I second the idea of a patron philosopher! Tonight my book club meets to discuss Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. I have already heard from a couple members that this was a hard book to read...we're all moms who met through our kids' private school (though I homeschool now). I assume it was a difficult read because most of these moms have children who're--at most--preteens. It is easy to put your head in the sand and not think about your children and sex when your children are still children. But once your kid hits double digits? I am not sure despair is the route to take! It should be an interesting meeting tonight. Goodreads tells me I am more than halfway finished with the 2016 Reading Challenge I set for myself this year, coincidentally 52 books. Considering the philosophical bent pursued in these recent BaW threads, and considering it was too hot to garden on Saturday, I picked up and read Victor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I had read it in a core class Freshman year of college; my only takeaway was one needs an external purpose in one's life or, as social beings, we'll just give up. This message still stood for me, what 33 years after first reading it; it was a complement to the book I finished Sunday, Oliver Sacks' memoir On the Move. Psychology, philosophy, history... I will say I have been moving through books lately with a search for meaning myself. Not *for* myself necessarily (I am old enough to know better and be set in my obstinate ways :closedeyes: ) but for understanding others...the motivations of others and the default empathy that I display for the same. It's a good reason to read, though (like my girlfriends' problems with Girls and Sex) nobody said it should be easy. Hugs Ethel!

Like idnib said, it's maybe just different now with more time...? Not worse, not more intense, just put through the filter of life experience. Likewise, I am not much of a series fan (exception being Elena Ferrante's Napoli series because come on!) but being there/being in it seems to be the reason our dd likes to read every. last. one. of her adolescent dystopia books...she can't let the place or characters go in her mind until there's not a page left to turn. I guess I have always been a fan of short stories though so I am more willing to let a (single) novel go? It's a bit of a mystery though of course I see the appeal of reading the same people in a new situation.

I have been watching that list for a while! What a good gig, getting the NYTimes Style section to do free advertising, and even more interesting to see these celebs etc. recommendations. Of all of them, surprisingly I most agree with Bill Gates' list: I found Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature to be truly positive about the human condition...so unfashionable! and that he lists Seveneves and Harari's Sapiens and Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong...? Either Gates has excellent advisors or he's one interesting dude. But like Kareni, if we *had* to pick books for deserted island reading, I would imagine the dictionary and books we would actually love to read multiple times would be the majority of our picks. I am sorry to hear that, mumto2. I didn't mean to "like" it so much as commiserate :grouphug:

Thanks for the lists, Robin! Like Rose I think I have read the majority on that Goodreads list, mostly in high school...seems to be a theme, getting youngsters in touch with their inner philosophical workings. Rose, thanks for the Ann Leckie series suggestion. You'll truly enjoy the Ferrante series if you like well-represented female relationships. I have The Nightingale on my TBR list too but the wait time is miles deep at the library...one day Can't agree more with the bolded, VC. I think it's why I read so much of it as a teen and college student, esp. for escape! i finished Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City this last week. Lots to contemplate, I appreciate the author's efforts (a Guggenheim fellow). It was a bit of a slog, not because of the writing (which was well done) but because of the content. Audiobooks count, you all tell me, so I admit to having started, finished and mostly enjoyed Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The West and the Rest this last week. He's a bit of a lad, that guy; an intellectual bro of the most annoying order (despite being Mr Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Perhaps my politics simply clash with his, though this audiobook, read by the author, was entertaining if madly disjointed. I count it as background school research; dd will tackle early Modern this year and I have a few overarching themes we'll address, maybe even using his BBC doco using the book. Otherwise I made headway on a few enjoyable books this week: Oliver Sacks' On the Move (his memoir about coming to America in the 1960s), Frans de Waal's Are We Smart Enough to Know how Smart Animals Are? (title is fairly self-explanatory, yes?) and Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. (These are fairly typical of my usual reads: a memoir, a NF science book, and a literary novel.) And I am <thisclose> to getting 3 books from Overdrive that I have anticipated for weeks! and thus I feel I can juggle the others. I also tabled The Invention of Nature from my kindle: my birthday is coming up soon so I requested the actual book as a gift.

Hah. My kid is named after a mermaid. It's an Irish myth about a woman/salmon rescued from Lough Neagh in Ulster. Love long weekends! Though ours was quite busy with planting and fruit tree issues, I did manage to start and finish Dana Spiotta's Innocents and Others. Filmmaking, manic depression, and phreaking with two friends my exact age...it is very new, and it popped up on my Overdrive list and I scarfed it right up. It was a happier contrast to the other book I am reading: Evicted by Matthew Desmond, which is quite good but also quite hand-wringingly dark.

