"The Convivial Homeschool" by Mystie Winckler -- Guest Review

I reviewed The Convivial Homeschool for the homeschool blog Blest the House this week -- you can read my full review here.  Overall, I found it very helpful and encouraging.

I want to share my favorite parts here with you so you can get a taste of how good this book is.  And so I can refer to them whenever I need them.

Particularly Good Bits:

Our job isn't to figure out how to make everything go smoothly and easily; it's how to glorify God in all things (p. 14).

Tears are a normal response to difficulty.  However, we don't want to shelter our children from encountering difficulty.  Experiencing and overcoming hard work and natural consequences at home is a vital training ground for adult life when they will not have a mom smoothing their path for them (p. 22).

Our goal is to walk in step with the Holy Spirit, not to make each and every homeschool day conflict-free.  The goal needs to be handling inevitable conflict with the fruit of the Spirit (p. 24-25).

Sometimes homeschooling becomes not just our pet project but the core of our identity, causing us to take situations personally.  As Christians, our real identity is in Christ... Homeschooling is one way we serve God; it is not a part of who we are as people (p. 42).

...we think that choosing to homeschool means we are assuming control of and responsibility for how our children turn out (p. 47).

Being merry and festive is not the same thing as being lazy or carefree.  It is being cheerful and enjoying life while doing the work of life (p. 60).

Homeschooling is no solution to sin.  It does not prevent sin in any way.  It just changes the setting and the temptations (p. 76).

Even as we disciple our children through the phases of growing up, we, too, are being shepherded through our own idealistic, stubborn, or discouraged seasons by a Good Shepherd who knows exactly what we need and where we're going (p. 103).

It turns out that homeschooling is work.  It's much more than teaching; it is providing the structure that allows our children to build their work ethic and responsibility muscles (p. 109).

Not a single one of us is patient enough to homeschool (p. 159).

Kindness is love in little things, in our entire way of life with one another (p. 166).

Most of what we, as mothers, do all day is mundane: read a book, correct a child, make a meal, sweep a floor, change a diaper.  Our days are full of small tasks, but their smallness does not mean they are insignificant.  It is in these ways that we faithfully love our families; by loving them, we also faithfully love and glorify and enjoy God (p. 183).

Our role is not to impart everything they need to know... Our role is to see them, hear them, train them, love them, and hold them accountable (p. 194).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  No objectionable content here.

This was the 48th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

Austen in August -- Guest Post and Giveaway!!!

Oh my goodness, I don't know how posting about this has slipped through my fingers so often.  I'm guest posting this month at Roof Beam Reader in celebration of Austen in August!  My first post is up right here; it's a collection of my favorite Austen(ish) Books.  

(All pictures are mine from my Instagram account.)

And, as part of the fun, I'm hosting a giveaway over there.  What am I giving away?  A $20 gift card to Northanger Soapworks!  Yes.  It's true.  AND the giveaway ends at midnight Pacific Time TOMORROW, Wednesday, August 17.  So you NEED to get over there and enter!  Because, I don't know if you know this, but I am obsessed with Northanger Soapworks and her amazing candles and soaps.  I even repped for her several times on Instagram over the past couple of years.  

I've got one more guest post lined up for this event, but I won't tell you what it is yet.  I can only say that the party host said no one had ever contributed a post like it in the ten years the event has been going on... 

"Soldier On" by Vanessa Rasanen -- Guest Review on SDMW

Wow.  This book is intense.  It deals with the struggles faced by a married couple who are separated when the husband is deployed to the Middle East.  I love how it gives a clear picture of two Christians with mature faith who still struggle to live out their faith in their daily life.  

There are no easy answers provided here -- simply reading the Bible and praying and going to church don't fix every problem, though turning your back on Word and Sacrament certainly exacerbate troubles at times.  Depression and doubt are depicted realistically, but shown to be survivable, not the end of life or faith.

I've reviewed this book fully here on Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife, if you want to know more.  You'll also have a chance to enter a giveaway there!

Particularly Good Bits:

Church wasn't a place to go only when life was going well.

They might not be like other couples, attached at the hip and sickeningly cute, but this was them, with their own brand of marriage and love, however odd it might seem to the outside world.

