My Summer Reading List

Here are the books I hope to read over the next few weeks while we're traveling or hubby is away from home. Most I was able to find at the library, if we don't already own them. We have a moratorium on book-buying until we can afford more book cases!!

But we don't always save up to buy books from one of our top 5 favorite book store in the country, the Inklings. The store owners have the "vision to promote 'the good, the true, and the beautiful,' with a special concern for fostering good reading from a Christian world-view." If you are in ever in Lynchburg, VA, you must stop to browse and enjoy a plate of Beignet!

I cried when the Harry W. Schwartz Bookstores, after 82 years in business and surviving the Great Depression, closed in the Milwaukee area this last year. Its founder was one of "the first champions of then-controversial 20th-century authors such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. He also sold erotically charged literature, including "Ulysses" by James Joyce and "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller." They made their business successful by knowing good books and the community. Schwartz distilled a philosophy he believed would help his small chain survive: A book is "a precious article that can change people's lives... it is a social prophet; we have a social contract. The bookshop is larger than a place of commerce. It really believes in the book and bookstores and the people. This is not something you can buy. This is not a clever marketing concept." But sadly this was not enough after all for this bookseller.

And I will cry again if the Inklings ever closes due to economics, the Internet or the big box "bookstore" chain.

So though I have linked the books to Amazon.com for easiest reference, if you have a great bookstore in your neighborhood like Schwartz or the Inklings, by all means, go now before it is too late!

Christian Non-Fiction:
Evangelical is Not Enough by Thomas Howard
A User's Guide to Holy Eucharist by Christopher Webber
The Eucharistic Way by John Baycroft
rereading and working through Sabbath Living by Norman Wirzba

Homeschooling/Parenting:
Honey for a Child's Heart: the imaginative use of books in family life by Gladys Hunt
When Children Love to Learn by by Elaine Cooper, Eve Anderson, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, and Jack Beckman
A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola
Start The Original Homeschooling Series by Charlotte Mason if I can save up money to purchase it!

Fiction:
Home by Marilynne Robinson, sequel to Gilead
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
More of Wendell Berry's Port Williams series


Food/Gardening/Cooking:
The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food by Janet Chadwick
Ball's The Complete Book of Home Preserving
How to pick a peach:The search for Flavor from farm to table by Russ Parsons
Local Flavors by Deborah Madison
Slow Food Nation: Why our Food should be Good, Clean, and Fair by Carlo Petrini
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan
Plenty: One Man, One Woman and a Racuous Year of Eating Locally by
The Green Gardener's Guide by Joe Lamp'l


With the Kids:
Classic picture books according to the letter of the week. This week is K-K-Kangaroo.
Little House on the Prairie at bedtime

Christian Books with the kids:
A Children's Guide to Worship by Ruth Boling
Come Worship with Me by Ruth Boling
A Child's Guide to the Holy Eucharist Commentary by Sarah Horton
What we do in church: An Anglican Child's activity book by Anne e. Kitch
The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes by Kenneth Taylor