“That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive – all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.†~Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
I’ve been on that geometrically progressive journey for about fifty years, ever since I learned to read, and today I celebrate fifty-five years of books. I’m hoping for fifty-five more–or for books in heaven. Anyway, my birthday is the reason for all the “55” lists that I’ve been posting for the last few weeks. Here are some links to those, and I’m hoping for at least 55 links in the Saturday Review of Books today. So if you want to celebrate with me, please leave links to your book reviews from this week and be sure to click through to read the ones that interest you.
Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.
Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.
After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.
By the way, I have some more lists of 55 that I’m working on. After all I get to bee 55 years old all year long; I might as well live it up.
What if your teenage son got involved with a group of car thieves?
What if he got himself beat up trying to defend a schizophrenic friend from those same car thief cronies?
What if he then proceeded to get himself into even more trouble—with no end but a bad end in sight?
What if you were the pastor of the local Episcopal church? What if your son got arrested for murder?
Actually, this novel isn’t told from the parent’s point of view, but for some reason, I almost always turn books upside down and look at them from a parent’s viewfinder, at least for part of the time. And the scenario in Crazy Dangerous is a parent’s nightmare.
It’s also not too much fun for our teen protagonist, Sam Hopkins, who finds himself “in between a rock and a hard place.” He’s a good guy who’s running with the bad guys, and then he decides to take up a new motto, “Do right. Fear nothing.” However, it turns out that there’s a lot of really scary stuff going on in Sam’s little town, and Sam is caught right in the middle of the action.
I liked this story of a good kid, a normal kid, who’s in way over his head (literally, in the lake, at one point) and who’s just trying to do what’s right. At least most of the time he’s trying to do right. Except at the beginning of the book when Sam does something that he admits later is incredibly stupid. Sam’s term for his decision is that it was a “Dragnet”—dumb-da-dumb-dumb (like the theme music).
I would start using the term, but I don’t think my kids would get it. I do think that Karate Kid (age 15) would like this book a lot. He already sped through Klavan’s Homelanders series, which I recommend especially for teen boys who want their books to have lots of action and excitement. Crazy Dangerous fits that description, too.
Published in 1959, this nonfiction narrative tells the story of a November 1957 trip down a piece of the Brazos River in central Texas, just before several dams were built along the river to change its course and character forever. Hence, the title: Goodbye to a River.
Mr. Graves grew up along the Brazos, in Granbury, Texas or nearby as best I can tell, and his writing reflects his love for Texas, the Brazos, country living, and history. It’s also a nature-lover’s book and a chronicle of a lost way of life, the Texas of the 1800’s and early twentieth century. I enjoyed the book immensely, even though it wasn’t exactly about MY part of Texas, too far east for that. It was, nevertheless, about the kind of people that I knew when I was a kid of a girl growing up in West Texas among the fishermen and ranchers and hunters and wannabes. My daddy hunted deer during deer season and fed them out of season (I never really understood that). He also went fishin’, but he never paddled a canoe down the river.
The book and the journey it tells of are a taste of Texas and solitude and reminiscence and homely encounters with classic Texan characters, alive and dead.
“We don’t know much about solitude these days, nor do we want to. A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness, and that to seek it is perversion. Maybe so. Man is a colonial creature and owes most of his good fortune to his ability to stand his fellows’ feet on his corns and the musk of their armpits in his nostrils. Company comforts him; those around him share his dreams and bear the slings and arrows with him.” (p.83-84)
“Mankind is one thing; a man’s self is another. What that self is tangles itself knottily with what his people were, and what they came out of. Mine came out of Texas, as did I. If those were louts they were my own louts.” (p.144)
“I used to be suspicious of the kind of writing where characters are smitten by correct quotations at appropriate moments. I still am, but not as much. Things do pop out clearly in your head, alone, when the upper layers of your mind are unmisted by talk with other men. Odd bits and scraps and thoughts and phrases from all your life and all your reading keep boiling up to view like grains of rice in a pot on the fire. Sometimes they even make sense . . .” (p.151)
“If it hadn’t been for Mexicans, the South Texas Anglos would never have learned how to cope right with longhorn cattle. If it hadn’t been for Texans, nobody else on the Great Plains would have learned how either.” (p.199)
“Neither a land nor a people ever starts over clean. Country is compact of all its past disasters and strokes of luck–of flood and drouth, of the caprices of glaciers and sea winds, of misuse and disuse and greed and ignorance and wisdom–and though you may doze away at the cedar and coax back the bluestem and mesquite grass and side-oats grama you’re not going to manhandle into anything entirely new. It’s limited by what it has been, by what’s happened to it. And a people . . is much the same in this as land. It inherits. Its progenitors stand behind its elbow.” (p.237)
The moral of the story, and I think it’s true, is that I carry Texas and Texans and the Texas landscape in my bones. Even though I’ve never once paddled a canoe down a Texas river or lived rough in a campsite beside the river or caught or shot my own dinner and cooked it up, I am still somehow the inheritor of something that my ancestors, many of whom did all those things and more besides, passed down to me. I’m a city girl, but the Texas wildness and independence and what sometimes turns into a lack of respect for authority and a heedless devil-may-care attitude–all that lives in me, and more besides. I am a daughter of Texas, and Goodbye to a River was a wonderful tribute to some of the places and stories that make Texas great.
