Lots of cold and rainy days in March made for good chunks of reading time. Here’s what was on the shelf in March:

• A Place on Earth, by Wendell Berry — My love affair with Port Williams and all its endearing characters continues. Heart-wrenching stories are perfectly woven in the lives of people who seem so real, I find myself thinking about them, wondering how they are doing. Berry’s characters remind me of the good farm folks I grew up around — people who worked and lived “with the good earth all around.”
• From Tablet to Table: Where Community is Found and Identity is Formed, by Leonard Sweet — This book is a call to bring back the table. Sweet issues a challenge to move away from tablets and iphones and “social” media and bring some actual people into our homes for an actual meal around an actual table. His insight into the many conversations Jesus had at mealtimes was an eye opener. I’ll be using some of Sweet’s material for our Spring Women’s Bible Study.  (Kindle version)
• Farm Recipes and Food Secrets From the Norske Nook, by Helen Myhre — Yes, this is a cookbook and it’s full of recipes that I didn’t read word for word. But if there was ever a fun-to-read cookbook, this is it. I felt like I was 10 years old, sitting at my neighbor’s house one farm over, listening to my 4-H leader give a cooking lesson. Myhre has a down-home way of making everything sound simple and deliciously funny.
• The Road Back to You, by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile — This is the latest take on the ancient personality type system called the Enneagram. Unlike some other, more academic publications, this one is approachable and easy to understand. I like this book because they emphasize how a level of self- awareness opens up intimacy with God.
• Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, by Dani Shapiro — I keep telling myself to stop reading books about writing so I have more time to write, but then I hear somebody recommend a book like this on some podcast and before I know it, I’m putting the title on hold. Shapiro had some good points, but they are the same good points that I’ve read in twenty other books on writing. I should write a book called Still Reading: The Perils and Pleasures of Reading About Other Peoples’ Creative Lives.

Whatcha been reading? Any good recommendations are welcome!

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” – Mortimer J. Adler