Becky's Book Reviews: March Share-a-Tea Check-In

Saturday, March 23, 2019

March Share-a-Tea 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 from a past or current read?
What teas have you enjoyed this month?

I'm currently reading Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken.

Yes. I've finished quite a few books since the last check-in post.

32. The Christian Book of Mystical Verse: A Collection of Poems, Hymns, and Prayers for Devotional Reading. A.W. Tozer, editor. 1991/2016. 177 pages. [Source: Bought]
33. Venetia. Georgette Heyer. 1958/2009. Harlequin. 368 pages. [Source: Gift]
34. Three Men in a Boat. Jerome K. Jerome. 1889. 174 pages. [Source: Bought]
35. Knowing Christianity. J.I. Packer. 1995. 191 pages. [Source: Bought]
36. Shirley. Charlotte Bronte. 1849. 624 pages. [Source: Bought]
37. Alone in the Wild (The Oregon Trail #5) Jesse Wiley. 2019. Scholastic. 160 pages. [Source: Review copy]
38. God is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself. John Piper. 2005. Crossway. 192 pages. [Source: Bought]
39. Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. Adapted by Ari Folman. Original text by Anne Frank. Illustrated by David Polonsky. 2018. 160 pages. [Source: Review copy]
40. Because. Mo Willems. Illustrated by Amber Ren. 2019. Hyperion. 40 pages. [Source: Library]
41. 31 Verses to Write On Your Heart. Liz Curtis Higgs. 2016. 224 pages. [Source: Bought]
42. These Old Shades. Georgette Heyer. 1926/2008. Harlequin. 384 pages. [Source: Bought]
43. Miss Buncle's Book. D.E. Stevenson. 1934. 304 pages. [Source: Bought]
44. The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Abridged. John Calvin. (1536) Edited by Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne (1987). Baker Books. 272 pages. [Source: Bought]

There will always be books I look forward to starting....the struggle for me is making myself finish "current" books before beginning new books.

I quoted so much in my review of Three Men in a Boat. If you haven't read that one yet, you should.
But the book I loved, loved, LOVED this month was D.E. Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book.

She had lived for so long among these people and had suffered so many afternoon teas that she was able to say the expected thing without thinking about it at all. You simply put a penny in the machine and the expected thing came out at once, all done up in a neat little packet, and suitably labeled.

He had already noticed that Miss Buncle was either monosyllabic and completely inarticulate, or else overpowered by a stream of words which forced themselves between her lips like water from a bursting dam.

She tried to fix her mind on the sermon. It was all about loving your neighbor, and how you must seek out the good in people and only see the good. Mr. Hathaway said that was the way to make people good—by refusing to see the evil. Barbara wondered if this were true, and, if so, how deep it went. If you refused to see the evil in a murderer, did that cure him? Doubtful.

Mr. Abbott had never before read a novel about a woman who wrote a novel about a woman who wrote a novel—it was like a recurring decimal, he thought, or perhaps even more like a perspective of mirrors such as tailors use, in which the woman and her novel were reflected back and forth to infinity. It made your brain reel if you pursued the thought too far, but there was no need to do so, unless you wanted to, of course. So much for the main theme.

I discovered a new favorite this month: Bigelow's Constant Comment GREEN. I'd tried the Constant Comment Black Tea years ago and enjoyed it well enough but it wasn't a love. The green one is. I also tried Bigelow's Pomegranate Green. I didn't care for it much.