Rory Gilmore's List Revisited Again: 162

I posted about this in 2012. My friend sent me the link to check off everything I had read. This was the first I had heard of Rory Gilmore. Here is the list with the new books added in BLUE.

2023 Update: I will add the new ones in GREEN! +7

2024 Update: DARK PURPLE additions +3

2025 Additions in BOLD +7

I'm up to 155 books May 2024 (but have read many of the other books by the authors mentioned)

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge

1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – read – July 2010
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - multiple movies and play
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Art of Fiction by Henry James 
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
The Bhagava Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire – read – June 2010
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White - and movie
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – all movie versions known to man
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare - multiple plays though
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père - and multiple movie versions
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber – started and not finished
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - and multiple movie versions
The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown 
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote by Cervantes - and musical 
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe - many
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen – and multiple movie versions
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - and movie
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves - parts
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien - and movie
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein - and movie
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom – and movie
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - andm movie
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – and movie
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - and movie
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – and movie
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - and multiple movie versions
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Hamlet by William Shakespeare - and multiple movie versions
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the (Philosopher's) Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry - and movie
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
Howl by Allen Ginsburg - disgusting! 
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer - and movie Troy
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – and multiple movie versions
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan - and movie
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - and movie
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis - and movie versions
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – two movie versions too
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold – read
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare (saw it in Ashland)
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult 
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin - and movie version
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen – two movie versions
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - and muliple movie versions
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey - and movie
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare 
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby – read
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – and multiple movie versions
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (August 2019)
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers 
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – and two movie versions
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster - and multiple movie versions
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin - started but TOO SCARY to finish!
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - and multiple movie versions
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy – on my book pile
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers 
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron 
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (August 2019)
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust - (August 2019)
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber - saw it when I was young and SCARY!
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – read
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty-Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - and the mini-series
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum - and the movie
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - and multiple movie versions
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (July 2019)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Village School (1000 Books to Read)

After reading Interview with the Vampire and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it was lovely to read a "calm" (see Mustich's take on the book below), sweet, and easily understood book. I just finished watching the Downton Abbey series and movies. So, I had a visual picture of the "village school," even though the one in Downton Abbey was in the 20s and this school is in the 50s

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Jul 30, 2018

Calm is not a virtue much prized by literary critics, yet, as many readers are well aware, a wisely calm book can be both restful and, paradoxically, deeply stimulating. That is the case with the “Miss Read” books, a modest yet addictively absorbing series of novels by Dora Jessie Saint. Saint was a teacher herself, and her working knowledge—and patience with learners young and old—pervades these thoughtful and generous accounts of the vibrant though unspectacular life of an English country schoolmistress and the denizens of Fairacre, her village. Everyday animation fills her pages, and there’s fine irony in the narrator’s gentle but perspicacious eye as it roams over a slow, small, well-measured life that, like high adventure, is no doubt best experienced in books.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1000 Books to Read)

Books like this always make my head hurt! It is philosophy. I was most interested in their motorcycle route (They go to places I have been - so that was fun. Toward the end, they travel to Crater Lake in Oregon!) and the relationship between father and son (who was stabbed to death after the book was written). 

It was challenging to follow, but I began to understand it toward the end. I am no philosopher, and the concrete, real world and complicated relationships are more where my head (and heart) reside. Regardless, I am so glad I read this.

From the author's reflection in the "Afterward":

Culture-bearing books challenge cultural value assumptions and often do so at a time when the culture is changing in favor of their challenge. The books are not necessarily of high quality. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was no literary masterpiece but it was a culture-bearing book. It came at a time when the entire culture was about to reject slavery. People seized upon it as a portrayal of their own new values and it became an overwhelming success. 

The success of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seems the result of this culture-bearing phenomenon. The involuntary shock treatment described here is against the law today. It is a violation of human liberty. The culture has changed.

The book also appeared at a time of cultural upheaval on the matter of material success. Hippies were having none of it. Conservatives were baffled. Material success was the American dream. Millions of European peasants had longed for it all their lives and come to America to find it—a world in which they and their descendants would at last have enough. Now their spoiled descendants were throwing that whole dream in their faces, saying it wasn’t any good. What did they want? 

The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it “freedom,” but in the final analysis “freedom” is a purely negative goal. It just says something is bad. Hippies weren’t really offering any alternatives other than colorful short-term ones, and some of these were looking more and more like pure degeneracy.

Degeneracy can be fun but it’s hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation. 

This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It’s not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of “success” to something larger than just getting a good job and staying out of trouble. And also something larger than mere freedom. It gives a positive goal to work toward that does not confine. That is the main reason for the book’s success, I think. The whole culture happened to be looking for exactly what this book has to offer. That is the sense in which it is a culture-bearer.

Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (pp. 436-437). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

I thought this was profound, and he wrote this at a time when I was coming into adulthood. So, I was a witness to what he is talking about. (But if he had gone a little farther south, he would have seen many of those degenerate hippies coming out of  Degeneracy to True Freedom in the  Jesus Revolution!)

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Some books resonate deeply with the tenor of their times. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig’s 1974 “inquiry into values,” is a case in point. Rejected, according to the author, by dozens of editors before it finally found a publisher, it became an enduring publishing phenomenon, selling millions of copies. The book has a skeletal plot: A man, his young son, and two friends are on vacation, riding motorcycles in the American West. But in the course of their trip, Pirsig ruminates on fundamental philosophical matters in an effort “to see if in that strange separation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century.” Conversational in its account of the journey, focused and dense in its consideration of Greek thought, of classicism and Romanticism, of reason and feeling, Zen and the Art makes up in richness what it lacks in rigor. Pirsig’s questing reach exceeds his grasp in the same way our own awkward questions about life’s meaning outpace the capacity of our answers. His book is a renewing and exhilarating ride.

Friday Freewrite Forty

 I am doing a 40-minute freewrite today. I usually do fifteen-minute ones, but I am taking more of the "Morning Pages" Julia Cameron method this morning. Those pages take about 40 minutes, but I don't like how much paper they consume. So I am doing it here. If anyone reads it, that's OK. My life IS an open book, and I don't mind others knowing. For some, it helps. I always write these thinking no one else will read until someone comes up to me and tells me how much what I wrote helped them. That was back when we left our old church 19 years ago, and the turmoil that was there. I journaled a lot back then. I haven't been doing it as much here as I used to. I don't know why. I did "Morning Pages" from January - September last year in my Kindle Scribe.

So as a refresher, a "freewrite" means you do no correct grammar or punctuation, and you just let the pen or pencil or fingers fly! That is always hard when you have Grammarly trying to improve you. I will do my best to ignore. 

The picture is where I sit as I type this freewrite. Yes, I left the plug in on the fire table on purpose because I am so excited I bought this fancy extension wheel that I can plug into the three pronged plug that used to be too far for my computer to allow me to sit here looking out over my yard. Before I would sit in the other chair facing the side of my house. The extension we have here is only a two prong plug. This one has three, three-pronged plugs and three USB plug-ins. So, I will be doing more work out here this summer. 

I am out here because I started out my morning really well, but it has gone downhill, and I find my soul in desolation. I want to get to the bottom of it by writing, asking for prayer (asked my bestie to pray just now), praying myself, and being outside listening to the birds sing (loud equipment is allowed is Corvallis after 9 am so I am living dangerously in that respect), and breathing the fresh air. 

I was great during my time with God. Jesus' words to ask whatever you wish (John 16), and me asking what I wish. Then an inkling that maybe I shouldn't observe my friend do deliverance with this person. I could do it, but my friend is so called to this, and I am called more to direction than deliverance. I see the need for it, but most of my directees are not in need of this. So, when I encountered this person, I wanted my friend, so gifted and called to it, to do it. She is amazing, and I have marveled at Jesus' love. Yet, I think my soul is heavy as a result. I will not go into the details, but I am going to leave it in my friend's hands and not go anymore, and the person receiving it agreed that I need not go anymore. It really is a matter of calling for me. Also, in talking to my bestie, she said she gets the same feeling after one of her clients, there is a heaviness. We are very similar, and I think it is our "absorb other people's stress" personality type that does it. My response is delayed, and it was probably prompted by getting a message from the person receiving the deliverance that she was distressed yesterday. I let go and am letting my friend continue.

So, the desolation is so weird after such a lovely time with Aki yesterday. She painted a picture called The Lion and the Lamb and she didn't even know that was in the Bible. It led to lunch and a good spiritual talk yesterday. I love her so much, and she kept saying, "This is such a good memory!" Such a consolation. So the desolation surprised me today.

I also took a risk and went to a prayer watch with my order. I have not been there since August, and it brought up some stuff that I had to deal with. Then I got into a conversation with one of the old-timers, and she was so gracious. I feel a bit disconnected there. I have moved on to other things that were more fulfilling for me and where my gifts and talents were more utilized. So, I don't regret the decision to scale back on my involvement with the Order, but it made me sad about somethings from the past. So, I think that also contributed to things.

One thing that I feel like I have an answer to is a local Spiritual Direction training. It is just not coming together. My bestie was going to do it and now she is not able to because she is doing a class for her career that will not end until next year. So, I prayed for a closed door yesterday. So, I will pursue online options, and I am open-handed about even that! God is so good.

