The Laughing Thief

Elijah is the laughing thief!  I noticed recently that his perfectly fine laugh, which I love very much, had vanished!  It was replaced by a neighbor kid's laugh.  Chris tells me that this kind of assimilation is normal, that kids tend to act like their friends.  As a person with a ridiculously loud laugh that does not appear to take on the nature of anybody else's, I am baffled.  And sad.  I hope his laugh will return.  I tried prompting him for a while, pointing out when he was using his friend's laugh and not his own, but nothing worked.

Recently I started reading again.  This, after more than a decade of reading almost nothing but textbooks.  I personally do not find textbooks all that interesting to read.  I actually think they damaged the part of me that loved to read - drove it deep inside where it took years to emerge again.  In November, I started reading again.  One of the series I started was the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan.  Now don't judge me too harshly for reading a middle-school series! They are super quick reads, and are very clever.  If you've seen the movies and not read these books, you're doing it wrong.  I have yet to encounter a movie that was better than the book it was based on, but these movies are especially horrible deviations.  You'll want to start with The Lightning Thief if you decide to read these.

Here are some grown up books that I really liked as well.  :)






Lynn Austin's series Chronicles of the Kings was fabulous.  These books begin when Hezekiah was a small boy, and progress in five volumes through the redemption of King Manasseh.  These books are based on scripture and are historically accurate as far as customs of the times, so if you have previously skimmed over the evil that is warned against in the Old Testament regarding child sacrifice and idolatry, you will encounter it here, and it is not observed from a distance.  Just a warning.








The next one was also great - it's basically the Bible in story form.  It's called "The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel" by Walter Wangerin, Jr.  While this is a novelization, it sticks very close to the scriptural account.  This book will take the events from the calling of Abram through Jesus and put them in order for you in story form.  It's very well done and very easy to understand.







The final series I'll tell you about is Shannara by Terry Brooks.   I love Tolkien, and all things fantasy, so Chris recommended this series to me.  I started with "The Sword of Shannara" and am currently reading my tenth book in this series.  I love them.  If you like fantasy, check them out!  The allegories in this book are very interesting, and it is continually clever writing and characters.







I've read some other books, but I don't believe they are worth mentioning.  I'm not sure that I'd recommend them, anyway.  If you stumble upon them, it won't be because I directed you there!