now loves staying home with her four children, Caleb, Kate, Christopher, and Caroline and homeschooling them classically.
