Monday, August 28, 2017

Share-a-Tea August Check-In

  • What are you currently reading for the challenge? 
  • Have you finished any books for this challenge this month?
  • Is there a book you're looking forward to starting next month?
  • Want to share any favorite quotes? It could be from your current read. It could be about reading. It could be about drinking tea. 
  • What teas have you enjoyed this month? 
  • Do you have a new favorite tea?
What I'm currently reading for the challenge:

ESV Reformation Study Bible. Edited by R.C. Sproul. Reformation Trust. 2560 pages. [Source: Gift/Bought]

MEV Personal Size Large Print. Passio. 2014. 1952 pages. [Source: Bought]

The Wretched (Les Miserables) Victor Hugo. Translated by Christine Donougher. 1862/2013. 1456 pages. [Source: Bought]

Adam Bede. George Eliot. 1859. 624 pages. [Source: Bought]

Books I've finished this month:
 Books! Books! Books! Explore the Amazing Collection of the British Library. Mick Manning. Illustrated by Brita Granstrom. 2017. Candlewick. 48 pages. [Source: Review copy]
Hide and Seek. Wilkie Collins. 1854. 384 pages. [Source: Bought]
The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old. Henrik Groen. Translated by Hester Velmans. 2017. 384 pages. [Source: Library]
Great Expectations. Charles Dickens. 1860. 640 pages. [Source: Library] 
Asking the Right Questions: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Applying the Bible. Matthew S. Harmon. 2017. Crossway. 144 pages. [Source: Review copy] 
Reformation Sketches: Insights Into Luther, Calvin, and the Confessions. W. Robert Godfrey. 2003. 151 pages. [Source: Library]
The Bruised Reed. Richard Sibbes. 1630. [Source: Bought]
 The Return. (Amish Beginnings #3) Suzanne Woods Fisher. 2017. Revell. 330 pages. [Source: Review copy]

Looking forward to...
  • Finishing Les Miserables
  • Continuing Adam Bede
  • Beginning Catch 22
Favorite quotes:

From Les Miserables:
  • Youth, even in its sorrows, always has its own brightness. Victor Hugo
  • Don’t you know, to do nothing is a fateful choice to make? Victor Hugo
  • Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater vision? You choose. Victor Hugo
  • To replace thought with daydreaming is to mistake a poison for sustenance. Victor Hugo
  • Destroy the mine of Ignorance, and you destroy the underminer, Crime. To put in a few words some of what we have been writing about: the only social peril is darkness. Humanity is of one kind. All men are of the same clay. With no difference, here below at least, in their predetermined fate. The same obscurity before, the same flesh during, the same dust afterwards. But ignorance mingled with the stuff of humankind blackens it. This incurable blackness spreads inside man and there becomes Evil. Victor Hugo
  • To read aloud is to lend authority to your reading. There are people who read very loudly and seem to be vouching on their word of honour for what they are reading. Victor Hugo
  • He never went out without a book under his arm and he often returned with two. Victor Hugo 
  • ‘Peace is happiness settling down.’ Victor Hugo
  • What tidal waves ideas are! How quickly they drown all that it is their mission to destroy and bury, and how swiftly they create tremendous depths! Victor Hugo
 From Adam Bede
  • Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. George Eliot
  • Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken. George Eliot, Adam Bede
  • When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. George Eliot
  • My life is too short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world. George Eliot, Adam Bede
  • "Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what does other good news signify if we haven't that? For everything else comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend? George Eliot, Adam Bede
  • I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God put his sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o' looking at it: there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all times—weekday as well as Sunday—and i' the great works and inventions, and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does bits o' jobs out o' working hours—builds a oven for 's wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o' one, he's doin' more good, and he's just as near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning. George Eliot, Adam Bede 
From Hide and Seek
  • Art wouldn't be the glorious thing it is, if it wasn't all difficulty from beginning to end. (120)
From The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen
  • Someone ought to bring a class-action lawsuit against the packaging industry for physical damage and mental distress. They have to be doing it on purpose. If they can send people to the moon, surely they ought to be able to come up with an easy twist-off lid. (157)
  • We lose some capacities as we age, but being a busybody isn't one of them. (292)
From Great Expectations
  • "If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my secret as you have kept your own?" "Quite as faithfully." "And your mind will be more at rest?" "Much more at rest." "Are you very unhappy now?" She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment, for my voice failed me. She put her left arm across the head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on it. "I am far from happy, Miss Havisham; but I have other causes of disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have mentioned." After a little while, she raised her head, and looked at the fire Again.
    "It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of unhappiness, Is it true?" "Too true." "Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding that as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?" "Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more for the tone of the question. But there is nothing." She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted room for the means of writing. There were none there, and she took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold that hung from her neck.
    She read me what she had written; and it was direct and clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand, and it trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the chain to which the pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All this she did without looking at me. "My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, "I forgive her," though ever so long after my broken heart is dust pray do it!" "O Miss Havisham," said I, "I can do it now. There have been sore mistakes; and my life has been a blind and thankless one; and I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with you."
This month's teas:
  • English Breakfast
  • White Tea
  • Green Tea
  • Peppermint
  • Earl Grey 
New teas:
  • Wild Raspberry Hibiscus (really like)
  • Peach/Honey White Tea (really dislike)
  • Moroccan Mint (really like)
  • Sweet Dreams (love, love, LOVE)

© 2016 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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