February 2022 Reading List

Want to know how easy it is to go from taking a pill for back pain, to becoming addicted? Jennifer Weiner puts you in the shoes of Allison Weiss, a wife, mother and blogger who is prescribed pills after an injury at the gym and found the blissful affect of them to be intoxicating. Before long all she thinks about is getting her next pill. Inevitably this comes crashing down and she ends up in re-hab with some very different people to her.

This is an area I have no experience with so I found it very insightful to understand the thoughts that go through an addicts mind.

This was my second reading of Let Your Life Speak. I was reminded of it by guest Emily P. Freeman on the Find Your Voice podcast as one she refers to for hope and change.

I read it a year ago but none of it seemed familiar on the second reading, so it was great to relive Parker’s wisdom. Maybe I’m in a better place to take it to heart.

My favourite quote that spoke to me as I support my son through anxiety and going to school was:

One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person’s pain without trying to “fix” it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person’s mystery and misery. Standing there, we feel useless and powerless, which is exactly how a depressed person feels…

I don’t know anything about St Francis of Assisi so after Wayne Dyer recommended this as a good book of getting to know him in one of his books I gave it a try.

It uses modern language, which I found surprising given it is about someone who lived in the thirteenth century, but it did make it easy to read.

How St Francis lived his life is quite remarkable but it just made me feel really depressed about his choices. He chose to go hungry, stay in a cave alone for days on end, go without sleep, have stones thrown at him, catch diseases of those around him.

The message he wanted to share with the world is that we should all live in Poverty, Peace and Love. Those last two are easy, but that first one I find a real challenge.

WARNING: There is a lot of use of the word “bowels”, such as “deep within your bowels”. It is referring to the deepest inner parts of you, but I couldn’t help but cringe every time.

I will read a few more accounts of the life of St Francis to get a well rounded understanding of his life and beliefs as there must be more to him than what is presented in this book.

On to a much lighter book – one about quilting.

My fabric scraps container was full to the brim so I needed to come up with a project to use them before working on anymore projects and trying to squeeze in more scraps. I went to the library for some ideas and come across this wonderful book – Successful Scrap Quilts.

I am not a quilter. I have made one bed sized patchwork quilt, and a few wall hangings that use techniques common to quilting (applique, binding, batting), so this was a fantastic read for me as a beginner quilter. What I learnt is how to pair fabrics by tonal value, colour and style; a key concept required in scrap quilts. There were lots of coloured photos that demonstrated each of those three elements.

There are 15 quilt patterns, which use 5.5cm x 9.5cm (2″ x 3 1/2″) rectangles or 6.5cm x 11.5cm (2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″) rectangles. Each one arranges rectangles at different angles and with different fabric combinations to create some very easy to make quilts.

I have started work on the Simply Scraps quilt as I had so many different coloured fabrics to work with. I can’t wait to show you once it’s done.