I am talking to someone in fifteen minutes about a sticky situation with another directee. It is not her situation, but she has knowledge of a situation that is not good, and her employers don't have a policy for reporting, and I am seeing if my former employer does by talking to one of my former coworkers. I have put this off for two weeks. 

I think this writing is helping me immensely. 

Oh, and there is my reading. I have only two more books to select to reach my 2025 goal for the 1000 Books to Read List! It has been fun to do this, and I have liked most of the books I have read. I am reading several at one time, though. I know that is weird, but sometimes I get exhausted with fiction and switch to non-fiction and vice versa. 

Oh, and we got through not only the Downton Abbey series but the two movies as well because the new movie is coming! Woohoo! I will have to check when the new movie is coming out and whether it will be in the theatres or streaming. 

Well, I just got a message from someone who is going to send me an email ahead of the call we have at the top of the hour! It is about time for the end. Not quite, but close enough. 

This was helpful. 

It is a good decision, but my soul is still a bit heavy. I know that a walk or ride to campus plus a strenuous Pilates with bands class will be great for me. I need to get out of my HEART and into my BODY. Listen to those birds. Music to my soul. 

Interview with the Vampire (1000 Books to Read)

This was really engaging writing, but it was so creepy! I am glad I know Jesus, and He protects me from all evil. (I don't believe there are vampires, but I do believe there is evil in the world!)

I also kept thinking how any parent could allow their 11 year old child to even ACT in such a creepy movie. I would really like to know how Kristen Dunst feels about all of that now. Ewww! (But I don't think I could ever watch the movie to find out how it played out on screen!)

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Aug 1, 2018

Anne Rice has been wildly prolific in the decades since Interview with the Vampire, her 1976 debut novel, catapulted her to fame, but her first book is still her most intriguing. Subverting convention in many ways, notably by making the vampire in question fallibly human and by presenting his story in his own words, Rice’s tale also embraces the genre’s Gothic-erotic roots with relish. The result is one of the best vampire novels ever written.

Within This Wilderness (1000 Books to Read)

This is my favorite book of the year. I am a mother of two sons who are individuals in their own right. It spoke to me about motherhood and the love we have for our children.

I was also delighted because I spent a summer not far from the setting of the book, the wilderness in the Canadian Coastal Range. It is a wonderful read. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

The author’s son left home at sixteen and, by the time Feenie Ziner’s chronicle begins seven years later, he had settled into a solitary life in the untracked Canadian wilderness, three thousand miles from home. “Ben was on perfectly safe ground when he asked me to come out to British Columbia to see where he was living. Any kid who had gone to the trouble of putting a whole continent between himself and his family could count on their never showing up at his doorstep.” Any mother who would make the trip—a transcontinental flight, a six-hour bus ride to the end of the line, then a journey by bush plane into a densely forested nowhere—is clearly a force to be reckoned with, and the reckoning between parent and child that Within This Wilderness witnesses takes on, because of its remote setting, an archetypal resonance. Indeed, both the awesome natural charms of the surroundings and the hard manner of living that isolation dictates engage and even relax our attention, protecting us for a time from the climate of deep emotion in which the protagonists dwell. Ziner’s deft portrayal of the elaborate, often comic diplomacy of the relations between parents and grown children, her sensitivity to the alarming innocence of the toughest youth, and her splendid writing reward the reader throughout, and her unstinting appraisal of her own noble confusion—a spell of love, worry, wonder, guilt, loss, pride, anxiety, anger, obligation, yearning—is both moving and magnanimous. 

Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1000 Books to Read)

What a delightful read! It follows a Vermeer painting backward in time from the Present Day to 1672, when Vermeer painted it (it's not really one of his paintings, though). Vermeer is one of my favorite painters, so to say I was excited that the book was about one of his paintings is an understatement. It is very well-written, and I am excited to watch the movie, Brush with Fate, based on the book. 

I found this timeline was really helpful at the end of the book (don't want to spoil it by reading it before):

Girl in Hyacinth Blue--Timeline | Sutori

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

In this lovely and absorbing book, Susan Vreeland traces a putative Vermeer creation—Girl in Hyacinth Blue—backward in time through three centuries, from its theft by a Nazi officer through the hands of several owners to the studio of the artist himself. In a series of linked stories, Vreeland conveys the private lives and inscrutable emotions for which the mysterious, evocative figure of the painting stands as an emblem. Each story details a domestic drama in which “the momentous ordinary,” in the author’s phrase, is honored and ennobled, even as its characters—a family of Dutch Jews celebrating Passover the year before their deportation; a devoted couple consoled by the embrace of their long marriage; Vermeer’s daughter Magdalena, the model for the girl in the portrait—fall under the sway of history’s calamities and time’s indifference. Like the real paintings that are its inspirations, Girl in Hyacinth Blue is a quietly astonishing articulation of the evanescent emotions that convey enduring human truths. 

