Happy Little Family

That’s cute. I’ve never read it before.

It’s vaguely reminiscent of The Little House books, but without all the depressing doom and gloom of rebuilding over and over.

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Mad About Madeline: The Complete Tales

I do love the original Madeline story. It’s one I’ve read so much that I’ve memorized it, much to the confusion of the children whenever I decide to ‘read’ it without even holding the book.

All of these other Madeline stories are new to me and while some of them get quite frankly rather weird and there are a number of rhymes that are rather a stretch… they’re still wonderful little stories to read.

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The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World

Did not finish at about 50%. I mostly picked this up from the Amazon Prime selection.

There are some good points in there, that we could use more empathy in the world and that it’s hard to find in an increasingly digital world. But those good points get repeated over and over far more than I cared to read about them.

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A Little House Christmas Treasury: Festive Holiday Stories

I’ve read or listened to the Little House books approximately a million times. The kids love them. This is basically a collection of the chapters from each book that cover Christmas. There’s a bit of context that feels like it’s missing without having just read the proceeding parts of the books, but if you’ve listened to them enough, it doesn’t overly matter.

A bit weird to read in February, but kids are a bit weird to begin with. :D

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On Writing and Worldbuilding, Volume I

To start with, despite a somewhat overblown feeling title, On Writing and Worldbuilding, Volume I is a solid book. It has piles of examples, a good dash of humor, and is well written enough to fly by.

I do not like the word ‘should’. Or, at least, I do not like how it has been used in books, videos, and lectures that purport to teach people how to write. The term ‘should’ is used often enough that authors might be tricked into thinking there is an objective way to write well. That there is some pantheon of writing deities who have brought forth the Ten Commandments of Writing, and that only the wise and sagelike amongst us can discern their will. Dare you write a book that is pure and unadulterated wish fulfillment? If you write a book that fails to use the three-act structure, curse ye! Doom awaits those that write vampire-romances with one-dimensional characters

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A Little House Picture Book Treasury: Six Stories of Life on the Prairie

Vastly simplified stories from the Little House books, with beautiful, colorful illustrations that really draw children’s attention as you read it.

At this point, we’ve listened to all of the full Little House books… who knows how many times. But there’s always room for a shorter read when you just want to pick up a book for an afternoon read or in bed. And once the kids are reading on their own, I’m sure they’ll appreciate it all the more.


Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!

This is a re-read, although it’s a been a few years. Actually, those years seem to have rather helped. Last time I around, I was reading through and everything made a lot of sense (I have a strong background in functional programming, so it wasn’t new here). And then I hit monads and side effects and everything went bizarre.

This time around? Well, everything still went sideways, but in a way that made sense?

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