I am a compulsive reader. As a child, I would send shivers down my spine with the thought of being stranded in a waiting room containing only old copies of Michigan Out-of-Doors magazine, because I knew that despite having less than no interest in hunting, fishing, or “outdoor news,” I would Read Every One. Better to be stranded with only my own thoughts for company . . .
My thoughts eventually carried me off to the University of Michigan, where I picked up a bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology – a major in which I conveniently got to take whichever sociology and anthropology courses interested me the most rather than having to choose one of the two warring disciplines. So I took everything I could find in the Soc. and Anthro. departments on family, gender, marriage, and childhood.
Two years later, after a mini-cancer bout (Hodgkin’s lymphoma), I headed back to school to study Catholic theology. And then decided to become Catholic. A few more piecemeal semesters of theology prerequisites, and then I headed off to Rome to do an intensive philosophy course at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum), where I met my now-husband. A school year and a semester more in Rome for us – coursework for a certificate in spirituality for me, coursework for a doctorate in moral theology for him – and back to the States just in time to have our first baby. A girl. And now we have a boy, too. (And no, God willing, we’re not “done.”)
I started this blog to share my thoughts on everything I’ve studied, food, good books, and Stuff In General, which have become too long and involved for status updates and tweets, but I find that I do not have either the efficiency or time/space/hands to do so much right now. So in the meantime, I am sharing what I’m reading, and what I’m reading to our kids – the not-too-heavy, one-handed reading that fits into the margins of the rest of my life right now – and perhaps my thoughts will emerge in the midst. Buon appetito!
p. s. The books featured in the header are Food Rules by Michael Pollan; Two-Part Invention by Madeleine L’Engle; The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King; Did Aquinas Justify the Transition from ‘Is’ to ‘Ought’? by Piotr Lichacz, OP; The Year and Our Children by Mary Reed Newland; The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer & Jessie Wise; Peace Like a River by Leif Enger; My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell; and The Tightwad Gazette II by Amy Dacyczyn
Table Reading 