Some­one please request these books before my hus­band burns them. That’s what Jason told me to put in my blog post tonight. My first ques­tion was where was he going to be able to burn them. We live in town. Of course, he was jok­ing and not actu­ally plan­ning on burn­ing any­thing, but he is tired of piles of my books falling down on him when­ever he sits on the couch. I sup­pose I can under­stand where he’s com­ing from. Since they are my piles of stuff though, I tend not to mind as much.

Here are the books I’m hop­ing to give­away and/or swap:

(I’ll give these away on a first come, first served basis. If you have a book or two you would like to offer up for a swap, let me know. If not, just e-mail me at casey at berbs dot us.)

Freefall by Kris­ten Heitzmann

After Anne by Rox­anne Henke (Book #1 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

Find­ing Ruth by Rox­anne Henke (Book #2 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

Always Jan by Rox­anne Henke (Book #4 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

With Love, Libby by Rox­anne Henke (Book #5 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

The Secret of Us by Rox­anne Henke

four­Souls by Trey Sklar , Jedd Medefind, Mike Peter­son, Matt Kronberg

Atone­ment Child by Francine Rivers

I think I have Becom­ing Olivia (Book #3 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series) some­where, too. If I can find that, I will update this post.

Right now, I’m inter­ested in any­thing that makes me think. It can be fic­tion or non-fiction. I just don’t want any of those super easy, really light reads. Any swap­pers out there?

It’s time for my favorite car­ni­val! It’s the 5 Min­utes for Books monthly “What’s on Your Night­stand?” car­ni­val. Yay!

This is so hard for me. I have so many books I want to read. I have told my hus­band sev­eral times recently that there are just too many books and too lit­tle time. Last month, I spent most of my read­ing time read­ing the Twi­light series by Stephe­nie Meyer. It was okay. Yes, that was a lot of time to allo­cate to some­thing that is just okay. Gen­er­ally, I’m not the type of per­son who sticks with some­thing and fol­lows it through if I start to lose inter­est, so I decided that I was going to read all 4 books no mat­ter what. Also, I was curi­ous. I liked some of the char­ac­ters, and I liked the first book quite a bit, so I wanted to see how she wrapped it up. It seemed to me like there was a LOT of room for another book in the series and that it wasn’t really wrapped up. I know the movie just came out, but I don’t go to movies so I most likely won’t be see­ing it for quite some time if at all.

This month, I’m back to my pile of books from Book­Mooch and Paper­back­Swap. I’m also think­ing a lot about home­school, par­ent­ing, and breast­feed­ing tod­dlers, so maybe I’ll read some of those types of books, too.

Do you have any home­school­ing, par­ent­ing or breast­feed­ing books you’d recommend?

Well, like I said last month, I don’t have a night­stand. There’s one on Jason’s side of the bed, but we don’t have books on that one either. I just have my books all over the house. There are a cou­ple in our room, a cou­ple on the back of the couch, one behind the couch, one in my purse, one on my end table, and tons down­stairs on our bookshelves.

Last month, I was read­ing The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book, Reclaim­ing Nick, and Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. I have made some good progress in the Breast­feed­ing Answer Book. I read Reclaim­ing Nick and the two other books in the series, Tam­ing Rafe and Find­ing Stephanie. I did not fin­ish Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. It fell behind our couch, and I sort of for­got about it. Whoops. I did start it, though, and it’s pretty good from what I remember.

In the last month, I also dis­cov­ered Paper­Back­Swap and Book­Mooch. I wouldn’t say that I am obsessed with them, but they are so fun! I put 20 of my books on the sites (10 on each) and so far, I’ve received 4 books with a 5th on the way. I also thought I would try a swap with any­one on here who wants a book that I’ve read, but so far no one has taken me up on my offer. Since I wrote the post, I have decided, I will just give those books away, so if you want one, let me know. If you have any you’d like to swap, I’m open to offers, but I guess it’s now a giveaway!

I have a trip com­ing up in about 1 1/2 weeks, so my read­ing list is a bit more ambi­tious this month. I have some high hopes that I will be able to read a lot on my trip. So, here is my list for October:

See­ing and Savor­ing Jesus Christ by John Piper (from Paper­Back­Swap)- I was look­ing through avail­able books on Paper­Back­Swap, and I saw this one. I hadn’t heard any­thing about it, but if it’s John Piper, I fig­ured there’s a pretty good chance it’s got qual­ity content.

Break­ing Free by Beth Moore (from Paper­Back­Swap)- My friend from col­lege pur­chased this study, and she has done it sev­eral times. I love Beth Moore, so I fig­ured if my friend can do the study 5+ times and find it valu­able, I would prob­a­bly enjoy the book.

Mid­wives by Chris Boh­jalian (from Book­Mooch)- This is a book I had heard about, but I’m not quite sure what I will think of it. It’s a sub­ject I have pretty strong feel­ings on (mid­wives and home­births). I sup­pose it could really go either way.

The Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards (from Book­Mooch)- I was in Tar­get wan­der­ing around one night after a stress­ful evening try­ing to put A to sleep. I picked up this book and read the back of it. I had actu­ally for­got­ten about it for quite a while, but when I was trad­ing away my books, I decided to look it up.

Wild Goose Chase by Mark Bat­ter­son (received from Monica’s give­away on her site Paper Bridges)- I actu­ally found this give­away last month when check­ing out oth­ers’ lists.

