Archives

Damerosehay novels by Elizabeth Goudge

Jul19

The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge.
Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge.
The Heart of the Family by Elizabeth Goudge.

I read these three related novels in the wrong order. I read Pilgrim’s Inn and reviewed it before I read The Bird in the Tree, the book that begins the saga of the Eliot family and their association with the house, Damerosehay. Then I found a mass market paperback copy of The Heart of the Family at a thrift store for 50 cents, and I brought it home and read it. Each of the three books in the ongoing story was a delight, a joy, and a wonder. I now want to re-read them all in the correct order, just to see what I missed the first time through. But I think I’ll wait a year or so, maybe read them in the winter rather than in the summer, just to see if that changes my appreciation of these novels or my thoughts and feelings about them.

The Bird in the Tree is the story of a man, David Eliot, who has fallen in love with his uncle’s young wife. The wife, Nadine, also loves David Eliot passionately and her own husband, George Eliot, not at all. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, there are children: sensitive Ben, rambunctious Tommy, and shy diminutive four year old Caroline. And also there is Lucilla Eliot, matriarch of the family, to consider. Lucilla has made the country home, Damrosehay, a sanctuary and a place of community for the Eliots and those who love them. Lucilla, with the help of her spinster daughter Margaret, raised David after the death of his parents during The Great War. And Lucilla will not be pleased with the idea that David and Nadine plan to disregard family ties, tradition, morality, and the children, to follow their own hearts in consummating this love of a lifetime.

Elizabeth Goudge shows how this new “freedom to be true to one’s own heart” is not so new, after all. We hope to call the old adultery and sexual immorality by new names such as “truth” and “beauty” and free love and thereby make them palatable and without negative consequences for family unity and especially for the children. One of the reasons I love this trilogy is that each book, in its own narrative way, shows the falsity of that lie. Sin, whether we call it sin or whether we call it freedom and truth, has its consequences, and the only way to live through the consequences is to accept the suffering and offer it up to God as prayer and sacrifice.

I wrote about Pilgrim’s Inn here. Such a wonderful and romantic story, in the best sense of the latter word. Goudge does not gloss over the difficulties, treacheries, and tragedies inherent in the best of families and the best of marriages. In fact The Heart of the Family makes those deep sorrows vividly clear, and I was reminded that there are many hurts and betrayals that are never completely healed this side of heaven. We fail one another abominably. But one can, with God’s grace and assistance, create a sort of a respite or a haven of home and family to help encourage the weak, cast down the proud, and heal the broken-hearted. I am always interested in the idea (and the ideal) of family and community and how to make those healing connections happen in our very imperfect and broken lives.

I do think the first two books of the trilogy are the best, with the third book trying to say too much with too little story. None of these books is filled with action: people go for walks and drives, have lovely philosophical and theological conversations, make decisions in the middle of the night, and visit each other in the day. They drink a lot of tea, of course, since this is set in merrie old England. Yet some how all the descriptive passages and the long conversational interludes work for the most part. However, I would warn readers that in the third book, The Heart of the Family, Ms. Goudge becomes a little too philosophical/mystical/esoteric for even my tastes. And I like all those things. Nevertheless, if I just kept reading, the story came back and the characters said and did interesting and thought-provoking things, and my own interest in the the novel was renewed.

I highly recommend this series of novels, as well as The Dean’s Watch, The Rosemary Tree, Green Dolphin Street, and Gentian Hill, all novels that I have read and enjoyed by this author. I do believe that this is my Year of Elizabeth Goudge, and I plan to read her children’s book, The Little White Horse, next. Elizabeth Goudge’s writing reminds me a little bit of Madeleine L’Engle’s adult novels, which is high praise for me since Ms. L’Engle is one of my favorites.

In case any of the rest of you want to go on a Goudge binge:
Another review of the trilogy at ShelfLove.
Review of Island Magic by Goudge at Worthwhile Books.
Review of I Saw Three Ships by Elizabeth GOudge (a Christmas story) at Worthwhile Books.
The Valley of Song, recommended at Charlotte’s Library.
Little White Horse, recommended by Amy at Hope Is the Word.
Janet at Across the Page on The Little White Horse.
The Scent of Water, reviewed by Janet at Across the Page.
The Dean’s Watch, also at Across the Page.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

The Dean’s Watch by Elizabeth Goudge

Mar4

The Dean’s Watch may very well be the best book I read this year. I can’t imagine any modern book outshining this lovely tale of the friendship between a cathedral dean and an atheist watchmaker.

Isaac Peabody, horologist and master craftsman, had any belief in God taken away from him early in life by his abusive clerical father. Dean Adam Ayscough holds a deep love for the people of the mid-nineteenth century town where he ministers, but he is unable to express his care for the community or for individuals because his shy, gruff manner and his deteriorating hearing separate him from the people he is called to pastor. When Dean Ayscough and clock and watchmaker Peabody meet and begin a tentative friendship, both men cannot predict that their short but rich time together will change an entire city as well as their own lives and legacies.

Elizabeth Goudge is a fine writer. Reading one of her novels takes a certain mood and patience since she was not, as far as I can tell, at all influenced by the press for unremitting action in novels that comes from our immersion in television and movies and the “hurry up and tell me what happened” attitude that can rule our reading nowadays. The Dean’s Watch moves slowly, inexorably toward a very satisfying conclusion, and I am impelled by the pace of the novel to slow down myself and savor every word.

I really think the best thing I can do to give you a taste of what I’m talking about is to, well, give you a taste.

Deceptively simple observations are one of Ms. Goudge’s specialties:

“The reasons for seclusion were many. One should find out why a man is alone before one lets him alone, for he may not want to be alone. This he had not done.”

“That sky was enough to make a man imagine anything, it was in itself so unbelievable.”

“The contemplation of sunsets and vegetable matter has its serene pleasure, and involves no personal exertion, but I think that is not what you want in your old age.”

“What harm unpurified and undisciplined human love could do. He believed it must pass through death before it could entirely bless.”

“Why do I demand certainty? That is not faith. Why do I want to understand? How can I understand this great web of sin and ugliness and love and suffering and joy and life and death when I don’t understand the little tangle of good and evil that is myself?”

Miss Montague is an elderly spinster, lame as a result of a childhood accident and never loved or cherished by her family as a child. But she finds a vocation as she expends herself in love for the people whom God has placed in her way:

“She never knew what put it into her head that she, unloved, should love. Religion for her parents, and therefore for their children, was not much more than a formality and it had not occurred to her to pray about her problem, and yet from somewhere the idea came. . . Could loving be a life’s work? Could it be a career like marriage or nursing the sick or going on stage? Could it be adventure?”

“So she took a vow to love. Millions before her had taken the same simple vow but she was different from the majority because she kept her vow, kept it even after she had discovered the cost of simplicity. Until now she had only read her Bible as a pious exercise, but now she read it as an engineer reads a blueprint and a traveler a map, unemotionally because she was not emotional, but with a profound concentration because her life depended on it.”

Isaac Peabody cannot believe in a fatherly God of love because he has only known a father who acted in cruelty and contempt. So Dean Ayscough tells him:

“Believe instead in Love. It is my faith that Love shaped the universe as you shape your clocks, delighting in creation. I believe that just as you wish to give me your clock in love, refusing payment, so God loves me and gave Himself for me. That is my faith. I cannot presume to force it upon you, I can only ask you in friendship to consider it.”

“Whatever had made the Dean take such a fancy to him, a cowardly, selfish, obstinate, ugly old fellow like him? He would never understand it. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at that too. Faith in God. God. A word he had always refused. But the Dean had said, put the word love in its place.”

And to top it all off, Dean Ayscough has a butler, Garland, who reminds me of Downton Abbey’s Carson, or perhaps The Dowager Countess’s Spratt, velly, velly British and dignified and protective. I highly recommend The Dean’s Watch, when you’re ready to slow down and enjoy the roses of thoughtful, unhurried prose and insight into the depths of the spiritual lives of a small cast of rather extraordinary quotidian characters.

Echoes of Eden by Jerram Barrs

Feb19

All things were created by God, through Him and for His glory.

We have no ideas of own. We are not original creators, ex nihilo, but rather as C.S. Lewis put it, “sub-creators”, dependent on the work of others and even more on the work of God in His creation. All of our ideas and artistic endeavors are either approximations or distortions of the thoughts and the artistry of God: this includes Romantic poetry, Middle Earth and hobbits, rap music, Monet’s water lilies, ballet, and any other artistic works you might imagine or remember experiencing.

These are the basic ideas I got from reading Mr. Barrs’ excellent book on a Christian approach to the arts, particularly literature. Jerram Barrs is “the founder and resident scholar of the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary, where he teaches apologetics and outreach as professor of Christianity and contemporary culture. He and his wife also served on staff at English L’Abri for many years.” The book begins with general principles for appreciating and evaluating art, and then goes on to deal specifically with five famous authors and their works: Shakespeare, Tolkien, C.s. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and Jane Austen. If you are interested in approaching any or all of these authors’ works from a Christian literary perspective, Echoes of Eden will be quite helpful in focusing your attention on the important aspects of how these authors glorify God in their writing.

Master Cornhill by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Feb12

Eloise Jarvis McGraw is the author of three other books that we have either read, or read aloud, in out homeschool in connection with out history studies. Her historical fiction for middle grade readers is challenging, with complex characters and vivi depictions of time and place. The Golden Goblet and Mara, Daughter of the Nile are set in ancient Egypt, and Moccasin Trail is a story of the American West and the trappers and adventurers who opened up the frontier in the early nineteenth century.

Master Cornhill is set in a very specific time and place: London in 1665-1666. The Great Plague in the summer of 1665 drives eleven year old Michael Cornhill from his home with loving foster parents in London to live in the countryside with not-so-loving Puritan friends. When the danger of the plague dies down, Michael takes the opportunity to return to london, alone, even though he knows that his foster parents are probably dead. What he doesn’t realize is that the friends and neighbors that he relies on to take him in and get him started on a path toward a trade or an education are also all gone, victims of the plague. Michael finds himself alone, an orphan with no skills to sell and no money to keep himself fed and clothed.

The story is about how Michael finds friends who help him, how he manages to weather difficult circumstances such as impressment for the Dutch War and the Great Fire of London, and most of all, how he finds direction and a purpose for his life. The atmosphere and buildings and culture of seventeenth century London come alive in this beautifully written story, from the gangs of soldiers impressing all available men into the King’s navy to fight the Dutch to St. Paul’s Cathedral where the business of London is conducted in the nooks and crannies of the great church courtyard to London Bridge lined with houses and shops to the Great Fire itself in September 1666. Ms. McGraw makes history relevant and interesting to readers of the twenty-first century by following an eleven year old boy from 400 years ago as he finds friends and allies in the streets of London. I could imagine my children in Michael’s place, and although it was a dangerous life, Michael survives, by the grace of God and by the innocence and persistence with which he faces his new circumstances.

Ms. McGraw’s books are probably better read aloud to middle grade to junior high students, since she doesn’t pander to the controlled vocabulary or the push for perpetual motion and action in contemporary fiction for children. Motivated readers who enjoy history can read it on their own, there is a lot of period detail and slang that will trip some readers up and enthrall others. Count me in the enthralled group.

I looked on Amazon for a good nonfiction “living book” about the Great Fire of London, but I didn’t really find anything that looked very readable. G.A. Henty has a book about the Great Fire, When London Burned: a Story of Restoration Times and the Great Fire, but I find his books rather hit or miss. Some are good enough, and others are too long, too preachy, and/or too slow, even for me. I recommend Master Cornhill for a good introduction to the time period and to the event.

