Forgive me if the blog is starting to read like a ‘what I did this summer essay.’ I’m playing catch up after 2 months off of blogging. I know it’s kind of a brain dump, but it’ll take a minute before I’m all dumped emptied out.

So, from the list I posted on July 8th, here’s what I’ve finished:

1. The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling
I managed to finish this interesting book on a schedule of a chapter a day, along with some of the other books. It didn’t offer practical hints as much as refreshing for the journey. There were some tips, but as I’m currently reading Homeschooling at the Speed of Life, which is full of practical tips for organizing your home and your life, the Imperfect Homeschooler book seems more like an outline of good ideas.

2. Mansfield Park
This book nearly derailed my summer reading, because I found it so compelling that I stopped reading everything else just to finish it. In fact, I practically stopped doing everything else; I just lay around reading about Fanny Price and company. I was very excited by the conclusions drawn in the prologue. Jane Austin was a genius. After I finished Mansfield Park, I went to the library and checked out a book about Jane Austin herself, as well as a volume with two other novels, Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. I was subsequently compelled to put Jane away for the summer and finish some other books.

3. Winning by Losing
I will probably need to read this one again, as it’s more an action book than a reading book. I had started it before summer, and was pleased to finish it amidst Jane Austin and all the American Girls books I’d ingested with my little girls.

Sadly, I only finished three of the original list of seven books. I am still reading the Charlotte Mason book. The good news here is that I’m working my way through it. There are a lot of references and heavy concepts therein.

I am even slower in devouring Pilgrim’s Progress and The New Rules of Marketing and PR, but I am still working on them. I already mentioned that I’m still working on Homeschooling at the Speed of Life.

I have also made my life harder by adding a couple books: Brave New World, which is fascinating, and Paula White’s The Ten Commandments of Health and Wellness with Dodd Romero, which is inspiring.

And as summer folds into fall, so my reading list metamorphoses; it continues, and grows, hopefully not carrying me into winter as well. . .

By the way, the children finished both libraries’ reading games as well. This is the first year that Joy and Esteban earned a t-shirt, so they were happy about that. Imani won her second t-shirt, and finished the local game early. Xavier enrolled in the game, and reported enough to earn the tiny flashlight, but he was not interested in the other prizes enough to go for them. He did spend much of the summer reading and riding his bike back and forth from the library, but he also took Chinese this summer, and wrote an opinion piece for the local newspaper, so he gets a pass on the summer reading program. I won a gift certificate to a bookstore in the Portage reading game, so that was exciting. I have yet to win in the Kalamazoo game. This year, the Kalamazoo prizes especially seemed affected by the recession. The adult game is usually good for a nice tote bag, but this year I got a seed packet for signing up. Nice.