Five recent reads

The Complete Guide to Dream Interpretation*… I don’t honestly know how I feel about this one yet! The quick premise, this is a biblical guide to dream interpretation. I have had really vivid dreams for as long as I can remember, and at times they are so vivid they haunt me and consume my thoughts for days. I’ve also had recurring dreams at different times in my life. I’ve always enjoyed looking up dream meanings after a particularly unnerving dream and almost always see a connection between my life and the dream’s alleged meaning but I’ve always just sort of viewed it as horoscope-y. One-size-fits-all, you know? I’ve also often wondered about dream interpretation as it’s written about in the Bible. The author of this book is charismatic and it was really refreshing to read about her faith and her standpoint despite the fact that the things she practices differ in some ways from the way my own family practices our faith. Did it convert me? No. Did it make me think? Definitely. I’ll still be looking up the meanings of my dreams “for fun,” but now through this book… and I’ll be enjoying reading actual scripture and then praying about what I’ve read to determine if I really think God is trying to speak to me through my dreams or not. I’m also excited to grow in this area and really decide for myself what I believe as far as modern-day dream interpretation goes.

The Green Ember… I had seen this children’s novel popping up on just about every Christian homeschooler’s Instagram feed for a while and I finally decided to try it for myself. It did not at all disappoint. I highly recommend it, can’t wait to read the second installment, and will absolutely be reading this one to and with my children down the road.

Dirty Genes… after I got that MTHFR test back I excitedly dove into Dirty Genes and I can’t recommend this book highly enough to literally all people. I am so fascinated by genetics and got so nerdy-excited through this one but truly, I can’t speak highly enough about it. My doctor didn’t know much about gene testing so we were going to test one gene at a time, which is crazy expensive. Instead, if you want to gene test, you should use 23andme where you’ll pay around $130 for the full test instead of just one single gene… but honestly, I recommend just skipping the cost of the test altogether and just reading this book. It was so fascinating to see how all the amazing genes that make us all unique can be damaged by so much in our environments. My diet is already pretty solid, although I of course enjoy a junky treat just as much as the next person, but there were still a lot of environmental changes I could make and started implementing after reading the book. I’m making all my own soaps and shampoos now, for example, and turning my cooking vents on high any time I’m cooking. I learned a lot, Ryan learned a lot, and again… I can’t tell you how much I think everyone should read this book.  

The Read-Aloud Family… I put myself on the library’s hold list for this one right away but must have entered at least 20 giveaway contests trying to get my hands on a copy sooner than that. Once I finally got started on the library copy, the Kindle version was suddenly on sale for $.99. I was loving it enough that I knew I’d want to refer back to it in the future so I bought it and have highlighted it like crazy. We are already very big on reading to our monkeys (did you know that? Probably had no idea) but this book affirmed that for me, gave me ideas for the future, and made me generally very happy. I also started a nice, cheesy little journal called The Bell Family Read-Aloud Journal where I’ve been reviewing each and every read-aloud book we finish. It’ll be so fun to look back on someday since I’m very book-nerdy.

Teaching from Rest… This is a beautiful (and super, super short) homeschool book written by the same author who wrote The Read-Aloud Family above (Sarah Mackenzie). I loved this one too and plan to buy a copy to re-read any time I start to feel tired in my homeschooling role.

Currently reading: Quit Church (not really about giving up on church)… and that’s pretty much it! I do read a snippet from 101 Things You Should do Before your Kids Leave Home and the Bible each morning but otherwise I am reading exactly one book. I think I’m finally over my 20 books at once phase.

*I received a free copy of The Complete Guide to Dream Interpretation from Chosen Books in exchange for my completely honest review.