Year of the Father
By the time I left, I knew I’d found a wonderful group of literature lovers. I could belong with them. Then everything changed.
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As women who consider ourselves—or who aspire to be—well-read, we can be too quick to dismiss the value of children’s literature for ourselves. But the Well-Read Mom team knows that children’s literature has much to offer—and not just to children.
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Approaching literature begins with leisure. Recovering leisure reading as a kind of spiritual discipline will help us move from interior boredom to an expanding inner life.
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Then and Now: The Impact of Rereading Written by Caitlin Bootsma “You’re definitely Meg,” my younger sister insisted. “You’re the oldest, and…well, I’m obviously Jo.” I did NOT want to be Meg; couldn’t we both be Jo? There was no question then that our next sister was Amy, and, in our teenage years, no one…
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It didn’t take very long for me to find out that English Literature was their least favorite class. I could completely understand—math, science, music…these were all subjects that could be understood even with a language barrier. In fact, there was more than just a language barrier—I was stunned on an almost daily basis at small little cultural references that just didn’t translate. As the year went on, my fondness for my students grew—so it was with a little trepidation that I announced that we would be tackling a Shakespeare play next.
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A Happy Accident Written by Jamie Cailteux I accidentally joined Well-Read Mom before I even knew what it was. My fifth pregnancy was difficult. I was 36 and my body felt worn out. We were homeschooling for the first time. Stress and emotional roller coasters drove me to my knees, but my varicose leg veins…
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Our conversation continued, but through it, I recognized that I was changing. I like to think that part of this change comes about through reading great and worthy books—books that have been, as Flannery O’Connor put it, “written from a perspective in which the truth, as Christians know it, has been used as a light to see the world.” This light then shapes our heart, mind, and soul and educates our imagination to the reasonableness of faith.
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Each year, at least one of our reading selections for Well-Read Mom is so jarring that it strikes an emotional cord, reverberating through our very cores. This year, John Steinbeck’s novella The Pearl is that work. Agonizing in its subject matter—namely, the insidious encroachment of evil within the human heart—this tale haunts us long after we read the final words.
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As I read King Lear, the word patrimony came to mind. Of course, the plot of the play centers around a king giving away his inheritance to his daughters. But I was also recalling a phrase that I first encountered in Theology of Home, The Spiritual Art of Homemaking.
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For years, I had heard great things about Well-Read Mom, a national women’s book club, but I had never had a chance to join. Then, last year, a friend invited me to the chapter that meets once a month in her home. I was more than ready to dive into a discussion of great books with like-minded ladies. As a serious bibliophile, I get a little lonely reading in isolation. I hoped for deep literary discussion with fellow women of faith.
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