Africa: Natural Spirit of the African Continent, Gill Davies

Africa, Gill Davies

This is a large format coffee table type book. It covers every country in Africa, giving information on history, the people, land, flora, and fauna, and includes gorgeous photography. Africa is near and dear to my heart, as I have visited Kenya twice. I have stayed in Nairobi, Masai Mara, and been near the base of Mt Kilimanjaro ( while still being in Kenya. I have slept ill on a little cot out on the country outside of Nairobi, and have braved the slums (with guides). I have waded in Lake Turkana and been a guest at a goat roast in our honor in a little Turkana village.What little I have experienced of Africa, I know that it is full of beautiful and amazing people. Yes, the animals are amazing as well, but in my opinion, it is the people that bring such beauty to the country.

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Her Daughter's Dream, Francine Rivers

 

Her Daughter's Dream, Francine Rivers

Her Daughter's Dream is the continuing story of the lineage of Marta, Hildemara, Carolyn, and May Flower Dawn and the mistakes they made that drove wedges between them, while they all desired to be loved and understood by each other. This book takes us through Carolyn and May Flower Dawn's lives, their heartaches and their joys as they seek to build a bridge between the generations.

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Books I have read in 2023

 Another year, another tally of books! This year I am not counting books of the Bible as part of my total until I have read the Bible completely through.

JANUARY

Her Daughter's Dream, Francine Rivers

Africa: Natural Spirit of the African Continent, Gill Davies

The Spark: Get Fit and Lose Weight, Dr. Glenn Gaesser and Karla Dougherty

FEBRUARY

Michelangelo, Elizabeth Elias Kaufman

John Martin's Big Book 2, John Martin

The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko

MARCH

Let's Make a Memory, Gloria Gaither and Shirley Dobson

APRIL

Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss

The Road to Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson

Let's Make Some Great Art, Marion Deuchars

Painting Horses in Oil, Cindy Larimore

MAY

Legendborn, Tracy Deonn

Floor Sample, Julia Cameron

Everyday Millionaires, Chris Hogan

Imperial Woman, Pearl S. Buck

JUNE

101 Workouts for Women, by Muscle & Fitness

The New Basic Reader: The New Our New Friends

JULY

An Introduction to Oil Painting, Ray Smith

The Illustrator's Notetaking Bible

What Hollywood Believes, Ray Comfort

AUGUST

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

SEPTEMBER

Weekly Reader Collection 1953/54

Bloodmarked, Tracy Deonn

OCTOBER

The Man Who Wanted Stars, Dean McLaughlin

Fix Freeze Feast, Kati Neville, Lindsay Tkacsik

NOVEMBER

The Golden Son. Shilpi Somaya Gowda

The Book of Creation, Pierre-Marie Beaude

DECEMBER

Japanese Folktales, Yei Theodora Ozaki

On the Beach, Nevil Shute

The Memory Weaver, Jane Kirkpatrick

2023 total books read: 30

2022 total books read: 36

Would you like to buy me a book, or help keep my little free library stocked and maintained? You can donate here: paypal.me/AmyVanGaasbeck 

Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher

Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher

I grew up with Princess Leia. As a child born in the mid-1970s, I was a Star Wars Kid. I had an older brother and a younger brother and both were obsessed with Star Wars. They had almost all the original figures from the first few years. We had the Star Wars soundtrack on 8 Track. My older brother read the novels. My younger brother had the first movie memorized word for word and would change costumes repeatedly as we watched it on those big laser disc things that were inside a cardtridge---I don't know what they are called. My cousin had the Princess Leia 12" doll and I was so jealous. Yes, I played with my brothers' action figures, but I really liked Princess Leia. She was one of the handful of women in the movie, and she could hold her own with the male leads. She wasn't a princess in need of rescue. She knew how to use a blaster. Princess Leia was an amazing role model.