She looked down into her mug, wishing she could disappear into the abyss, drown herself in coffee.  That would be a weird way to go.  Very Lutheran of you.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scenes of war violence and danger, soldiers using occasional crass language and making jokes about people's mothers, a realistic depiction of more than one kind of depression, and discussions of child neglect and a suspected suicide attempt.  Gritty, but not gruesome or gross.

I received a complimentary advance copy from the author, and in no way did I agree to provide a positive review in exchange.  These are my honest opinions.

(UPDATED 1-2-25 to include my full review below.)

This book is intense. 

Neither I nor my husband have ever been in the military, but I have several friends and relatives in various branches. Because we live not that far from Washington, DC, and there are Marine, Air Force, and Army bases close by, a sizable percentage of the people who attend our church are either current or former military personnel. So I can identify really well with this book in a second-hand way.

Meg Winters thinks she'll survive her husband Charlie's deployment to the Middle East just fine. She's been through deployments before. She's got good friends nearby, a warm and loving church family to help her, and besides, this is the modern day. She can chat with her husband online, face to face, quite regularly. It'll be a milk run. 

Charlie Winters is a little disappointed that his main mission overseas is to drive convoy trucks back and forth. He's been deployed before, and he has a lot of combat training and some combat experience. He feels like he's being wasted on these boring truck routes.

That could all be a recipe for a cozy, sweet, cheerful look at how living through a deployment isn't so bad. Or it could be the perfect ingredients for a story about the dangers of leaning on your own strength instead of God's and being careful what you wish for. Rasanen chooses the later path, and Soldier On dives deep and dark fairly quickly.

As Meg slides into depression over past sins and present heartaches, Charlie feels haunted by his own past struggles and present boredom. Throughout the story, both seek comfort and guidance from the Bible and their pastor, but both struggle mightily nonetheless. Rasanen avoids trite, easy answers like, "Pray more and you'll feel better" and acknowledges that sometimes God's "peace that passes all understanding" is not something we'll physically feel or mentally understand in this life, but something we know waits for us in heaven. She delves into serious problems like depression, guilt, and lying.

This story is haunting in its bare-knuckled honesty. I had to set it aside while my husband was away on a business trip because, even though he was just attending a conference a few states away, the book was impacting me so much, it felt like I was trying to survive a deployment myself. That is powerful, stirring writing.

Throughout the book, the issue of vocation surfaces again and again. Being a husband, wife, friend, soldier, mother, and neighbor are all touched out, and the characters work to fulfill their God-given roles in realistic ways. And all of them are approached from a solidly Lutheran standpoint, which I greatly appreciated. 

 Don't let all my talk about realism and serious problems dissuade you from reading this book! It ends happily, I promise. It's the first book in a planned series, and I look forward to seeing what Rasanen writes next.

My Review of "Pew Sisters" by Katie Schuermann on Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife

Just dropping in for a minute or two to let you know that I've written a review of this awesome Bible study book aimed specifically at women, and you can read my review right here on one of my favorite blogs, namely Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife.  

Pew Sisters was written for small-group Bible studies, but you could also use it on your own for personal devotions.  

Guest Post for the Little House Blog Party

I've got a guest post up today on Ashley's blog, A to Z.  It's my review of the Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker, and you can read it here.  Ashley asked me to write up the post as part of her Little House Blog Party that's running all this week, and I was happy to be able to contribute :-)  I've loved the Little House books for as long as I can remember! 

If you haven't checked out the blog party yet, please do so!  The kick-off post is here, which includes a giveaway and a tag to copy and fill out.  I posted my tag answers here on my other blog :-)

Guest Post About Anne Shirley

I've written a guest post for Eva's Lucy Maud Montgomery Week, and you can read it here on her blog :-)  

I'm really getting excited about re-reading all the Anne books next year!  And I think that will work so nicely for the Women's Classic Literature Event that I just posted about. 

Guest Review on SDMW: "Luther and Katharina" by Jody Hedlund

I'm very excited to announce that I have written a book review for the excellent Christian blog Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife!  I've been following that blog for over a year, and it has provided me with a lot of inspiration and encouragement, as well as moments of soul-searching.  

Anyway, I've reviewed Luther and Katharina by Jody Hedlund for SDMW because it's a Lutheran-focused blog (though I'm quite sure it would interest many of my blogging friends who are not Lutherans too -- it focuses primarily on Christian vocation) and obviously, that book is about Martin Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora.  You can read my post here.

(UPDATE on 1-2-25 to include my full review.)