Then, you could read an excerpt from Pepys’ Diary, where he tells about his experience during the Great Fire.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Five Things That Made Me Smile on February 11-12, 2015:
1. I got a compliment on one of my grown children, something I knew but was glad to hear that others recognize.

2. I was asked to speak at a local homeschool “expo” in May and give a forty-five minute workshop on “living books” (like Master Cornhill) and reading aloud as the backbone of homeschooling. I’m really excited to have this opportunity to share my love of excellent books with an audience of new and sometimes struggling homeschoolers. My themes so far: “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!” and “Build your family culture around books.”

3. I am learning the value and discipline of silence. Enough said.

4. Betsy-Bee will be sixteen years old tomorrow. What a blessing she is!

5. This blog post by Bible study leader Beth Moore: It’s Prayer. That’s the thing.

“It’s time we quit falling asleep in prayer. It’s time we quit practicing a prayer routine that bores us to tears. It’s time our quiet times ceased to be quiet. There are battles to be won. Works to be done. The kinds which only come through prayer, prayer, and more prayer.”

Five Things That Made Me Smile Over the Weekend

Feb8

1. Engineer Husband, Brown Bear Daughter, and I went to a library book sale on Saturday, and I found several treasures, including:
Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger. A favorite historical fiction novel of mine.
In the Company of Others by Jan Karon. This novel is the only one Jan Karon’s Father Tim novels that I didn’t own and haven’t read. I was just thinking about how I need to purchase a copy, and there it was at the book sale.
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson. I read and reviewed this book in December, 2014, and now I own a copy to refer to anytime I want.
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Just on the right day, Dickens’ birthday, a very nice, hardback, slipcovered volume with illustrations by Barnett Freedman, a British illustrator and book jacket designer who also worked during World War II as a full-time salaried war artist, recording the adventures of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940 and then again on D-day in 1944.
A beautiful hardcover edition of Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux and several paperback children’s classics (20-30) in very good condition.
All for $25.00.

2. A pulled pork barbecue sandwich for lunch on Saturday, split pea soup for supper, and chicken tetrazzini for Sunday lunch—none of which I cooked. I have a very kind and gifted husband.

3. Making valentines with my daughters.

4. My pastor’s use of Dory in his sermon as an example of how we tend to “forget” to obey the simple commands we read and hear from Scripture. The text was James 1:22: “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.” ~The Message

5. Remembering lines of poetry that I thought I had forgotten.

As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden

BNSF Railroad Three Arch Bridge over Bullinger Creek, Sealy, Texas 1112111436BW from Flickr via Wylio

© 2011 Patrick Feller, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

Things sort of go downhill for Auden after that, until “the crack in the tea-cup opens/ A lane to the land of the dead.” Read the rest of the poem at Poets.org.

Erle Stanley Gardner and 5 Things That Made Me Happy Today

Feb4


Over the weekend, I read four Perry Mason mysteries by Erle Stanley Gardner. I think I needed to de-tox from reading so much about the “roaring twenties” and Warren G. Harding’s infidelities and his lack of common ethical sense. Perry Mason only flirts and skirts the edges of legality, unlike Mr. Harding who was apparently juggling multiple mistresses while he was in the Senate and while he occupied the White House.

What did I read?
The Case of the Nervous Accomplice. Sybil Harlan hatches a plot to bring her wandering husband back to the fold by throwing a monkey wrench in the business deal he and his paramour are working. But then another party to the deal ends up dead, and Sybil is the obvious suspect. This one was pretty good, and I didn’t see any obvious holes or issues.

The Case of the Careless Kitten. The behavior of a kitten is the main clue that resolves the murder mystery. This story is OK, but there is a a minor character, used as a red herring, who is a Japanese (or possibly Korean) “houseboy.” He is written as a stereotypical “sinister Japanese” character, which since the book was published in 1942, right after Pearl Harbor, is not surprising. It’s a wonder he wasn’t made more sinister–even portrayed as a spy or something worse. But the racist treatment of the character is rather jarring to this contemporary reader’s ear.

