"It's Monday! What Are You Reading?"  is hosted by Shelia over at Book Journey.



What I have finished this week
None! I didn't finish anything last week. I have been flipping through 2 books though.
One is a knitting book that I am borrowing from my mom. I'm scanning some of the niftier patterns into the computer. I need to enlarge my stash of go-to scarf patterns.

This volume is a comprehensive how-to book about all aspects of knitting. This book is a reference for all knitting techniques, beginning with the basics of how to knit. A large section of the book is devoted to showing different stitch patterns, arranged in style categories for easy reference. Special knitting topics will be explored in depth: cables, intarsia, entrelac, Fair Isle knitting, and lace knitting. A section will discuss yarns: fibers, how they are spun, gauge, and how to choose.

The other is a homeschooling book. My 4yo is showing many signs of being ready to start learning how to read. Right now I'm borrowing it from the library, but I'd like to purchase a copy.

Too many parents watch their children struggle with early reading skills—and don't know how to help. Phonics programs are too often complicated, overpriced, gimmicky, and filled with obscure educationalese. The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading cuts through the confusion, giving parents a simple, direct, scripted guide to teaching reading—from short vowels through supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. This one book supplies parents with all the tools they need.
Over the years of her teaching career, Jessie Wise has seen good reading instruction fall prey to trendy philosophies and political infighting. Now she has teamed with dynamic coauthor Sara Buffington to supply parents with a clear, direct phonics program—a program that gives them the know-how and confidence to take matters into their own hands.

What I am reading now
Still reading Dragonfly in Amber. I have less than 100 pages left. May even finish it today. =)

With the publication of her debut novel, Outlander, Diana Gabaldon dazzled readers with a love story that spanned two centuries. Hailed by critics for its spellbinding blend of history, passion, and drama, it is a unique evocation of eighteenth-century Scotland from the perspective of a modern heroine.

In Dragonfly in Amber, Gabaldon returns us to the same landscape. Claire Randall -- successful physician, recent widow, mother -- has returned to the Scottish Highlands with her nearly grown daughter to look up a young historian she met briefly some twenty years earlier. But why does she come back? What does she know about the rim of standing stones on nearby Craigh na Dun? And who is really the father of her beautiful copper-haired daughter, Brianna?

The questions raised by Claire's reappearance lead her back to the far, far distant past: back to Jamie Fraser, the young Scottish warrior whose gallant attentions drew her from the security of her own life to the dangers of his. Together, Claire and Jamie struggle to save a country and thwart a king. Their love affair -- as brilliant as the span of a dragonfly's wing and as enduring as the glowing depths of ancient amber -- takes them from the intrigue-filled Paris court of Charles Stuart to the warring clans of a Scotland gripped by the fierce Jacobite Rebellion. Theirs is a story about the power of kings, the dangers of ambition, the agony of choice -- and finally, the terrible burden of too much knowledge.

In the hands of this masterful storyteller, history is neither dead nor fixed, but a thing coiled, fluid and alive. For Claire, the inexorable march of fate -- toward the Highlanders' doom on Culloden Moor -- raises questions that lie far beyond the timeless stones.


What's next?
What's Next has changed since last week's post. I will be starting Rosemary Harris' Dirty Business Mystery series.

So what are you reading? [Comment below!]