If you love the essays and the localism of Wendell Berry, and especially if you have some connection to Texas, I think you would enjoy Goodbye to a River.
I’m not saying these are THE BEST read-alouds, just some of our favorites.
1. Adams, Richard. Watership Down. Violence and mythology and rabbits. This novel of rabbit communities is long, but worth persevering through. 2. Aiken, Joan. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Deliciously Victorian, and dangerous, and odd, this one is a sort of October-ish book.
3. Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women or Eight Cousins. I prefer Eight Cousins, but of course, Little Women is a classic. Little Women is #47 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
4. Alexander, Lloyd. The Book of Three and all the sequels. Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper, Eilonwy the annoyingly intelligent and plain-spoken princess, Gurgi, and Fflewddur Fflam, the truth-stretching harpist are favorite character in our fictional pantheon. #18 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
5. Balliett, Blue. The Wright 3. All of these detective adventures centred on famous works of art are favorites of my youngest two girls. They have listened to Chasing Vermeer, The Calder Game, and The Wright 3 many times in audiobook form.
6. Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. I like James Barrie’s imaginative story very much, and think the movies Peter Pan (Walt Disney), Hook by Steven Spielberg with Robin williams as grown up Peter), and Finding Neverland (more for adults) are all good follow-up viewing for after you read the book aloud. #86 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
7. Benary-Isbert, Margot. The Ark. Not many people are familiar with this story set in Germany just after World War II. It’s about children surviving the aftermath of war, about animals and animal-lovers, and about family. A good read-aloud for older children. 8. Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks:A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy. My children and I love the Penderwick family. In fact, when I started reading this one aloud to some of the younger children, my then-15 year old was entrapped in the story, and picked it up to finish it on her own. #29 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.Z-baby and I discuss The Penderwicks.
9. Bond, Michael. A Bear Called Paddington. Paddington has been a favorite around here since Eldest Daughter (age 26) was a preschooler.
10. Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Little Princess. From riches to rags and back again, the story of the orphaned Sara Crewe is delightful and richly Victorian. #56 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
11. Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. I think Alice is a love-it or ate-it proposition. I love all the word play and sly wit. #31 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 12. Cleary, Beverly. Ramona the Pest. We’ve had to read all of the Ramona books to my youngest, Z-baby,and she’s listened to them on CD. Several times. #24 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
13. DeAngeli, Marguerite. The Door in the Wall. A crippled boy learns to be a strong, courageous man during the Middle Ages. We’ll probably be reading this book this year since Betsy-Bee is studying that time period.
14. DeJong, Meindert. The Wheel on the School. A group of children work together to bring the storks back to Shora in Holland.
15. DiCamillo, Kate. The Tale of Despereaux. A mouse who loves a princess and save her from the rats. Z-baby recommends this one. #51 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
16. Enright, Elizabeth. The Saturdays. If you like The Penderwicks, you should enjoy Enright’s stories about the Melendy famly, or vice-versa. #75 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
17. Estes, Eleanor. The Hundred Dresses. Short, poignant story of a group of girls who find out too late that people who are different and perhaps misunderstood should still be treated with care and gentleness.
18. Forbes, Esther. Johnny Tremain. Good accompaniment to a study of American history.
19. Gilbreth, Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Cheaper by the Dozen. Z-baby says this story about a family with an even dozen children is funny and good to read aloud.
20. Gipson, Fred. Old Yeller. One of those dog stories where the dog, of course, dies, but it’s still a good read aloud for frontier studies or Texas history.
21. Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Read aloud slowly and carefully and savour the descriptions and the setting and the antics of Mole, Rat, Badger, and especially Toad and his motorcar. Brian Sibley on the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Wind in the Willows (2008).
22. Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. Milo is bored until he goes through the tollbooth into a world of word play and numerical delights. #21 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
23. Karr, Kathleen. The Great Turkey Walk. In 1860, big, brawny Simon Green, who’s just completed third grade (for the fourth time), sets out to herd a huge flock of bronze turkeys all the way from his home in eastern Missouri to the boomtown of Denver, where they’ll fetch a big price. />24. Kipling, Rudyard. Just So Stories. These stories are good to listen to because Kipling used words in a very poetic, vocabulary-enriching way, even in his prose. The book includes stories such as How the Leopard Got His Spots and How the Camel Got His Hump and others.
25. Konigsburg, E.L. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Z-baby likes it because the children are independent, resourceful, and funny and they visit a real museum in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. #7 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.Z-baby and I discuss the Mixed-Up Files.
26. L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. Meg, and Calvin, and Charles Wallace rescue Father from IT. #2 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.More about Madeleine L’Engle and her wonderful books.
27. Lamb, Charles and Mary. Tales from Shakespeare.
28. Lang, Andrew. The Violet Fairy Book. And all the other multi-colored fairy books.
29. Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. What can I say about the Narnia books that hasn’t already been said. Get all seven of them , read them aloud, listen to them, read them again. #5 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 30. Lindgren, Astrid. Pippi Longstocking. I like the edition that came out a coupe of years ago with illustrations by Lauren Child for reading aloud because the pictures are delightful and because it’s large and easy to hold. #91 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
31. Lovelace, Maud Hart. Betsy-Tacy. Eldest Daughter was a huge fan of the books of Maud Hart Lovelace, and in fact they took her from childhood into her late teen years along with Betsy and her friends. #52 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
32. Macdonald, Betty. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. If only I had Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle living near-by in her upside-down house to solve all my parenting problems.
33. MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. Princess Irene and her stout friend Curdie, the miner’s son, must outwit the goblins who live inside the mountain. “I write, not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.” ~George Macdonald
34. Milne, A.A. Winnie-the Pooh. Every child should read or hear read this classic story of Christopher Robin and his Bear of Very Little Brain, Pooh. #26 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 35. Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables. Read aloud or listen to the Focus on the Family radio dramatized version. #8 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
36. Nesbit, Edith. Five Children and It. Predecessor to the stories by Edward Eager and other magical tales.
37. Norton, Mary. The Borrowers. Little people live inside the walls and nooks of an English house and only come out at night to “borrow” things that the people don’t use or need anymore. The story in the book(s) is much better than the movie version.
38. O’Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Karana, a native American girl, is accidentally left alone on an island off the coast of California, and she must use all her wits and ingenuity to survive. #45 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
39. Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terebithia. Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke become friends and imagine together a land called Terabithia, a magical kingdom in the woods where the two of them reign as king and queen. #10 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 40. Pyle, Howard. Otto of the Silver Hand. Another tale of the Middle Ages about courage and dealing with suffering and cruelty.
41. Pyle, Howard. The Adventures of Robin Hood.
42. Pyle, Howard. The Story of King Arthur and His Knights.
43. Rawls, Wilson. Where the Red Fern Grows. Another good dog story. #34 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
44. Salten, Felix. Bambi. Bambi. A little fawn grows into a handsome stag. You can a Kindle edition of this translated classic for free.
45. Serrailer, Ian. The Silver Sword, or Escape from Warsaw.Best World War II story for children ever. Pair it with The Ark for a study of refugees during and after the war in Europe.
46. Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. A horse story told from the point of view of a Victorian working horse.
47. Sidney, Margaret. Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. A bit cloyingly sweet for some adult readers, but children love the story of the five little Pepper children and their cheerfulness in the midst of poverty.
48. Speare, Elizabeth. The Bronze Bow. Adventure story that takes place during the time of Jesus’s incarnation. Daniel barJamin and his friends Joel and his twin sister Malthace must choose between rebellion and hatred for the Roman conquerors and the way of following this man Jesus, who preaches love and forgiveness.
