Historical Reading

I enjoy reading historical novels. I was going to say especially about the frontier, but then I thought of a bunch of other especiallys =) so I'll just say that I enjoy reading historical novels. Period. The one I'm reading now is the third in a trilogy by Nancy E. Turner. The books chronicle the fictionalized story of Turner's grandmother as she makes a life for herself in the Arizona Territory in the early 1900s.


The first book, These is my Words, is one of my all-time favorite books ever. I cried and cried through much of it, not because it was so sad, but because it was so beautiful. Written in diary form, you really get to the heart of Sarah Prine's struggles to persevere through all kinds of challenges. Her first marriage was a loveless one, but her second one was amazing. I could not believe that such a relationship could exist...and yet, as I said, it was based on a real-life story.

I did not like the second book, Sarah's Quilt, as much. The love of Sarah's life died, so if felt like much of the heart of the story fell away. But this third one, The Star Garden, is pretty good. Not as good as the first. I don't think anything could come close to that, but I'm enjoying this one. Trouble is, the only time I have to read during the week is right before I go to bed. And here it is almost 11:15 and I'm still up writing...which means it will be at least 11:3o before I can read...and I have to get up at 5:30....so I don't read all that long. Sigh....

Anyway, if you like stories that have good adventure and a deep, true love while showing what what life was like in another era, I highly recommend this series. I understand there is a fourth one on the way. I know I'll be looking for it!

Birthdays, Vocabulary, and Free Rice

One of the things I love about holidays is the family time. I've had a fair amount of it the past three weeks, but of course it's never enough. Not when you enjoy being together the way our family does. Yesterday, we gathered at my youngest sister's home to celebrate her birthday as well as our father's. It was her actual birthday; his is three weeks away, but we wanted to celebrate while we had the whole family together.

We had a great time, talking, eating, and watching family videos. That's another favorite thing we do together. Most often we do this on New Year's Eve, but this was a good opportunity to look back on the fun we've had together, so we took it. We looked at our trip to Norway the summer of 2005, and when the "kids" were very young and sweet and cute and funny. My, that was fun!

On the way home, my oldest niece, the one who goes to college in TN (and who went back this afternoon) told me about a fun and challenging website that she recently discovered. It's called Free Rice and it combines a vocabulary game with a UN project to give rice to underprivileged countries. It works like this (from the website):

• Click on the answer that best defines the word.
• If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word.
• For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

"WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance..."

It's quite addicting. After I got home, I went to the site and started playing. I couldn't stop! I wanted to keep earning free rice for someone. In the first hour, I got up to level 47 and had earned over 4,000 grains of rice. Very cool!