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Quoth Senator Joe Biden

Aug26

On April 3, 1987, at a campaign stop in Claremont, New Hampshire, a voter named Frank asked Biden what law school he attended and how he performed there. “I think I have a much higher IQ than you do,” Biden answered. “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship.”

To a reporter after the above encounter: “I exaggerate when I’m angry.”

Biden to the Brookings Institution in 2005: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out — equally a mistake.”

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asking about Senator Obama: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.'”
Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.”
ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07

Campaigning in Iowa, 2008: “Please, decide how much it’s worth to you to give your country the strongest, most seasoned leadership. Then write that number on a check and mail it to ‘Biden for President’.”

During the primary: ”I am not running for vice president … I would not accept it if anyone offered it to me. The fact of the matter is I’d rather stay as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee than be vice president.”

Biden, on MSNBC, October 30, 2007: “The only guy on the other side who’s qualified is John McCain.”

Abigail Iris: The One and Only by Lisa Glatt and Suzanne Greenberg

Aug26

Move over, Clementine! Make room, Ramona! Judy Moody, Clarice Bean and Lucy Rose, you have a friend: Abigail Iris, The One and Only!

Abigail Iris is eight years old, and her adventures are just right for second and third grade readers. She has three friends, all of whom happen to be Onlies, the only child in the family. Abigail Iris, has two brothers and a sister, and while she’s not exactly jealous of her friends’ families, she does see some definite advantages to being an Only.

For instance, according to Abigail Iris:

“When you’re an Only, your house is sometimes bigger, and your car always, always has automatic windows.” Also “lots of leg room even in the backseat.”

“When you’re an Only, you have Heelys and sometimes you get pierced ears before you turn twelve. You have your own room and you can paint it any color you want.”

“Room service isn’t nearly as impressive when you’re an Only.”

“Oh, and you get your own big bed at the hotel, and even when you lay in the middle of that bed and spread your arms our as far as they’ll go, you’ll never, ever reach the end of the mattress. It’s impossible.”

“Onlies have Heelys and beach cruisers and get to go to ballet camp in the summer.”

And “Onlies are the luckiest girls in all of the world because they are not on a budget.”

In a nutshell, the book tells the story of how Abigail Iris gets to go on vacation with one of her best Only friends, Genevieve, to San Francisco and of how she figures out that “even Onlies aren’t happy every single minute.” There’s a nice balance in the book between the advantages and disadvantages of being an only child and the ups and downs of having a larger family. And Abigail Iris is a delight.

Thanks to Bloomsbury/Walker Books for sending the review copy of this one, this time for real. I’m going to give it to my nine year old and watch her smile her way through it.

Expected publication date: March, 2009.

Go here for Little Willow’s list of Ramona readalikes, and I expect her to add Abigail Iris soon.

Perfect Chemistry by Simon Elkeles

Aug26

I can’t believe I read the whole thing.

And now I’m going to write a spoiler review so that you don’t have to read it when it comes out in December, 2008. Or if you like stereotypical characters, a predictable plot, and lots of heavy breathing in your teen fiction, you can run out and grab a copy for Christmas. Just don’t give it to me.

Alex is a Chicano gang banger from the wrong side of town, and Brittany is the blond and beautiful leader of the pom-pom squad. Alex’s dad is dead (killed in a gang-related murder), and his mom is loving but overwhelmed. Brittany lives with an inattentive dad and a neurotic mom who pressures her to be perfect. In fact Brittany pressures herself to be perfect because her mentally handicapped sister can never be the perfect daughter that Brittany’s mom wants. This books is actually about perfectionism, gangs, and sex, with sex at the top of the list.

So Miss Perfect But Really Poor Little Rich Girl meets Chicano Gang Member from Down in the Boondocks with a Rough Exterior But a Heart of Gold –in chemistry class–and what do you think happens? Of course, they fall for each other, and after several mildly humorous cross-cultural misunderstandings and lots of heavy breathing, petting and foreplay, and not a little violence, they get together, have sex before marriage, and live happily ever after.

Again, any author has a right to tell whatever story he or she wants to tell, and I have a right to say that it’s not only unrealistic, but misleading to the teens to whom this book is being marketed. Bad boys are not usually changed into law-abiding citizens by the love of a good woman, no matter what the romance writers may say. If your daughter takes up with a gang banger who in his spare time is an enforcer for criminal enterprises, you had better do more than wring your hands and whine that he’s just not our kind of people. No one is beyond redemption, not Mexican American gang members and not perfectionist fake blondes, but redemption is the product of repentance and a change of heart, not lust and a lucky break, as it is in this novel.

