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Reading

Top Ten Books on My To-Read List

September 13, 2017 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

Top 10 To-Reads

A week or two ago, I set about trying to make a list of all the books I’ve been given for review or borrowed over the past four months. I was prepared for a decent-sized list, but I admit I did have to gulp a little when I saw the full extent of it. I’m a little more behind than I thought. However, since making this list, I can see progress! My hope is that by November, I’ll be mostly through this stack. There are thirty-two books altogether there so far, with fourteen of them being physical copies and the other eighteen being ebooks, mostly “e-review” copies, which means most of them were given to me in exchange for my honest review (and, obviously, the authors hope that I’ll get it done in good time!).

My want-to-read list, however, isn’t just contained on this page. If I would write out all of those, I’d easily have somewhere between 1 and 500 books written down!

Ante Up!: A New Book by Chautona Havig!

June 28, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · 2 Comments

Ante Up! by Chautona Havig

About two months ago, Christian author Chautona Havig released an interesting mystery named Sweet on You. Now, not too much later, she’s completed another book named Ante Up!. This one is the fourth in a series called the Aggie’s Inheritance series, about a young woman who inherited her eight nieces and nephews after her sister and brother-in-law died in a tragic accident.

I’m reviewing the story today, but a more in-depth review will be posted on the website on Friday, so keep an eye out for that in this week’s newsletter!

My Goals for This Week

June 6, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

Morning Beauty 01

Planning has always been a sore point for me. I love the idea; love the feel of paper under my fingers and seeing plans take shape before me. I can easily spend hours reading productivity blogs about how one could go about making a plan for what you want to do in a year, broken down into quarters, months, weeks, and finally days. I love it, I really do.

Yet this morning, as I was mulling over the words from Proverbs: “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule…” (12:24), I realized how very lazy I have been about my work lately. How little I’ve accomplished, and how much I’ve let the important things slip.

Reading, Art, and Guilt — a Guest Post

September 8, 2015 by Esther Filbrun · 1 Comment

Twice in the past two months I have had an “ah-ha!” moment. Both times, I suddenly had an answer to something that I had been feeling guilty about for years.

I was reading by the time I was three years old. When I was a baby, someone gave my mom a book, something about “Teach Your Baby to Read.” I was the first baby, so she had time, and she made flashcards to put on objects all over the house. I can’t remember not being able to read, and I’m guessing maybe she eventually regretted teaching me that young, as I quickly developed an addiction to reading! I remember being excited to start first grade, but then being very disappointed because the first day of first grade the reading lesson was simply, “God.” I was reading whole books by then! I spent hours and hours reading thousands of books as I grew up, and put that love of books to good use when I started a bookstore in my late teens. However, after I got married, little by little I started feeling guilty for loving to read, and guilty for taking time to read when there were other things to do, as there always are. Comments some people made such as, “I only ever read the Bible and ___________(church paper),” or, “Reading is a waste of time for me,” added to that feeling of guilt. I still read, because I can’t make myself stop reading, but always with a slight feeling of guilt.

Reading, Art, and Guilt

Last year, my daughter came in from her bedroom one morning saying that she felt like the Lord had given her an idea. She wondered what I thought of a website devoted to book reviews. She would include warnings with the reviews of anything that parents might want to know about the book before giving it to their child, and build a search function to help parents find books about a particular area they were studying. After we all prayed about it, she built the website, and soon I started writing some reviews for her of books I read to myself or aloud to the other children. Still, I felt somewhat guilty about loving to read!

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