The Portable Dorothy Parker (1000 Books to Read)

I listened to this by a fabulous narrator! Why are literary people so sad? It is comic writing, but there was such sadness behind the words. There is also an upper-class snobbishness that she pokes fun at, but it is so obvious that she was a part of that world. I got a bit bored by the end...and sad! (Apparently, Hemingway did not like her, but he did not like many people.)

It is another book this year where I read about life in New York in the 1920s. 

Not everyone is so unhappy, Dorothy. I think she died alone. I haven't watched the documentary on her on YouTube yet. Let me watch it and see if that is the case. Yep, the YouTube documentary says it all. It is interesting. She was an alcoholic. :(

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Mrs. Parker, as she liked to be called, became one of the most quoted writers of her time because of her singular gift for sharpening truths into well-honed words; her barbed ability was unparalleled in her day and hasn’t been equaled since. In 1944, she selected and arranged this collection of her stories and poems for presentation in a single volume. It has since been expanded to include some of her later stories, as well as theater reviews and essays, and the complete archive of her terrific Constant Reader book column from The New Yorker. Spanning her career and containing the bulk of her work, this is truly a treasure trove.

Microbe Hunters (1000 Books to Read)

This was so fascinating. I loved it. I learned about the first simple microscope by Anton Van Leeuwenhoek and the exploits of Pasteur and Walter Reed (yes, the military hospital is named after him). This is a great book! (Many animals die in the writing of this book, but their sacrifices have saved millions of people.) 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Few books convey the romance of science—the intense excitement of close observation, the intuitive leaps that link phenomena, the disappointment of failed hypotheses, the triumphant clarity of successful experiment—better than this one. The enduring 1926 bestseller by bacteriologist-turned-writer Paul de Kruif is a colorful account of the careers and discoveries of the pioneers of the microscopic world. Presenting these scientific trailblazers as the “hunters,” “explorers,” and “fighters of death” that they truly were—including some “done to death by the immensely small assassins they were studying”—de Kruif infuses his profiles with an extra dose of drama that brings a page-turning pleasure to the real scientific history he imparts.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Ha! Ha! I thought this book was on the 1000 Books to Read List. But it is NOT! Why was it in my tagged group of audiobooks for 1000 Books? Oh well. 

That said, this book is often on lists of books to read and is very well-written. I am goal-oriented and have been on this quest since May 2019. I don't know if I will ever get to all 1000 books, but my intermediate goal this year is to get to the top of the List Challenge List, and this book will not get me there. Again, oh well. 

I am also so tired of reading books where women are abused by vile people. Why does AI say that Geishas are not prostitutes? Maybe they are not now (outlawed in 1956), but they were during the time this was written, and it was heartbreaking to see the abuse. They were high-class prostitutes taken advantage of by rich and powerful people. It broke my heart in places. 

Navigator of the Flood (1000 Books to Read)

He assumed a lot about what Noah was thinking and feeling. He nails how Noah might have felt as he built the ark, knowing that the people around him (minus his family) would perish in a big flood.

The whole drunkenness thing was pretty weird. But it did cause me to think about some things. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

In his lifetime, Mario Brelich published only three books, each a distinctive, imaginative exploration of a biblical theme, and each a discovery of the first order. In Navigator of the Flood, Brelich’s ingenuity is set to the task of explaining the drunkenness of Noah, the episode that concludes the ninth chapter of Genesis and stands as a peculiar coda to the story of the great flood. The result is a playful, trenchant, inspired, and funny meditation—a philosophical essay in the form of a novel—on the deep meanings we can still find hidden in the dusty folds of a familiar tale

Oblomov (1000 Books to Read)

I liked this book. It is about a Russian "couch potato"!

This Wikipedia article is so thorough in explaining it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblomov

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Goncharov’s novel, originally published serially, had such an effect in its time that it inspired a new Russian word: oblomovshchina, or “Oblomov-itis,” a fake clinical diagnosis of the paralysis of privilege. Although the book’s satire of Russian nobility is trenchant and funny, the author knows that his protagonist suffers from something more insidious than mere laziness, for Oblomov isn’t empty or corrupt: He’s intelligent, perceptive, and capable of deep friendship and passionate attachments. Indeed, the psychological inertia that Goncharov depicts, which seems to be strangely fostered by the very talents and advantages Oblomov possesses, retains its relevance today, and not just in terms of “couch potatoes.”

The Riddle of the Sands (1000 Books to Read)

This had everything that I love: adventure, mystery, even romance! I loved this quick read. I am going to watch the movie that is on Amazon Prime. It has Jenny Agutter who is on Call the Midwife. 