And don’t even get me started on the stereotypes that fill the book: Mr. Macho, Miss Popularity, Mr. Sidekick, Tough but Fair Chemistry Teacher, Back-Stabbing Friend, Weak Lawyer’s Son Boyfriend, Distant Dad, etc.

Thanks to Walker Books for sending me a review copy of Perfect Chemistry, but no thanks.

Jocelyn at Teen Book Reviews has a completely different opinion from mine.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Aug25

“The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea. you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die,” he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson’s own. “Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.”

Subtitled One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time, this book was both inspiring and disappointing at the same time. Greg Mortenson was a mountain climber who attempted and failed to climb K2, the second highest mountain in the world found in the northern regions of Pakistan (Baltistan). While he was in this remote area of Pakistan, Greg was inspired to begin a one-man mission to build schools there, especially schools for girls, most of whom were not getting any kind of education.

As the son of Lutheran missionaries, Mortenson grew up in Africa as an MK, and even after they returned to the U.S. neither Greg nor his parents were exactly rich according to American standards. So Mortenson, living out of his car, began his campaign to build schools for girls in northern Pakistan by writing letters on an antiquated typewriter to every celebrity, famous person, or potential donor he could think to write. He explained what he wanted to do, wrote something like 600 letters, and got no response. A Pakistani expatriate who owned a copy store taught Mortenson how to use a computer and a word processing program, and he wrote more letters. Still no response.

Finally, he connected with one rich, sort of eccentric, donor, and he went to Pakistan with $30,000 to build his first school in the mountain village of Korphe. That one school was only the beginning, and that’s a capsule version of the inspiring part.

The disappointing part was that, as much as I admire what Greg Mortenson has done and continues to do, I think he is mistaken to put his trust in education alone. He seems to have left his Christianity behind in a quest change the world through education. Education is a wonderful thing. Education may be the best, perhaps the only thing, that can be done for the girls and boys of Pakistan and Afghanistan, given their cultural and religious heritage. So, I applaud Greg Mortenson and his organization CAI for what they have done and for what they continue to do.

However, I first of all agree with this reviewer at Amazon who opines that boys need education just as much as girls do. Read his exposition for a look at why educating just girls or girls in preference to boys may be counter-productive and produce civil unrest instead of the peace we all want.

Secondly, education without a Christian moral foundation produces only educated fools, according to the Bible and according to historical experience. I can name many individuals and groups of individuals who have been highly educated and also committed to evil goals and foolish ideals. An education does not guarantee peaceful intent, and neither does a change for the better in socio-economic class. No matter how much we as Americans may want to think that we can change the world by improving people’s standard of living and giving them books, it will have only limited success. Do I believe that making poor people richer and giving young people a chance at an education is a goal worth working for, and donating to? Yes, I do. However, according to CAI’s website, “The best hope for a peaceful and prosperous world lies in the education of all the world’s children.”

No, our hope does not lie in education. Without Christ, the change in a culture that is produced by education is only cosmetic and unlikely to produce the kind of lasting political change that we as Americans would like to see. People can be educated, even educated using funds donated by Americans, and still hate us. We should give and do good because it’s the right thing to do, not because we expect that a school building and classes and clean water will make them quit believing the mullahs who tell them that we are godless infidels. I know it’s unpalatable and controversial, but education is not God.

The book itself is decently written, and the story is absorbing. The idea that one person can have an idea and do something important to make the world a better place and the details of that idea working out in one man’s life are inspiring, as I said. Don’t expect great literature; do expect the story of a great life.

Sunday Salon: Biblically Literate

Aug24

Back in April, I started a book club. Well, at least I tried to start a book club. But what with one thing and another, mostly my lack of follow-through, the book club languished over the summer and became absorbed into Eldest Daughter’s summer book club project. And that was fun.

However, Eldest Daughter is now in Nashville, and my motto is, “If at first you don’t succeed, rise again.” Or something like that. So even though I don’t believe in reincarnation, this fall will see the second iteration of the Biblically Literate Book Club. The idea is the same. I’ll be focusing on one regular book and one book or portion of a book of the Bible each month, September through November, and anyone is welcome to read along, comment here, review there and get linked, or appear in person at the monthly meeting of the Biblically Literate Book Club at my home in Houston, TX on the last Saturday of the month. Email me (sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom) for directions to my home or to be added to the email list for updates.

