Sharing a loved book with a beloved person is one of the sweetest pleasures I can imagine. That’s why reading Jane Eyre with my husband this past month has sent my cup of joy spilling over the edge. Though I could never forget my first passion for this masterpiece—my initial reading was at fourteen and […]
I hope that y’all are having a lovely summer! It’s getting too hot here to go out and garden past ten o’clock in the morning, but there are plenty of pleasant indoor things to put one’s hands to. Not the least of which is a good book when all (or almost all ;)) the pressing […]
A couple of weeks ago we were sitting on the front porch of our dear friends in Birmingham, savoring a cup of tea and fresh scones with them and a new friend from across the street. How effortlessly does conversation flourish upon the common ground of our fellowship in Christ! We womenfolk had kept up […]
I could read a seed catalogue from cover-to-cover.
Especially one with beautiful photographs. I still remember the thrill of that first one from Park Seed, and the infinite sense of possibility that it offered me. I was seventeen, and completely dazzled with the notion that a whole garden could come from an envelope of those […]
The Scottish-American preacher Peter Marshall is one of my heroes. Not only for his robust faith and his imagery-laden sermons that read like poetry. Not only for his distinction as one of the most respected chaplains of the United States Senate. And not just because his beloved Westminster Presbyterian was right here in Atlanta.
I […]
I first made the acquaintance of Alice Van Leer Carrick many years ago by way of a fat, red book of Christmas stories. Though delighted by most, I was completely enchanted with the one entitled simply Christmas in Our Town. In her treasured reminiscences of a New England holiday over eighty years ago I found […]
Is there any more delicious treat than a mailbox stuffed with a manilla envelope containing a much-awaited book? As a little Christmas present to myself this year I located four of the published volumes of a new favorite author, Alice Van Leer Carrick, and ordered them all from abe. At 3 to 6 dollars a […]
My mother read me a passage from the newest Jan Karon book the other day; it was actually a quote from an old and somewhat obscure volume of sketches that we both love very dearly: Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. It was like hearing good news of an old friend and a warm sense of […]
For an enchanting sojourn in a quaint Scottish village tucked away in the heart of the Angus Glens, allow me to recommend J. M. Barrie’s delightful The Little Minister.
The story—among the most touching of love stories I’ve ever read—opens with the arrival of a new minister in the town of Thrums, a village based […]
Isn’t it lovely the way a truly great book lingers with you long after the cover is closed? I dreamed about the end of A Room With a View last night, and this morning I pulled it off the shelf and looked up Mr. Emerson’s heartfelt speech to Lucy in the second to the last […]