The only disadvantage is that I did not have the maps with me while I was listening to the audiobook on a walk. I came home and followed it on Google Maps for the last half of the book. I wish I had the illustrated version of this book!

While it did not initiate naval preparedness for Great Britain, it did help propel it. Germany did end up being a problem a few years later in World War I!

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

“A yachting story, with a purpose,” Erskine Childers wrote to a correspondent while he was composing The Riddle of the Sands at the beginning of the twentieth century. The purpose was political: to alert an unprepared England to the threat posed by German ambitions. It was by no means the only example of “invasion fiction” created by British writers at the time to stir their sleepy country to naval investment, but it was the most influential in promoting the cause of military readiness, and—more important for later generations of readers—it has proven the most enduring, for the simple reason that it is a rip-roaring good yarn.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (1000 Books to Read)

Lin-Manuel Miranda's narration was brilliant. 

The story is very engaging and deep. I can totally understand why it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2008. The Wikipedia article contains a thorough analysis of this book and made me appreciate it even more! If you can get through the foul language, it is a worthy read. 

I loved learning about the Dominican Republic's history, but I think many of my friends would not like this because of the language and sexuality. It was a bit much for me, also. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

The first thing that strikes you is the prose: It’s fast and agile, unafraid to mix ingredients. English and Spanish and Spanglish combine to energize the sentences, which move easily between different modes of discourse—expository, conversational, professorial, confidential, ribald, tender, rambunctious—but never stray for long from speech rhythms. Now shouting, now murmuring, now explaining or exhorting, the voice of the narrator—a man named Yunior, as we will eventually discover—relates the life of his friend Oscar de Leon, an overweight, nerdy, sensitive boy possessed of—or more exactly by—what Díaz has called “outré interests.” Yunior’s narration also encompasses the times of Oscar’s family (including his sister, Lola, Yunior’s former love), immigrants to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic. The book’s style is powerful, and it needs to be, because it must treat several spheres of action and dimensions of experience, diverse in register and implication. Along the way, the story bounces back and forth between yearning and nostalgia, tenderness and violence, nerdiness and nobility, anguish and—not least, and almost inexplicably—joy.

Freewrite Fifteen

I have not had a freewrite on here in a while. I have been reading many short books and posting my reviews here. So, I have not been freewriting as much.

Today is the last day with the last group doing the Spiritual Exercises. I ended my other group yesterday at 10:30, and I cried. I loved the 34-week journey with them (Easter was later this year. So we had two extra weeks where they had an extra week to do a Yearly Examen and an entire week to compose a Beloved Charter. That was special. Next year's group will not have those two extra weeks.) I will continue to meet one-on-one with two of the three people. That will be great. 

The same is true for the other group I lead. This group has only been 14 weeks, but I will continue to meet with the two left. The other person was only able to make it three times out of the ten times because of health and family things. I bless her. This group has been great. This is the third time leading people through the shorter 18th annotation. I highly recommend the 19th though. It gives you time to settle in and linger longer by doing repetitions and looking at your "Blessed History" for an extra week. I like that.

I am going to go into my Zoom room early this morning to pray for one of the people in my 19th Annotation group who is speaking at 5:45 am Pacific time for 150 people at a school. I know she will do great, but I want to give extra prayer support.

I have enjoyed the reading that I have been doing. I have three more books until I pass up the person who is second in line on the List Challenge (they took off the person who said they had read all the books on the 1000 Books to Read Before You Die list - how could it be possible to read ALL of them unless you were the author of the book? They signed in as a guest. So, they took all the "guests" off the list.) The list is incomplete though. They have left off quite a few books, have the wrong books linked to it, and count a whole series as one book. All the people who made the list had to do was do the list in James Mustich's book, but I digress.) 

I am about halfway through my time. I have this 18th annotation group and a woman from another country. Then I have an hour break, and I have two friends coming from Seattle who are driving through on their way somewhere. We are going out for an early lunch. That will be so fun. I need to remind George that they are coming.

After that, I am free. I think I might read. It is always harder for me to read print books in the afternoon. My eyesight is not what it used to be, and some of these books have very small print, but I went to the eye doctor and am getting new lenses, not new frames, because I love these lightweight frames. So, I will be without my better corrected lenses for about a week. So, I think it will be audiobooks for the foreseeable future!

I am also doing great with my eating. I am on day 11 of recording. It has come easier than earlier in the year. I think I did about three weeks earlier in the year, but I am going for three months this time. We will see! 

I have to decide on when I am taking my 12-hour walk, if I should teach Pilates this summer, and where our family is going on vacation this year. 