49. Streatfeild, Noel. Ballet Shoes. Three sisters—Pauline, Petrova, and Posie— are orphans who must learn to dance to support themselves when their guardian disappears. #78 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
50. Sutcliff, Rosemary. Black Ships before Troy. The story of the Iliad (Trojan War) retold for children with beautiful illustrations by Alan Lee.
51. Tolkien, JRR. The Hobbit. Our read aloud experiences with The Habbit are chronicled here and here and here and here and here and here and here.#14 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
52. Travers, P.L. Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins, the book,isn’t the same as the movie, and you may or may not like both. I do, but in different ways.
53. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Every boy, at east, should read or listen to Tom Sawyer.
54. White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web.#1 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
55. Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods.#19 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
Yikes, I left off some really good read aloud books, but I was limited to 55. So check out the Fuse #8 list (not technically a read-aloud list, but still a good place to look), and this list from Jim Trelease, this list of favorites at Hope Is the Word, and this list that I made a few years ago. Whatever, you do, though, read some books out loud as a family. It will change your life (as my next-door neighbor used to say about some discovery or activity about once a week.)
“It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don’t kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.†~Willa Cather
Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.
Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.
After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.
I didn’t get all the answers I wanted from reading Rob Parsons’ short book called Bringing Home the Prodigals. (I don’t get all of the answers I want when I read Scripture either.) I didn’t read the book, and immediately receive a phone call from one of my “prodigals” saying that she was returning to the faith and wanted to go to church on Sunday. I prayed the prayers printed in the book, and my prodigal son hasn’t come home—yet.
However, I was reminded of the truths that God has already spoken to my heart during this time of waiting on Him and trusting Him to do His work in my life and in the lives of my family members:
Ultimately, we are all prodigals, Elder Brothers and Younger Sons and a little of both, and Christ is our only hope.
We the people of God’s church, by our legalism and our unloving attitudes, have made open rebels of some who were never rebels in the first place. We have driven God’s children away from us because of the color of their hair, or the clothes they wear, or the beverages they drink, or the language they use, or the piercings or tattoos they have on their bodies.
The great problem with the church in the Western world is that half the prodigals are still in the pews—and don’t realize their lost condition. “Our churches are filled with nice, kind, loving people who have never known the despair of guilt or the breathless wonder of forgiveness.”
Seeds sown into the soil of our children’s lives go deep into the soil of their very being. Never give up.
We cannot live someone else’s life for him. Children make choices. And sometimes those choices are bad ones.
“Our children are ultimately God’s responsibility. He is their Father. He does not ask the impossible of us. Only that we love them.”
“You and I cannot bring up godly children; it is not our responsibility—it is too heavy a burden. We are called instead to live godly lives.”
“In love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.” ~Thornton Wilder.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ~I John 1:8-9
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ~I John 3:1-2
Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Florence Harding: The First Lady, The Jazz Age, And The Death Of America’s Most Scandalous President
Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh.
Brookiser, Richard. James Madison.
Buechner, Frederick. The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days.
Byrne, Paula. Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead.
Carter, Jimmy. An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.
Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China.
Chesnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie.
Colledge, Gary. God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author.Recommended by Gina Dalfonzo at NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Conroy, Pat. My Reading Life. I just got this one from the library, and Eldest Daughter is reading it. I’ll see if I can get her to post a review when she’s finished.
DeMuth, Mary. Thin Places: A Memoir.
Dineson, Isak. Out of Africa.
Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.
Freeman-Keel, Tom. The Disappearing Duke: The Improbable Tale of an Eccentric English Family.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.
Hall, Ron. Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together. I just borrowed this book from the library, too.
Harrer, Heinrich. Seven Years in Tibet.
Harrison, Rosina. Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast.
Hirsi, Ayaan. Infidel.
Hitchcock, Susan Tyler. Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London.
James, Marquis. The Raven.
James, P.D. Time To Be In Earnest: A Fragment Of Autobiography.
Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm A True Story of Men Against the Sea.
Kamara-Ummuna, Agnes and Emily Holland. And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation.
Kendall, Joshua. The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Kirkby, Mary-Ann. I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage.
Korda, Michael. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.
Korda, Michael. Ike: An American Hero. Recommended by Patrick Lee at NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild.
Kullberg, Kelly Monroe. Finding God at Harvard.
Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom.
Markham, Beryl. West With the Night.
Massie, Robert. Peter the Great: His Life and World.
Massie Robert. Catherine the Great. Recommended by Samuel Gregg in NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Matteson, John. Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.
