The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.
Often I am caught off guard when the fourth Tuesday of the month is not the last Tuesday, but this time I saw it coming. 🙂
My Emily by Matt Patterson, a family’s true story of a young daughter born with Down’s Syndrome who is then diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two, reviewed here.
Better To Be Broken by Rick Huntress, his personal testimony of God getting hold of his heart after an accident left him in a wheelchair, reviewed here.
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here.
Hard to say. I’m working on my reading plans for the year, and you people keep adding to my lengthy list of books I want to get to. 🙂 Once I finish War and Peace, I think I’ll get back to the Sherlock Holmes series via audiobook. Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder had been delayed but I am informed it is on its way now just arrived. I’ve seen several people mention Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and I just ordered it. I may need something lighthearted to break up some of the heavier reading.
Stephanie does not remember her birthday or her given name: she gave herself the name of Yoon Myoung in her book. She was born in Korea not long after the Korean War: her mother was Korean and her father was an American serviceman who never knew of her. Because she was of mixed blood, she was not accepted, even by her mother’s family. Stephanie explains:
In Korea, having a fatherless child of mixed blood brought impurities to the ancestral bloodlines. It was culturally unacceptable – a disgrace. And children who were not given a family name literally had no birthright and lived unacknowledged. They were rejected. Worthless. Nothings. (p. 34).
The Korean people had suffered greatly during the Japanese occupation before WWII. Then the communist occupation had come, and then the Korean War–their cultural identity had been ripped away. Although grateful to their Western liberators, their greatest desire was to rebuild their lives, reclaim their land, and forget their pain. The site of mixed blood children such as Yoon Myoung stirred up their anger, frustration, and hurt. The foreigners may have fought to preserve South Korea’s independence, but they were not permitted into Korean families, heritages, or bloodlines (pp. 35-36).
When Stephanie was four, her mother’s family found someone who was willing to marry her despite her indiscretion, but who was unwilling to take her mixed child. Her mother sent her away on a train, telling her an uncle would meet her at her destination. It’s unclear whether that was an outright lie or whether Stephanie got off at the wrong stop or what, but an uncle was not there when she got off the train. Instead of trying to find out what happened and taking care of her, the station master just shooed her away when he closed. Stephanie decided to follow the train tracks back the direction from which she had come to find her village and her mother, but she never found them. She wandered around the Korean countryside alone for three years. She had to try to find shelter and forage for food, finding out by trial and error what worked and what didn’t. When she did encounter people, it almost always went badly. She was called names, treated in abominable ways, betrayed at the deepest level from someone she had come to trust. At times she lived with groups of other abandoned children, once at a large encampment of many of them. Over time, due to exposure, malnutrition, and lack of ability to get clean, and everything else she had gone through, she was filthy, had a head full of lice, open wounds, and worms, so that added to the repulsion people felt toward her, but the primary hatred always went back to her mixed race.
At a very few intervals she came across someone kind who rescued her from death and danger, until finally she was near the end of her rope, abandoned on a garbage heap. A Swedish nurse passed by who picked up abandoned babies and nursed them back to health so they could be sent to an orphanage and adopted. She cared for all the children but could not possibly help them all, so she concentrated primarily on the babies. But when she saw Stephanie, she was compelled to pick her up. Stephanie then described her time at the clinic, the orphanage, and finally her adoption by an American missionary couple who actually had been planning to adopt a baby boy.
This is a heart-breaking story. It’s hard to fathom people being so cruel to a child for any reason.
But it is also a story of hope.
Stephanie writes in the third person rather than first because she wants people to think not only of her story but of the millions of orphans in need in the world. She has become an advocate for orphan care.
Overall I was greatly touched by this book, and also convicted about how I would react if, as happened to several in her book, I found a dirty, wounded, and somewhat wild child stealing from my garden or sleeping in my garage. I would want someone to help them but would be more likely to call a shelter or something than to take them into my own home. Yet throughout the Bible we’re told both by instruction and example to care for people. I was convicted to look beneath the surface to the person underneath, to see their souls, and to care for their needs.
