Avalanche Lily’s Bedside Book Pile

June 7th (one week from today) is the Book Bomb Day for the new book The Simplicity Primer, by Patrice Lewis. You’ll probably recognize Patrice’s name from either her excellent Rural Revolution blog, or from her WorldNet Daily columns. Please wait until June 7th to order the book, to create the maximum media buzz. I got an early review copy of the book, and I’m about halfway through reading it. It is set up in a 365-day format, but only someone with extreme self discipline will be able to resist reading through the book in just a few sittings. It is as wonderful book chock full of common sense, practical ideas and actions to take to make and keep our lives simple! This is a book where you will want to get yourself a cup a tea, a notebook and pencil, and curl up on the couch for an hour or so. Often as I read it, I would think,”This is a great idea, Patrice.” or while reading of her words of wisdom, “Yes, Patrice, I’ve often thought that way, it is so refreshing to finally see someone express it. You go, woman!” The main thrust of Patrice’s book is: to make right choices. In America we take pride in the fact that we have the Freedom to choose as we wish. Most everything in life that comes our way gives us a choice on how we could act: attitudes, work ethic, finances and relationships. Our choices can empower us for a productive, contented life or can drag us down into a life full of heartache, financial and relational difficulties and complexity. Patrice’s book gives many examples of how to choose wisely each of these areas of life which in turn will keep our lives simple and at peace. This book is a great reminder for many adults on how to reevaluate and simplify our lives. I especially, recommend it for your older high schoolers and college students, because they are in the process of choosing their life’s path and many of their decisions will affect their whole life. They would benefit greatly from Patrice’s wisdom. The Simplicity Primer would be a great high school graduation gift. Please mark you calendar for June 7th. We will post a link for ordering, a few hours before the big event.

I recently read two of the Crispin Trilogy books out loud to our young’uns as a supplement of our World History Studies: Crispin: The Cross of Lead and Crispin: At the Edge of The World We have not yet read the third book in the trilogy: Crispin: The End of Time. We are awaiting its arrival from Amazon. Though these books are not exactly SurvivalBlog material, there is much information to be gleaned from them. As a homeschooling mom, I also wish to promote some very good reads for other moms to investigate. The books take place around 1358 A.D. in England during the Hundred Years War–about 15 years after the Black Plague killed one out of three people throughout Europe. This is approximately 150 years before the Reformation so there is a lot of reference to the Catholic church, which I found to be very interesting in learning more about its practices and its control that it had on the lives of the people in the Feudalistic society that Crispin lived in. This story gave a very good lesson on the economics of that day which demonstrated how though “free” the peasants were truly enslaved and impoverished by their lords. In actuality, the lords were enriched through the peasants’ starvation. The story is about a 14 year old boy, whose mother dies. He finds himself, without understanding why, being labeled as a Wolf’s head, which means anyone can kill him at any time. He escapes death in many adventures and searches for the reason of why he was labeled as such. In the process, he meets a wild man who takes him under his care and teaches him some survival skills: music by which he can earn money, knife and sword fighting, archery, use of snares to catch the King’s hares for food. What amazed me was how little they needed to survive: one set of clothes, a knife and sword and the recorder for music. They often went two to three days without eating and then they only had maybe one meal per day. I highly recommend this book for your fifth grader on up. This is a book to read out loud to your older Elementary school age children so that you know what is in the story and so that you can foster conversation. There are a few ugly scenes of fighting and death, but it is reality. I’m big on reality as long as its explained and put into proper perspective and discussed so the children know our family values. I highly recommend these books as a supplement for your medieval history studies. Adults will also enjoy these books. You are not too old to read them.