Bookmark this Meme

Kim of Hiraeth has a new business venture, selling custom, handmade bookmarks featuring her beautiful calligraphy. She’s introducing her new site with a meme—a book meme, of course.

• Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?
  I like hardback best (who doesn’t?), but I read a lot of paperback. They cost less, and they’re easier to get.
• Online purchase or brick and mortar?
  Mostly online. The chance that the bookstore here in town is going to have the book I want in stock is pretty slim.
  
• Barnes & Noble or Borders?
  Neither. If I shop in a store, it’s at the used book store or Mac’s Fireweed Books.
• Bookmark or dog-ear?
  I use one of these.
  
  

• Mark or not mark?
  I mark them up and doodle in them.
• Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
  I put them on the shelves by subject or type of book (mostly), but I do make allowance for size, and when I have several books by one author I try to keep them together. In other words, I have my own weird system that I understand, but confuses everyone else.
• Keep, throw away, or sell?
  I never throw away. If I know I’ll never look at it again, I donate it or sell it at a garage sale. The rest, I keep.
• Read with dustjacket or remove it?
  Read it with the dustjacket.
  
• Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?
  I don’t read short stories enough to have an opinion on this.
• Lord of the Rings or Narnia
  Once again, I’m going to avoid answering. I like them both. They’re different sorts of books, and they serve different purposes.
  
• Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
  I stop reading whenever a crisis arises that requires my attention.
  
• “It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
  “Once upon a time.”
  
• Buy or Borrow?
  Buy. If I borrowed it, I’d have to give it back.
  
• New or used?
  Used, but in good condition, if I can find it.
  
• Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?
  All of the above.
  
• Tidy ending or cliffhanger?
  Tidy ending. I hate cliffhangers and feel cheated if there is one.
  
• Morning reading, afternoon reading or night time reading?
  Mostly night time, but also whenever I can sneak in a few minutes throughout the day. I love reading in the car while I wait to pick someone up, or reading while I wait for an appointment.
  
• Standalone or series?
  Mostly standalone.
• Favorite series?
  I really haven’t read books in series since I was young. The Narnia books or the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, maybe.
  
• Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
  I usually read classics, so at least some people have heard of them. They may not have read them, but they’ve heard of them.
  
• Favorite books read last year?
  I read Knowing God again, and that’s always a favorite.
• Favorite book of all time?
  Nothing else compares to the Bible.

Sunday's Hymn: Irish Hymn Writers

Beneath the Cross

Beneath the cross of Jesus
I find a place to stand,
And wonder at such mercy
That calls me as I am;
For hands that should discard me
Hold wounds which tell me, “Come.”
Beneath the cross of Jesus
My unworthy soul is won.

Beneath the cross of Jesus
His family is my own—
Once strangers chasing selfish dreams,
Now one through grace alone.
How could I now dishonor
The ones that You have loved?
Beneath the cross of Jesus
See the children called by God.

Beneath the cross of Jesus—
The path before the crown—
We follow in His footsteps
Where promised hope is found.
How great the joy before us
To be His perfect bride;
Beneath the cross of Jesus
We will gladly live our lives.

—-Keith and Kristyn Getty

From Kristyn Getty:

A friend from Westminster Seminary inspired us in the thought of how the cross is not just something in our past providing a way for our salvation, nor is it only providing a secure hope for the future in Heaven, but actually it should impact everything we do today. When we come to the cross, we don’t just stand there by ourselves—we stand with thousands of people from every tribe and tongue under the same Savior and same grace. Considering how unworthy I am coming to the cross, and finding I am forgiven, how can I then turn and look at others and dishonor them or somehow think I am better than they are?

---

Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah at IMD 2.0.
• A Hymn from Isaac Watts and more at Thirsty Theologian
  
• Take Up Thy Cross at Magic Statistics
• Update: Thou Art the Way at Fish and Cans
  

Have you posted a hymn for Sunday and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar, and I’ll add your post to the list.

Saturday's Old Photo

 

 

I was going to use another photo, thinking there’d been enough of them featuring me, me, me. But hey! Tomorrow’s my birthday, and , so if ever there was an appropriate time for one more photo of me as a child, this was it.

 

I’m guessing I’m four in this photo and that would make the year 1959. The house in the background is the ranch hand’s home on my uncle’s ranch, the P Lazy P, in Gannet, Idaho. We lived there while my dad helped my uncle with the ranch work and my mother cooked for the crew in the big kitchen of the beautiful log ranch house my uncle built by himself.

 

I amused myself outdoors while my mother worked indoors. There were always animals around—dogs, kittens, chickens—and people working. Sometimes I helped collect eggs, and sometimes I hung on the outside of the corral and watched the horse training or the calf branding. Another thing that fascinated me was the artesian well right outside the fenced-in yard, which gushed water from a 4 inch pipe and made a little stream that ran out into the field.

 

My family continued to go to the ranch in the summer whenever we could. My dad had been a cowboy, so he loved being there during round up, and my mother loved visiting all her relatives who lived nearby. The ranch was only twenty miles from the Sun Valley ski area, and eventually the area became a place for the rich and famous to have a vacation home. It became more and more difficult to keep cattle on the open range, so my uncle sold the ranch to someone with Hollywood connections and he moved further west to the Wallowa area of Oregon.