(whot! multiquote! won't let this go to my head) Thanks for the clickbait 10 Fictional Houses Kareni! You post such interesting (read: I probably won't get around to it but I remain interested nonetheless) books that you've read, but as an architect who loves to read, I found that list fairly representative. I would add a few more...but My Family and Other Animals is probably our favorite ever read-aloud. And Stoner was never on my radar but I do adore books revived by NYRB. I was wondering if it was in the vein of Babbitt or the scads of sad working corporate dads in Cheever or Updike or Richard Yates. Granted most of those I list are satires or at least noddingly making fun of their subjects. I am always down for a tragedy though :lol: But: I was writing to say I did a quick search on my minuscule Overdrive selection and I think I overdid it. Four books came up that I'd spied for future reading, figuring that they'd never hit my library's wee list. I am a pig! I tell you. (Actually what we do is I put them on the family cloud, add books that dd wants to read, then we download all the books to each. Then we turn the Airport mode on. So if one of the books on our long Wish List list shows up...we can sacrifice the content on one of the Kindles to retrieve it. We also, immediately after downloading/turning wifi off, return the books so nobody's waiting in vain.) Laundry will pile up and I will lose some sleep now :D

Hi all, even though school has ended, it's high planting season on this wee farm and we're distracted by new chicks, turkeys and bunnies. Work, too, has gotten a bit too busy for my liking. I just am thankful for these longer days now in the northern hemisphere. Last week, I finished reading Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, hate-listening to American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers and finished the audiobook of A Man Called Ove. I think I am not finished "navigating" teenage girl stuff so I might get Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls through the Seven Transitions to Adulthood, though quite frankly the latter sounds awfully self-helpy proscriptive, not generally my thing. I have just begun Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond and am limping through the ebook of The Invention of Nature, though I should just buy it and luxuriate in it in page form. And I actually purchased a book I could not find on any Overdrive account. It's Marion Coutts' The Iceberg, a memoir about losing her husband/grief. It is beautiful. Ali in OR: I love Dava Sobel's stuff! we did Longitude as a read-aloud as well. Planning on having dd12 read Galileo's Daughter next year for school. But I hear you on editing. I think my...pickiness keeps me away from certain genres because I can't help but see the holes and the mistakes. Mothersweets: lovely shawl! (I came into knitting through spinning>>sheep owning>>knitting. An odd track but here I am.) And with the Kindle I can read and knit, it's sooo awesome ErinE: I admit having a bit of a crush on Sam Harris. Free Will left me kind of cold, too. But thanks for the reminder of Corelli's Mandolin. I read it years ago, ages really, and suggested that my book club at the time read it. It completely changed one girl's life in the club. She so identified with the woman and regrets that...she moved back to her hometown and started her life from zero. Of course it turned out fabuously for her because she met her husband soon after. Happy memory, thanks for spurring it. And SPQR is a few books down in my library queue. Shage: I did not get to Inheritance, but am wondering if you've plans for reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's latest, The Gene? Mr Bowdich is a great read-aloud! and Being Mortal is very timely with our family; both our parents are going through this now...though I suppose that is everyone's fate...at least this book gives us all some tools. Have you read Ann Neumann's The Good Death? Minerva: I went through a huge Cather binge in my early 20s. And sadly I read A Long Walk to Water to my dd too...probably should have spared myself and had her read it :) Rose: we seem to trip over the same books! Thanks for the mention of the Twelfth Night redo...I have jotted it down. Leopold gets a re-read pretty often here as we're a bit nature-obsessive, and of course you can't go wrong with Edith Wharton. Station Eleven. I read it last year. I'm in Michigan so it was...quasi-familiar. I saw too many loose threads though which decreased my enjoyment of it, I think I gave it 3 stars.

I do love this thread. As a newb though, I sometimes feel like I have stumbled into a private or at least insider conversation!! Not that I am trying to take away from graduation celebrations (yay!!) or--whew!--you emerita who've successfully fledged your homeschooled children (your encouragement and your success do give those of us still entrenched a needed caffeine jolt) or, sadly, any medical conditions you/yours might be experiencing. Just yay-thanks-hugs to those three things. Really, though, I am all about the education. Amish...gay...adult fiction? whaaaa? Jenn I think it was you who enjoyed Barbarian Days. I finished it this weekend and am all too...well I miss it already. I knew his work from The New Yorker but conveniently forgot until getting the book. Tonight I should finish Girls and Sex. (This is a book-club book and I am the owner of the eldest daughter in the group at 12 tender years. All our kids have gone through the OWL program in 4/5/6th grade so we're well versed in sex ed.) This book's gooood. But I am contrasting it to the audiobook of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. I have admitted before that I am hate-listening to it. I realized the source of my dislike: I could read this book in about a quarter of the time that the audio file is dishing it out. UGH. Am I alone in this problem? I find I enjoy audiobooks much more if they're nonfiction (check) and scientific or historic (no checks) or just a rollicking good story. Something like this, endless narratives of preteens/early teens making really bad decisions...ugh again. happy to be here...! El

