Recap Book Chat

Please join Kate and Sheila as they tackle Rule # 7, We Deal with Our Problems, in House Rules by Jacob Hudgins. Lev. 19:17-18 gives us a great game plan. “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighb...

Batter up! Join Kate and Sheila and their special guest, Jonah, as they recap Skinnybones by Barbara Park. Alex Frankovitch is an undersized uncoordinated sixth grader who has an oversized funny bone. When he tries to triumph over T.J. Stoner, the best of the best in baseball, all Alex can think to do is yell, “Booga booga” to distract the baseball star. “Every single year, I am always the smalles...

This attitude of humility, admission, and apology should be learned young, at home. In Christian homes, some phrases should be in regular use: I didn’t know that. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have said/done that. You’re right. Can you forgive me? I messed up. In a society that values victimhood, Christian homes must be countercultural.” Let’s learn Rule #6 — We take responsibility from House Rule...

Mama said that if someone’s putting ugliness into the world, you can’t be ugly back; you gotta put a little bit of sunshine into the world to even things out.” Joseph Johnson, a 12 year old orphan, living in the 1890s lost his mama and little sister to sickness and his papa to an accident. He remembers the lessons his parents taught him as he journeys across the northwest to recover his pony that...

Kendra, a 21 year old history major, comes to Cotswold, England to interview Isabel Macfarland, a famous artist on her 93rd birthday. “The cottage was as cozy and inviting as one of Tolkien’s hobbit holes.” Kendra feels a bond with Isabel who says, “We first borns are driven aren't we? We have to be. There is no one leaving bread crumbs for us on the trail ahead.” Why did Isabel decide to tell her...

What a blessed episode! Join Kate and Sheila as they interview Jacob Hudgins, the author of House Rules, the book we’ve been highlighting on Thursday’s Bonus-Bite episodes. He shares how he came to write the book and what he and his wife have learned on their adventure of parenting children together. We appreciate his dedication to putting God first and writing in a straightforward style that help...

Greetings dear listeners! Please join Kate and Sheila for Rule #5–No Gossip Allowed in Jacob Hudgins’ book, House Rules. We have an enlightening interview with Jacob coming out on Tuesday. We hope you’ll join us! What does God’s Word say about gossip? The Bible uses words like slander, speak evil of, whisperer, reviling, back-biting, busybodies, talebearer, and meddling. Whew! Quite a list! “...bl...

The Horse and His Boy is book #3 in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia timeline. Readers meet Bree, a powerful and confident war horse, whose homeland is Narnia, hence the reason he can speak to Shasta, a poor fisherman’s boy, on the brink of being sold into slavery. Bree convinces him to escape. When Bree finds out Shasta can’t ride he asks him if he can fall. “I suppose anyone can fall,” said Sha...

“Sometimes little things matter a lot. Words change things. Words start wars—and end wars. Words start marriages—-and end marriages. Words make us feel like we can’t go on—and make us feel like we can. We speak with love.” Jacob Hudgins shows us in House Rules why Rule #4 We Speak with Love is so vital for families. James 3:7-8 tells us that the tongue cannot be tamed, that it is restless evil, fu...

Let’s look back to a simpler time, when kids played outside until dark and phones were attached to the walls. Have you seen the movie Secretariat where the father says to his sons, “Get your devices off the table,?” The devices were their toy airplanes, that always cracks me up but it also is a reminder of how much things have changed. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger reminds us of a less hu...

Our Bonus Bite for this week continues from House Rules by Jacob Hudgins with Rule #3: We tell the truth. Let’s embrace the simplicity of telling the truth. “We serve a God who tells the truth (John 17:17) and cannot lie (Titus 1:2). Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44).” We really only have two choices. Christian homes need to be places where the truth is told. This takes much work and intenti...

Greetings book friends! Join Kate and Sheila as they dive into The Persian Pickle Club. What a timely tale stitched up by Sandra Dallas that takes us back to the dirty thirties to the town of Harveyville, Kansas! There’s a plethora of personalities around the quilting frame but one thing that stands out like a beacon is how these ladies show up for each other in times of need! “There wasn’t a quil...

Please join Kate and Sheila as they recap rule #2-All people deserve respect— in Jacob Hudgins book, House Rules. Respect may be a bit challenging to define but it is easy to see the lack of it. Where is respect taught first?... You guessed it–The home! We are made in God’s Image and God values all people, yes ALL people, the good, the bad, and the disparaging. It is not about us or them, it is ab...

