Monthly Mix-Up Mania is a two-year challenge, so I've been working on this one for awhile. The goal was to spell out the name of each month with book titles. So for January, you would need seven books - one for J, one for A, one for N, etc. The book title didn't have start with that letter; the letter just had to be somewhere in the title. I've been pretty much done with this challenge for months, but I had a hard time finding titles with Y or U words in them. And when we're talking about the months of the year, there are a lot of Y's and U's involved (four Y's and six U's, to be precise). I finally read my last Y title, so this challenge is officially complete! Here are the books I read:

J - Julie and Romeo (Jeanne Ray)
A - Arabella (Georgette Heyer)
N - 365 Nights (Charla Muller)
U - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Charles Yu)
A - The Jane Austen Marriage Manual (Kim Izzo)
R - The River of No Return (Bee Ridgway)
Y - The Year of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs)

F - A Little Folly (Jude Morgan)
E - The House at the End of Hope Street (Menna van Praag)
B - The J.M. Barrie Ladies' Swimming Society (Barbara Zitwer)
R - Beautiful Ruins (Jess Walter)
U - The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (Kristopher Jansma)
A - After Rome (Morgan Llywelyn)
R - Ruby Red (Kerstin Gier)
Y - When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)

M - Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (Jennifer Chiaverini)
A - Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (Laurie Viera Rigler)
R - Destiny, Rewritten (Kathryn Fitzmaurice)
C - The Cherry Cola Book Club (Ashton Lee)
H - The Strength of His Hand (Lynn Austin)

A - The Real Jane Austen (Paula Byrne)
P - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan)
R - Heaven Is For Real (Todd Burpo)
I - My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business (Dick van Dyke)
L - The Little Women Letters (Gabrielle Donnelly)

M - My Friend Flicka (Mary O'Hara)
A - The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (Kelly O'Connor McNees)
Y - A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (James Shapiro)

J - Just One Day (Gayle Forman)
U - The Underneath (Kathi Appelt)
N - National Velvet (Enid Bagnold)
E - Eighty Days (Matthew Goodman)

J - The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling)
U - The Unknown Ajax (Georgette Heyer)
L - The Last Runaway (Tracy Chevalier)
Y - The Yellow House (Patricia Falvey)

A - Anne of Avonlea (L.M. Montgomery)
U - Flora & Ulysses (Kate DiCamillo)
G - Going Clear (Lawrence Wright)
U - Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand)
S - Siege and Storm (Leigh Bardugo)
T - Tuck (Stephen Lawhead)

S - The Whistling Season (Ivan Doig)
E - Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (Chris Grabenstein)
P - The Peach Keeper (Sarah Addison Allen)
T - Two-Part Inventions (Lynne Sharon Schwartz)
E - Every Day (David Levithan)
M - Someday, Someday, Maybe (Lauren Graham)
B - Shadow and Bone (Leigh Bardugo)
E - Ex Libris (Anne Fadiman)
R - Song of Redemption (Lynn Austin)

O - These Old Shades (Georgette Heyer)
C - Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel)
T - Words Spoken True (Ann H. Gabhart)
O - One for the Books (Joe Queenan)
B - Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote)
E - The Emerald Atlas (John Stephens)
R - Reading Like a Writer (Francine Prose)

N - The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
O - The Other Side of the Island (Allegra Goodman)
V - The Vatican Diaries (John Thavis)
E - Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day (Doug Mack)
M - Clara and Mr. Tiffany (Susan Vreeland)
B - Big Stone Gap (Adriana Trigiani)
E - Chateau of Echoes (Siri Mitchell)
R - The Reading Group (Elizabeth Noble)

D - The Daughter of Time (Josephine Tey)
E - The Elephant Keepers' Children (Peter Hoeg)
C - The Casual Vacancy (J.K. Rowling)
E - The Elephant's Journey (Jose Saramago)
M - The Mermaid Chair (Sue Monk Kidd)
B - Betsy-Tacy (Maud Hart Lovelace)
E - The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World (E.L. Konigsburg)
R - The Art of Racing in the Rain (Garth Stein)

I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun, quick read with wonderful characters.

But it could have been so much more.

It was fine the way it was. But it had the potential to be more. A.J. Fikry is the owner of an independent bookstore on Alice Island. His wife died in a car accident not long ago, and subsequently, his life is falling apart. Then someone leaves a little girl in his bookstore, and he has to figure out how to build a new life for both of them. It’s a novel full of zany characters; a book that has you cheering for A.J. from the very first page. There are literary references galore, and a love of reading that shines through clearly on every page. It’s a fun summer read.