Stephanie said in her preface that there were great gaps in her memory, so she filled in some of the story the best she could. I can’t help but wonder if much of the filling in was in the first three chapters about her mother and father and how they came together: I don’t know how much of that her mother would have told her in her early childhood. I would rather have had a little less filling in there than to wonder how much of it was true. And I would have liked to have heard a bit more about how she adjusted after being adopted. She told of many doctor’s visits and the healing of her physical wounds, and mentioned that it was a long time before she could return affection to her adopted parents. But after the trauma she went through, it had to have taken a long time for her to heal mentally and emotionally. I think families need to be aware that adoption, as wonderful as it is, is not necessarily a fairly-tale “happily ever after,” that there is a lot to work through. But I realize, too, that the main purpose of this book is to draw attention to and awareness of the needs of orphans, so perhaps the rest is for another book.
Stephanie says at the end that she eventually came “to a place in my life where I can say with all conviction: There is nothing that has happened to me that I would have been better off without” (p. 224). She plans to write another book about how she came to that acceptance – that is one I can’t wait to read.
A synopsis of her story is here:
I highly recommend this book to you. I’d like to follow Carrie’s example and give this copy away to one reader. I’ll take all comments on this post as entries for the giveaway unless you tell me you would not want to receive the book. Due to shipping costs I am afraid I can only send it to the US and Canada. I’ll draw a name from among those who have commented using random.org a week from today.
(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
The giveaway is closed: The winner is Michele. Thanks for participating!
I didn’t do one of these last week because I only had two or three – and now this week I have several. That’s how it goes sometimes. But here is some noteworthy reading found in the last couple of weeks:
Solid Food for Little Ones. A list of books for young children that teach about God. Keeping in mind for future reference when my little grandson gets older.
Remember Card Catalogs? As a former librarian and avid reader, I loved this piece about people who take the old cards from library card catalogs and illustrate them.
I thought this was really cool. With a nerdy family who loves the Marvel universe films, Iron Man being one on them, I loved this video of Robert Downey, Jr. (aka Iron Man) delivering a bionic arm to a boy who has only a partially developed right arm.
And for Jan Karon fans, I saw on her Facebook page this announcement about her newest book coming out this fall!
I loved hearing her talk and watching her expressiveness! I also saw this post on her Facebook page saying that there might be a movie about Mitford and asking for suggestions about who should play which part. I hope if this comes to pass that they let her have creative control. I have mixed feelings – I love the books and would definitely see any film made from them, but I’m not sure I’d want any images other than the ones in my head. 🙂 But we’ll see.
To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner begins with Julia, a widowed, middle-aged, introvertish teacher of Creative Writing at a university in South Carolina. Her tightly-controlled world has been shaken up a little by the award of a sabbatical, a paid year off from teaching, and she is not quite sure what to do with herself. But it is shaken up even more by a message on her answering machine: Carmen, a niece she has never met, daughter of her estranged brother, is in the state and planning to come to see her. While Julia hopes with everything in her that Carmen doesn’t come, of course, she does, and while Julia plans to send her off again as soon as possible, for various reasons she can’t.
Carmen is Julia’s opposite in many ways: she is free-spirited, open, gregarious, and a Christian. Julia thinks Carmen’s faith is naive and unrealistic. But as the two women get to know each other, we learn more of what makes each of them the way they are. Both have had a number of hard breaks and tragedies, both have actions in their pasts that they can’t forgive themselves for. Julia takes Carmen along on a trip which takes them both literally and figuratively to far different places than they had first imagined.
I identified with Julia and her introverted way of thinking quite a bit, but I can understand that some readers may not like her. Sometimes introverts can come across as standoffish, and Julia has other reasons as well for holding people at arm’s length. Although I like Julia, I haven’t liked many of Mrs. Turner’s main characters in other books, but as I got to know them, their background, what makes them tick, and came to understand them better, I could at least empathize and usually came to like them as well.
