I love to read, though I haven't been doing too much of it lately. I used to read just about everything, but have become much more discriminating about what I spend time reading. No more romance novels and serial killer books for me. I do love them, but they're way too addicting, and hours and hours pass with nothing to show for them.
We are getting ready to go on vacation on Friday, so I do need to find some things to read while I float around the pool on my raft. Think I'll head to the library tomorrow and see what I can find.
All that to say, I read way more nonficiton than I used to. (Actually, I never used to read nonfiction except for work. I was a book editor/copywriter in my pre-children days.) And I find I enjoy it more than I ever thought I would.
I recently read Robert Benson's Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard. Robert is one of my favorite writers and this book offers lots of life lessons as he chronicles the journey he and Sarah made in landscaping (and relandscaping) their backyard. After reading it, I'm up for dinner on his patio any time!
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
"We had an old house to live in and a new home to make."
"My gardening expertise has some limits, but I do know this much: any patch of dirt, no matter how large or how small, if tended a little bit, holds within it the possibility of enough beauty to take your breath away. It can grow something that will catch your eye and touch your heart. It can give you something to look forward to when the days are dark and cold."
"If we are to have any roots at all, we must find them in the places where we are now, on this day. If we are to make a home, if we are to deeply belong to the places in which we find ourselves, we must dig ourselves in somehow."
Makes me excited to start some work on the backyard when we get back from vacation...
I've also started reading Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson. I'm not that far into it yet, and am saving the rest for the trip. But so far, I really like it. Here's a quote from the preface:
"Keeping house can be a very mundance activity. It is certainly repetitive, and the kinds of work that it involves are varied enough that few people enjoy all of them equally. But at the very same time, housekeeping is about practicing sacred disciplines and creating sacred space, for the sake of Christ as we encounter him in our fellow household members and in neighbors, strangers, and guests."