Summer Reading Challenge Update

Done

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Murder at Markham by Patricia Houck Sprinkle
The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne
When All the World Was Young by Barbara Holland
Romeo and Juliet
The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition by E. Christian Kopff

Remember, for the most part you can find the books you need in public libraries, in paperback editions in ordinary bookstores, and in used bookstores. Acquiring Greek and Latin does not cost a lot of money, but it does involve getting up from your seat in the cave and walking out into the sun. As Plato told us, that decision will involve effort and even some pain, because at first the intellectual sunlight is too bright for our minds. So do not expect encouragement from other people in the cave. Getting into the sun does not bring you money or position in life. It does bring you a quality of life you can't find elsewhere; a different type of life, a higher kind of life, under the bright and warm sun that sends its rays streaming to us from the Mediterranean.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Yes, done! It's going back on the shelf, but I anticipate a re-read when the time is right and when I can read in larger chunks.

Blue Shoes and Happiness, Alexander McCall Smith

I lost interest in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books awhile ago, but found this on the shelf by the library door. It was the perfect time for a gentle story, complete with appreciation for the "traditionally built woman." Loved it.

The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde

If you are unfamiliar with Fforde's Thursday Next books, I suggest you start withThe Eyre Affair and move through the series. Funny and creative.

In Progress

Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine by Dorothy Sayers.

Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education by David Hicks

On the Art of Writing by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

Still to come:

Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis

The Iliad by Homer