Other than knitting patterns, homeschool materials, and children's books!
Yesterday I finished The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I'm pretty sure I'm the last person in the world to read it. Smock and MamaT recommended it during a convo that somehow turned to creepy, taking-over-the-country sects. It was awesome! I was spiky-backed and couldn't put it down. Looking forward to the movie.
Saint Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life has been downloaded to my phone and is my reading material while nursing the baby down. This is my calm time for spiritual reading and prayer. I fall asleep with her only 25% of the time or so.
Today I pulled Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights down for a re-read. I adore Bronte. I know many find her work hopelessly dull, but I like it. The grayness.
I know I said other than children's books, but I've got to add Georgie Porgie's Nursery Rhymes! I read it 14,000 times a day to my 16 month old Camila. She is obsessed. The pictures, the rhymes, she can't get enough. It's had tape-up surgery and was even found under the couch cushion one evening after a day that was particularly full of Georgie and Andy Pandy and Mrs Hen and all those guys. I'm totally certain in 20 years that the sound of those rhymes catching me off guard will reduce me to a pool of tears remembering her bright face and chubby hands bringing me The Book yet again. This I remind myself when I pull her into my lap for the 5th just once more.
What have you downloaded or checked out or is waiting on your nightstand for you?
So what was the Handmaid's Tale about exactly?
St. Frances de Sales!!!! Part of my saint posse! The Introduction might be the best spiritual book I've EVER read. Definitely top 3.
Wuthering Heights? Ick. Someone throw water in that Bronte girl's face.....
One of the few books I actually hate. AND the movie, which scandalizes the Smock.
The Handmaid's Tale was written in the mid-80's and, in a nutshell, is narrated by a woman who was separated from her husband and child when our country was taken over by extremists that cleanse it of everything deemed evil, Jews are sent to Israel, Catholics hanged, women's rights abolished. That kind of thing.
She is forced to live as a concubine, or "Handmaid" to one of their army's commanders, with the sole purpose of bearing kids for The Commander and his wife. She's their property and the novel is her story during it.
It was like when you have one of those nightmares that's extra creepy because it could maybe happen if though it's a long shot.
mamaT just couldn't help herself, had to bash my bronte sister just one more time. that little factoid duly noted, i'm glad i'm not the only person on the face of the planet who lurves some old fashioned drrryyyyy reading. kudos to lamama.
as for the handmaid's tale THE MOVIE. please note that while i absolutely a-dore ALL of the principal actors (natasha, may she rest in peace, robert, and yes, even faye -- heck, especially faye!), lizzy mcgovern totally steals the show as moira. just be warned, the flick is almost painfully campy. alas, maybe that's why i could recite it for y'all forwards and back. i watched my copy so many times that the tape finally snapped. oh, and lamama -- that's cuz it was a VHS tape. those were those big square doohickys that had reel to reel tape in 'em. that's what we put our movies on before they invented DVDs. anyhoo... all i hafta say is "it's her fault, her fault, her fault!"
Hey, I love the other Bronte sister.....
AND I love old fashioned drrrryyyy reading--
JUST NOT THAT STUPID WUTHERING HEIGHTS BOOK.
(It's in the same category as Moby Dick. Dead to me.)
[MamaT flounces off.....]