That's what I knew of Carrie Fisher growing up.  I did not know much about Carrie Fisher other than through Star Wars. I never saw her in many other movies. I knew she had written a couple of books and they had been turned into movies. 

This book is not an in-depth comprehensive autobiography, but was made after an autobiographical show she did. It is meant to be a humorous and snarky look at her life. We read about her super famous mom and dad, and growing up  as the child of celebrities. We learn about some of her love interests, as well as her daughter. We come to understand the strong bond of love she had for both her mother and her daughter, and we learn a bit about her addiction. 

The shocking thing about her drug addiction is that her own mother introduced her to addiction. She thought they would try pot together when Carrie was a young teen. Her mother got over it and forgot about it, but it awakened the monster of substance abuse in Carrie...which eventually took her life.

Boy if you get nothing else out of this meant-to-be-humorous book, it's that a parent has an imporant responsibility to keep their children safe and protected from harm. Trying to drink or do drugs or smoke at home "under your watch" is not safe. You're hurting your kids. Just don't.

So Carrie Fisher wasn't Princess Leia in real life. Such is the way with actors. We know that, yet are disappointed to find that our favorite characters are just fiction. However, despite the rest of the problems she had in life, I would like to say that her choice to portray a strong female lead in a groundbreaking sci-fi saga truly has positively influenced a lot of women in the world today, giving them someone to look up to, encouraging them to be strong, eloquent, feminine, and able to hold their own in a man's world. 

 

Her Mother's Hope, by Francine Rivers

Her Mother's Hope,

Francine Rivers

I picked this one up at a rummage sale along with its sequel---SCORE! I really enjoy Francine Rivers' writing. She seems to really research before writing her stories and I think I have enjoyed each one so far. 

This story is a generational series, starting with a young girl who is abused and controlled by her father, who seeks to enslave her to keep his business going, but she has other plans, and she leaves and ends up travelling through Europe and settling in America. 

Eventually she marries and has children, and in order to keep something she feels was a terrible mistake from happening to one of her children who she considers weak, she goes overboard in her tough-it-out attitude towards her child, and becomes unknowingly like her own father in some ways. 

The second half of the book is about her daughter, who doesn't understand why her mother has always hated her, and her struggles she has to overcome .

It is based on Rivers' own family, the division she saw but could never understand between her own mother and grandmother.

 

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

I have been a big fan of Bill Bryson's for years. I really enjoy his style, and he makes pretty much everything he writes about interesting. 

This book, however, I had some issue with. Yes--it was interesting and he did a great job writing it. My issue is with the blind acceptance and treating as fact some of the popular theories, such as the big bang theory, evolution (one kind of creature turning into a completely different kind), that all dinosaurs died from a meteor hitting the earth etc. 

Yes, I believe in creation by intelligent design and it makes more sense than blindly accepting that nothing magically exploded and created the building blocks of everything which magically and randomly came together into the exact proportions of elements etc to create and sustain life. I just can't get past the blind acceptance of that.

Whether you are an evolutionist or not, though, I think this is a good read. If you don't believe in the theories in this book, it still gives the explanation of how they came to be accepted and what they all entail. I think it's important to know the history of the ideas. And for all the other stuff in the book, it is quite fascinating and put in a way that the lay man can grasp and enjoy, even.

Would you like to buy me a book, or help keep my little free library stocked and maintained? You can donate here: paypal.me/AmyVanGaasbeck 

 

Creating Art at the Speed of Life, Pam Carriker

Creating Art at the Speed of Life, by Pam Carriker

This is the second art journaling book I have picked up, and like the first one, it's a mixed media collage type of book, with 30 days of exercises. However, each day explores a different aspect of design, such as exploring the color wheel, or composition, line, or texture. I haven't actually done this type of art, as I am an oil painter, but I do like the book and the ideas, and I think it would be fun to explore when I have time to create just for fun rather than for commission. And this book might be good to use if one wanted to teach a class. It's very well thought out.