Author: Sarah Bringhurst Familia

The Doctor is In

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

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In theaters August 25th, that is! The first episode of the greatly anticipated 8th Season of Doctor Who will be coming to theaters across the U.S. later this month.

I already have tickets.

This is exciting because it’s my first real-time experience with Doctor Who. I only recently became acquainted with the series due to a several week Netflix binge that began while my husband and children were in California earlier this year. So I feel like I’m catching up on a lot.

Doctor Who is one of those things you always hear about from your geeky friend but think is way too complicated to start watching.… Read more

Expatting Again

Expatting Again

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Well, while we’re on the subject of announcing major life changes, I should probably let you in on where we’ll be moving next. Hint: our destination is neither U.S. nor subtropical. Because let’s face it–we have now lived in Florida for 2 1/2 years, which in Familia time is about two decades. By the time we leave, we will have lived in Florida for over three times as long as we’ve ever lived anywhere else. Oh, the ironies of life. The weird thing is, I think my internal clock is set according to moves rather than time in any specific location.… Read more

Endings and Beginnings

Endings and Beginnings

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

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What do you think about the new theme? Since my blog is my home on the web, I like to rearrange the furniture once in a while. I hope you enjoy the clearer text, cleaner layout, and larger header photos. I only have a few up so far, but I’ll be adding more headers into the rotation–at least one for every place we’ve ever lived, and maybe one for every place we’ve ever visited.

In other news, the weather is hot, the kids are enjoying going to the pool several times a week, and we’ve decided to take an indefinite leave of absence from the Mormon church.… Read more

Exciting News!

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

You know all those times people told me I should write a book about our international adventures? Well, last week I indie published my very first book. Here it is:

Paradise Interrupted: Romantic Adventures Backpacking Across the Philippines, Baby in TowParadise Interrupted: Romantic Adventures Backpacking Across the Philippines, Baby in Tow by Sarah Bringhurst

 

It’s available on Amazon for Kindle here. Check it out!… Read more

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Voices, City of Bones (Ashes, and Lost Souls), Under the Never Sky and Graceling

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

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Despite the fact that I have spent a fairly obscene amount of time watching Doctor Who during the past several weeks, I have managed to get a little reading in too. Stay tuned later for my review of Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside, which I currently have on hold at the library. But in the meantime,

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I quite loved this book. Yep, it was violent. And quite disturbing. But the characters were so very compelling to me. Especially Lisbeth Salander. She’s a person whom society has completely failed, who is in an incredibly vulnerable position.… Read more

The clear expression of mixed feelings

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

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Here’s a rare thing–a secret about myself that I have not yet disclosed on this blog. I am a poet.

I fell in love with poetry as a little girl. I loved the images it made in my head, and the startling flashes of insight it gave me. But most of all, I loved the sound of the words in my mouth. Memorizing poetry became a habit, and a weapon against my recurring insomnia. I don’t know that I ever made it to the end of Paul Revere’s Ride without falling asleep.

At a used book sale once, my resourceful homeschooling parents picked up a copy of Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense.… Read more

The Lonely Weeks

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

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Tony and the Bobbles have been in California for three weeks. I could have been blogging all this time, I suppose, but it would probably have been three weeks worth of this, so it’s probably better that I didn’t. How’s it been going? Yeah. Not really that well.

I love my children, and have had momentary stabs of missing them, but I’ve been perfectly fine chatting with them a few times and getting regular reports that they are happy and greatly enjoying their stay. If it makes me a bad mother that I don’t miss them too terribly much, then I am a bad mother.… Read more

The Red Tent, Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin, The Mists of Avalon, and A Song for Arbonne

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Yes, more book reviews! Here are a few incisive feminist retellings from the Bible, Arthurian legend, and the Age of Chivalry. As well as a funny and heart-wrenching memoir about being single in the Mormon Church.

The Red TentThe Red Tent by Anita Diamant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The core of this book is one of those disturbing and troublesome stories in the Bible that we don’t tend to talk about much–like the time Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law got pregnant and he wanted to burn her alive, but then it turned out that he was the one who had impregnated her. Or the time Lot hospitably offered to give his virgin daughters to the mob of rapists outside his door.… Read more

The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Across the Universe, Champion, and All Our Yesterdays

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

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Hurrah for YA speculative/dystopian fiction. There’s nothing like remembering you are no longer full of teenage angst, nor is the world disintegrating as a result of natural disaster, antibiotic resistance, or runaway time travel to improve your day.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles, #1)The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was surprisingly good. It’s not often that you run across a YA novel that is both provocative introspective literature and fascinating speculative fiction. If you must have things happen in your books, then this might not be for you, but I loved the slow, pensive unfolding of Jenna’s awareness of herself.… Read more