Luther and Katharina, by popular Christian novelist Jody Hedlund, is a fictional account of how Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora met and married. I had high hopes for this book because, from what I have learned of them over the years, both Martin and Katie were unusual, strong-minded individuals who made difficult decisions and lived through some extraordinary circumstances. I knew that a fictional retelling of their lives could be fascinating, thought-provoking, and inspiring. Having read a few non-fiction biographies of them both years and years ago, I was eager to see what kinds of deeper insights a novelization could provide. I was hoping for a book about a real relationship instead of yet another formulaic romance.

Luther and Katharina begins promisingly, following Katie as she flees the convent where she has lived since a child. She and several other nuns have read Luther's writings in secret, and some of them have been severely punished for daring to do so. Luther, himself a former monk, insists that married life as a layman is no less holy than serving God in a monastery or nunnery. He has been adjuring monks and nuns to leave monastic life if they feel a desire to marry and start families, and many do so. Roman Catholic officials see their power threatened and strike out toward any monks and nuns who might be trying to rejoin the world. The first few chapters of the book are like a suspense novel, as Katie and her friends elude their would-be captors several times on their way to Wittenberg, where Dr. Luther teaches, preaches, and lives.

Hedlund expertly illuminates the world of Reformation Germany--her details and descriptions are evocative and realistic. I greatly enjoyed the way she wrote about the physical world around the characters, as well as the current events such as the Peasant's Revolt. And her characters are also well-rounded. In addition to Katie and Martin, many other names from history, like Phillip Melancthon and Justus Jonas, are attached to fully-realized, interesting characters.

However, for the most part, the characters bearing those names felt much too modern in their thoughts, actions, and attitudes. Now, I'm not adverse to tossing some modernity into a historical story to help present-day audiences understand how people long ago were similar to people today. However, Martin and Katie in particular could have been interchanged with any longing-to-be-together-but-having-lots-of-misunderstandings couple from any romantic novel you can think of. They felt too much like standard romance characters who happened to share names and circumstances with a couple of historical figures. Also, I can't recall ever reading anything that even implied that Katie's first suitor, Jerome Baumgartner, was only courting her because he was a womanizer who wanted to deflower the former nun. 

I'm afraid this book felt like yet another sensationalization of a true story. It dismisses the truly interesting depth and richness of the people involved in favor of more conventional development.

All of which means that overall, I was disappointed by Luther and Katharina. Technically, it was well-written, but it felt too much like any other historical romance. I wanted to learn about how the strong-willed, salty-tongued, endlessly intelligent Martin Luther came to marry equally strong-willed, fiercely practical, outspoken Katharina von Bora. Instead, I got two lonely, conflicted people who spent far too much time necking and daydreaming about physical intimacy. I was uncomfortable with how much detailed sensuality was included. Hedlund never quite crossed the line into eroticism, but she came awfully close several times.

If you're a fan of Christian historical romance and think of this not as a novelization of the relationship between two very real and unusual people, but simply fiction, it's probably a fine book. But for me, it deviated too far from what I have learned about the real Luthers to enjoy the changes Hedlund has made.

Guest Post about "Persuasion" by Jane Austen

Naomi kindly asked me to contribute a guest post for her Jane Austen Week extravaganza, and she let me write about my favorite Jane Austen novel, Persuasion.  My post is here on her blog, Wonderland Creek.  I hope you enjoy it :-)

(Source)

Soundtrack Review Guest Post

I usually announce these over on my Soliloquy blog, but today I thought I'd mention it here because I know a lot of people who read this blog are into Jane Austen.  I write guest posts about movie soundtracks for the blog J and J Productions on a pretty much weekly basis right now, and this week, I've reviewed the music in Pride & Prejudice (2005).  You can read my post here.

Guest Post about Anne Elliot from "Persuasion"

I've written a character sketch of Anne Elliot, my favorite Austen heroine, for Heidi's Persuasion read-along.  You can read it here.

Thanks for letting me write this post, Heidi!

Guest Blogging about "Anne of Green Gables"

I wrote a short review of the 1985 movie version of Anne of Green Gables for The Book Chewers blog, and you can read it here.  :-)

Megan Follows as Anne Shirley

Guest Post on The Book Chewers

Hey, guess what?  I'm the guest blogger on The Book Chewers today!  Go here to read my post about my three favorite non-canonical Sherlock Holmes books.