April 16, 2008

There's few things in life better than a good book. One of them is a free good book! Remember my find at our local library? The American art book that weighed four pounds? I found it in the free section and lugged it home to keep. Well...yesterday my oldest dear son called from the campus to say he was bringing me home a surprise. My mind instantly went to something in nature...a bird's nest, flower, rock, etc. When he got home, he had a book with him that he had picked up off the free table at the campus library. The book is Chronicle of the 20th Century and it weighs almost NINE POUNDS! It is a history of the 2oth century written in a brief newspaper style format with tons of pictures. It is like having a huge book of newspaper clippings in chronological order.

Of course, one of the first things I looked up was my birth date. I learned that Castro proclaimed Cuba a socialist nation on this day and abolished elections. I learned that Coca-Cola first arrived in Britain, 14 years after it went on sale in the United States on August 31, 1900. I learned that different blood types were not discovered until November 14, 1900. On December 1, 1959, twelve countries signed a treaty which said that no country would claim any part of Antarctica as its own and established the continent as a preserve for scientific research. Robert Frost, who was asked by President John Kennedy to read a poem at his Inauguration, died on January 29, 1963. You get the idea. The book covers wars, politics, sports, fashion, movies, medicine, etc.

You may be wondering why we have been weighing our books. We are nerdy homeschoolers and nerdy homeschoolers are supposed to do stuff like this.