Thursday, January 17, 2013

New Favorite Quotes

I was reading De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde and I found some quotes I really like. I just can't remember which device I was reading it on as I recently got a couple of new magic rocks, but maybe the magic rocks are smart enough to keep my place across all my devices like the apps say they can. In fact, I had forgotten that I was reading this until I found a piece of paper on which I had written these quotes. It was the first free e-book I downloaded, after getting a magic rock that can do such things! I love free books!

Anyway, the quotes:

"If I got nothing from the house of the rich I would get something at the house of the poor. Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little always share."

~

"...as long as I am free from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face the life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me sick with hate."

~

"...when you really want love you will find it waiting for you."

~

And then I had to look up the word Antinomian which means: a person who maintains that Christians are freed from the moral law by virtue of grace as set forth in the gospel.

Hmm... that sounds like license to do whatever the heck you want because you're already saved. I had never heard that before, obviously, but I don't think that's what Christ intended to happen because of his grace and probably also why we're taught that grace without works is dead. Professing to believe in Christ and then acting un-Christlike is the ultimate hypocrisy. Something against which all who believe in God must guard, because none of us have achieved the perfection that Christ has, but we can all try every day to be a little better than we were the day before and His grace is sufficient for us all, if we repent. See, repenting is the work we must do to go along with the grace that He has given us with His atonement.

That being said, I found the next quote humorous, though I didn't copy it word for word, (except for the part in quotation marks) because I didn't find it uplifting, but it was something to the effect of:

I want to found an order for those who cannot believe, the Confraternity Of The Faithless, and "praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man."

I think this last quote from De Profundis is very profound. {chuckle}

"I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me."

To quote Captain Picard, "Make it so."

Friday, January 11, 2013

A Look Back at Books

What did I read last year?

I felt like I didn't read very many books last year. There was that whole moving to a new house thing that happened last February and it's accompanying packing and unpacking and all that good stuff.

However, looking over my list on GoodReads, it looks like I read 33 books, one of which was a re-read (Here Lies the Librarian). I also partly re-read two other books for the book group I joined after moving. I didn't completely re-read those, so I don't really count them, since for one I just watched the movie (The Help), but the other was Walden, by Thoreau, so I think reading even half of that would count as reading an entire easier book, but I digress.

So, that is almost three books per month, unless, there were some that I forgot to enter on GoodReads, which is possible since I'm just now getting around to updating books that I've read since November.

At the urging of my kids, I read:
The Hunger Games trilogy, (a gripping series, but so sad), and
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, (which I found more enjoyable than the movies because they miss some of the humor, though Tolkien can get a bit wordy with his descriptions)
preceded by The Hobbit (my favorite of the series).

I also really enjoy my book group for expanding my reading horizons and giving me a deadline to aim for in reading:
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, by Wendy Mass (which led me to other books by this author Every Soul A Star, [loved!] and Leap Day [not my favorite due to typical teenage behavior content, but the way she told the story was interesting])
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Orczy (enjoyable classic, old-fashioned spy novel)
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, by Smith (enjoyable [mystery?])
Seeking Persephone, by Eden (enjoyable light romance)
Life's Lessons Learned; Personal Reflections by Oaks (enjoyable non-fiction)
Cold Comfort Farm, by Gibbons (enjoyable after a few chapters, set in England in the past's future)
These Is My Words, by Turner (also enjoyable after a few chapters, set in Arizona territory where some tough things happened).

At the urging of a friend, I read Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris, which I highly recommend to all teenagers and leaders and teachers of teens. Actually, it is good for everyone to read, though it is aimed at teenagers it doesn't talk down to them and its lessons are applicable to everyone.

I'm not going to list every book I read, for the sake of brevity. I will say I love Shannon Hale's novels and I enjoyed three Grisham novels last year.

I have so many books I'm looking forward to reading this year, I think it's safe to set the goal of reading three and a half books per month, that would be 42 books this year, but I don't want to stress about it, so I'm reconsidering actually setting that goal.

I do have a goal to re-read The Book of Mormon at least once this year, perhaps twice.

What was the most memorable book you read last year?