I have the Boller Cohort next Tuesday and Wednesday, and my last Campfire for the 2HC on May 28th. Then I will be done with all the groups I lead. I will just have my final Pilates class and the final retreat for the 2HC, and everything will be done. 

I wonder what will be around the corner. I am embracing uncertainty. I love this. 

Memorial (1000 Books to Read)

I agree with James Mustich's assessment of this beautiful book. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Only 120 pages long, Memorial is a small book about a small life. Yet the reader who opens it will discover a story that is unforgettably moving in its sympathy, dignity, and desire to articulate the deepest human needs. Written by one of the most notable of Italy’s post-World War II writers, this enchanted autobiographical novel is steeped in the peasant culture of Camon’s native Veneto, an ageless and all-but-vanished way of life the author has left behind for the city and the twentieth century.

The Praise of Folly (1000 Books to Read)

This was very interesting. It is a work of satire and criticizes the Catholic Church. It is notoriously difficult to analyze. So I chose to simply enjoy it. Some have said it led to the Protestant Reformation.

I like that he was a dear friend of Sir Thomas More. There is much I liked about this book, and there is more I didn't really understand!

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Waspish, subversive, bitingly ironic, and endlessly entertaining, Praise of Folly has endured for five hundred years as a masterpiece of humanistic inquiry and opposition to dogmatism. The book begins as a straight satire. Folly, in the guise of a jester, speaks for herself in a parodic declamation, insisting she is the world’s greatest benefactor—desire, flattery, youth, and vitality all follow her lead, and Jupiter himself has to fall in behind her when he wants to father a child. When someone observes that no humans have ever built a house of worship for her, Folly first responds with a droll observation: “I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude.” Yet Praise of Folly soon pivots from this cheeky beginning, and the goddess becomes a mouthpiece through which the author propounds more serious themes. Half a millennium on, the power of Erasmus’s masterpiece has not waned; in fact, it’s both disturbingly and providentially relevant in our contemporary moment, when religious belief and humanistic scrutiny are often violently opposed. 

A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor (1000 Books to Read)

This 1967 book was about a country doctor, Dr. John Eskell (he is "Doctor Sassall" in the book). The village is St. Briavels in the Forest of Dean.

The video above is an interview with people from that area, 50+ years later. That was interesting.

Here is an article about the people from the area, many years later:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-47731653

It was philosophical in nature. I liked looking at the life of the doctor from his perspective. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

A Fortunate Man is one of several volumes Berger made in collaboration with the photographer Jean Mohr. An assemblage of narrative episodes, passages of biographical profile, and both poetic and philosophical speculation on the labors of an English country doctor named John Sassall, its quiet power is amplified by Mohr’s black-and-white images of Sassall, his patients, and the landscape in which they dwell. A carefully observed attempt to take the measure of the doctor’s influence on an impoverished community’s experience, A Fortunate Man is a probing meditation on medicine and meaning, conscience and commitment, and other matters of life and death.

My Brilliant Friend (1000 Books to Read)

It took me a while to get into this book, but once I was in, I was hooked! It helped that one of my favorite reality shows, The Amazing Race, was in Naples when I was attempting to "get into" the book. It helped me visualize the novel! 

It is a coming-of-age story following two friends from childhood to adolescence in post-World War II Naples, Italy. I plan on reading the whole trilogy. I want to follow these women. Of course, there is mistreatment by men. Is spousal abuse common and accepted in this culture or just in certain segments of society? I am curious. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

“We climbed slowly toward the greatest of our terrors of that time, we went to expose ourselves to fear and interrogate it.” So Elena Greco, called Lenù by those who know her, describes the adventure that cements her friendship with Raffaella Cerullo, known familiarly as Lina or Lila, a friendship that Lenù will narrate across six decades in the novels of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. The first novel in the series, My Brilliant Friend, is devoted to the girls’ school days and teenage years. It begins with them playing with their dolls and ends—in cliff-hanging form—in the middle of Lila’s tumultuous wedding. The apprehensiveness of childhood—the uncanny allure of dark cellars, the liberating mischief of stone throwing or shouting in a tunnel—is perfectly drawn, as are the classroom rivalries of girls and boys that foreshadow relationships between them that will develop and transform as elementary learning is outweighed by the lure and luck of circumstance.

The Physiology of Taste (1000 Books to Read)

Surprisingly, I really liked this quirky little book! The whole time I was reading, I thought, "Those French and their food!" It is SO important to them, and if you ever get to go to France, you will be GLAD they take such care with their food. It is a delightful experience to eat there, and the most amazing meal I have ever had was eaten there at this restaurant:

Bayeux, France

So I was delighted as I read with warm memories of our time in France in June 2018 and November 2019 in the Alsace region. Both delightful gastronomical adventures!