The Case of the Vagabond Virgin. At the end, the denouement, of this story the solution is either wonky or I didn’t understand. The murderer uses the victim’s car as a getaway car, drives it to Vegas, leaves it there, and flies back to LA. But neither the police nor Mason seem to have noticed throughout the entire book that the victim’s car was missing. That doesn’t make sense to me.

The Case of the Crooked Candle. Too technical for me, with not enough emphasis on characters. The case hinges on a complicated timeline and high tide and low tide and the burning of a candle in a leaning boat. But I don’t know why anyone would leave a candle burning on a table in a houseboat containing a murdered man.

So, I took a break from true and sordid history to read about not-so-true or even true-to-life murder mysteries. Now I think I’m ready to go back to the twenties and see how Florence Harding manage to deal with her husband’s death and his loss of reputation afterwards.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Per the ever-inspiring Melissa Wiley, here are five things that made me smile today (Thank you, Lord, and thanks, Melissa, for the idea.):

1. Listening to Read Aloud Revival, Episode 10, with Heidi Scovel of Mt. Hope Chronicles. It’s just so encouraging to hear people talking about their love of books and reading and classic literature.

2. Chocolate-covered cherry Bluebell ice cream.

3. Reading Gulliver’s Travels with my almost 16-year old and discussing as we read. What was Swift trying to say about England in his story about the tiny Lilliputians of his imagination? And why is his story filed with scatological references that will fascinate and amuse the high school students (boys) in her homeschool literature class?

4. A new family joined my library.

5. Reading half of the book Happy Pig Day by Mo Willems to one of the children in that new library family, and then getting a hug from the child as the family went out the door. Happy Pig Day to me, too.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Careless People by Sarah Churchwell

Feb2


Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell.

Essentially, this book focuses on the autumn of 1922 when F. Scott Fitzgerald was beginning to think about writing The Great Gatsby and when all of the reading public was fixated on the salacious details of the Hall-Mills murder case in New Jersey, a bizarre and celebrity-driven murder and investigation that played out in the newspapers and probably influenced Fitzgerald’s story of murder and infidelity in several aspects. Ms. Chruchwell also includes the before and after stories of how Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda came to be the celebrities that they were and of how Scott Fitzgerald finished writing his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, and even what happened to him and to Zelda after that novel was published.

I learned several facts that I didn’t know while reading this volume of history and literary criticism combined. F. Scott Fitzgerald was only twenty-six years old in 1922 when he began planning his novel, and only twenty-eight when it was published. Zelda was even younger, born in 1900, twenty-two years old in 1922. She was only nineteen when she married Fitzgerald in April, 1920.

Their daughter, Scottie, was about a year old when they decided to move to New York from St. Paul, Minnesota. I’m not sure how the baby survived, although they did hire a nurse to take care of her, since the parents seem to have been constantly and continually drunk throughout the entire time that they lived in New York. I also am not surprised that Fitzgerald didn’t get far beyond the planning stages in writing his Great American Novel; I am surprised that he was able to write a coherent sentence, much less a number of short stories and the seminal beginnings of what would become The Great Gatsby.

“In May 1924 the Fitzgeralds sailed for Europe, to put the temptations of the New World behind them, with the conviction that they had left their old selves behind forever.” The temptations accompanied them; they got drunk in France just as well and just as often as they did in New York; and their marriage began to disintegrate. But Fitzgerald did write his novel, set in 1922 and based on the characters and the adventures that he and Zelda experienced in New York in that memorable fall of 1922. In particular the Hall-Mills murder case became a part of The Great Gatsby, inextricably intertwined in the characters of Daisy and Tom and Nick and Jordan and Gatsby himself and in the ideas of romantic adultery and carelessness and mistaken identity, insoluble crimes and American idealism.

