Thursday, April 28, 2011

Knit Your Own Royal Wedding


Just in time for the royal wedding, depending on how fast you can knit, you can create your own royal wedding. Maybe make up your own exciting story.

Knit Your Own Royal Wedding by Fiona Goble gives you directions on making this large cast of adorable characters for the wedding.

I'm sure that all of them are much more advanced than my meager knitting skills - I have trouble with a simple scarf for a doll.  So I can't give you a review for how well the instructions are written.  But aren't they just so cute!

If you aren't interested in the wedding, know that there are also other similar books on knitting a nativity scene, and about knitting dogs.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Courting Miss Amsel




Courting Miss Amsel by Kim Vogel Sawyer is a love story set in 1882-1883 school year in the small town of Walnut Hill Nebraska. After having cared for her younger siblings after the death of her mother, Edythe Amsel is finally leaving her father's depressing home to move to Nebraska to teach in a one room schoolhouse. She is independent and has teaching methods that are shocking to the town. She is dealing with an unruly child and fending off advances from the town's bachelors.  Miss Amsel is reading the Bible for the first time, and there are many references to her conversion in this book.

Joel Townsend is a farmer who is raising his orphaned nephews, and could use a wife. He also has outlandish, more modern farming methods.

The story was a lovely read, and it was a nice change to read fiction for a change.

This book, like the Union Quilters talks about the beginning of the womens' suffrage movement.  I don't know enough about history to know if the methods are accurate for the time period. For example, I am not sure a teacher of that time would think to teach her students how to cook, since that would be something that would naturally be taught at home. It is pretty far from reading, writing and arithmetic. It is possible that the "outlandish" teaching methods are just our modern methods taken back in time. Whether it is true or not, I don't think it matters.  It makes for a good story anyway.

I received this book from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for an unbiased review.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Hello

Good morning.  I am creating this blog to post my book reviews.  I am a member of several (three right now) book review groups. Generally about once a month, a publisher generally gives us a list of a few books, and I choose one.  It is mailed to me, and after I have had a chance to read it, I post my opinion about it.  I am not required to post a positive review. I have to admit that I don't read all books all the way through. Time is too precious to waste if finishing the book isn't going to add any value to the review.  Since all three of these publishers publish Christian books, some of the books do tend to be very religious, although others merely mention Christian themes.

I enjoy this, because it gives me a chance to expand to books in subject areas and opinions that I would not pick up on my own. This does mean that this blog will contain reviews for books that range from really bad to mostly mediocre to awesome.

To keep it balanced, I do like to pick up books from the library and review those as well.  Those are generally ones that I think are worth the read.

I link the book titles to Amazon, so you can see how much it is and what others think about it. I am a part of their referral program, so if you choose to buy a book through them, I will get a referral bonus.

I hope you enjoy!
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