I dutifully finished another book of City of God and picked up Cry, the Beloved Country. I was assigned it in high school but *ahem* didn't read it. A South African homeschooling friend was aghast to learn that I was ignorant of Alan Paton, and so I'm reading it now out of shame. And it's a remarkable, beautiful, terribly sad book. I think I would have been too immature for it in high school.

I think you're supposed to read it while drinking absinthe and watching a bullfight. Then you walk home. In the rain.

I wouldn't be too quick to assume school vs homeschool is the issue. I had three wild-'n'-silly kids in my Sunday School class last year, and two of them went to public school, and the third was my Middle Girl. Two other homeschooled children in the class were always calm and well-behaved. My oldest was never disruptive in a classroom situation. So yes, you should work with them on nondisruptive behavior; but I'd guess it's just personality. P.S. I would a thousand times rather have wild-and-silly in my class than sullen and defiant. High spirits can be sat on; bad attitude is incurable.

:party: Another Aubrey/Maturin fan! When the movie came out, a friend at Half Price Books told me this was the time to sell my set, because the demand would never be so high again. But no, I figured I might need to read them all a third time. And the girls will surely want to read them someday....

It's old, but Cry, the Beloved Country. Deeply human, deeply Christian, sad and yet joyful. I can't believe it's taken me so long to discover Paton.

Does math and Greek with Middle Girl in the a.m. when all decent people are asleep. Reads endlessly to Wee Girl in the evenings. Guides Great Girl through the college maze.

I've just finished #10. You can be in the Book of the Month Club with me. :)

This may not be what you want to hear, but I had one of those! And she never changed: she is the brightest of the girls, she's about to start at a good college, in a very challenging double major, and she still falls apart when anything goes a little bit wrong. In the face of having achieved at a high level by any objective measure, she sees small failures as proof of Being No Good At Anything. And she cries. She was greatly cheered, though, by seeing Olympic athletes this week in tears; it's good to know you're not alone. Lots of good advice in the replies. Even if the perfectionism never goes away, they do get some self-awareness and ability to redirect constructively, and you can help to promote that.

Great Girl audited a college class in Vergil last semester. She knew the story of the Aeneid, but was blown away by the beauty of the poetry of the original Latin. All that time spent drilling paradigms paid off for her. Middle Girl is still at the beginning of her Latin education, but is increasingly able to appreciate the beauty of the Latin prayers: for instance she sings along with "laudamus te; benedicimus te; adoramus te; glorificamus te," (her favorite part of the Gloria) with comprehension and enjoyment of the crescendoing repetition. This to me is the only real reason to study any language: to read or speak it with profit and enjoyment. ETA: We use Artes Latinae.

I've read 12 of those, four because I was forced to (by high school teachers or my book club) - of those four, Lord of the Flies was the only one that didn't leave me resentfully wishing for those hours of my life back. Dh tried to make me read Dune, but unlike Mrs Anderson in eleventh grade, he couldn't make me comply. :D

#10, Macbeth. Not much to report on Macbeth, except that I'd forgotten the existence of the Hecate scene (III.v, and an interpolation in IV.i), because it's never performed, being obviously not by Shakespeare. It really is dreadful writing; but this is the first time I noticed that Hecate's appearance also destroys the ambiguity about whether there's really something supernatural going on or not. Re: the most difficult books - I've read Swift's Tale of a Tub, Richardson's Clarissa (unabridged!), some of the Hegel (under duress), and the first 3 books of The Faerie Queene (I thought Britomart would have been an awesome girl's name, but dh kept vetoing it). I thought Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! was much more difficult than Clarissa, which really isn't difficult in the least but just endless. I'm also dubious about including the two philosophical works; philosophy is a technical subject, and any important work in a technical field is going to be extremely difficult going.

