It’s time to wrap up the Winter Reading Challenge. Here’s what I’ve done so far, and though it looks like winter is hanging on, as I look up and out into the barnyard, I am going to plug ahead and start the Spring Challenge list! (Take THAT, ye Gods o’ Winter!)

Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux – Loved it. I marked it up and fully intended to write a review, and maybe someday I will…

Pope Fiction: Answers to 30 Myths and Misconceptions about the Papacy, by Patrick Madrid – This book was a carryover from the Autumn Challenge, and I wasn’t sure I’d finish it off. But the last ten or so chapters flew right along – whether because I was intent on finishing, in the right frame of mind, or because they were written better somehow, I don’t know. Typical of Patrick Madrid, this book dissects its topic (the papacy), and gives clear and cognizant reasoning.

The End: Book the Thirteenth, by Lemony Snicket – Ah, a series finished off. And I’ll admit, I was disappointed.

The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis – I kept running across references to this book here and there, and so I sat down and polished it off. It’s a tiny little thing – maybe 150 pages. But it’s packed with the sorts of things you just want to reread and think about over and over.

Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis – This is the second in Lewis’s Space Trilogy, and it got me. Loved it.

The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology, by Joseph Campbell – I’m still reading this one. It will be joining the short list for springtime, though I’m not sure it’s possible to finish it even in that timeline, at least for me.

That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis – This is the third and final book in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It took a while to hook me, as it’s so different from the first and second. But, in the end, I agree with my friend Vicki, who said that the third book was the best. (It’s also longer than the others, which was either exciting or annoying, depending on which day I was trying to finish it.)

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen – Someday I’ll get to this book, I promise; it just seems that now’s not the time…

EXTRAS: These are books that weren’t on my list, but which snuck in anyway (audio books aren’t usually on my list, and the temptation to stray from the list is OK to give in to sometimes!).

The Wal-Mart Effect, by Charles Fishman – Hmm. Lots of reasons to say hmm after reading this book. And lots of reasons to consider social justice teaching – not just at Wal-Mart but everywhere I shop. I’m not the type of person to stop shopping at every place I can find, because I just feel like there’s only so much I can do. Those who know me well know what I think about Wal-Mart (and if I post it here, we might get into a rabbit trail discussion of no real importance), and I was pretty sure, in the beginning, that this book was out to change my mind. It didn’t, though. (And it wasn’t, I think now, out to change my mind.) But it gave me food for thought, and plenty of it.

Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White (Read my review of the book) (Read my review of the movie)

The Pearl, by John Steinbeck – In my ongoing attempt to keep on chugging away at the classics, I picked this up. It was an audiobook, and it was OK. I’ve already sort of grayed out the details…

Betsy-Tacy, by Maud Hart Lovelace (Read my review) – I picked this up because it looked like something I want to read to my daughter. Sure enough, it is. And I want to read the others in the series too.