I like the way Mrs. Turner gradually reveals the depth of her characters. I like that the spiritual truth in the book comes not from an expert who has it all together, but from a young woman who is still dealing with issues herself. I also like that the ending isn’t tied up with a neat bow: things are left a little more open, but you know both characters are on their way to where they need to be. I have to admit to a little disappointment with the ending: without revealing anything, I had hoped it would go the way Julia was thinking it would. Yet I can see that the choices that were made were necessary to the growth of both Julia and Carmen.
Many of Mrs. Turner’s books have the aspect of an outsider looking in on someone else of faith, and that is an interesting and refreshing perspective. They also have grace and redemption as major themes. She’s often described as a different kind of Christian fiction author, and I would agree.
Since I spent 26 years of my adult life in South Carolina, fourteen of them in the town where Mrs. Turner lives, which is near the town many of her books are set in, I very much enjoyed that aspect of the book as well. I knew some of the places mentioned and knew the pattern of spring blooming that she described and could very much picture it. And some of the different types of Southerners were familiar as well.
Since Mrs. Turner is also a teacher of Creative Writing, there are often literary references in many of her books. This one contains a lot of mention of Flannery O’Connor, someone I have never read but now want to.
An interview with the author about this book is here. I think this is my favorite of her books, and I hope you’ll give it a try.
(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
Christopher and Angela take turns with the chapters, describing events from their different points of view. They open the book with Chris’s coming out to his parents that he was gay. Angela did not object on Biblical grounds: she was an atheist who hated Christians. I don’t think the book ever explains just why she was against his homosexuality, except that they had hoped he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a dentist, and patients would probably avoid a dentist who had the potential to be HIV positive. Maybe it just didn’t fit in with her idea of a perfect family, but it was devastating to her.
Angela had come from an unhappy home and had put great stock into having a good family. But over the years her husband grew cold and distant, her oldest son rebelled, and now Christopher was going in a direction completely unacceptable to her. She gave him an ultimatum between his family and his homosexuality, and, believing he had no choice in his orientation, he left home to be with friends who would accept him as he was. Angela crumpled to the ground in despair, feeling she had nothing left to live for. She made plans to end her own life, but wanted to talk to a minister first. Though he was kind, nothing really changed in her heart. He gave her a booklet which she later read, and her eyes were opened to the truth that her lifelong desire for belonging could be fulfilled in belonging to God. It was even a relief to know and admit that she was a sinner, that though she was far from perfect, God still loved her. “I had not been seeking God, but I was found by him” (p. 19).
Chris, for his part, was glad to get away from the “Chinese-mother guilt-trip drama” (p. 8). Coming out to one’s parents and the inevitable negative reaction was a rite of passage among his friends. He finally felt free to live as he wanted to. He “started going to gay clubs and began tending bar” (p. 23) at night while attending dental school during the day. Eventually the party scene took over his life. While feeling low after a broken relationship, he accepted someone’s offer of the drug Ecstasy, and within a very short time started selling drugs to support his own habit, then became a popular and leading seller in his area and even across the country. His schooling suffered to the point that he was eventually expelled, but it no longer mattered since he was making money hand over fist and enjoying life and popularity.
Until he was arrested.
During this time Angela had been growing in her own faith and her husband Leon had come to the Lord as well. At first she tried various things to get through to Chris but finally realized that she could not “fix” him. She could only fast, pray, show him love, and not shield him from the consequences of his actions. She and her husband did not intervene when Chris was threatened with expulsion from school and after he was arrested asked the judge to give him a sentence just long enough to bring him to God. Once after reading Psalm 46:1, “Be still, and know that I am God,” she knew “as hard as it was, I knew I had to quit striving and trying to make things work my way. But rather, I had to let God do things his way and in his timing” (p. 73). “It may have just been easier for us to give up on our son, but God said, Wait! He gave us faith to hope against all the evidence we saw and to trust he had a plan, Leon and I committed to focus not on hopelessness but on the promises of God” (p. 109). She “prayed specifically that God would do whatever it took to bring our son to him — not to us, not out of drugs, not out of homosexuality…but to the Father” (p. 159).