Cathy Gohlke’s book, Ladies of the Lake, has astute readers asking a plethora of questions from the get go. Why is Rosaline Murray no longer Adelaide? Why won’t she go to her daughter’s graduation? Why did she want to disguise her voice? What is Dot’s secret? What is Rolsaline’s veil for? Join Kate and Sheila as they join Addie on her tumultuous journey. “Dear God and Father of us all, we come to...

Greetings dear friends! We are embarking on a new impactful Book Bite journey. Join Kate and Sheila as they start 10 Guidelines for Christian Homes in House Rules! The book connects with the timely quote by Fredrick Douglass, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Jacob Hudgins delivers a clear and concise plan to help readers build homes where families thrive. “Homes a...

Ruta Sepetys' finely crafted WWII novel, Salt to the Sea, is a gem. It was inspired by the real-life tragedy of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff which claimed over 9,000 lives making it the greatest maritime disaster in history. The story is told in four voices, each from a different homeland, Readers will meet: Emilia, a 15 year old blond Polish girl with unbelievable perseverance and resilien...

Kate and Sheila wrap up Rebecca DeYoung’s Glittering Vices in this episode. It has been an enlightening trek. As Horace said, “To flee vice is the beginning of virtue.” The Rest of the Journey wraps up our study on the seven deadly sins and their remedies. Pride is the root and the trunk of the vice tree and vainglory, envy, acedia, avarice, wrath, gluttony, and lust are the main branches. The wor...

Have you ever heard the last two lines of this poem? “Water water everywhere And all the boards did shrink, Water water everywhere Nor any drop to drink” Join Kate and Sheila as they discuss Samuel Coleridge’s Four Types of Readers: Sand-glasses / Hourglasses- like sand that runs in and out and leaves not a ‘vestige’ behind, in other words, these readers retain nothing. They are simply passing tim...

Please join Kate and Sheila as they discuss the last vice in Glittering Vices by Rebecca DeYoung. She defines lust as a disordered desire for sexual pleasure. Lust begins as a sin of weakness not malice. This habitual attachment to pleasure erodes our relationship with God. DeYoung puts it this way, “Lust is a problem with the heart above your belt before it is a problem with the heat below it. Fu...

Let’s meet the brothers: Dmitri- the eldest, impulsive, strong, uneducated, driven by desires Ivan- the middle, the intellectual, preoccupied, gloomy atheist Alyosha- the youngest, kind, thoughtful, brave, spiritually minded Smerdyakov-illegitimate, ungrateful, sneaky, devious (creeper alert) Please join Kate and Sheila discussion about the age-old struggle of good versus evil by looking at the gi...

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! This vice really hit home. Gluttony, like all the vices, begins with something created for good but sin creeps in and our desires run amok. Gregory the Great from the Middle Ages summed gluttony up in five categories: Too daintily (nothing is ever quite right) Too sumptuously (lavishly) Too hastily (gobble and go) Too greedily (ravenously-think Augustus Gloop) Too much (tastes li...

“No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.” What a powerful quote in The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis! The prequel to the enduring and ever-popular The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Readers discover how Narnia came to be in this timely tale when two children from London, Digory and Polly, stumble upon Digory’s Uncle Andrew; he tricks them into putting on rings that transport them t...

Join Kate and Sheila as they dive into the vice of wrath from Glittering Vices by Rebecca DeYoung. There are two schools of thought on this vice. Aquinas believed it was a natural expression of a human emotion and it could be righteous if it targeted injustice. Anger as a holy emotion has justice as its object and love as its root as Jesus overturning the money changers tables. Anger turns wrathfu...

Welcome back, Recapsters! In this episode of the Recap Book Chat, we delve into the rich tapestry of Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece, "The Brothers Karamazov." Settle in with your favorite cup of tea as we embark on a journey through the complex dynamics of faith, doubt, and familial bonds. First, let's meet the titular characters: Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha Karamazov, three brothers who couldn't b...

Greetings Recapsters! For this episode, we discuss Gretchin Rubin’s book, The Four Tendencies, where she discusses how people respond to inner (stop nagging) and outer (traffic laws) expectations. She also wrote Better than Before to help us discover why some people can form habits more easily than others. How do we change? Habits are the invisible architecture of our lives. 40% of our daily behav...