This year, I decided to join in a new kind of blog activity for me, the "One Word" community at Lisa Notes. As far as I can tell, this involves choosing one word to engage with during the year, mindfully following it as a thread through life's ups and downs and distractions. Once a month … Continue reading One Word for 2022
After I moved to Switzerland, digestive issues that had previously been annoying but manageable ramped up and made me quite miserable. So I tried eliminating a variety of foods in various combinations, at the most extreme point being unable to eat anything except vegetables (and not all of those either). This was depressing. Living in … Continue reading My gluten-free life (with a recipe)
This year I'm going to go easy with the reading challenges. Selecting particular titles I intend to read is almost a guarantee I won't read them, of late. So I am going to do more free-form and spontaneous reading, letting my interests lead me along the way. However, I came across a new challenge I … Continue reading A new challenge: Support Book Bloggers
Literature Illustration by Pauline Baynes This month I joined in #Narniathon21 hosted by Calmgrove, with a post about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I thoroughly enjoyed this venture into one of my childhood favorites and look forward to the next installments. I also summed up my Year in Fiction, my Around the World … Continue reading Month in Review: December 2021
For my first post of 2022, I'm looking back to my favorite reads of the past year. On my former blog, The Emerald City Book Review, I awarded the "Emerald City Gem" each year to the most memorable books in various categories. You can visit those lists here if you like, covering 2014 to 2020. … Continue reading Stars of 2021
Retable of the life of the Virgin, anonymous, c. 1480 At the turning point of timethe spirit light of the worldentered the stream of earth-existence.Darkness of nighthad ceased its reign;day-radiant lightshone forth in human souls.LightThat gives warmthTo simple shepherds' hearts;lightthat enlightensthe wise heads of kings. Light divine,Christ-Sun,warm our hearts,enlighten our heads,that good may becomewhat from … Continue reading Shepherds and Kings, warmth and light
This has been my first year of fully blogging on Entering the Enchanted Castle. It's been a wonderful new adventure and I want to say thank you for being here and sharing it with me. Here's a month-by-month review of some blog highlights: In January I looked back at some of my favorites from seven … Continue reading Year-end reflections, and a blog break
For the next several months, I'm joining in a readalong of C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, hosted by Chris of Calmgrove - starting with this month's volume, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As I mentioned earlier, while the Narnia books have many weaknesses, they were incredibly formative for me as a reader and thinker, … Continue reading Through the wardrobe door: #Narniathon21
Back in October, when winter was already approaching in our region, we spent a couple of weeks exploring and looking for sunshine in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. It can only be reached by going over or under the Alps -- we spent 15 minutes driving through the Gotthard Tunnel, a wonder of modern … Continue reading Postcards from Switzerland: Ticino
While I'm rounding up my 2021 reading, I wanted to take a look at how I did with my goal of reading more books written or set in in different countries of the world (see my Around the World page for full details of what I've read so far). I was pleased to see that … Continue reading Around the World reading in 2021