With Christopher’s arrest, his popularity vanished. None of his “friends” wanted any more to do with him. One day in prison, he saw a Gideon’s New Testament on top of some trash, and he took it back to his cell and began to read mainly just as a way to pass the time. Over time, both with reading the Bible on his own and studying it with others, Chris came to believe on Christ.
Being in prison had taken care of getting Chris off drugs and out of the party scene, and he came to admit they were both wrong and he needed to stay away from them once he got out. When he talked with a chaplain about his homosexuality, he was told that the Bible did not condemn homosexuality and gave Chris a book explaining that view. That sounded wonderful to Chris, but as he read the book and then studied the Bible, he felt the book did not line up with what the Bible taught. He did discover that in “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 — passages normally used to condemns gays and lesbians…God didn’t call lesbians and gay men abominations. He called it an abomination. What God condemned was the act, not the person. For so long, I had gotten the message from the Christian protestors at gay-pride parades that the God of the Bible hated people like me, because we were abominations. But after reading these passages, I saw that God didn’t hate me; nor was he condemning me to an inescapable destiny of torment. But rather, it was the sex he condemned, and yet he still wanted an intimate relationship with me” (p. 186). Being gay had been a major part of his identity, but as he continued to study the Scriptures, he “began to ask myself a different question: Who am I apart from my sexuality?” (p. 187). He details his thought processes and conclusions in a chapter called “Holy Sexuality.” One conclusion was:
God’s faithfulness is proved not by the elimination of hardships but by carrying us through them. Change is not the absence of struggles; change is the freedom to choose holiness in the midst of our struggles. I realized that the ultimate issue has to be that I yearn after God in total surrender and complete obedience (pp. 168-169).
This book touched me on so many levels. What a joy to see the journey of how God brought both Christopher and his parents to Himself.
Christopher’s testimony from a documentary is here:
You can read more of Christopher’s life and ministry at his web site, www.christopheryuan.com.
(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
My Emily by Matt Patterson is a family’s story of a young daughter born with Down’s Syndrome who is then diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two.
After the joy of Emily’s birth, the Pattersons were shocked to learn that she had Down’s Syndrome. Once they had a chance to absorb that, though, they found it didn’t really change anything. Emily was a little behind other children in her development, but she was developing, and “she did possess two characteristics many Down’s children are blessed with – a never-ending smile and a heart so very full of love.”
But a late-night run to the ER for a fever when Emily was two, and a question about some dots on her leg, led to blood tests which revealed Emily had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Matt relates what Emily and the family went through as she underwent a 100-day course of chemotherapy with its attendant side effects, went into remission, relapsed, and had a bone marrow transplant.
A major part of a journey like this is wrestling with God about why He allowed it, especially for a little child, and Matt shares some of that as well.
Perhaps He sent this little, unassuming angel to instruct me and many others about what’s truly important in life. I believe she taught us not to take one single day for granted, showing a greater appreciation for family, faith, and friends and all that we have been given and blessed with.
…Some would look at Emily’s life and think that a child born with Down’s syndrome has little hope for a meaningful life. Throw in the diagnosis of leukemia and that little hope turns into no hope whatsoever.
I disagree.
Emily’s life, with all its imperfections, had great meaning. Because of how many people she touched, I realize that we are far more than what we can accomplish. We are the very thumbprints of God.
Matt goes on to say:
Incidents in our lives – big or small – develop our character. The Bible says, “We know these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character.”
Our lives, as short as they may be, are a test. And one of the biggest tests we can endure is how we respond to those moments when we don’t feel the presence of God in our lives. I believe deeply that one of God’s greatest gifts is to teach us there is a purpose behind every single one of our trials and problems.
Treat them as a gift, an opportunity to to move forward and draw closer to God. Problems often times compel us to look to God and count on Him rather than ourselves.
This is a very short book at 98 pages and at the moment is available for free for the Kindle app. I was touched at many points in the book and the quote about every life with its imperfections having meaning and purpose and that we “are more than what we can accomplish” particularly spoke to me.
