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!

I’ve been blog­ging on this site for over a year now, and I’ve been read­ing oth­ers’ blogs for even longer. Only recently, though, have I really started par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­ments and give­aways on oth­ers’ blogs. Appar­ently, I’ve had a great streak of luck, because I’ve won 3 give­aways in the last few weeks. So, I want to take a minute to say thanks to those blog­gers for their fun con­tests. Thank you, 5 Min­utes for Books, for the book, Shop Your Closet. I have big plans for my closet! Thank you, Heather, for the lip­stick. I love it, and I’m so glad I took a chance on the Rais­in­berry. It’s so fun. Thank you, Mon­ica, for the book, Wild Goose Chase. I have a lot of read­ing I want to do, but I think this may make its way up to the top of the list rather quickly.

I have enjoyed read­ing new blogs, and of course, there’s always an extra thrill that comes with win­ning some­thing. Hmmm, maybe some time it will be my turn to do a giveaway!

I think over the course of the next sev­eral months, I will prob­a­bly be chang­ing my blog top­ics up a lit­tle. When I was breast­feed­ing K fre­quently or when A was born and I was feed­ing both boys fre­quently, I felt like I had a lot more to say about nurs­ing specif­i­cally. Now that they’re get­ting older, it’s just some­thing that’s an every day part of our lives. It just is. I don’t think or worry about it too much. We’ve got­ten over most of the hur­dles and pit­falls. A is sleep­ing bet­ter, and K has kept up his 2 a day nurs­ing rou­tine for the past few weeks.

Some of the top­ics that I have become more inter­ested in lately are healthy eat­ing, green liv­ing, cook­ing, exer­cise, and expand­ing my read­ing reper­toire. Maybe I’ll fin­ish a book (with­out read­ing the end­ing ahead of time) and do a review of it. Who knows?

What are you read­ing? I’m always look­ing for a good book or a good rec­om­men­da­tion. I start lots of books, and I fin­ish a few. I will start any­thing that sounds even remotely inter­est­ing. I’m not lim­ited to a cer­tain genre, author, or sto­ry­line. I read Chris­t­ian authors and non-Christian authors. I read fic­tion and non­fic­tion. I read as much as I can. I have always loved to read. As a child, my mom says that I taught myself to read around the time I was 4. Since then, I have almost always had at least one book in the process of being read.

Right now, I don’t have a night­stand, but I do have a read­ing list. Some of these I just started, and some I have been work­ing on for a while.

The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book — Who doesn’t love a good sev­eral hun­dred page, spi­ral bound, infor­ma­tional book?

Reclaim­ing Nick — I read this review on 5 Min­utes for Books, and I thought I should start at the begin­ning of the series instead of at the end.

Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately — I got this book off freecy­cle. If someone’s giv­ing a book away, it’s worth tak­ing a chance, right?

I’m sure there are a few oth­ers, but these are the ones that get most of my time right now. How about you?

There are a few par­ent­ing books that I would really like to find the time to read in the next cou­ple months. The No-Cry Dis­ci­pline Solu­tion by Eliz­a­beth Pantly, The Fussy Baby Book by Dr. Sears, How to Get Your Kids to Eat but Not Too Much by Ellen Sat­ter, Adven­tures in Tan­dem Nurs­ing by Hillary Flower, and Adven­tures in Gen­tle Dis­ci­pline by Hillary Flower are all on my list right now.

I’m not quite sure when I’ll get to all these, because with a tod­dler and a high needs, fussy baby I don’t tend to have a whole lot of time for sit­ting down to read, but I think that all these books will be worth the time that I put into them. Has any­one read any of these? Any reviews?