I think if you have lost a great happiness and try to recall it, you are only asking for sorrow but if you do not try to dwell on the happiness, sometimes you find it dwelling in your heart and body, silent but sustaining. The purest, completest happiness I know is that of a baby at the breast and the mother giving suck. From that I know what perfect fulfillment is. But I cannot regain it by remembering, by speaking, by yearning. To have known it is enough, and all.

Last month I read Lavinia by Ursala Le Guin. A great tie in on the prefounding  of Rome with my grade six homeschool planning.

Okay, the ruminating on grade six, that I have been doing. <i think i will be doing a book post on homeschooling materials and a separate one on craft books later this month>

Lavinia is not a book to read quickly. I read 10 or so pages at a time, digested, then went back. I am not overly familiar with Le Guin and am now very excited about choosing her children’s books as family read alouds this winter.

~

 

The Boggart still clung to the oldest beliefs about the shape of the year, Celtic beliefs that had been in his head for two thousand years and  more. For him, Halloween was not All Hallows Eve but the ancient Eve of Samhain, the marker between summer and winter.

 

Eldest son, 11, finished this book just as he was walking out the door to sleepaway camp. He recommends it highly. Two ragged thumbnails up!

~

 

‘Fifty two weeks a year and we work fifty,’ he muttered.

‘And they say buy a new hat so you’ll feel different,’ she agreed.

‘But we’ve got everything before us haven’t we? he moaned as it he were looking down in to his own grave.

‘Year in year out,’ she assented.

 

Currently reading Nothing, Doting, Blindness by Henry Green. The quote above is from early 20 somethings. He captures them finely, I’d say. I tried reading this before and just couldn’t slog through. Giving it another go. It is less visual than the books I usually read.

 

linking up with The Year in Books.