Hi everyone, hope your Mother's Day was at the very least relaxing...! Ugh on the multi-quote. Shall I simply embrace my technological ignorance? Anyway I love it when those of you who enjoy genres I know next to nothing about (scifi, thrillers, romances, mysteries, fantasy!) do go on and on about your favorites. Some posts, I read the titles and I cannot even guess what category the book would fall into (unless the title is pointedly obvious). So I appreciated Ishki's discussion in the last BaW thread. And I take it to heart about your inclusion of audiobooks in your lists, folks. With me, it's the multitasking nature of them...I surely don't give them due respect that I give to the electronic or printed page. But sometimes that is okay. Perfect example is my "hate-listening" to Nancy Jo Sales' American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. Every story she illustrates is positively horrid. Yet I continue, masochistically, to listen to it. (Book club's next read is Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein. I have hope that this will be a more...hopeful book) I did finish one (meh) book, though, this week: John McGahern's Amongst Women, which is pretty much a social history at this point. And I started a new one which probably should just be on my bookshelves and not an elibrary volume...it's got all the makings of something I will refer to again: The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf about Alexander von Humboldt. But yes I continue mentally surfing with Barbarian Days, who knew 400+pages on surfing would sustain my inland-sea interest? 19. Amongst Women by John McGahern 18. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 17. The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel 16. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande 15. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Ofill 14. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (did so not want the series to end wah) 13. Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier (reread; book club) 12. Dream Land by Sam Quinones 11. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 10. 1Q84 by Hakuri Murakami 9. Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford (reread; book club) 8. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein (horrid book to read after below) 7. M Train by Patti Smith 6. A Little Life by Hanya Yanangihara 5. The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick 4. Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks 3. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (book club) 2. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 1. Neanderthal Man by Svante Paabo

Thank you for the warm welcomes!! Too Monday for me to figure out Multiquote, many pardons. Some quick thoughts: Overdrive/e-readers: admittedly very late to the party as a Paperwhite was a Christmas present for our daughter. I realized the extreme utility of the toy and soon thereafter purchased my own (was wrangling with her for hers...never a good idea). So yes I did figure out the airport function quickly too. But I seem to forever be in a bit of a juggling-chainsaws habit of trying to get my Next Latest Greatest Read (Girls and Sex, The Invention of Nature) on the Holds list coincide with the last page turned of my Almost Overdue Current Fabulous Read. Also, goodness, my reading choices of late have also been...limited by the extreme weeny teeny list of books available in the communal e-library group. So I am thinking about ponying up the $50/yr for a Brooklyn library card, even though I am a Michigander. Re: Elena Ferrante. Maybe it is because I tend to read/like memoirs and fiction, the fiction mostly lets me down in its lack of verisimilitude. Granted, most lives, daily lived, are not terribly exciting (and thus not happy fodder for either medium) but this story of two friends across decades in a very culturally hidebound time and place was extremely "real" to me. Helps that I spent time in southern Italy and remember well running into my own cultural roadblocks while there. I did not want the story to end. Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates (and James Baldwin etc.): I had been a fan of his for years and really could not wait for this book. But it took me a while to read it, it was so freshly painful. My mom was a high school teacher in the Chicago public schools and it was tough, the problems brought on by systemic racism (redlining, those public schools, the gangs, crime, etc.). Re: A Little Life. I had a hard time with the author's voice. The story was gripping, almost pornographically so, in its torments to one of the characters. I would not recommend it to...everyone, I would have to know you well. Its characters are (mostly) gay males and it did not necessarily jibe with my experience with the educated professional NYC gays that I know...there was a prurience in the writing; not nearly so libidinal and free and (dang it) consensual as what I understand it can be (gay or straight in that class). Re: Shop Class for Soulcraft. It was a re-read. It's so...male DIY. Disappointingly so. Females can DIY. Homeschooling is an awesome example of it...! Ok! back to work, and happy Monday. Looking forward to picking your collective brains soon :D