But it could have been so much more than just a breezy summer read. The problems that A.J. and other characters encountered were solved too quickly and too neatly. These characters faced real struggles, things that each of us could someday face in our own lives. And instead of watching them fight through these struggles, we simply turn the page to see everything packaged with a neat bow. This could have been a book you turned to during those struggles in your life, a book you could empathize with, a book you could turn to for guidance. Instead, it’s just a quick summer read.

I really did enjoy this book. I read it in one day, and I loved meeting each and every new character. But I wish it was a book of more depth and less surface. If it were, it would have easily found a place on my bookshelf and to-be-reread-soon list. As it is, it was a quick read that will be too quickly forgotten.

Find it on: Goodreads  |  Amazon  |  Better World Books

I read Little Women for the first time when I was in middle school. The copy I own belonged to my grandmother, and it has full-page, full-color pictures. It's a beautiful edition. And it held a beautiful story. The March girls live sweet lives, always trying to do their best, but inevitably getting into "scrapes." Especially Jo. She was my favorite of the girls - so spirited, and she loved reading and writing. I've reread Little Women a couple of times, but I honestly found it a bit boring. I gravitated instead to Alcott's Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom.

But somehow, I had never read the sequels to Little Women until just this month. Little Men and Jo's Boys have exactly what was missing in Little Women (and what Eight Cousins has in abundance) - lots of boys. Jo and her husband, Professor Bhaer, open a school for boys, both rich and poor. We are introduced to musical Nat, mischievous Tom, and troublemaker Dan, among others. We also get to know Meg and Jo and Amy's children, a wonderful continuation of the stories of the "little" women we already know. Suddenly, there are scrapes galore.

You know, I first thought that these books didn't really dive too deeply into life. They tell of short episodes in these characters' lives. Difficulties are usually settled by each chapter's end. These are books made up of anecdotes.

And yet, aren't anecdotes what make up each of our lives? Little difficulties happen and are solved quickly all of the time. Our lives don't have an overarching plot, complete with climax and resolution. Why do these characters need that?

Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys are stories of love. Love for God and love for family shines through clearly on each page. In the end, I think that's what drew me into these books and now gives them a treasured place on my shelves. After all, love is truly what life is all about.

Well, my prayers for snow days were finally answered. We only had two days of school last week (Tuesday & Wednesday). The rest of the week was off not because of snow, but because of the extreme cold. Friday morning was -21 degrees! I was perfectly content to stay home and read a good book (or several good books, as it turned out).

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Wonderful, as always)
I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora (Fun story, especially for anyone who likes books)
The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey (Good novel if you are interested in 20th century Irish history)
Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott (Light and enjoyable read)

The Little Book by Selden Edwards (Time travel and Vienna. What more could you want?)

The Tale of Applebeck Orchard by Susan Wittig Albert (Cozy read for a cold winter)

I should be honest right off the bat and admit that I’m not much of a mystery reader. I have devoured Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who series, but that’s more for the cats and the small town of Pickax than the mysteries. So why would I pick up The Frost Fair by Edward Marston at the library?

Well, let me explain that the summer after my junior year in college, I took a three-week course in London. Much of my free time was spent wandering around the city exploring (and yes, most of it alone. Some things are better for parents to know after the fact.). One day, I was wandering along the south bank of the Thames on my way to the Globe Theatre. I happened upon a tunnel in the pathway (with a road overhead) that was decorated with the story of the Frost Fairs. Several hundred years ago, the Thames River would freeze completely over during the winter. When that was the case, entertainers, food booths, and salesmen moved onto the ice, ready to cater to the tourists who would come to enjoy this novelty. I loved the idea of this temporary festival, fun with a hint of danger (just how long would the ice last?).

Find it on: Goodreads  |  Amazon  |  Better World Books

Let me start by saying that I read Great Expectations not just one, but three times. Three. The first time was my choice. I knew it was required reading in high school, and I decided I wanted to read it for myself first. That way, dissecting it in school wouldn't spoil the book for me. This tactic worked very well for Pride & Prejudice. Since the moment I first read P&P, I have been an ardent Jane Austen fan and will be until the day I die. I was hoping for a similar result with Charles Dickens.

It didn't. I did not particularly enjoy my first reading of Great Expectations. It's a long book, and not really a happy one. Creepy even, occasionally. Not a book I really wanted to revisit. But I still had to read it for my high school English class. So I did.

And then came college. I was an English minor, so I read a lot of works that I wouldn't have had much experience with otherwise. Every good English minor is required to read some Charles Dickens. What was the assigned book? That's right. Great Expectations. 

I've read it three times. I don't ever want to read it again. And unfortunately, that feeling seeped over into every other book written by Charles Dickens. I have studiously avoided all of his other works (even the harmless little A Christmas Carol). 

