Share-a-Tea January Check-In

• What are you currently reading for the challenge? 
• Have you finished any books for this challenge this month?
• Is there a book you're looking forward to starting next month?
• Want to share any favorite quotes? It could be from your current read. It could be about reading. It could be about drinking tea. 
• What teas have you enjoyed this month? 
• Do you have a new favorite tea?

I usually have a couple of books that I'm currently reading. I usually read the Bible while drinking tea at least once or twice per day. And another book for the other tea times. The Bible I'm currently reading is the 21rst Century KJV Bible. I finished my other tea book Friday afternoon. So I'm going to be picking another one to start on today or tomorrow! (I've also been reading off and on in Steven Lawson's Foundations of Grace.)

Yes, I've finished several books. In late December, I finished Three Treatises by Martin Luther. If I'd not had such a WONDERFUL experience reading this one while drinking tea, I never would have started this challenge. Initially I wanted to call it the Tea-o-logy Reading Challenge. But didn't want to potentially limit interest by saying it was only for theology! The next book I read for this challenge was a very short read at the start of the New Year, William Goldman's The Silent Gondolier. Next, I read a Newbery winning children's classic, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. These three were mostly tea reads. Mostly. But the next two were longer--much longer--and I read them whenever, wherever. The New English Bible was one of them, and the Karamazov Brothers was the other.

I haven't picked out my next books yet.

Favorite quotes:

Brothers, be not afraid of human sin, love man even in his state of sin, for this is already a likeness of divine love and is the highest love on earth. (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers, 399) 

We are not here on this earth for long, we commit many bad deeds, and we say much that we should not. Therefore, let us all take advantage of any opportunity of social interaction to say a kind word to one another. (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers, 936)

I did come across a character sketch by Anthony Trollope of a servant who loved tea a little too much!

Mrs. Kelly kept two ordinary in-door servants to assist in the work of the house; one, an antiquated female named Sally, who was more devoted to her tea-pot than ever was any bacchanalian to his glass. Were there four different teas in the inn in one evening, she would have drained the pot after each, though she burst in the effort. Sally was, in all, an honest woman, and certainly a religious one; — she never neglected her devotional duties, confessed with most scrupulous accuracy the various peccadillos of which she might consider herself guilty; and it was thought, with reason, by those who knew her best, that all the extra prayers she said, — and they were very many, — were in atonement for commissions of continual petty larceny with regard to sugar.
On this subject did her old mistress quarrel with her, her young mistress ridicule her; of this sin did her fellow-servant accuse her; and, doubtless, for this sin did her Priest continually reprove her; but in vain. Though she would not own it, there was always sugar in her pocket, and though she declared that she usually drank her tea unsweetened, those who had come upon her unawares had seen her extracting the pinches of moist brown saccharine from the huge slit in her petticoat, and could not believe her.

I drink a lot of different teas. The past two weeks I've really come to LOVE my chocolate mint tea. Most of the time while drinking this one I was reading Dostoevsky. My second favorite tea I enjoyed this month was Bigelow's Lemon Ginger with probiotics.

© 2016 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews