Making it Up As I Go

These posts is usually “Books I’ve read this month”, but I’m behind. So here’s what I’ve read in the last couple months.

Momfulness: Mothering with Mindfulness, Compassion, and Grace by Denise Roy: This was really good, though I can’t remember anything specific from it a the moment. But that should be chalked up to the fact that my mind is a sieve recently, not to the quality of the book. The title pretty much covers it, it’s full of ways to approach day to day mothering in a more mindful way. I will admit that the term “momfulness” kind of squicks me out. But that’s just me.
Time-Out for Parents: A Guide to Compassionate Parenting by Cheri Huber and Melinda Guyol : Another book about mindful parenting. (If you don’t know the term mindful, it’s all about being present in the moment, taking a step away from the immediate reaction to assess what is really happening rather than what your preconceived or conditioned notions are telling you is happening.) I adore Cheri Huber, she speaks my language. This book in particular is extraordinarily useful, as is her reminder to stop, take a breath, and look non-judgmentally at what’s happening inside of you and outside of you. And to do that over and over and over and over and over and over, and to do it every time you remember to do it, so that when you’re in a crazytown insane kid moment, you will do it automatically.
There Is Nothing Wrong with You by Cheri Huber: My dad brought me a box of stuff that I’d left at my parents’ house since college, and this book of Cheri’s was in it. Another fantastic one, this book centers on self acceptance and self compassion. She talks a lot about emotion, and how emotions aren’t good or bad, they’re just emotions, and if we can accept that, we can deal with the emotions rather than being controlled by them. Really excellent.
Family Math for Young Children – This is really a curriculum type book, but I read it cover to cover so I’m counting it. 🙂 It has some fantastic ideas for exploring math with kids. I’ll be doing most of the stuff in it with Z this summer.

I’ve also readLittle Wizard Stories of Oz by L.Frank Baum, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (again! I think this is the third time) with Z. Right now we’re reading the Mother West Wind ‘Why’ Stories by Thornton Burgess.

I’m in the middle of Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles Roth, which is lovely, and a biography of Thomas S. Monson, and it seems like something else as well. My reading has been really scattered lately, and a lot of it has been dabbling in different education and curriculum books. Hopefully more novels will make their appearances soon. I did just get The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown from the library- I’ve wanted to read it, so I was glad to see it hanging out on the new arrivals shelf.

I’m also working on a list for a new book club that I’ll be asking everyone to bring to the first meeting (if you’re one of them and you read my blog you get an early heads up!) – here’s some of my answers so far.

5 books you love

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

5 books you hate (or at least severely dislike)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Sunday Philosophy Club-Alexander McCall Smith

I’m sure there are 2 more…

5 books you’ve always meant to read

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

That’s it so far. And it’s time for me to go to bed. What are you reading? Any suggestions for me?