Christian Shelves

Having worked in communications and being aware of copyright issues, I am doing my best to set up my blog and social media in a way that does not infringe on anyone's rights. While I am starting to introduce some of my own pictures, I am also reliant on royalty-free stock images, such as Pixabay. Reading and adhering to their content license summary means that I am trying to be extra careful in what I select and how I use it, regardless of my limited scope and reach. If you hover over any of the images I have used on here, you will see the attribution information 🙂 Right now, I am researching fair usage of book covers for book reviews, one of the things that I am eager to embark on. In wanting to do this right, I have found some interesting articles that speak to this matter: Do Book Covers Fall Under Fair Use? Can You Use Book Cover Images on Your Blog? Can You Post Book Covers on Instagram? Copyright for Writers: Using Images in Blog Posts How To Use Copyright Protected Images ...

Happy Paperback Book Day ! To celebrate this book holiday, my husband took me to a new and used bookstore in the mountain town of Canmore, Alberta. Even though Banff National Park (the first national park in Canada!) is nearby and much more well-known, there seems to be no existing bookstores left within the town of Banff —at least none that I could find in my research as the Indigospirit (mini version of a Chapters Indigo store) in Cascade Shops closed down a few years prior and the gift shops only supply a few local area interest books. In terms of charm and everything that you can picture for bibliophiles, Café Books in Canmore hits the mark. The staff kindly let me take pictures of my excursion today, including the one above of their children's and fiction used books. Café Books is divided into two storefronts that are connected by a hallway with the front store entrance containing new books and book-related merchandise, and the back section an area for used books in a stor...

Is it Friday already?! What a treat to have some titles to read going into the weekend! As the literary merchandise says, my weekend is indeed booked up 😄 This upcoming week, I am working on the following books, courtesy of the public library: 📘 Christian fiction : Hearts of Steel by Elizabeth Camden 📗 Christian non-fiction : God is Rice by Masao Takenaka 📙 Non-Christian fiction : None this week! 📕 Non-Christian non-fiction : Fair Play by Eve Rodsky—just finished! I have a fuller schedule coming up, so I want to ensure that I have enough time to focus on the two titles I've been waiting to dive into for a few months now. I'm looking forward to the conclusion of the Blackstone Legacy series! I was able to finish listening to Fair Play a couple of days ago, and there were some nuggets that are still in my mind, so I may consider getting the book down the road. There were a lot of acronyms used throughout, and I'm hoping that a visual copy will make it easier to navi...

As I organize myself in preparation of tackling the ever-growing, never-ending TBR pile, I am struck by how people organize their home libraries, especially after my journey between minimalism and maximalism. As much as the trend is to organize by colour right now, I would be even more mixed up in trying to locate titles. Since my preference is to keep books in publication order for each author, this helps series to remain together (for the most part). I also enjoy seeing the evolution of how authors write as their books progress. Furthermore, there seems to be more attention paid to how spines can look, thus leading to some of my favourite series depicting complete scenes when placed next to each other in order—a real visual feast! My absolute favourite to date is the Hope and Glory series from Elizabeth Camden for both the spine art and the cover art which all links together. I couldn't imagine breaking those titles up for aesthetic value when it already exists. A visual cacoph...

One thing that I have been convicted by throughout my life is that I need to be careful not to elevate reading—even reading Christian books—above my relationship with God. I confess that I will more readily dive into a book than the Bible at many times, and that this can start eroding my relationship with God. It's not that I perceive Him as being legalistic and counting how many times I am in His Word versus everything else I read. It's more that I want to do everything I can to guard my heart against idolatry. I believe that, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." - Matthew 6:21 While treasure can amount to physical objects, I am realizing more and more that my time can be counted as treasure as well. Thus, I need to be even more careful that I am not consumed by all the time and attention I pay to looking up new books, reading, shopping, and of course, looking at lovely pictures of other people's home libraries (a much more recent phenomen...

