This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I'm so excited about my reading list for 2017! I've already gotten started on my first book (a Dorothy Sayers mystery). I feel FREE because for the past two years I've included a huge and overwhelming classic that TOOK OVER the year. In 2015 it was Les Miserables and in 2016 it was The Brothers Karamazov. I'm not doing that to myself this year. There's … [Read more...]
The 10 Most Popular Carrots Posts of 2016
Here we are at the end of the year again! It's been another fun year of writing for this community that I adore. Did you know Carrots readers are the best readers? Well, you are. No contest. It's a tradition for me to compile a list of the 1o most popular posts written in the past calendar year. It helps me understand what you liked best. Sometimes it aligns almost perfectly with what my … [Read more...]
Sorting Jane Austen Characters Into Hogwarts Houses: The Definitive Guide
images by Katherine Makowky You love Jane Austen. You love Harry Potter. So why not sort your favorite Austen characters into Hogwarts houses? I could not come up with a good reason not to. I'm the sort of person who wonders how Elinor and Marianne Dashwood's Myers-Briggs personality types made their sisterly relationship complicated. And I've spent a lot of time considering whether … [Read more...]
Podcasting, Books, and Giveaway Winners. Oh My!
You know I have a podcast, right? Sometimes I think I don't share enough over here at Carrots about the podcast I co-host with my friend and fellow-blogger Christy Isinger because I'm always getting, "Wait! You have a PODCAST? How did I miss that?" from readers. I must not be doing a very good job at telling you about it! So....friends, I have a podcast! It's called Fountains of Carrots and … [Read more...]
Why You Needn’t Bother with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Yes, I read it. And I’ve had a couple of weeks to process Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this big disappointment of a play that picks up where the epilogue in the final book of the Harry Potter series ends. I love Harry Potter. I have always been stridently against Rowling continuing the story that was so perfectly completed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The series wraps up so … [Read more...]
If I Could Cast Austen’s Mansfield Park…
I'm re-re-re-re-reading Mansfield Park right now. I've written before about how it's Austen's underrated novel and that we don't love Fanny Price as she deserves to be loved. What I find terribly disappointing that there isn't a decent film version of Mansfield Park. Granted, the 2007 Masterpiece Theatre version was tolerable, I suppose, but the casting was just not right. Haley Atwell as Mary … [Read more...]
Is Your Favorite Saint a Gryffindor? The Definitive Guide to Sorting the Saints
Ever wonder whether your patron saint is a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff? I didn’t start to consider it until last week when my friend Haley over at Home to Catholicism brought up sorting saints into Hogwarts houses on Twitter (she’s @bakeorbake over there, folks). But then I couldn't STOP thinking about it, crowdsourced my queries to Facebook, and ended up with the best thread ever. Granted, I’m … [Read more...]
Tim Burton’s Big Fish, Me Before You, and the Terrible Power of Story
Tim Burton’s film Big Fish, based on the novel by Daniel Wallace, is one of my top ten favorites of all time. I recently shared it with my kids who love everything Burton. Their favorite Christmas movie is The Nightmare Before Christmas which means I’m either really rocking this parenting thing or I’m raising warped little cynics. But I love Big Fish above all others. It has all the quirky, … [Read more...]
Emma Woodhouse and the Cure for Selfishness
image: ©BBC In Mansfield Park the charming Mary Crawford claims, “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope for a cure.” But she’s dead wrong. Jane Austen shows us in another novel, Emma, that there is indeed a cure for selfishness: love. And no I don’t mean just falling in love or romantic love, but the kind of love that transforms us. Emma gets a bad rap. I … [Read more...]
Finding Great Audiobooks for Kids (Including free options and a list of our favorites!)
Audiobooks are one of our family’s secrets to happy road trips AND peaceful afternoon rest time. For some reason, having to pay attention to the story of an audiobook keeps everyone so much quieter and happier than trying to play a movie in the car. As a homeschooling work-at-home mom, I desperately need my kids to have a consistent afternoon quiet time or else I lose my sanity (and it's not … [Read more...]
