reading – sethlewis.ie

Three Books To Draw Your Heart To God This Summer

The days are longer, the weather is warmer, and it’s a perfect time to get outside and enjoy creation. This is also a great season to let your enjoyment draw your heart closer to the One who invented the sunshine, the growth, and everything else you see. Here are three books I’ve read and enjoyed recently that can help you focus your mind and heart on God this summer:

A Thousand Lives (a poem)

Here’s a poem to compliment my previous post, A Treasure Chest for Thoughts

I have often wandered in
The Hundred Acre Wood
If you’ve never been to Neverland
I’ll tell you that you could
But mind yourself—
There’s pirates there
And don’t trust Long John Silver
You need a bear like ol’ Baloo,
The jungle-wisdom giver
I’ve been in boats with Rat and Mole
And Huckleberry Finn
And for a time the Pevensies
Were pretty much my kin
I cried when Old Dan died and I
Rejoiced when Gandalf was revived
And I have lived a thousand lives
While sitting by the bookshelf

A Treasure Chest for Thoughts

Class was finished for the day at Munster Bible College. As my friend looked over the school’s library, he said, “I never used to read at all before I came here. I just looked at movies and videos and stuff like that. But then I had to read for class, and now I can’t wait to get my hands on more books. I had no idea how many treasures there are in those pages!”

Some Of Our Favourite Teen Fiction Books

A friend asked our family recently for recommendations for their teenage daughter, who’s an avid reader. She knew that our children are voracious readers, as well. The trouble with teenage bookworms is how quickly they devour books, and the trouble with the modern world is that so many of the books currently being written and marketed for teens are rubbish. As we compiled a list of some of our family favourites to share with our friends, we thought there might be other families that could benefit, as well. Our teens are still moving through books fast, so we’d love to hear any recommendations you have—if you leave them in the comments, we’d be grateful!

I’ve posted previously about some of our favourite children’s picture books, as well as some recommendations for older children.

I’m Dated (and you are, too)

New Year’s Day, 2025. The day we all start having to pause to remember what year to write on forms and checks and such, or when we start writing it wrong and having to scribble it out and start again. What will this New Year bring? No one really knows. Looking back is easier—we know what the past is. For good or bad, it’s done. Before long, this past year that was so current, so vital and cutting-edge yesterday will start to feel stale and dated. Old. Has been. Whether we look back on it as the good old days or some kind of personal dark age doesn’t change the fact that we will look back on it. There was a New Year’s Day last year, too. Do you remember it? Or ten years ago, or twenty? Last Halloween I saw that they were selling ’90’s costumes, as if the ’90’s weren’t just last week. But they did look a bit funny.

The Picture Books We Couldn’t Part With

Our children are not really children anymore. It’s been a long time since we read picture book stories to them. But if you look at our bookcases at home, you’ll see that our family still has picture books. We didn’t save most of them—bookcase space is too precious for that—but there are also some picture books that are too precious to part with. Books that were read too many times, that became too much a part of us and our family history together to think of letting go. We had a conversation over dinner recently about the picture books we all remember and love the most, and I thought some of you might like to hear what we came up with. This list represents many hours of read-aloud story times in the Lewis home, times that continue to live on as treasured memories for all of us. So if you have little ones at home, or nephews or nieces or grandchildren or friends with smallies, you might enjoy these, as well. Here’s our list:

Top Books Of 2023

I’d like to finish the year out by sharing the six best books I read this year, and some recommendations from my family as well. These are not books that came out this year—some of them are old, but I read them this year and enjoyed them. You might, too.

Seven Books That Changed My Perspective

Communication is powerful. Written and spoken words can carry ideas, and ideas can change the world. This week, I’d like to share with you seven books that changed the way I think about things. There are many other books that I love and many that I have enjoyed greatly, but for a book to be on this list, it has to have changed my perspective on something. Here they are, in no particular order:

Quotes I Can’t Forget

Words are powerful. They can communicate ideas, and ideas can change everything. Every once in a while someone captures a profound idea so well with their words that it hits my brain hard enough to stick and it won’t let go so it ends up becoming part of me. This week I want to share with you a few quotes that have become part of me. The hard part was picking just a few, so you’re likely to see this kind of post again in the future. Here they are:

A Thousand Words Are Worth A Picture

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but as someone pointed out to me recently—can you draw a picture that effectively communicates that concept? Maybe you’re a good artist and you have an idea of how you could do that well, but I’ve never seen anyone try, and isn’t it interesting that the phrase always comes to us in words, not pictures? The whole point is that pictures are more powerful, but to make that powerful point we use words, not pictures.