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Composed in aphorisms, anecdotes, and brief topical essays, The Physiology of Taste can be picked up at any time and opened to any page; it is a browser’s delight, best sampled serendipitously. The thirty “meditations” that make up the meat of the book cover a wide range of gustatory subjects, from underlying matters such as taste, the senses, and the pleasures of the table to overriding concerns such as the end of the world, sleep, dreams, death, and digestion. Brillat-Savarin’s appetite is catholic; he tackles turkeys, truffles, chocolate, and coffee with equal gusto. His penchant for theorizing is as French as his fondness for food, and he applies it to subjects as diverse as frying, gourmandism, obesity, and restaurants. Imagine a postprandial conversation, fueled by fine wine and cognac, with a worldly and loquacious uncle whose store of anecdote and eloquence seems endless, and you’ll approach the pleasures that await you in this quirky masterpiece. It is unrivaled to this day as a compendium of food lore, culinary observations, and philosophical ruminations on the art of eating and the art of living. Fortunately, because of the labors and inspirations of M. F. K. Fisher, Anglophone readers lose nothing in translation [Note from Carol: I read the free translation] for Fisher’s version of Brillat-Savarin’s chef d’oeuvre is not only exquisitely translated, but made immeasurably richer by her amplification of the text in her own notes and glosses. It is guaranteed to bring hours of diversion and delight—and perhaps even a few minutes of the promised transcendence—to any food-loving reader. 

Rosemary's Baby (1000 Books to Read)

Wow! I was three years old when the book came out. I was nine years old when the movie came out. I just remember hearing about it at that age and being scared of the movie. I never watched it. I will now. Man, what a page-turner! And I listened to Mia Farrow (Rosemary in the movie) narrate the book! It was so great. I was shocked when I read the reviews of one star on Goodreads. It is such a classic.

I will say that weird things like this DO GO ON! I cannot say I have heard of a baby being born of an intimate relationship with Satan, but many children are subject to Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). I work with many survivors. It is sick. It goes on in surprising circles. 

Read about the "curse" on the film.

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

The book begins with the most innocent of premises: A young Manhattan couple moves into a larger apartment as they get ready to start a family. Rosemary becomes pregnant just as her husband, a struggling actor, finally lands a Broadway role while becoming devoted to the eccentric elderly couple next door, who take Rosemary under their wing. Initial uneasiness at their ministrations turns into a growing suspicion of their motives, and Rosemary begins to imagine all sorts of dark doings. Or is she imagining them? The suspense ratchets up as what she expects while she’s expecting takes a diabolical turn—proving, of course, that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. The devil is in the details.

Wicked

I forgot to add this book to my 2025 books, and I read it back in January! How did I ever do that? It was interesting. It gave me more backstory to the movie we saw.  It is definitely a PG-13 book and not for kids. It is a strange take on The Wizard of Oz. Some people do not like that someone would take this classic and write something like this. It was OK, but I won't continue to read the whole series. 

Love the songs in the musical though, especially "Defying Gravity." 

The Andromeda Strain (1000 Books to Read)

I was 10 years old when this book became a bestseller, and a movie was made about it. It is well-written and a page-turner. It was worth reading, and I understand why it would be on the 1000 Books to Read List. I have the movie on hold from the library. I will say that some might get a little bored with all the technical and medical jargon.

I did make some connections to COVID-19.

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Although physician Michael Crichton previously published several pseudonymous novels, The Andromeda Strain was his first bestseller, and the storytelling élan it displayed would inform nearly four decades of inventive, often medically or scientifically minded thrillers. The combination of cutting-edge science and sheer narrative bravado breeds a kind of terror of discovery that puts his best efforts firmly in the lineage of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine or Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (a title Crichton would borrow for his prequel to Jurassic Park). In a word, they’re unputdownable.

Friday Fifteen Minute Freewrite

I am tired this morning. I know I have had too much time with people when I just want to crawl in a hole. It was all really wonderful time, but I am a true introvert, and it is time for me to recharge. I canceled a 4 pm appointment with someone yesterday. I had three early morning meetings in a row. Two out of three were group meetings. Then I had two other group meetings. One I was facilitating. The other I was participating in. 

All very good things, but I want so silence where I am not around others for a while.

Enter in my postponed trip to the Trappist Abbey in Lafayette (McMinnville), Oregon. It is 1300 acres of natural Oregon land. It has never been farmed. It is steep ascent to the top - I think it is 1200 feet, but I always love it. The weather is to be in the mid 60s, and that is superb hiking conditions. It also has housed comfortably situated on a man-made lake. I was to go the end of March, but the OSU Women's Basketball team made it into the NCAA play-offs. So, I decided to go ahead and postpone it, and the weather was cold and rainy that weekend. So I am grateful.

