The Divine Artist: Art for God's Sake

I love this book, by Stephen Bennett, so much that I have it in paperback and on audio.  I am listening to it for about the fifth time, right now.  It is an encouragement to me that God has given me the ability and the desire to be an artist, but it also guides me into how to pursue my art without losing sight of the reason that I exist:  glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.

Of course, there are things that I do not agree with in any book, including this one, but I so much agree with the overarching premise of the book, that God created, that God created art, that God is the Divine Artist and the First Artist, that WE are art, that we are artists created in the image of the Divine Artist, and that it is all about HIM!  Beauty is important, God is beautiful, God's creation is beautiful, we are God's creation, we are beautiful, we are created in His image and should reflect His beauty in ourselves, our lives, our homes, and our art.  Oh, I could go on and on.

I really think that every Christian ought to read this.  (Of course, I do...  LOL!)

Thrift Store Book Haul

I love to go to thrift stores.  One of the biggest reasons I go to thrift stores is books.  Yesterday, two friends and I went to a couple of thrift stores and a couple of fabric stores.

B drove and J and I rode along on the beautiful day in Amish Country of Ohio.  The conversation was fun and we laughed quite a bit.  We brought our lunches and ate at a picnic table outside of Heini's Cheese Chalet.  I bought some fabric for making painting canvasses, handkerchiefs, kitchen towels, and one jumper.  I bought a small wine glass and a vase for using in still lifes.  But, it is the books that took up the most room!  I was specifically looking for books on Spanish language, writing, and art.  I was amazed that I actually found some of everything, plus some.  The "plus some" was not all that surprising.

Here is a list of the books that I gratefully brought home:

Art

Mastering the Art of Watercolor

by Wendy Jelbert and Ian Sidaway

256 pages, large, heavy paperback

like new, beautiful color photos

$.50

Picasso, Life and Art

by Pierre Daix

450 pages, large hardback

very good, some b&w photos

$2.00

Landscapes of His Grace:  A Visual Devotional

Written and photographed by Charles Stanley

224 pages, heavy hardback with dust cover

like new, beautiful full page color photos

$1.00

Doodle, Draw, Journal:  An Art Journaling Workbook

198 pages, paperback

good, highly illustrated with drawings

$2.00

Cover to Cover:  Creative Techniques for Making Beautiful Books, Journals, and Albums

by Shereen LaPlantz

144 pages, paperback

good, b&w and color photos

$1.50

Using Calligraphy:  Layout and Design Ideas

by Alan Furber

128 pages, paperback

good, b&W photos

$2.00

Writing

The Writer's Home Companion:  An Anthology of the World's Best Writing Advice from Keats to Kunitz.

Edited by Joan Bolker

269 pages, paperback

very good, some charts and manuscript pages

$1.00

Writing Life:  How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature.

by Bill Roorbach

218 pages, hardback with dust jacket

very good, no illustrations

$2.00

Prentice Hall Handbook for Writers, Fourth Edition

486 pages, clothbound hardback

good, technical reference

$1.00

How to Write a Children's Book and Get it Published

by Barbara Seuling

214 pages, hardback

like new, few illustrations

$1.00

Spain/Spanish

Toledo:  History, Color, and Art

Prologue by Gregorio Maranon Moyo

63 pages, paperback, printed in Spain

good, beautiful color photos and a large fold-out map

$.25

Food in Spain (International Food Library)

32 pages, hardback, children's book

good, lovely color photos

$.25

Conversational Spanish

by Walter A. Dobrian

315 pages, b&w photos

good, hardback textbook

$1.50

Spain (National Geographic Traveler Series)

400 pages, thick and heavy paperback

like new, beautiful color photos

$.50

Spanish-English/English-Spanish Dictionaries (Four)