I don't really count because I just had 3 months out of the country. But.... I was terribly nervous. I'd heard all about Europe: the people there are thin, dress well, cook and eat well, speak multiple languages, don't care for children (I mean, that's why they don't have any anymore, right?), and have practically banned religion. I was prepared to be outclassed and depressed. And then we went to Scotland! Turns out that short and a little plump don't stand out in Scotland. Everyone was lovely and kind. There were tons of adorable children, playing in the world's most awesome and perilous playgrounds (clearly the Scots haven't invented torts law). People complimented my children and were extremely kid-tolerant. Wee Girl cried and vomited in motion-sickness-induced misery throughout one endless bus ride, and as I got off I apologized to the driver, who looked at me in puzzlement and said, "But it's just a baby, innit? Babies cry." The Scots fry food even more egregiously than Texans. They weren't smugly cosmopolitan, there was a thriving parish with normal, friendly, non-persecuted people, and Austin casual worked just fine. I love Scotland. There even seem to be homeschoolers! :D Everything I thought I knew about Europe - at least there - was so very, very wrong. Oh, and I discovered fresh fish. Deep-fried fresh fish. Mmmmmmmmm. Catfish hasn't been good enough since.

I'm so glad to read this. Great Girl sleeps up to 13 hours a night (usually 11-12 though) and all the "experts" seem sure that that's far too much.

Did it just yesterday: I took Middle Girl to see a revival of The Dark Crystal. The girls are spaced very far apart, and it would have been way too scary for Wee Girl, while Great Girl would rather have poked her eye with a sharp stick than watched. There's almost no overlap at all in movies suitable for them.

Oh post the link, we all want to see. Here, you can have The Judgmental Map of Austin in exchange, which probably isn't funny to anyone outside Travis County. It's universally admitted to be true, though it really ought to be quite offensive. (I grew up in Who Cares; and, yeah.)

I don't doubt that. But down that road, we might as well put in all sorts of non-book entertainment. What's the point of being at the library longer in order to pursue activities that don't contribute to literacy? And which demonstrably detract from the ability of library users to read? My kids would love it if each APL branch would bring in a pet goat for the children's section. But it would detract immensely from the purported mission of the public library.

I would stop everything until multiplying/dividing was in hand. Since he's done them but apparently not to mastery, you might have him do a few problems for each page, rather than the whole exercise, where he explains to you each step of what he's doing and why he's doing it.

I've lived in Austin, on and off (though mostly on) since 1975. Tea used to always be served without sugar, and if you wanted sugar, you added it yourself. And you called it "tea with sugar." Some time in the '90's, places started asking if you wanted "sweet or unsweet" tea. "Unsweet" had hitherto been considered a Deep South and unTexanly thing to say, and it always struck me, at least, as affected and Trying Too Hard to be Down-Home, besides being a linguistic abomination. But it seems to be here to stay. As is the vile overly sugared tea. ETA: One of my favorite tea memories is a Bahamian friend at an IHOP vainly trying to order a cup of tea, and utterly failing to make the waitress understand why the tall icy glass of Lipton's that had been placed in front of her was neither a cup, nor tea. The waitress was reduced to staring at it, asking incredulously, "You want me to make it hot?"

:iagree: And from the Piney Woods of Texas on east.

One of our big tech corporations recently gave the public library system computers running supposedly educational software for elementary-age children. The children's librarians hate them, but there's nothing that can be done. The games are lame and don't seem to teach anything - the children's librarian at our nearby branch was informed that the goal was to expose the youngers to 'mouse skills' - and they have huge screens with constantly flashing images and sound effects, so they're impossible to ignore. You used to come into an APL branch children's section and the kids would be reading or browsing the shelves - now they're all gathered around the d****d children's computer.

Twenty-two. It would be higher, but dh's three bookcases (one is wall-sized) are in his lovely roomy high-ceilinged office. He keeps an up-to-date list of what's in his office so I can place an order when necessary.

i admit to a horrified fascination with Hoarders, but who doesn't? Oh, books, that's right. Still on Augustine, and doing a quick re-reading of Macbeth, as I'm supposed to be teaching it.

It's much better, isn't it, when you've lived long enough to encounter real people who go through life blithely destroying other people's lives.

Let's just say that tv hasn't ever been the same since the '70s. I'm so excited that Quincy, M.D. is on Netflix now. If only they would show Emergency! - Randolph Mantooth, where art thou? - and I dream of The Man From Atlantis and The Six Million Dollar Man (even if he stole my name). Meanwhile, I watch and re-watch Columbo.

$7.60 in softcover, "near fine," from Books of Yesterday.