Hellooo! May I join...? I have been lurking for a while, and wondered, frankly, if I could read 52 books in a year...but then I checked my list and bingo I am above 17 books so far on the 17th week (yay me!) We've got a singleton dd, 12, 6th grade; we're accidental homeschoolers. I'm an architect, working full time, but partially at home (otherwise the homeschooling wouldn't happen). Hubs is an artist. We live on a hobby farm and I run a CSA for 5 families. So...reading time is kind of a challenge but I have always been a voracious reader. I'm in a book club and it influences my choices in books, kind of. Today I will finish Amongst Women (thanks to BaW!) by John McGahern and wonder if bipolar Irish fathers are universal or if that's just my own history creeping in? And I totally am rocking William Finnegan's Barbarian Days. Maybe I can finish that before Overdrive sucks it back. Next up for my book club is Girls and Sex. I don't count audiobooks or books I read aloud with kiddo; maybe I should? Mostly the reading is just, selfishly, my me-time. Happy to be here and pick up new suggestions, magpie (magenpie) style! 18. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 17. The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel 16. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande 15. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Ofill 14. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (did so not want the series to end wah) 13. Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier (reread; book club) 12. Dream Land by Sam Quinones 11. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 10. 1Q84 by Hakuri Murakami 9. Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford (reread; book club) 8. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein (horrid book to read after below) 7. M Train by Patti Smith 6. A Little Life by Hanya Yanangihara 5. The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick 4. Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks 3. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (book club) 2. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 1. Neanderthal Man by Svante Paabo

So Farrar, you think he needs more...control of his days/weeks? I was going to recommend OM too. We're using OM7 world history for 2 years starting next year, along with its OM7 English (just for 7th). Def more scripted, however, he does get choices about projects/what to write about, as in "select from the following (usually 4) things: write a newspaper article about so and so, make a screenplay, outline something or do a research paper about x" whether it's the OM English or History. My kiddo really appreciated having the choice the last time we went round with OM (in 4th).

Well, it's for algebra, but it really helps tease apart what a word problem is asking: How to Solve Word Problems in Algebra by Mildred Johnson And it's an inexpensive consumable workbook.

DD did RSO Biology 2 in 5th grade and it assigned "extra" reading, so she tackled these by herself or as read-alouds with me. Most have female protagonists, a must for her at the time. We're secular if that matters. Peter Dickinson's novels The Kin and Bone from a Dry Sea Small Steps: the Year I Got Polio by Peg Kehret The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate & The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier We also watched Yuval Harari's lectures Sapiens on Coursera (there's a book on it now too) and listened to an audiobook of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

I am quite surprised the other D&Cs you had weren't with a hysteroscopy. I just (and I mean 2 wks ago) had a hysteroscopy/myomectomy for a polyp that caused similar symptoms. The hysteroscopy found another polyp that the ultrasound missed. So my doc, with myosure, removed both. She suggested that if there was new or extra bleeding after this D&C, we might go the route of ablation...basically what Raindrop's experience was. Am not sure if this is 100% apples to apples because the growth was not a fibroid (was limited to the endometrium), though I do have those in abundance. I am old enough though to be menopausal so...we expect a few weird things. Just not anemia and/or flooding, though.

We've done HO level 2 (ancients/middle ages) through 6th grade but DD wants a change. We usually used Human Odyssey with HO, worked well as a supplement. So for 7th and 8th we'll do Oak Meadow 7th world history as a spine; it goes from late middle ages to present day. DD needs more writing, pairing this curriculum with OM English should be helpful...there is a LOT of writing required. But we'll supplement with lots of other books (Human Odyssey 1 & 2; Guns, Germs & Steel; SOTW3/4; and a pretty ok middle school textbook I found called Understanding Western Thought) and mapwork and lots of novels from the times. I felt it would be hard to rush through all that history in 7th. 9th: the plan is to get Pandia Press' high school American History. Should be out by then.

Here is a link to a sample lesson for the most recent edition of the 8th grade English: http://oakmeadow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/8-English-sample-lessons.pdf What I like about the new format is all the areas for writing in the book...I have a kid who likes to organize her thoughts that way. We're using OM for English and History next year (7th grade) and the two programs are (very) linked. I would investigate the 8th grade curriculum to see if it's closely tied to its Civics program.