    The University of Chicago, paperback $1.25

    Cassell's, paperback $.25

    Merriam-Webster's, paperback $.25

    Websters, paperback $.10

Set of four beautifully bound hardback classic books in Spanish

    La Hija Del Capitan by A. S. Pushkin

    El Hombre y La Tierra

    Hamlet by Shakespeare

    El Papa Verde by Miguel Angel Asturias

very good, small

$.50 each

Just Because

Selections, translated and adapted from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

by Barbara Cohen

Beautifully illustrated by Trina Schart Human

88 pages, hardback, ex-library

$.25

The American Heritage Book of Great Adventures of the Old West

384 pages, hardback with dust jacket

good, generously illustrated

$3.50

Little Men

by Louisa May Alcott

349 pages, clothbound hardback

good, illustrated

$2.50

My Life in France

by Julia Child

349 pages, paperback

good, illustrated

$1.50

Tales from the West of Ireland

by Sean Henry

93 pages, small paperback, published in Ireland

good, no illustrations

$.10

Dear Laura:  Letters from Children to Laura Ingalls Wilder

152 pages, hardback, ex-library

good, beautifully illustrated

$1.50

Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis

    Out of the Silent Planet

    Perelandra

    That Hideous Strength

Well-loved paperbacks

$3.50 total

Two of the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis

    The Horse and His Boy

    The Last Battle

One is well-loved, the other is like new

$3.50 total

The Shepherd's Castle

by George McDonald

281 pages, paperback

good, no illustrations

$2.00

Berlitz German Phrasebook

192 pages, small paperback

very good, no illustrations

$.50

I am assuming anyone who is reading this blog is a book-lover, like me, and would find this list interesting.  Someday, when I get around to reading some from this list, I may do some reviews.

Have you read any of these?  If so, please let me know what you thought of them.

The Mayflower: The Families, The Voyage, and The Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser

My copy of this book is audio and it was 15 1/2 hours long.  The reader seemed to have a very forceful delivery which made her sound like she was emphasizing everything, which was a little irritating at times.  I wish she had read it in a more relaxed way most of the time.  Other than the slight irritant of the voice, the book was wonderful.  The author was very sympathetic to all the people involved:  good, bad, ugly, whoever they were she was able to write about them in a very human way.  Sometimes, if the author does not like a particular person, it comes across in the writing, but I didn't get that feel about anyone.  At least, not from the authors words.  The reader gave me that impression, because of her tone and inflections.  I don't know if I can make you understand what I mean by the feeling that I get from the author as opposed to the reader.  But, anyway, I loved the book and I highly recommend it, if you are interested in history.  I think it would have been better as a physical book or an ebook.

Publishers Description:

From acclaimed historian and biographer Rebecca Fraser comes a vivid narrative history of the Mayflower and of the Winslow family, who traveled to America in search of a new world.

“There is nothing sleep-inducing about the chronicle crafted by Ms. Fraser . . . There is more to the Pilgrims’ story—more to American identity and character—than our Thanksgiving rituals and reveries.” —Wall Street Journal

The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is one of the seminal events in world history. But the poorly-equipped group of English Puritans who ventured across the Atlantic in the early autumn of 1620 had no sense they would pass into legend. They had eighty casks of butter and two dogs, but no cattle for milk, meat, or ploughing. They were ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the new land that few of them could comprehend. But the Mayflower story did not end with these Pilgrims’ arrival on the coast of New England or their first uncertain years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of one ordinary family and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in America.

Edward Winslow, an apprentice printer, fled England and then Holland for a life of religious freedom and opportunity. Despite the intense physical trials of settlement, he found America exotic, enticing, and endlessly interesting. He built a home and a family, and his remarkable friendship with King Massassoit, Chief of the Wampanoags, is part of the legend of Thanksgiving. Yet, fifty years later, Edward’s son Josiah was commanding the New England militias against Massassoit’s son in King Philip’s War.

The Mayflower is an intensely human portrait of the Winslow family, written with the pace of an epic. Rebecca Fraser details domestic life in the seventeenth century, the histories of brave and vocal Puritan women, and the contradictions between generations as fathers and sons made the painful decisions which determined their future in America.

I recommend this book. 

I love reading!

So, I thought I would start a blog that is just about the books that I am reading, have read, will read in the future, and, maybe, even, possibly write.  👀

I hope you get the book bug, too.