It’s the holidays and sometimes a girl likes to have time to read. The new term looms ahead and I know I’ll be sorting out curriculum soon (especially as I now have a newly arrived reconditioned laptop-so no excuses).
At the moment I am reading three books. Iona has lent me her copy of Regina Doman’s “The Shadow of the Bear” which I am just coming to the end of. I highly recommend this book for anyone with a teenage daughter. Perhaps even a younger child might enjoy it; but it is aimed at the teens and I have to say it is a breath of fresh air to have a book that is well written and not sleazy or pushing some other anti-family agenda. It is modern without some of the stilted language Iona finds so off putting in other books I have offered her to read.
She is still reading Draculaat the moment but I don’t think she is much of a Bram Stoker fan from the way she talks about it. Hehehe. She says the book started well, but it is grinding on a bit now it is near the end. They eat breakfast and look meaningfully at each other far too often, she tells me and Van Helsing seems to her to have verbal purple passage. Josh loved the book. I’m afraid I have never read it.
“Shadow of The Bear” is a wonderfully imaginative retelling of the Grimm tale of “Snow White and Rose Red”. Mrs Doman has done this without loosing any of the flavour of the original story.
I am looking forward to reading the other ones and have just ordered Iona her latest book “Midnight Dancers”.
My second book is Volume One of G.K.Chesterton Collected Works. It consists of Heretics, which I have read, Orthodoxy, which I am half way through (although I have read Orthodoxy before) and The Blatchford Controversies. You gotta love Mr Chesterton-the man who just makes you want to highlight half of what he writes because it all MEANS something.
His explanation of how he came to be Christian because of all the anti-Christian arguments being so directly contradictory is a magical piece of logic and yet somehow there is always something child like about his writings (not childish you understand-but child like; innocence without naivety. I don’t quite know how to describe it) Anyway, as with all things Chestonian I am feeling grey matter being stretched.
The third book is Living with Fibromyalgia by Christine Craggs-Hinton. I got it from the library. It’s a small book but packed with good advice about how to deal with chronic pain and fatigue. Having found this book so helpful I have been inspired to buy a second hand copy of the Fibromalgic’s bible Fibromyalgia and Chrinic Myofascial Pain Syndrome A Survival Manual by Devin Starlanyl and Mary ellen Copeland I haven’t read it yet. I’ll tell you what I think when I do. Interestingly the myofascial pain I have so often was picked up on by one of the neuros and he said how odd that was as it isn’t an MS symptom. What could I say? I have a lot of it; but it’s one of the major symptoms in FMS.
So that is my present reading.
As I type Iona is reading Roald Dahl’s Dirty Beasts to an enthralled Heleyna, who loves being read to.
The gcse results were out today. In the past we have had to wait a little longer for international gcse results. However today Iona received a phone call from the exam centre. She has achieved a grade B.
Thinking Love, No Twaddle 