Thomas Jefferson Education a book a week for the next year discussion

Keeping up with my reading while working full-time and homeschooling my 18 yo son is a BIG challenge. I sometimes feel torn between spending time with my family and finishing my reading.

This month I am finishing up Education of a Wandering Man and The Real Thomas Jefferson while continuing my scriptures, The Chosen (our current read aloud), United States History an LDS Perspective volume 1, and Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson. My list is long but some of these are ongoing books to be read over the year.

I also began as a "fun read", Insurgent. I saw the first movie, Divergent, and felt the need to read the books. This is one of the few movies that I think is better than the book. Lol! Well, I do want to finish the series before I see the movies. I still want to find that fantastic Sci-Fi book that just blows my mind. It's been a long time since I found one.

Hey Celeste,
Have you read David Brin (you probably have he wrote back in the late 80's early 90's). His Startide Rising Series (it might be called Sundiver series) is one of my all time favourite Sci-fi books.
I didn't think and popped my February posts at the end of January. Oh well.

Kristy I liked the movie. And I watched it after reading the books.

My reading is sort of intense this month. I am personally being pulled in several directions and so I have been reading with intensity - both to help detach from the stress and to help inform my behavior and decisions pertaining to the stress.

This month I am reading The Count of Monte Cristo (I read it 15 years ago but I am starting to wonder if I read an abridged version). This book is beating me up - far more than Les Mis ever did. I feel like Dumas wastes no words (and Hugo drove me nuts with his over-telling of everything) I feel much more challenged by the attitudes and actions of the Count than many other characters I have read. In some ways, he is a perfect example of a Leadership Education. In others, I just wonder if there is any Core left at all.

I am also reading Asperkids and Aspergirls. Reading both slowly so that I can properly digest these. Discovering that I am an Aspie (in my search for understanding of my daughter) has caused me to really slow down and read intensely so that I can see the connections and build my toolbox.

I am loving The Great Conversation (book 1 of The Great Books of the Western World) and am eager to see how the group votes for our plan of attack through the Great Books.

To keep a foot in my Catholic theology, I am reading Scott Hahn's The Lambs Supper along side my daily Catechism and Bible reading.

I am supposed to be reading We Hold These Truths To Be Self Evident, but I am not connecting with it at all. I am not sure if I am just in the wrong mood or the wrong chapter of life. I did subscribe to Black Belt but I may just save the materials for another day.

Kristy,Nice to know the tv show was close to the mark; my brother-in-law worked in the art department for it. I so know what you mean about Madeleine L'Engle. When I did a google search about her it was interesting to read some of her family's reactions to her smugness. Reading her is like digging for gems. They are there, wheat hidden in a tare field.

I'm trying to finish heavy stuff I started last year: diet books, books about thinking and keep getting side-tracked into buying fiction that I'd rather gobble up. Rick Riordan beat out "This is your brain on music" and Roald Dahl is about to beat out finishing "Constructing the Universe".

I'm waiting on a new copy of The Hiding Place; my copy left with my eldest daughter when she got married last October. She insists it's her copy.

Both my youngest and I have got bogged in some of last year's reading and it's waiting for us to finish it. I was just pleased to see her eat up Charlie and the Chocolate factory, after the whole class reading she is doing at school almost stopped her enjoyment.

Kristy, well said. That's exactly how I felt about Turn The Page as well.

Very interesting to know about Marco Polo! I had no idea there was a TV show!

Isn't it interesting when we fall in love with an author to go and then read about their personal lives? Reading Sanctifying Myth has really altered my view of my hero C. S. Lewis and has made me fall in love with J. R. R. Tolkien Who previously I had tolerated at best. now I am the one who feels smog. I can sit from my armchair and judge men who bear their souls on the written page. I surely would never love to be written about because all of my faults would be scrupulously exposed.

Kristy, that is just plain cool.

Hi Kristy,

If it's the Marco Polo that was made in Malaysia then that's the one. They are currently working on Part 2. I've never seen it because I have heard that about the sex and nudity.

L'Engle's family (from the articles I read on the net) were often quite hurt by the parts of their lives that she used for her fiction. The other comments that I read talked about how they saw her fiction as closer to reality than her non-fiction. Apparently she edited her own life quite heavily. Her son, who both Charles Wallace and Rob Austin were based on, basically couldn't cope and became an alcoholic dying young. It was so sad because I also really enjoy her work. It is as I have said to someone about actors though, "Just because I like their work doesn't mean I like them as a person." It has made me very wary about researching author's lives.

Love your story about the 'track" trips. You'll find they want the "time of your life stories." Interesting side point on track stars, the New Zealander in "Chariots of Fire", his real name was Arthur Porritt. When they were making the film they asked his family for permission to use his real name but the family turned the filmmakers down. Afterwards when they saw how good the film was the family really regretted saying no.