Welcome, hopeful wanderers, seekers of truth, fellow readers. Are you ready to freshen your mind and awaken your soul? Well then, let’s jump in.

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.”

Emma Thompson

With all the rush of life: school, work, travels and mundane business my beloved books can get shoved absently onto my bedside table and promptly covered by to-do lists, essays and Greek paradigms. But how I miss them when they do. My heart misses the bolstering courage of a Tolkien tale. My mind misses the joy of unraveling the depth of a sentence in Markus Zusak’s prose. My soul misses the tales of hope spun by pilgrims who walked this trail ahead of me.

I believe that story is a gift from God: a gracious gift that He can work through. Words matter because our God has created them that way and He has created our hearts to be encouraged and bolstered and pointed to Him through stories (and other things!). So, friend, will you join me? I am going to fight the “no time” and “too tired” and “100 other things to do” that my mind and the world throws at me and I am going to read. With the end of the National Bible Bee Season, I have jumped back into reading and since I always love book recommendations I thought I’d give you a look at my Winter bookshelf: what I’m reading right now and what I want to read soon.

But before I do, I have something exciting to share with you all!

“What’s more, stories are stars – stories are beacons to guide us and heal us and to promise us that the darkness is not all there is. And this is what the tagline, Remember the stories, means.”

Karissa Chmil

May I introduce you to a new corner of light and story in the blogging world? A friend of mine, a lovely person and beautiful writer, is launching her blog today and I think it is something a lot of you would like.

“Storylight is a blog that focuses around the tagline Remember the stories, which champions the idea that, when you’re hurting or confused or you’ve messed up at something, you can go back to the stories you’ve read, to the character’s you’ve grown with, and let them teach you and heal you.
It features flashfiction, bookish articles (such as Is Reading A Waste Of Time?), book reviews, book recommendations, and soon-to-be author interviews—in short, it’s a hopeful, purposeful, bookish atmosphere, and I’d love to see you over there!”

Doesn’t that sound amazing? (And I have been browsing the blog and it certainly lives up to it). Hop over and check it out!

What I’m Reading

The Two Towers: Being the Second Installment of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkein (fiction)

Yes, I’m one of those sorry folk who has never read LOTR in its entirety. I have no valid excuses and bear your reproachful gasps with bowed head. Reading The Two Towers has made me wonder why in the world I couldn’t get through it before. Tolkien’s writing is so rich and these books are a breath of fresh air. The characters, the prose and the ever pervading theme of good and light and hope struggling against the massive odds of darkness are not something you find everyday.

This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson (non-fiction)

Do you ever discover a book and think to yourself “this is the book I’ve been looking for for years“? That is what happened with me and this book. In Sarah Clarkson’s beautiful prose she weaves a story of how God broke into her pain and darkness with beauty. I’m not very far yet but I loved it from page one and I will take my time with this one, savoring each page to come.

“We live in a broken world. Amid the daily realities of sickness and isolation, disappointment and pain, it can be profoundly difficult to grasp the real goodness of God. But this is where God breaks into our darkness with beauty…” ~excerpt from the back of the book

Content Warning: some mention of depression and mental illness, but in a healing way

To Be Read…

These are a few of the titles on my TBR list. Note: I have not yet read these and cannot vouch for the content.

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• Fawkes by Nadine Brandes
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Have you read any of these books? If you all are interested I might make a follow up post after I have read them, let me know if you’d like that! That’s it for now friends, until next time, lift your head dear one! May the Lord bless you!