(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
It’s the last day of February and so it is time to wrap up our Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge. If you’ve read anything by, about, or related to Laura this month, please share it with us in the comments. You can share a link back to your book reviews, or if you’ve written a wrap-up post, you can link back to that (the latter might be preferable if you’ve written more than one review — the WordPress spam filter tends to send comments with more than one link to the spam folder. But I’ll try to keep a watch out for them.) If you don’t have a blog, just share in the comments what you read and your thoughts about it. We’d also love to hear if you’ve done any “Little House” related activities.
I like to have some sort of drawing to offer a prize concluding the challenge, and as I thought about it this year, I decided to offer one winner the choice of:
If none of those suits you, I can substitute a similarly-priced Laura book of your choice. To be eligible, leave a comment on this post by Friday telling us what you read for this challenge. I’ll choose a name through random.org. a week from today to give everyone time to get their last books and posts finished.
For myself, this month I read (linked to my reviews):
I had planned to read the newly published Pioneer Girl, Laura’s first book that had never been published before now. But they quickly ran out of all they printed at first and had to print more, and so far I have not received it.
Thanks for participating! I hope you enjoyed your time “on the prairie” this month. It always leaves me with renewed admiration for our forebears and renewed thankfulness that I live in the times I do.
<strong>The giveaway is closed and the winner is Bekah! Congratulations! I will leave the comments open for those still finishing up their reading and posts for the challenge.</strong>
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder starts out in the summer. The Ingalls family has lived in their little claim shanty through the spring, and Pa is cutting down hay. When Pa comes across a big muskrat house made bigger and thicker than he has ever seen, he takes that as a sign that this coming winter will be a particularly hard one. An early blizzard in October and an Indian’s prediction convinces Pa and other homesteaders that they need to move into town for the winter. Pa had built a building in town in the last book and rented it out. The claim shanty was too flimsy to stand up against a blizzard, and being in town would keep them close to supplies.
But then blizzards start coming one right after another with only a day or so in-between, some times only half a day. Supplies run out and the trains can’t get through. Almanzo comes up with a plan, but it is a dangerous long shot.
This book isn’t a fun read, but it is a good one mainly to see the ingenuity and character of the family in this crisis. But there are a few lighter moments. When the family moves to town, Laura and Carrie have to go to school: they’re frightened at first (though Laura tries not to show it), but eventually they make friends and enjoy their studies. There is still a lot of singing in the evenings, along with other ways of entertaining themselves.
There are also glimpses of the times and culture. When Laura wants to help hard-working Pa to get the hay in, Ma was reluctant. “She did not like to see women working in the fields. Only foreigners did that. Ma and her girls were Americans, above doing men’s work.” But Pa could use the help, so she agreed. I was amused that Ma thought girls “above doing men’s work,” when usually we see “women’s work” demeaned. (And there is a bit of that as well – Almanzo considers cooking women’s work, but since he and his brother are bachelors and have to eat, he pitches in. Maybe each gender thought they had the best of it, though they all were industrious and hard-working). I was interested to read Almanzo’s justification for lying about his age in order to stake a claim. The land agent evidently got that he was underage, yet winked at him and gave him the necessary papers. I did have to smile when he commented once that “Three o’clock winter mornings was the only time that he was not glad to be free and independent” when he had to rouse himself up to do something, when at home his father would do that. Ma’s sending ginger water out when Pa and Laura are working in the hot sun on the hay makes me wonder if the recipe is in the Little House cookbook – it sure sounds refreshing. I’ve mentioned before Ma’s not politically incorrect feelings towards Indians, one of her few flaws grown primarily from fear. It is mentioned in passing again here. Laura has an interesting conversation with Pa when she asks how the muskrats know about the coming winter, and Pa replies that God tells them. Laura asks why God didn’t tell people, and that leads into free will, independence, the differences in the way God deals with animals and people (he could have said, but didn’t, that one way God did give clues to people was through observation of things like muskrat houses).
I like that Laura is honest about her feelings and faults. “Sewing made Laura feel like flying to pieces. She wanted to scream. The back of her neck ached and the thread twisted and knotted. She had to pick out almost as many stitches as she put in.” She and Mary quarrel some times and she flies off the handle sometimes, but family discipline is such that she does this less often than one might expect.