If you’re fascinated by the Jazz Age, Prohibition, flappers, Scott and Zelda, and The Great Gatsby, Careless People has some good factual material as well as speculation and philosophy about the era and the meaning of the history and the novel and their intersection. The author gets a little carried away at times with passages like the following, coming at the end of each section of the purportedly nonfiction prosaic tome:

“Life is always there waiting to be transfigured into a splendid fiction, however sad or sordid its origins. A story of adultery ends in the violent extinction of a woman of tremendous vitality. A dreamer keeps faith with the faithless, an a double shooting draws coder in the cooling twilight, as e writer tires to determine whether what he holds in his hand is the past, or the future.”

However, reading about Scott and Zelda did make me think about sin and its intractable hold on our lives, about how genius can transcend even the tragic and injurious decisions we make, sometimes, and about what the real meaning of The Great Gatsby is. Did Scott Fitzgerald understand the tragedy of his own novel? Did Zelda? Do I?

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy– they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Scott and Zelda were careless, too, and sort of rich, but there came a time, later, when the piper had to be paid, and the party was over, and both their lives ended tragically. I wonder how many “messes” the “golden boy” and his “first American flapper” left in their wake? If sound self-righteous and Pharasaical, I don’t mean to be. I also wonder how many messes I’ve left for others to clean up and how many more I might have run away from if I had been rich and able?

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Briefly Noted, Fiction

Jan26

First Impressions by Charlie Lovett. The main character’s attitude toward casual sex (“bliss because she didn’t care what it meant”) was sad and made the entire book feel tawdry and cheap, in contrast to Jane Austen’s more elevated, intellectual, and thoughtful prose and her insightful approach to even flawed characters. Also some dropped plot points and discontinuities marred the otherwise serviceable story.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. Everyone and their dog recommends it. I found it fascinating, but mostly because I kept hoping that the protagonist, Theo, would learn something, or grow up, over the course of the novel. He sort of did? But not really. The book should come with a warning label: lots of drugs, lots of illicit (and boring) sex, and then lots more drugs and violence. Theo actually finds “somewhere safe with somebody good” after a traumatic and neglected childhood, but he’s too traumatized to enjoy and appreciate the one person who actually loves and cares for him, Hobie, the antique dealer and friend to the friendless. Theo is a mess, and the “happy ending” seems forced in light of Theo’s choices throughout the novel. I was reading Careless People about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing of The Great Gatsby after this one, and Gatsby and Fitzgerald both ended up about the way I would imagine someone who made the choices they did would end up. Theo, in contrast, gets to travel the world and make restitution on his own timetable. Lucky for him.

Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good by Jan Karon. Father Tim Kavanagh and his lovely wife Cynthia, not to mention Dooley and Sammy and Lace Turner and all the other inhabitants of Mitford, return in a safe but enjoyable novel that reads just like cozy, warm cup of tea with the reader curled up in a homey old quilt on a cold winter day. The questions in the novel—Will Father Tim come out of retirement in an emergency? Does Mitford still take care of its own? Will Sammy grow up and forgive and overcome his past?—were intriguing enough to keep me reading and comfortable enough make me smile as I did. It’s well worth your time if you’re a Mitford fan, and if you’re not, you should be. Start with At Home in Mitford, and you’ll be hooked.

I’ve been focusing on nonfiction this month, and I plan to continue to do so. However, I can’t resist slipping in a few novels, now and then. I’m especially interested in reading a really good historical fiction book set in the “roaring twenties” since I just finished the book about Scott and Zelda and the Great Gatsby, and I’m now reading a biography of Florence Harding aka “the Duchess”, wife of Warren G. Harding, who became president in 1920 and presided over the beginning at least of the Jazz Age. Suggestions, anyone?

12 2015 Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading

Jan1

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley. Flavia just gets better and better. Publication date: January 6, 2015.

Own Your Life: Living with Deep Intention, Bold Faith, and Generous Love by Sally Clarkson. Publication date: January 8, 2015.

The War That Saved my Life by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley. Middle grade historical fiction about child evacuees from London during World War II by an author I’ve enjoyed in the past. Gotta try it out. Publication date: January 8, 2015.