I set up a separate blog for Biblically Literate, and back in July when I had blog troubles, it got deleted. Now I’ve decided to just post here about the book club and the books and the Biblical passages, and I’ll title the posts “Biblically Literate” so that you can focus on or skip those posts as you see fit. The books for the next three months are the same as they were when I first began back in April:

September:
1 John
A Bell for Adano by John Hersey. “An Italian-American major in World War II wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700 year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists.”

October:
1 Samuel 24-31.
So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger. “A stunning successor to his best selling novel Peace Like a River, Leif Enger’s new work is a rugged and nimble story about an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.” (If you’ve never read Peace Like a River, you should. I loved it.)

November:
2 John and 3 John
Creed Without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers by Laura K. Simmons.

In December, I plan to have a Christmas/New Year’s party for all who can come, we’ll discuss the book selections for next year. If you have suggestions via internet, feel free to email me or leave a comment. I would like to include the following in our reading for 2009: a mix of fiction and nonfiction, at least one Shakespeare play each year because I like Shakespeare, one Pulitzer or other prize winning book for adults, and one Prinz or Newbery or other prize-winning book for children or young adults. I’m looking forward to discussing specific, selected books with some of you, both online and in person.

Poetry Friday: Robert Southwell

Aug22

Robert Southwell was a Jesuit priest in a time and a place when Jesuit priests were not welcome: Elizabethan England. The law was that no priest who had entered into Holy Orders after the ascension of Elizabeth to the throne could stay in Britain longer than forty days or else he would be subject to the death penalty. Southwell asked to be sent to England anyway. After six years of going from house to house administering the sacraments, he was arrested, tortured, and eventually after three more years in prison, tried and hanged. He probably wrote much of his poetry in prison, and it was published after his death. This poem about the vicissitudes of life may have given him hope or not, as he waited in the Tower for Elizabeth’s judges to decide his fate. He does know Who is ultimately in control, writing that “God tempereth all.”

Times Go by Turns
By Robert Southwell

THE lopped tree in time may grow again,
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorriest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moistening shower.
Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb.
Her tides hath equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web.
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring,
No endless night, yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
The net, that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crossed;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish.
Unmeddled joys here to no man befall;
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.

The Poetry Friday Round-up is at Read. Imagine. Talk. today.

Appreciating Obama

Aug21

I’m not too fond of Barack Obama. He’s pro-abortion in the most radical sense of the word, deeply indebted to the pro-abortion lobby, and not at all willing to even mouth the goal of “safe, legal, and rare” —the easiest compromise he could make on the issue. I think he’s stupid and misguided on Iraq, and he’s still insisting that surge didn’t work, couldn’t work, was a big mistake, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. He speaks in banalities and cliches:

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” (I change. You change. We all change. Now.)

“YES WE CAN!” (Can what?)

“I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” (Isn’t everybody?)

However, there are some things I can appreciate about Mr. Obama.

1. He tried to help a Chicago woman whose daughters are being held by their father in Ramallah in the West Bank, Palestine. No one know how the issue here will be resolved, but I appreciate Obama’s intervention.

2. I watched the Saddleback Community Church Civil Forum on the Presidency on youtube, and I have to say that Obama IS quite personable. When he was talking, I felt as if I were eavesdropping on a real conversation between him and Pastor Warren. When McCain was talking, I felt as if it was Rick Warren giving Senator McCain an opportunity to say the things he wanted to say to the voters and McCain taking advantage of that opportunity. I liked both men, Obama with his nuanced and thoughtful answers and McCain with his stories and firm declarations of good intent and strong conviction. . . But either Obama’s the better actor, or else he’s more sincere and open and unrehearsed. Not sure which it is, and not sure if it really matters in the grand scheme.

3. He’s much better looking than John McCain, and he’s definitely younger. McCain was looking o–l–d at the Forum. Not to be morbid, but I really want Mr. McCain to choose an excellent running mate.

I hope those won’t be seen as left-handed compliments. I really tried.

Gleaned from the Saturday Review: August 9th and 16th, 2008

Aug20

Sassymonkey is recommending The President’s Daughter by Ellen Emerson White. I first heard of this series during last year’s Under the Radar Recommendations from A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy. I think it’s time I tried out this series about a woman elected president and her teenage daughter.

I finally have this book from the library, having seen it recommended by someone and requested it a couple of months ago and then recommended again at Just a Reading Fool. Lucky for me I’m patient with the waiting list at the library.

Calon Lan recommends The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy. This humorous look at the vicissitudes of various historical figures sounded like just my kind of humor, so I looked up the author, Will Cuppy. He was a journalist with a book review column for the New York Herald Tribune, and he wrote for The New Yorker and other magazines. He was a humorist, but actually suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1949. Decline and Fall was published posthumously in 1950. Sad story, but I’m looking forward to checking out a copy of the book.

