Welcome to the September 2017 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart AND CatholicMom.com!

I’ve been swapping chapters for critique with author Theresa Linden, and she mentioned the research book she had read in relation to her work in progress. It sounded like something right up my husband’s alley, so I quickly looked it up and mentioned it to him. Only to find out that he’d purchased it last year! Its mention was enough for him to locate the unread book and crack it open. It is Hungry Souls: Supernatural Visits, Messages, and Warnings from Purgatory by Gerard J.M. van der Aardweg. The book recounts stories of “Church-verified accounts of earthly visitations from the dead in Purgatory.” Sounds creepy.

Each month, I borrow a book from the Kindle Lending Library, a perk of our Amazon Prime account. This month, I downloaded Land of My Dreams by Norma Gail, an author I’d come across on social media. I’m only a third of the way through the book and enjoying the Scotland setting and the characters. While it’s free of typos and grammatical errors, I’m struggling a bit with my internal editor when it comes to dialogue and several other issues. I’m only a third of the way through though and intend to stick it out.

Next on my list to read is Dying for Compassion by Barbara Golder, the second in the Lady Doc Murders Series. The first in the series, Dying for Revenge, is excellent! I’ve been looking forward to this one, which is set in both Telluride, Colorado and Ireland, but somehow it keeps getting bumped back on the pile. No longer. I will begin this book next!

During one of our many early August library trips, my son picked up Weird Al: The Book by Nathan Rabin. It’s an oversized hardcover book with lots of color photos tracing the singer’s life from childhood throughout his career of popular parodies. My son inherited his love of Weird Al from me and his Uncle Pete. I’ve seen Weird Al in concert at least four times, the most recent being last September, which was my son’s first concert. Highly entertaining show, and a very interesting personality.

As a reward for completing the library summer reading program, my newly-minted high school freshman also grabbed a paperback copy of Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno. Like his father, this kid never tires of Star Wars. Tarkin is set between Star Wars: Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. As the title suggests, the novel is about Imperial bad guy Grand Moff Tarkin.

My daughter spent most of the summer either tending to Monarch caterpillars or buried in a book. One by one, she’s ticking off the books in the Childhood of Famous Americans series, most recently reading about Sacagawea, George Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt. She’s currently finishing  Liberty Letters: Attack at Pearl Harbor by Nancy LeSourd. She has also been reading one of our selections for September’s Sabbath Rest Book Talk: The Good Master by Kate Seredy. I’ll be reading this Newbery Award winner as well. It is a historical novel set in  Hungary, and all my daughter has said thus far is how much she dislikes the character Kate.

I brought out  one of our all-time favorites for the little kids: Muncha, Muncha, Muncha by Candace Fleming and G. Brian Karas. I love reading the book aloud! Mr. MacGregor plants a garden, only to be continually outwitted by three hungry bunnies. It has the perfect amount of repetition and onomatopoeia. The illustrations are among my favorites too. I love the puff-tail rabbits!

We also read Beginnings written by Lori Ann Watson, illustrated by Shennen Bersani. This is a simple yet lyrical book about God’s loving creation of the natural world culminating in His loving each precious child into being, cared for and nurtured by the family. It makes a beautiful addition to a child’s collection of picture books.

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