I am so tired. I really am so tired. I am better after hearing some very disturbing news about the state of one of my directee's coworkers. I think I have worked through it and am leaving it in the Lord's hands and praying that all that is in darkness will be exposed to the CLEANSING light of God's presence and mercy from the cross. Thank you, Jesus.

So, I am supposed to go to a meeting in 5 minutes, but that will mean I will have to rush to pack my bags when I get home after I teach my Pilates class, and I am not into rushing this morning, and the Lord knows that I am full-up on going to meetings. I am not sure what the purpose of the meetings are either. 

This Trappist abbey holds many memories for me - my first time with a 20 minute prayer sit 11 1/2 years ago. My time with Brother Mark (RIP) where I decided that spiritual direction was God's nudging direction. 

I think this time, I will write a lot. Last time, I drew and meditated on my Belovedness, and that was so fun, and this was the result:

I am done with my projects on YouTube now other than Pilates and Praise videos this summer. 

Summer - I am going to have so much more time because I will not have 

1) Sustainable Faith Boller Cohort Interning

2) Renovare Book Club Leading

3) 19th Annotation of the Exercises Spiritual Direction

4) 18th Annotation of the Exercises Spiritual Direction

5) 2HC Campfire and Retreats and Direction

6) OSU Pilates 

I am going to have so much more time!! I am not doing 2HC, Sustainable Faith, or Renovare next year, but I hope to have at least one 19th Annotation group! YAY!

Lord, I heard you say to "Cast my net on the other side of the boat" regarding Body and Soul Companion Spiritual Direction training. OK, I have three people that are on my heart. Would you please bring them to me? Two of them already responded positively when I reached out to them, not for director training but for spiritual direction. Now the third one is more difficult for me to reach out to. Please give me clarity. Hmm, P from the current one was interested in what I did. I will pray into that. 

A Rage in Harlem (1000 Books to Read)

The tangled web we weave. This was a compelling page-turner. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

A Rage in Harlem is the first in Chester Himes’s cycle of eight Harlem detective novels (nine if you count Plan B, unfinished at the time of his death), and it introduces the two cops—Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson—whose presence ties the books together, even if the duo plays a somewhat peripheral role here. The action of A Rage in Harlem centers on counterfeiting, theft, and confidence games, with all three types of deception applied equally to both love and money by characters hapless and savvy, seductive and scheming, helpless and swindling.

Molloy (1000 Books to Read)

I will watch this YouTube video to try to understand this absurd novel. I did not like it. Thankfully, it was shorter than many of the novels on the 1000 Books to Read List. 

Here is why James Mustich think you should read it:

Beckett's novel Molloy is a diptych of two long interior monologues that are part existential rumination, all shaggy dog story. By anatomizing thought and syncopating the progress of sentences with obsessive attention, Beckett creates a kind of awkward poise—an anomalous grace—on the stage of narrative. It is both precise and riveting, reveling in the humors and movements of language as it explores, with comic impulse and tragic obstinacy, “the crass tenacity of life and its diligent pains.”

Ragtime (1000 Books to Read)

Wow! This book was a compelling page turner. There are so many people living lives of "quiet desperation." I love how real-life people were woven throughout the book: J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, and Emma Goldman. It was a great read. It brings America in the early 1900s to life. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Ragtime is first and foremost a good read, animated with complex characters, real and invented, and several absorbing plotlines that intersect in the narrative’s ingenious design. The layering of fiction and fact, ephemera and history, headline news and private heartache is alluring, giving the book a surface glamour that is at once entertaining and compelling. Equally captivating are the juxtapositions of poverty and wealth, leisure and labor, sex and politics, idea and emotion. And although it is lucidly declarative, it is peculiarly told: There is a matter-of-factness to Doctorow’s prose, no matter how outlandish its content, that keeps the telling—appropriately enough given the book’s title—a little offbeat. The narrative itself is syncopated, playing off our expectations of history to present an entirely new music, one that holds us in thrall and creates no little sense of wonder.

Abandonment to Divine Providence

(I love this cover because it represents so clearly what the whole book is about - opening your hands to God and letting him have it all in each moment.) 

I loved that I could finally see the quote I have heard from Richard Foster for YEARS in its written context. Here is the quote:

 
I also have one that is more balloon as no water:

This book repeated itself a lot, but it is so infused with Ignatian principles (Caussade was a French Jesuit priest) that I loved the repetition (and I know how much Ignatius LOVED repetition). 

I am so glad I read it. It is all about abandoning oneself to God's presence in the present moment because that is all there is to do! I love that, and it has been the journey I have been on for 46 years, ever since what happened to me on the OSU campus at sunset. Here is the video:

God is so good to answer this prayer. I am more and more able to "be where my feet are"!