Water for Ele­phants by Sara Gruen (bor­row­ing it from the library)- After hear­ing about this one for so long, I decided to find out what all the talk is about.

A Tree Grows in Brook­lyn by Betty Smith (don’t have it yet, but will be get­ting it from the library and hope to be a part of Octo­ber Book Club on 5minutesforbooks.com)- I have heard about this book, but I don’t know any­thing about it. Maybe it’s time I start learn­ing what the clas­sics are all about!

The Prob­lem with Breast­feed­ing by James Akre (bor­rowed from a friend)- She said this book is a must read. I guess I’ll find out.

Don’t for­get to check out www.5minutesforbooks.com for a list of peo­ple who have shared what they are read­ing this month!

I love to read, and I have loved it as long as I can remem­ber. Accord­ing to my mom, I’ve been read­ing since I was 4 years old. I don’t think I remem­ber that, but I do know that the library, books, and read­ing were a major part of my youth. I used to go to the library every Mon­day after school and exchange my books. I would sit there and read until about 4:45 when my dad got off work and met me there. Gen­er­ally, in that time, I would have picked out 8 books (1 for each day of the week plus one for the time at the library) and returned the one I had just fin­ished. Once I got into col­lege, my pace slowed down, but I still read when I could. The day that I turned in my master’s inde­pen­dent study, I went to the library to cel­e­brate. I checked out 4–5 books and read for the next week straight, I think.

Recently, I’ve got­ten a lit­tle claus­tro­pho­bic with all the stuff we have in our house, so I decided that I should list some of my books on some book swap­ping sites. I listed books on Book­Mooch and Paper­Back­Swap. The idea of the sites (with a few dif­fer­ences of course) is that you list books you’ve read. Some­one else requests them and you send your books to peo­ple that want/need them. Then, you find some­one who has books you want/need and you request those books. Of course, the books I want right now are also ones that 300+ oth­ers also want, so we’ll see how soon I get them. Haha…

But, why should I save all my swap­ping for peo­ple I don’t know and have no con­tact with? Any­one wanna swap with me? I’m putting 5 books up for a swap. If you want one of mine, offer me one of yours. I’ll pay my ship­ping, and you pay yours. I’m going to list my books, books I have liked in the past (to give you an idea of what my tastes are), and books I want now. If you think we could make a match, either leave me a com­ment or e-mail me at casey at berbs dot us.

First, books I have and want to give away:

A Fam­ily Apart by Joan Low­ery Nixon– This was a book I had to read for one of my ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion classes in col­lege. I remem­ber it being a good book, and I remem­ber being some­what tempted to read the rest of the series (The Orphan Train Adven­tures). It is a book that is appro­pri­ate for kids in the upper ele­men­tary grades. I would say it would be good for an advanced 3rd grader or an aver­age fourth or fifth grader. There are some themes in the book that are some­what intense for kids of this age (orphans, family/sibling sep­a­ra­tion, fam­i­lies that do not adopt the chil­dren out of love but are look­ing for labor or ser­vants) so be aware of that if you are intend­ing to give this book as a gift or to some­one younger than 14ish (?).

A Time to Kill by John Grisham– This is a great book. It’s a crime drama. It’s about a man who kills two men who raped his young daugh­ter. This book isn’t in great con­di­tion. I got it off the library swap table. It has the library book tag on the side and the bar­code on the back. The bind­ing is bro­ken and page 117–118 falls out. It’s def­i­nitely read­able, but it’s not fresh. It’s a book worth read­ing though.

The Wit­ness by Dee Hen­der­son– I read Dee Henderson’s books The O’Malley Series and The Uncom­mon Heroes series. I really enjoyed those books. I thought The O’Malley Series were her best books though. This book is good, too, but I didn’t like it as well as the O’Malleys. I think that I got so attached to those char­ac­ters I missed them when I was read­ing this book. It’s a Chris­t­ian sus­pense book. There’s a lit­tle romance in it, too, if I remem­ber cor­rectly, but it’s def­i­nitely PG.

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaugh­lin and Nicola Kraus– This book is light chick lit. It’s about a woman who becomes one of “those” nan­nies to a wealthy New York fam­ily. The job starts out as car­ing for one small child. She ends up becom­ing much more than just a nanny. It reminds me a lit­tle of The Devil Wears Prada Nanny Edition.

Every Storm by Lori Wick– I read this book quite a while ago, so I’m not all that clear on the details of it any­more. I remem­ber some­thing about a plane crash and that’s about it. It’s Lori Wick. That should say it all. The main char­ac­ter is sweet and maybe a lit­tle unre­al­is­ti­cally per­fect, and there’s romance in it. Also, this is Chris­t­ian fic­tion and PG. It’s a good book. It’s hard­cover in case that mat­ters, too.

Books I have read in the past and liked:

See the list above. I liked all those. I have read books by Susan May War­ren, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, James Pat­ter­son, Lori Wick, Anita Shreve, Dee Hen­der­son, Dr. Sears, Mary Doria Rus­sell, John Piper, Henri Nouwen, and Beth Moore.

Books I am look­ing for right now:

I’m par­tic­u­larly look­ing for

You: The Owner’s Man­ual by Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Ani­mal, Veg­etable, Mir­a­cle by Bar­bara Kingsolver

The Shack by William P. Young

You can try me on Chris­t­ian fic­tion and non-fiction, but I’m not inter­ested in the Bev­erly Lewis/Amish type of Chris­t­ian fiction.

Ready, set, SWAP!