The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus by Dallas Willard. Publication date: February 10, 2015.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. The author’s first novel in nearly ten years, and I’m game to check it out. Publication date: March 3, 2015.

Completely Clementine by Sara Pennypacker. Publication date: Also March 3, 2015.

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden. I’m particularly interested in North Korea ever since the Sony hack, actually even before that. I just read Escape from Camp 14 by this same author. Publication date: March 17, 2015.

The Penderwicks In Spring by Jeanne Birdsall. Oh, the Penderwicks, almost as good as the Marches or the Melendys! Publication date: March 24, 2015.

Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein. Ms. Wein wrote Code Name Verity and Rose. I’m looking forward to reading her next book, which involves women pilots and World War II—but it’s set in Ethiopia! How could it not be good? Publication date: March 31, 2015.

The Revelation of Louisa May by Michaela MacColl. I enjoyed Ms. MacColl’s other lady author mystery stories: Always Emily and Nobody’s Secret. I like Louisa May Alcott. So I would imagine this novel featuring Ms. Alcott as the protagonist will be a treat. Publication date: April 14, 2015.

The Worst Class Trip Ever by Dave Barry. It’s Dave Barry. If any adult humor writer could pull off the move to middle grade fiction, it’s Dave Barry, right? Publication date: May 5, 2015.

Lion Heart (Scarlet, Book Three) by AC Gaughen. Conclusion to these books about a lady thief named Scarlet who captures the heart of Robin Hood in medieval England. Publication date: May 19, 2015.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover or a title here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

12 Best Adult Fiction Books I Read in 2014

Dec29

Lists. I started doing lists of twelve favorites in all sorts of categories several years ago to wrap up the year. Twelve seems like a nice, round number; ten’s not enough, and anything greater than twelve is excessive. So, here are my favorite adult fiction books read in 2014.

The Circle by Dave Eggers. Computer Guru Son thought this one was a little too preachy and pointed, but I liked it and thought about it often through the year, especially when I was “liking” something on social media sites.

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, #14) by Alexander McCall Smith. Mr. Smith almost never disappoints.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Americanah is a smart, penetrating, rather dramatic look at the immigrant experience and at the emigrant experience and at the experience of returning home. It made me feel uncomfortable.

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton. Highly recommended to those who have an interest in West Texas, classic western stories, or stories of ranch life and drought.

Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4) by Dorothy Dunnett. The best of the series that I’ve read so far, but anyone who wants to read these should start from the beginning.

Pied Piper by Nevil Shute. I just finished this novel, written by the author of A Town Like Alice and On the Beach, last night, and I haven’t written a review yet. However, it had to go on this list since it’s already one of my favorite reads ever. A seventy year old Englishman flees France in the spring of 1940 during the German invasion with a string of children for whom he has become responsible.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie King. Sherlock Holmes gains a female sidekick. I thought this series went downhill after the first book, but I did enjoy the first book.

March by Geraldine Brooks. This Pulitzer prize winning novel featuring the fictional characters Marmee and her husband from Little Women does a good job of bringing out the impracticality and impracticability of March’s/Alcott’s beliefs and still making him admirable as a man who tried, at least in the fictional version of his story, to remain true to his principles.

The Prayers of Agnes Sparrow by Joyce Magnin. No longer able or willing to leave her home because of her obesity, Agnes commits herself to a life of prayer. When her miracle working abilities become a matter of town pride, Agnes is trapped in more ways than one.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer. Ms. Heyer’s regency novels, including this one, are not as subtle and deep as Jane Austen’s, but as far as straight light romance novels go Georgette’s Heyer’s books rise near to the top of the list.

Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge. This novel set in England at the time of Napoleonic Wars is a lovely retelling of the legend of St. Michael’s Chapel at Torquay.

Bellwether by Connie Willis. One funny, sweet, and at the same time thoughtful, romantic comedy of a novel by one of my favorite contemporary authors.