What's wonderful this Wednesday?

French toast bake!  And the wonderful friend who made it.  I sent Donna this recipe I found online, saying I wanted to try it.  She bought Texas Toast and a couple of other ingredients she didn't already have, and this morning we had it for brunch.  Thank you, Donna, for a wonderful Wednesday.  It was delicious, with some left over for tomorrow.

Ingredients

1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)
1 cup brown sugar
1 loaf Texas toast
4 eggs
1-1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Powdered sugar for sprinkling

Directions

1.   Melt butter in microwave, add brown sugar, and stir until mixed.
2.  Pour butter/sugar mix into bottom of 9" x 13" pan, and spread around
3.  Beat eggs, milk, & vanilla
4.  Lay single layer of Texas Toast in pan
5.  Spoon 1/2 of egg mixture on bread layer
6.  Add 2nd layer of Texas Toast
7.  Spoon on remaining egg mixture
8.  Cover and chill in fridge overnight
9.  Bake at 350 for 45 minutes (covered for the first 30 minutes)
10.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar
11.  Serve with warm maple syrup

Two books from friends

Listening for God: Volume 3 ~ edited by Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, 2000 (paperback, 158 pages)

Where do you listen for God?  In this collection of stories and essays, the challenge is to pay attention everywhere.  This book is intended to help readers investigate how life and faith merge in surprising ways and places.  This reader includes eight selections from contemporary American literature, brief author profiles, and reflection questions.  The eight authors in this volume are John Cheever, Mary Gordon, Wendell Berry, Oscar Hijuelos, Reynolds Price, Louise Erdrich, Tess Gallagher, and Tillie Olsen.

Three of us were on our way to a bookstore together last week.  When Betty stepped off the elevator to meet Sheila and me in the lobby of our building, she handed me her copy of this book, thinking it was one I might enjoy.  I think she's right.  The eight short pieces look interesting, and each chapter ends with four or five "Guides to Reflection."

Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived ~ by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober, 1999, psychology paperback, xviii + 249 pages)

This book is a must for the parents of unusually bright and active children.  Indigo children are those who display a new and unusual set of psychological attributes and show a pattern of behaviour generally undocumented before.  In this groundbreaking book on the Indigo Child, international authors Lee Carroll and Jan Tober report the information of this increasingly documented and world-wide phenomenon and tell you how to identify this behavioural pattern and guide you on how you, as a parent or teacher of these children, can help them realise their amazing potential, not forgetting their spiritual needs or specific health issues.

Last week, I ran across an article about Indigo Adults and took a test I found online to see if I was one.  The test informed me:

"Congratulations! You are an Indigo Adult! (100%)."

Years ago, I bought this book about Indigo Children, but figured it was "lost" in one of my unpacked boxes somewhere.  When I saw the same book on my friend Donna's bookshelf, I brightened up and asked, "Have you read this?"  She had not, and added, "It's probably yours."  And it was!  Inside was my "bj" with the date 3/9/2001.  Since I don't believe in coincidences, I figure it's time for me to read this book.  So Donna "gave" it back to me.

Two books from two friends, and both of them are in my Study Buddies group.

They began to run

Where Maeve Binchy lived in Ireland

Echoes ~ by Maeve Binchy, 1985, fiction (Ireland)

People seemed to know without being told.  They came out of their houses and began to run down the main street.  The murmur became louder, and almost without knowing they were doing it they started to check where their own families were.  It was still just a figure, face down in the water.  They didn't know for sure whether it was a man or a woman.

Maeve Binchy's web site gives a summary of what this novel is about.

Two very different children are growing up, shouting their hearts' desires into the echo cave, praying that their destiny will lead them far away from the town in which they live.  Castlebay, in winter empty and grey with wind and sea spray, becomes all bustle and colour in the gaudy days of summer — and Tom O'Brien's shop on the edge of the cliff besieged by holidaymakers.  One of those children with ambitions to leave Castlebay is Clare, Tom O'Brien's younger daughter.  A favourite with the local schoolteacher, she wins a scholarship to University College, Dublin and seems all set for a path of academic glory.  The other child dreaming of escape is David Power, the doctor's son, also bound for Dublin university, and probably a dazzling future as a specialist.  The paths of these two characters are destined to criss-cross in a quite unforeseen way, and eventually both roads will lead back to Castlebay.  The end of this long drama of ambition, betrayal, and love is played out in the seaside town where it began, against a backdrop of whispered family gossip and the tangled skein of past friendships.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.

Blogiversary ~ eight years

I first posted on this blog on January 30, 2007,

which means I have now been blogging for eight years.

Now what?

Libraries are wonderful

The Lower River ~ by Paul Theroux, 2012, fiction (Malawi)

Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa.  He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business.  When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go:  back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.  Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people.  They remember him — the White Man with no fear of snakes — and welcome him.  But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena ~ by Anthony Marra, 2013, fiction (Chechnya)

In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home.  When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed (a failed doctor) finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives.  He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.  For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise.  Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility.  But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate.

There Were Giants Upon the Earth: Gods, Demigods, and Human Ancestry: The Evidence of Alien DNA ~ by Zecharia Sitchin, 2010

In whose genetic image were we made?  From his first book The 12th Planet on, Zecharia Sitchin has asserted that the Bible’s Elohim who said “Let us fashion The Adam in our image and after our likeness” were the gods of Sumer and Babylon — the Anunnaki who had come to Earth from their planet Nibiru.  The Adam, he wrote, was genetically engineered by adding Anunnaki genes to those of an existing hominid, some 300,000 years ago.  Then, according to the Bible, intermarriage took place:  “There were giants upon the Earth” who took Adam’s female offspring as wives, giving birth to “heroes of renown.”  With meticulous detail, Sitchin shows that these were the demigods of Sumerian and Babylonian lore, such as the famed Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh as well as the hero of the Deluge, the Babylonian Utnapishtim.  Are we then, all of us, descendants of demigods?  In this book, Sitchin proceeds step-by-step through a mass of ancient writings and artifacts, leading the reader to the stunning Royal Tombs of Ur.  He reveals a DNA source that could prove the biblical and Sumerian tales true, providing conclusive physical evidence for past alien presence on Earth and an unprecedented scientific opportunity to track down the “Missing Link” in humankind’s evolution, unlocking the secrets of longevity and even the ultimate mystery of life and death.

What's wonderful about this Wednesday?  More books from the library.  When I returned two books, I brought home these three.  So this is a very good Wednesday.

Two book clubs ~ or more?

I'm already in two book clubs, one with the other seniors where I live and one made up of women from my church.  Yesterday, a neighbor handed me an invitation to another one:  a book club that meets at a book store.

Book Club Launch Party — Wednesday, January 28th, 7:00pm.  Come join the party and meet other like-minded readers, sign up for a reading group, volunteer to host, offer book suggestions.  What genres tickle your fancy?  Young adult, science fiction, banned books, philosophy, noir suspense, literature, ecology, history?  Come mingle and talk books!  The party starts at 7:00 pm, and beer, snacks, and other refreshments will be available!  Everyone is invited. Bring your friends!

My question to you is:

How many book clubs
is too many?

It's a miracle

Let us now contemplate miracles.  This is one of them.