I've seen and enjoyed a lot of posts that are part of The Broke and the Bookish's Top Ten Tuesdays. I haven't participated myself yet, though. I decided to change that today. And what a great topic to start with!

1. Not enough space for all of the books that I own. I already have a dedicated room in my house for all my books. They don't fit. I recently had to put a bookshelf in another room to accommodate all of the books I bought last year.

2. Not enough time to read. This silly thing called life keeps getting in my way.

3. Reading books from the library instead of books that I own. I'm really bad about this. I've read probably less than half of the books that I own, yet I keep buying more and then getting books from the library to read.

4. Difficulty getting rid of books. There are books in my collection that I have already read and I have no plans to reread. There are also books in my collection that I will probably never read. Can I get rid of any of them? Of course not.

5. Finding a place in my purse for all of my Barnes & Noble gift cards. (I guess I wouldn't necessarily classify this as a problem . . .)

6. Not being able to mark rereads on Goodreads. Seriously annoying.

7. Being overly addicted to reading challenges. I love reading challenges, but every once in awhile, I feel too constricted. I was trying to limit the number I signed up for in 2015 in order to avoid this problem. Did I succeed? Not even close. Fifteen reading challenges. Ah, well. I brought it on myself. And it's still so much fun to accomplish things!

8. Not having a large enough purse to carry a book around in. I'm one of those take-a-book-with-you-everywhere-you-go sort of people. But my purse fits my wallet, keys, phone, and that's about it. It looks a little awkward to just carry a book, but when desperate. . .

9. Loving physical books too much to enter the whole digital reading world. I just can't give up the smell and the feel and the turning of pages. Someday I may discover that a Kindle is the most miraculous device in the world. But I don't think that day is coming anytime soon.

10. Not having people understand when all I want to do is stay home on a Friday night and read. Just happened to me last week. Are there really better ways to spend Friday night than curled up with a good book?

Boy, I don't know what the temperature are like where you are today, but here they are cold! We had a high of zero degrees on Sunday, and subzero wind chills pretty much all weekend. We ran some errands Saturday evening (very romantic Valentine's Day, I know. Don't worry, we did plenty of fun things, too!), and it was such a shock to keep going from warm stores to the freezing outdoors. At times like this, I am so grateful to have a nice, warm house to live in!

Let us all rejoice over the new sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird!!
Balance by Nik Wallenda - Review + Videos
Saturday Snapshot - Snow Walk

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (This is my first Dickens book in quite awhile. My thoughts will be posted Thursday!)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I read this one a couple of years ago, but my book club decided to read it for our February selection, since half of our members had never read it before. I have no problem whatsoever rereading this fantastic book!)

I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora (Fits right in!)

We finally had a good snowstorm a couple weekends ago - which actually resulted in our first snow day of the school year. I took advantage of the unexpected time off to go for a walk in the freshly fallen snow. God did a great job of decorating the world with snow and ice!

I think we can all agree just by looking at the cover that this guy is crazy. Not only is he on a tightrope wire, but he is walking over Niagara Falls, for Pete's sake. I'm afraid of heights, and even living vicariously through him in this book was a bit much for me sometimes.


I'll be honest up front. As far as biographies go, this is not the best one I've ever read. The writing was simple and the font was big. It looked like they were stretching to get it to take up 200 pages. It's not a great work of literature.

And yet I gained such respect for Nik Wallenda in reading his autobiography. The Wallendas are a family of circus performers that goes back seven generations. Nik's great-grandfather, Karl, was the first to make the Wallenda name popular in America. Through hardship and tragedy, the Wallendas have struggled on. And Nik has made it his mission to make the Wallenda family a household name once again. He strives to inspire others to follow their dreams, as he has followed his. And he achieves these goals by walking on wires in really high places. He has gone across Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon (well, technically a smaller, adjacent canyon, but still pretty impressive). Most recently, he has set the record for an incline high-wire walk and walked between two towers in Chicago blindfolded.

Nik's faith in God pervades the book. He is honest about his struggles and his efforts to become a better person. He gives the glory to God for everything that has happened in his life. My favorite example of this was his walk across Niagara Falls. He spent the entire time praising God for this opportunity and His beautiful creation. Because the walk was televised, he had a microphone on so he could occasionally chat with the reporters. He didn't realize until afterwards that the mike was on the entire time, and his prayers had also been broadcast. What an awesome witness.

This review would not be complete without the chance to witness some of his crazy stunts for yourself. So here are 3 videos, showing his walks across Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, as well as the blindfolded walk in Chicago.