BBC 100

Aug19

I can’t remember where I copied this list. I really like book lists, don’t you?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller Probably not.
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck I’m not a Steinbeck fan.
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma- Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving Tried it, didn’t like it.
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel Maybe.
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 .Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (why is this on the list?)
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce Life is too short.
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker The movie was enough.
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom I’m looking forward to meeting my Saviour face to face, and then I’ll let Him introduce me around. I’m not sure Mr. Albom knows much about it.
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole Tried it; maybe I’ll try again someday.
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables– Victor Hugo

I couldn’t figure out how to underline the ones I loved, but since I loved almost all the ones I read, the ones in bold print, I suppose the underlining part was unnecessary.

Sunday Salon: What To Read?

Aug17

The Sunday Salon.comThis Sunday Salon post is made up of more notes for my talk next Tuesday:

WHAT do we read?

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a 1000 years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges

1. Read the classics.
From C.S. Lewis’s Introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.


Great Books of the Christian Tradition and Other Books Which Have Shaped Our World by Terry Glaspey. Glaspey lists books by era and gives a little information about each one. His list is not exhaustive, but it does include non-Christian authors as well as the great Christians.
The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer. Ms. Bauer’s book is marketed for and aimed toward homeschoolers, but it’s perfect for any autodidact. The books are listed by genre: the novel, autobiography and memoir, history, drama, and poetry.
Who Should We Then Read? by Jan Bloom. I got this title from Carmon’s list here. I haven’t seen it, but it sounds good.

Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature by Gene Edward Veith, Jr. This one is not so much a list of what to read as a guide to how to read discerningly.
Books Children Love: A Guide to the Best in Children’s Literature by Elizabeth Wilson, foreword by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. I used to have a copy of this book, I think. As I remember, it’s a list by grade level of the best in children’s literature.
Love Your God With All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul by J.P. Moreland. I just found this one at the church library today, but it looks like a fantastic case for Christian intellectual endeavor. And it has a list at the end of books that are useful as introductions to various fields including ethics, economics, education, theology, history, journalism, law, literature, mathematics, psychology, mostly from a Christian perspective.

In science, read by preference the newest works.
In literature, read the oldest.
The classics are always modern.
~ Lord Edward Lytton

2. Read the books that are shaping the minds of our culture.

What is the most popular fantasy book of the past ten years?

Have any of you read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code?

Who’s heard of Stephenie Meyer? Have you read her books?

I don’t enjoy a lot of modern literary fiction because I find that most of what’s been produced in the twentieth century and beyond is full of existential angst and hopelessness, but I make myself read some because it’s speaking to the people in our culture, the people to whom I am a witness of God’s truth, whether it speaks to me or not.

“If you still don’t like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you’re more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages.” —Nancy Pearl

3. Read what you enjoy.

I like fiction. I learn from fiction. Next to fiction, I like stories of real people, biographies and history and memoir, Make yourself try different genres, different eras of literature, kinds of writing that are new to you. But if you don’t enjoy them, don’t finish. The 50 page rule is not a bad thing. Life is short.

4. Use booklists and blogs and book reviews and catalogs.
In addition to the guides above, try these assorted booklists and reading guides:

Picture Book Preschool. Picture Book Preschool is a preschool curriculum by Sherry Early based on picture books that she has been reading to her children for the past twelve years.
100 Best Fiction Books of All Time from Semicolon.
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Peter Boxall. Arukiyomi’s 1001 Books spreadsheet lists the 1001 books and gives you a way to record what you’ve read and calculate how many books you should read per year to finish the list.
Book Lust by Nancy Pearl.
Book Crush by Nancy Pearl.
WORLD Magazine. WORLD has lots of book reviews, book columns, author interviews, etc.
Sonlight catalog for a list of quality children’s books, whether or not you use their curriculum.
Veritas Press catalog. Ditto the Sonlight blurb.
Lots of great blogs feature book reviews and book talk. Check out my sidebar under Book Blogs or Kid’s Lit. Or try the links found at the Saturday Review featured each Saturday here at Semicolon.

Quick unrelated link: Joel Belz of WORLD magazine says that real winner of tonight’s townhall meeting (Civic Forum on the Presidency) at Saddleback Church (Rick Warren’s church) was Pastor Rick who proved himself to be an able interviewer. I’ll be interested to read a more detailed account of the questions and answers.

And for more reading suggestions the Carnival of Children’s Literature, Beach Edition for August, is up at Chicken Spaghetti.