Book Club: Twelve Mighty Orphans

This is one of our current book club books and I cannot put it down. Its a great story about orphans at the Masonic Home in Fort Worth, Texas and their quest to become great. I can hardly put it down at times. You will especially love it if you love Texas football, but I think anyone would like this book about overcoming great odds.

Twelve Mighty Orphans by Jim Dent

Book Club: The Last Lecture

Howdy Folks--

I am back from my retreat and back to the grind at work....sorry I have not been around to post lately but I will strive to be better about it!

Tonight I am recommending the book "The Last Lecture" by Paul Rausch. you may have heard of it, it is a best seller. It is about this man (true story) that is a professor at Carnegie-Mellon and he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At the school, they have a tradition of having a "last lecture" for people who are retiring or leaving and they gave him this opportunity since he was only given 3-6 months to live. He talks about life lessons and things he learned from others. Its a great book, a fast read, and I found it really inspiring in a non-depressing I am going to die kind of way. He faces his disease head on, does what he can to fight it, and is frank with his feelings and what legacy he was trying to leave his 3 very young children who may not remember him.

This is a great bedtime book, one of those books you can read before you go to bed and just read a little or a lot, it doesn't matter. All the "chapters" are his life lessons so its okay if you skip for a few days and then pick up reading again. His courage and grit I found inspiring....and I hope you will too!

Be beautiful people!

Heather

Children's Book

I have a love for Children's books. I have some that were read to me as a child and others that I have grown to love since I have had my son. We had an enrichment night once where we had a teacher do a class on children's books and what her favorites were. I thought this was such a great lesson because it opened up my world of books to a whole new group of books and it also taught me to broaden my horizons. She talked about books of different cultures and different kinds of stories and themes, different lands, and holidays I had not celebrated. It was really wonderful!

I would also suggest that if you do this kind of activity, that you have people write down their favorite Children's books and pass out the list to everyone so that they can go to their nearest library or book store and start broadening their reading horizons as well!

Here are a few of my faves....

The Story of Ferdinand (I think its also called Ferdinand the Bull) by Munro Leaf
Bertram the Bad
Where the Wild Things Are
Whose Mouse are You?
The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone
Santa Mouse
The Velveteen Rabbit
Click Clack Moo. Cows that Type
The Lady with the Alligator Purse (not sure if that is the correct name)

So, tell me what your favorite children's books are....I will try to look up the authors of these books or scour through my bookshelves to find them.

You could even do a book club with a group of children's books just to mix it up a little!

Have fun and read! It does a mind good!

Books -The Secret Life of Bees

There is nothing more beautiful than a good book...and this is a GREAT one! Its one of my all time favs. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to! We did this for a book club with my church ladies and it was the largest attended book club we had. It is by Sue Monk Kidd and the title is "The Secret Life of Bees". A little warning for you....there are a few curse words...but not many and it builds the character of one of the people in the book...and you really start to loathe him for it. You will learn a lot about bees and a lot about life. And you will grown to love so many of these characters like they are your oldest friends.