As I am thinking of which books to read and review, I am struck by the myriad of options I possess. Admittedly, I am probably more overwhelmed now that I would have been in the past. A few decades ago, my TBR pile would literally be a pile. Now? I have books on the go on Libby, Audible, and Kindle (Kobo is still a question mark for me). This is alongside my physical piles, including my library books and the books on the nightstand, coffee table, and bookshelves. I've been tempted to add a TBR book cart as well on top of all this, but am now wondering if that may be over the top -- or maybe not as I did find one in a colour I like 😉 It makes me think of the best ways to enjoy a book, whether it's physical or digital, and whether it's printed text or the spoken word. I discovered quite young that I am not an auditory learner so the past few years of listening to audiobooks has been an experiment in trying to absorb information in a different medium. Through input from others...

When I first got married, I had a dream of lining an entire wall in my new house full of bookshelves. I can remember bringing over all the books I had in my bedroom, in something like 13 U-Haul boxes. I had carefully labelled each one and envisioned where the books would go. At the time, I thought that was a lot of books, especially as I practically kept every single textbook from school and was adding more books every few months. Moving the boxes over certainly felt like a lot of work at the time. Going from one bookshelf in my childhood bedroom to three, and then four bookshelves seemed astonishing after getting married! What I had thought was a lot of books was actually not, compared to the number of bookshelves I now have (my husband keeps telling me I can't add any more). The shelves were still largely vacant and full of promise for the titles to be stored. Eventually, over time and many travels, I was able to add to my library. I ran into the issue of having cluttered shelves...

As much as I am able to do so, I will share some of the current reads I have on the go from my large stack of TBRs. Since I may not review every single title on this blog, especially when I am concurrently reading non-Christian books, it will be a fun way to keep myself on track with the books I want to read within that week. I imagine some titles might take longer than that, so I'll see how this goes as a form of accountability 😃 For this upcoming week, I hope to finish the following books (sans one!): 📘 Christian fiction : On the Beat by Nicole Lam 📗 Christian non-fiction : Surprised by Faith by Dr. Don Bierle 📙 Non-Christian fiction : Yellowface by R.F. Kuang—just finished! 📕 Non-Christian non-fiction : The Power of Discipline by Daniel Walter

Since we all have things we tend to gravitate toward, I thought I would compile some of my observations about my library and tastes from over the years. For Christian fiction, I have noticed that: I have a penchant toward getting series, especially for historical fiction. And due to being a completionist, I try to get as many backlist titles as I can. I am growing a small collection of suspense books to offset the amount of romance that I read, but at the end of the day, I still like the warm and fuzzies (although some romances are definitely set against grittier themes). I have some auto-buy authors, but I am realizing that I am quickly running out of space on my bookshelves. I appreciate the new releases; however, I am likely still trying to catch up! I am starting to read more from independent authors, especially due to Kindle Unlimited. It has definitely been a way to find more Christian authors, and I appreciate that I don't have to worry about availability through the library...

I normally shy away from sharing too much about myself as I stopped being active on social media almost a decade ago. When I mentioned that I casually browsed Bookstagram, I had been doing it with an account that contained zero content and zero followers at the time. This is now (slowly!) changing as I become more active on this blog. Because I would like to maintain my anonymity as much as possible, my biographical information will be scant, although I am sure that aspects of my life will emerge the more I share. Just so there is some context, here are some details about me: I am Canadian. I feel the need to mention this first as most of the Christian reading community seems to be American, and there is not always the same access to information, book promotions, and even vendors for those of us up north (there are many publishers that do not ship books or send advanced reader copies to Canadians, but I hope this will change). I am an avid reader. I have averaged over 100 or more books...

Thank you for taking the time to stop by this little corner of the Internet! Though I started blogging over 20 years ago, I will confess that I have not usually keep up my blogs for longer than several years at a time. For this blog, I have instead decided to focus on a topic that actually consumes a lot of my spare time so that I can combine my interests (and test my longevity and commitment). This topic is of course, Christian books! Through casually browsing Bookstagram over the past few years to glean recommendations for new reads, I see that there is a place where people can share about books, and it is celebrated. How refreshing to see a reading culture remain strong amidst many other distractions, several of which have kept me scrolling non-stop to learn about books rather than simply reading them. Since I fall into this camp, this blog can help me to get through my TBR (to be read) pile in order to actually make a semblance of a dent into it. I recognize that it is such a bless...