Back in the Saddle

I am going to start using this blog more. I am going to use it as a sort of commonplace blog. I will keep a record of what I study during the day. I just finished several books and am still working on a few. Here is a list:

A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway (20 pages left)


How to Read a Book (much more complicated than I thought)


The Fourth Turning


The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen (love her)



And as always:

The Scriptures

Charlotte Mason Series

Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning

Today:

A Farewell to Arms:

I do not like this book. I think that the protagonist and his lover are two of the most selfish and cowardly people I have read about. I may just have them wrong, but I don't see much that can be called redeeming. I only have 20 pages left and can't wait for them to be over. Catharine is getting ready to have her baby and they move closer to a hospital. They spent some sickeningly loving months in the mountains and now that spring is here they are getting to where it is cleaner and safer for her to have her baby.

How to Read a Book:

The focus today was on how to use a dictionary and encyclopedia. Both are to be used sparingly and only after you have done the necessary work to understand what the author is trying to say. Adler suggests that we should read both of these reference books for pleasure. I do like to look at the dictionary every now and then, but I do not usually do that with an encyclopedia. This was a short day because I was just finishing up a chapter that I started yesterday.

Book of Mormon:

I read most of Jacob 5 today. This is the parable of the olive tree. This is not one of the most interesting parts of the BOM. I was also distracted by Abby, she wanted me to take lots of breaks to read her stories. She loved the books so much that she saved them in her "tubby" for later.

That was all that I got to today because we spent most of the day wild flower hunting at Big Hollow. We found lots and lots of them.