There are interesting comments about how progress can actually make us less able to cope than our forebears:
“We didn’t lack for light when I was a girl, before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of.”
“That’s so,” said Pa. “These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves — they’re good things to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on ’em.”
When the train can’t get through, they reason, “We survived without trains before.” Thankfully both Pa and Ma come up with some old tricks to help along the way. But as dependent as I am on electricity modern appliances, and creature comforts, I agree that I would have a hard time surviving in that setting.
A lot of this book is about endurance, and that might not be fun reading for some, but it is important. I think for most of us, our endurance would have run out long before theirs did, and we see some cracks in their armor due to the strain of constant storms, being trapped inside, dwindling food, and monotonous tasks just to keep alive. One of the first times I read this book, it made me quite ashamed that I feel tired of winter and gloomy about the lack of warmth, sunlight, and color – and I have always lived in the southeast, where, though we do have freezing temperatures and bad winter weather, it’s not nearly as bad as what others have to face. As it happened, the several days that I was reading this story this time, we had some of our severest winter weather, and while reading this story reminded me that I have nothing to complain about, in some ways it oddly did add to that feeling of winter weariness. But there is always hope that spring will indeed come again.
(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.
It’s been a colder than usual February here, and you’d think that would have lent itself to cozy days curled up on the couch with a throw blanket and a book. There were a few moments like that, though not as many as I would have liked. Here’s what my reading situation is currently:
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, audiobook. I’m about 1/3 of the way through. Progress!
Next up:
Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder has not come in yet and I have gotten a notice that it will be delayed even more, but I’m looking forward to it when it finally does arrive.
I also wrote about finding time to read, as I often get asked how I do. I invite you to check out that post and let me know if there are ways you find time to read that I hadn’t thought of.
In A Promise Kept by Robin Lee Hatcher, Allison Kavanagh moves into her aunt’s cabin in the woods of Idaho after a divorce that she did not want, prayed against, and was certain that God would prevent. In fact, she had been fairly sure that God had impressed upon her that He would heal her marriage. Tony was an alcoholic and his drinking had grown more out of control until it threatened the safety of their family, particularly their daughter. Allison had issued an ultimatum – and Tony had left. Now Allison’s not certain whether she knows how to ascertain His voice and leading at all, and she feels like a failure as a wife and a Christian.
Allison discovers a hope chest with photos, her aunt’s journals, and a wedding dress. She decides to pass the long winter nights by organizing the photos and reading the journals. A number of photos of her single aunt show her in close company with a handsome young man when they were both in their twenties. Did Aunt Emma have a beau that no one had known about?
As Allison settles into small town life and her “new normal,” she begins to heal emotionally and spiritually. Getting to know a new friend and getting back into church and her Bible help along those lines. Thanks largely to her daughter, she has several encounters with Tony and notices apparent changes in him, but after the numerous cycles they went through in their marriage, she is wary of trusting that the changes are permanent. And then when she least expects it, God shows her that His way and timing of keeping His promises may be different from hers, but He does keep them.
This story was largely based on author Robin Lee Hatcher’s own life. It’s not an exact replication, and there are differences between the circumstances and personalities of all involved. Oddly, some of the points of the story that some have criticized as “fairy-taleish” are the most true parts. I appreciated Robin’s note to readers at the end with a bit of a window into her own story, and I am thankful she and her husband were willing to share their story with others.
I wanted to read this book because I enjoy Robin’s books, especially her contemporary stories; because her stories are usually set in Idaho, and my husband is from ID; and because my own father was an alcoholic. My own parents’ story was closer to Emma’s than Allison’s or Robin’s; their marriage was not healed, but I am thankful God did heal my father of his alcoholism and save him, also in a time and way totally unexpected but shining forth with His grace. And I am thankful for the reminder Allison’s mother gave to her that while “God hated divorce, He did not hate the divorced. God loved her and wanted His best for her. Her life was not over. God still had a purpose and a plan for her. All she had to do was trust Him.”
(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.
My Emily
Stray Thoughts 