DD is finishing up Exploration Education's Advanced Physical Science curriculum (she's a 6th grader) and she likes it, does it 95% by herself. But because she's finishing early and there's a fair bit of chemistry in there, we're starting Ellen McHenry's Elements and the American Chemistry Association's free middle school chemistry program once she finishes EE. So I think Chemistry as a subject could last more than one school year, which I am fine with: lots of good books and extra things to study with chemistry. (We read living books to go along with any science program; physics was a bit of a desert, books-wise...)

Hi Julie, back story is we're accidental homeschoolers because her private school didn't work well with dd's ADD. And it took me about 2 solid years of homeschooling to realize that jumping from one subject to another (say doing 5-6 subjects a day) was really frustrating for both of us, because once she got really well into something, it would be time to switch to another subject...counterintuitive isn't it, with an ADD kid? You'd think shorter/swifter/faster would work? Well nope! Slow and steady wins this race. So we block-schedule, if I can call it that. M&F are science. TWTh are history/LA. Math is every day, as is any reading or catching-up. With this schedule we're able to devote the time required for science experiment set up, work, cleanup. She gets a whole morning to research something in history, all afternoon to devote to grammar/writing. Out of home classes can therefore be whenever they are and we can work around them. We're also able to do unit studies if she finishes something. If, say, she finishes up EE physics end of Jan/early Feb we're gonna go full-bore on The Elements. We'll have specific read-alouds (The Disappearing Spoon, Uncle Tungsten) and she'll have side projects. I would say it's worth it to pair specific books with the science studies, but that's how things have worked well with us...so for physics we read Archimedes and the Door of Science, she read a couple books about Tesla and Edison and Newton, and we watched a bunch of NOVA and Veritasium videos. I simply tried to pair books or videos with the section being studied (gravity, electricity/magnetism, etc).

Hi Julie, we're doing EE Advanced Physics with our 6th grader right now. She's blowing through it so we're planning on finishing out the year with Elements (probably starting in February). 7th grade will be Chemistry so this should work nicely. DD is a bit science-obsessed and EE was a bit light for her but was OK because it wasn't math-based. We did a lot of off-script things like wiring a couple lamps for her bedroom, backyard ballistics (2 stage rockets!) and she and a friend studied castle building and castle destroying (Middle Ages stuff) by researching and building a trebuchet with my childhood erector set (trebuchet) and her friend's Legos (castle). We do a modified block scheduling: M&F are science all day (with math) so she's able to get quite a bit accomplished. I think that's why EE is going so quickly; it's self-paced to the student.

There's a unit study with Build Your Library called Darwin and Evolution that uses The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate as one of its sources. And...there's a 2nd Calpurnia book out now! Anyway even though it was geared toward younger ages (dd did it as a rising 5th grader) I think your daughter might enjoy it as a 7th grader; some of the picture books (I know, but really) are quite beautiful. We watched a ton of documentaries too, and Your Inner Fish came out after we did the study and DD happily knew a lot about the subject already. And the unit study was rich enough to encourage a lot of side studies with it and a post-study of prehistory (though BYL also has a prehistory unit study now too).

Listening in as we've got it to pair with Middle Ages study this year. I am a bit concerned that, even though it's been stepped back/rejiggered to teach one child, it's still fairly teacher-intensive and so we'll probably get her buddy to tag along with her for collaborative thinking...good for 6th grade brains methinks :)

Sounds like the girls are doing Middle Ages this year? Mine is too...so I have a few extra readings for her lined up. The Midwife's Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman (neither is really a "light" read but thumb's up for life in the time period, plus girl protagonists of course) I Rode a Horse of Milk-White Jade (Mongols, adventure, girl protagonist, a horse and a cat and family honor) And Outrageous Women of the Middle Ages.

We used HO Ancients 2 for 5th grade and I would say there was more outlining than writing-writing. I think the format is great for helping kids figure out the big ideas and minor threads of history and the outlining was a good way to do that. We did not do a separate, formal writing program for 5th grade because she was fairly loaded up with the rest of LA if we include HO in the mix (and we did: she read a lot of extra novels etc.). This year for writing--and points forward--we'll at least start with IEW-B, and do something similar to what happypamama said above with WWE-1: use a writing program's prompts to reinforce the history (n.b. we like HO a lot). It just seems to work better for my kid if subjects aren't distinct. Oh and History Pockets were part of the curriculum and we mostly skipped them. They're fine for younger kids though.

I have a sciency kid too. Have you looked into Engineering Everywhere/Engineering Is Elementary website at all? There might be a couple of units he could do independently. The site is kind of geared to afterschooling but one or another unit might spark his interest as far as a long-term study. HTH.