Living Unabridged

Obviously, June was not a good blogging month around here.

But it was a good month in other ways. And busy. Very busy. (VBS! Birthdays! Wedding! Anniversary!)

So, we'll call this catch-all post a WWW even though I haven't saved that many links since the last one. (Maybe everyone else has lost their blogging mojo at the same time? Hmm...)

Learning

• It's Up to You to Save the Humanities by Heidi White at CiRCE Institute.
• Flipping the Switch from Consumer to Producer by Jonathan Rogers at The Rabbit Room. I enjoy everyone associated with Andrew Peterson's Rabbit Room and since I'm trying to make myself make this switch, it definitely resonated.
• Speaking of affiliated with Andrew Peterson, if you haven't checked out Randall Goodgame's Slugs and Bugs, you should. Our children love these albums and we've started using some of them in our children's ministry at church.

Volume 3 is the most recent Slugs and Bugs Sing the Bible:

And the price is worth it just for "Man Shall Not Live By Bread Alone"

Living

• How to Care About Social Justice (Without Losing the Gospel) by Russell Moore. (Simple answer: be like Jesus.)
• One Year Later: Reflections on Life in the Face of Death by Courtney Reissig. Moving and thoughtful.
• File under, "Don't Do This": When Comforting Turns Selfish by Anna Smith.
• I have a sixteen year old and a thirteen year old. And parenting is different with teens. Not better or worse, just different. And we work with some teens at our church, too. So posts like this catch my eye: Your Gospel Toolkit to Help Teens by Paula Marsteller.
• Sobering look at incarceration and mental illness (content and language warning): This Place is Crazy by John J. Lennon. (A look inside Attica.)

Loving

• I haven't seen Infinity War yet. Why? Because I'm waiting for the next one to see how the story resolves. I'm mostly here (here = Marvel movies) because of Robert Downey Jr. anyway. And this post helps explain why: No One in Marvel's Universe Has a Character Arc That Compares to Tony Stark's from The A.V. Club.
• Why J. Peterman Catalogs Use Art Instead of Photographs by Emma Alpern at Racked. I lurve these catalogs and the descriptions in them.
• I don't watch Westworld (it's obviously full of things I do NOT want in front of my eyes), but this made me laugh anyway (mild content warning): Welcome to MidWest World from McSweeneys.
• Another one that made me laugh (possible content / language warning): Every State, Ranked By How Miserable Its Summers Are by Matt Lynch at Thrillist.

From Living Unabridged

Recent: Home
One year ago: Books About World War 2 for Kids and Teens
Two years ago: Favorite Fictional Fathers
Three years ago: An Epidural Queen's Guide to Natural Childbirth

Quick Lit for June:

Finished 9 books. (3 Nonfiction and 6 Fiction.)
1. Soulful Simplicity by Courtney Carver. Verdict: Ok. Went a lot deeper than "just put all your stuff in these cool containers".
2. The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith. Slow and a bit meandering, but thoughtful, as many of his books seem to be.
3. Blood Sisters by Jane Corry. Implausible and full of things that deserve the label "trigger warning".
4. I Know My Name by C.J. Cooke. Intriguing. I guessed some of the "twist" but as thrillers go, it's better than some.
5. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. Started off promising but didn't ultimately deliver. I wrote a longer Goodreads review because I definitely had Thoughts on this one. (The Kindle edition is just $1.99 today if you want to see for yourself.)

6. Notorious in the Neighborhood by Joshua Rothman. Could add this one to my Reading about Race and Slavery post.
7. Hitler's Monsters by Eric Kurlander. This one took the better part of two months to read, which is unheard of for me. It's meticulously researched but more academic than accessible. If you're not a WW2 historian this will probably not appeal.
8. Twenty-One Days by Anne Perry. An attempt to carry on the Pitt series with the next generation. It was...adequate. Perry (or her characters) make leaps of logic and the conversations are difficult to follow. Some of it is long past wearing thin.
9. Farthing by Jo Walton. Wow. This "alternative history" starts off like a cozy British mystery (a al Miss Marple or Poirot) with a Daisy Dalrymple type female protagonist and gradually becomes sinister and terribly tense. Couldn't put it down but I doubt I'll read the others in the series.

I hope each of you has a wonderful summer!

Resources: