Here is a little tasting of recent books that I have read while watching my son play at the pool.
If you are in the mood for just some fun lightreading try:
The Romantic Obsessions & Humiliations of Annie Sehlmeier by Louise Plummer
I have read three of Louise Plummer’s young adult fiction books and enjoyed all three. This one and
The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkrnan are just goofy fun!
For the rest of the week I sat behind Woolley and weighed the risks of leaning forward and kissing the back of his smooth neck. The smell of his aftershave hovered under my nose, made me dizzy. What exactly would the rest of my life be like if I kissed that stunning neck? Planted both lips on his skin and left them there like some sucking leech? I pictured the newspaper headlines, GIRL’S LIPS STUCK TO BOY’S NECK. Once I craned my head forward, and Jack leaned over to ask if I had a headache.
Jack was the confusing thing. I still thought him attractive. I still wanted to be around him. He smiled at me, and a warm dizziness took hold of me.
I am crazed, I thought. Soon, I will love every boy in this school. I’ll walk with my tongue extended like a sloppy dog and drool over their looks, their smiles, their poetic greetings: “Hi ya, Annie.”
For a little spiritual thought provoking reading try:
The Shack by Wm. Paul Young
“You know that place: where there is just you alone – and maybe God, if you believe in him. Of course, God might be there even if you don’t believe in him. That would be just like him. He hasn’t been called the Grand Interferer for nothing.”
“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”
“Faith does not grow in the house of certainty.”
“I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”
“Well, I sort of feel obligated to go in and talk to him” (Mack said referring to Heavenly Father)
“Oh” – now Jesus was serious – “don’t go because you feel obligated. That won’t get you and points around here. Go because it is what you want to do.”
If you enjoy historical fiction with some romance try:
These is my Words by Nancy E. Turner
“I keep looking in on him and touching his hands and he squeezes me ever so softly, then I go so he can’t see me crying over him. My head aches bad. I asked Papa couldn’t we turn back and go home. He set his hand on my arm, and said, Girl, there’s never any turning back in life. But don’t you worry, he says. The Lord is watching over us. Then I felt real hollow and low and mean. If He is a watching us, I wish He’d lend a hand now and then.”
“I turned to Jack Elliot and said, If you are too tired to haul water, you are too tired to bathe in it, and I am fit to be tied. Your supper is on the stove and your children are driving me to distraction and April has lost the scissors under the house through a crack in the floor so there will be no haircut tonight. If that don’t please you, then I will put on a uniform and ride out of here tomorrow morning and chase around the countryside and you can wear this apron and tend these crying children and this drafty house from dark to dark and then tell me you think I should haul you a bath.”
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
I had seen the movie years ago with my daughters. I didn’t realize the movie was based on a book - actually very loosely based if you want my opinion. The only resemblance the movie has with the book is that the premise and the names of the main characters are the same. My daughter said I would probably enjoy the book, and she was right. It was a fun and easy read.
This past week I was in the mood for something chocolaty. I decided to use up some of the zucchini that was collecting on my kitchen counter and try a chocolate zucchini cake. I don’t have a favorite recipe for chocolate zucchini cake, and so I tried a new recipe that I found on the internet. There were literally hundreds of recipes that combined zucchini and chocolate. My favorite zucchini bread recipe was easily adapted to whole wheat flour, and so I figured whatever recipe I used would turn out well with whole wheat instead of all-purpose flour. I liked the flavor of the cake, but the texture was more like a quick bread recipe than a fluffy cake. My husband ate the majority of this cake. He loved the flavor and thought it was incredibly moist, but I think the middle section must have been a little too moist because he cut all around it.
