Category: Book reviews

So good.

I serve as a Sunday school teacher right now and I’m reading this excellent book as a supplement to my study of the Old Testament.

Also, this is very good. The hard cover, coffee table book, color edition is out of print, so I bought it used. Deseret Book will print a black and white paperback copy for around $30 but it isn’t the same experience as the original version.

I realize that my life and ideas don’t have the Sirens’ call of a TikTok video. As I read books like this, I grow less trendy, and more like those old men in the ward of my youth who couldn’t stop talking about the Abrahamic Covenant. I’m more aligned with them these days than any other mentors in my life, and I like that about myself.

This is also very good.

Daily doses

I have learned that short daily routines are powerful and effective for improving myself. A daily habit of reading one author or one subject for a period of time is a wonderful way to grow.

One year, I read A Year with C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classical Works. As I spent about five minutes with this great thinker each day, I was inspired to articulate faith in a clearer, more persuasive way. It didn’t matter that I had already read many of his books. These short readings were a steady dose of brilliance each day.

I have enjoyed other daily readings, such as Russell M. Nelson’s Daily Joy, and Clemency Burton-Hill’s Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day. Each of these informed and inspired me and gave me a sense of accomplishment each time I read. Dopamine! Yay!

My daily dose of culture for 2026 is Shakespeare. So far, I have floundered to understand my daily readings, but when something makes sense, a mark is made on my heart. I think that I’ll be able to comprehend Shakespeare better as I continue to spend time with him.

I’m most successful if a new daily goal is brief so can be linked easily to my established routines. I learned somewhere that this is called habit stacking. Basically, the idea is to link a goal to something you are already doing. For example, I have an established morning routine, so I might choose to add a 5-10 minute goal during that time.

An ongoing goal of mine is to simply read one page each day. That gets me into a book, then I end up reading much more. It’s an overtly minimal goal, but it’s effective.

Small daily acts give a better picture of where I’m headed than the things I do occasionally, in the past, or plan to do someday. Brief minutes add up to a lifetime.

Helpful.

If you do the work to follow the author’s thought journey, this book will give to you some validation for your views and give you a framework to understand your neighbor’s views. Daniel recommended this one and I am so glad that I read it.

current reading and current mood

Last week, I gathered some of my books that I found in various places throughout the house. I realized that I am in the process of reading 10 books, and that’s probably a personal record. I can predict the books that I will finish first and the ones that will change me. They are not the same. 😏 There are many purposes for reading, and my 10 books represent that.

I am in a phase of life where I can do a lot of reading, but my book count doesn’t reflect that. Even though I am reading 10 books at once, I am still finishing them at about the same rate. So, there is no magic when the children leave home. I am still the same person with the same habits. The only real change is that I’ve lost some zeal and capacity to do some things that once came easily for me.

It’s just a very quiet, baffling time of life.

And with that happy thought, I will go pull a bucket of weeds in the yard and see what the sky and earth can teach me about seasons and life and new growth. After a few more tasks, you’ll find me reading. 🙂

Wrapping up 2024

I’ve been journaling about the following questions to wrap up the year. They are adapted from several lists I have seen online.

  • How do you describe your discipleship of Christ in 2024? How do you want to improve?
  • What did you lose and gain this year?
  • What is something difficult that you overcame?
  • Who influenced you the most?
  • What are you most proud of this year?
  • What habit or routine had the biggest impact on your life?
  • What’s the most prominent emotion you felt this year?
  • What was your biggest source of stress and how did you handle it?
  • How did Jesus Christ show up in your life this year?
  • What is a life lesson you learned in 2024 that you want to take forward?
  • What good things have you done as a colleague, a leader, a spouse, a friend? How can you improve?
  • What’s something you want to leave behind?
  • What are some small daily practices that can help in the biggest area you are struggling with?

I’ve also been looking over the books that I read during the year. It was a slow and steady year of reading. Here is what I read in 2024, with my favorites in bold:

The books I read this year

Wishing you a happy New Year!

Wintering

I read an interesting book by Katherine May recently. It was a memoir of a time of severe health challenges that forced her to “winter” for a while. She used examples from nature to describe the necessity of winters, plus strategies to get through a season of darkness or change. She discovered that there was wisdom and a new life to be found as she faced her winter.

Transformation is the business of winter.

The loose communities that we find in spiritual or religious gatherings were once entirely ordinary to us, but now it seems more radical to join them, a brazen challenge to the strictures of the nuclear family, the tendency to stick within tight friendship groups, the shrinking away from the awe- inspiring. Congregations are elastic, stretching to take in all kinds of people and bringing up unexpected perspectives and insights. We need them now more than ever.

But if happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.

In our winter, a transformation happened. We read and worked and problem- solved and found new solutions. We changed our focus away from pushing through with normal life and towards making a new one. When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs. That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.

Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us.

All quotes are from Katherine May’s Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat during Difficult Times.

I Finished this.

What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?” “Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced— from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.”

“I too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed me all the kingdoms of the world, and as he said before, so said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I reflected long, for a gnawing ambition had long preyed upon me, and then I replied, ‘Listen,— I have always heard of Providence, and yet I have never seen him, or anything that resembles him, or which can make me believe that he exists. I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.’ Satan bowed his head, and groaned. ‘You mistake,’ he said, ‘Providence does exist, only you have never seen him, because the child of God is as invisible as the parent. You have seen nothing that resembles him, because he works by secret springs, and moves by hidden ways. All I can do for you is to make you one of the agents of that Providence.’ The bargain was concluded. I may sacrifice my soul, but what matters it?” added Monte Cristo. “If the thing were to do again, I would again do it.”

“Count,” said Morrel, “you are the epitome of all human knowledge, and you seem like a being descended from a wiser and more advanced world than ours.” “There is something true in what you say,” said the count, with that smile which made him so handsome; “I have descended from a planet called grief.”

Friends, this was a fun summer read. My dentist recommended it after he realized that I was a reader. You never know where you might find a good book recommendation.

If you decide to take on this mammoth book, I have two suggestions: First, read the Penguin Classics edition, as this translation is great, and second, keep notes on people and families. Begin with the four people who betray Edmund Dantes and their families and friends. Trust that each named character has a part to play throughout.

Children’s Book Illustrator

Little Baby McLaughlin will be lucky to have Paige as a mom for many reasons. She knows how to raise boys, she is patient and gentle, she is a woman of faith, and she is an artist. It is fun for children to watch a parent draw something well. I bet he will ask her to draw all kinds of things and he will be delighted with the results. Lucky baby.

These children’s books were illustrated by Paige and they were privately published, so they are not available for sale. They were my Christmas presents. I am such a fan of Paige’s work. 💕

To see some of her work, you can look at her website, paigemclaughlinart.com.