McCullough, David. Truman. I got a copy of this book for Christmas, but I still haven’t read it. Before next Christmas?
Millard, Candice. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.
Morris, Roy. Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876.
Naidi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Nevin, Allan. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage.
O’Brien, Michael. Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon.
Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London.
Panter-Downes, Mollie. London War Notes 1939 to 1945.
Roe, Dianah. The Rossettis in Wonderland: A Victorian Family History.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Steinmeyer, Jim. The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards.
Taylor, Hudson. The Autobiography of Hudson Taylor: Missionary to China. I have this one on my Kindle.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
White, William Allen. A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge.
Wilbur, Gregory. Glory and Honor: The Music and Artistic Legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life.
Wrong, Michaela. It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.
So many books. So little time. Have you read any of these books? Do you recommend that I move any one or more of them to the top of the TBR list?
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Rivers are fascinating. And traveling down a river is such a rich metaphor for traveling through life. A river can be adventurous (Huckleberry Finn) or languorous (Langston Hughes’ poem) or perilous (River Rising by Athol Dickson). So in today’s edition of Book Tag, please suggest your favorite book, fiction or nonfiction, that features rivers.
Remember the rules: In this game, readers suggest ONE good book in the category given, then let somebody else be IT before they offer another suggestion. There is no limit to the number of books a person may suggest, but they need to politely wait their turn with only one book suggestion per comment.
My suggestion to start the game off is Athol Dickson’s River Rising. The book I’m reading now, Same Kind of Different as Me, reminded me of Mr. Dickson’s novel, since the man in my current book, Denver Moore, grew up in southern Louisiana, where Dickson’s story takes place. However, River Rising is about the Mississippi River flood, the greatest flood in modern history on the lower Mississippi River and about how such a flood can be horribly destructive, but also can provide an opportunity for cleansing and for a new beginning.
Your turn. What river-themed books do you recommend?
Ambrose, Stephen. Band of Brothers.
Bowen, Carolyn Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia.
Catton, Bruce. Civil War Trilogy: The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, Never Call Retreat.
Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life.
Chesterton, G.K. The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton.
Colson, Chuck. Born Again. Costain, Thomas. The Conquering Family, The Last Plantaganets, The Magnificent Century, The Three Edwards. A fantastic series of four books telling all the history of medieval England from
Doss, Helen. The Family Nobody Wanted. This story of international adoption made a huge impression on me when I was a teenager.
Eliot, Elisabeth. Through Gates of Splendor.
Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Hastings Max. Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945.
Hautzig, Esther. The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia.
Hayden, Torey. One Child.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend.Semicolon review here.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.Semicolon thoughts here.
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains.Thoughts on the book and on parallels between slavery and abortion.
Jenkins, Peter. A Walk Across America.
Jordan, River. Praying for Strangers.Prayer adventures after reading this book. Kennedy, John Fitzgerald. Profiles in Courage. I need to re-read this book. I remember it as inspiring and revealing in its stories of political courage.
Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine.
Kililea, Marie. Karen. Another book that captured my attention and my heart when I was a kid of a girl.
L’Amour, Lois. Education of a Wandering Man.Semicolon thoughts on education and Louis L’Amour.
L’Engle, Madeleine. Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, A Two-Part Invention.Madeleine L’Engle favorites.
Lewis,C.S. Surprised by Joy.
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow. Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928and the other volumes of Mrs. Lindbergh’s diaries.
Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia.Reading about the Romanovs.
McCullough, David. 1776. 

McCullough, David. John Adams. Semicolon thoughts here and here. McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt.
Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy.My thoughts on Bonhoeffer and his classic, The Cost of Discipleship.
Millard, Candice. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey.Books about Teddy.
Muller, George. Autobiography of George Muller.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.
Richardson, Don. Peace Child.Semicolon thoughts about this exciting, classic missionary story. Saint Exupery, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars.
Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.Semicolon thoughts here.
Sobel, Dava. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago.A Solzhenitsyn Celebration.
Stone, Irving. Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900.
Tada, Joni Eareckson. Joni: An Unforgettable Story.
Ten Boom, Corrie. The Hiding Place. Semicolon thoughts here.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods. Thoughts on Thoreau and clothing.
Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Good companion piece to the Costain books listed above on the same time period.
Turkel, Studs. Hard Times. Oral history recorded in this book of memories of the Great Depression.
Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi.
van der Bijl, Andrew. With John and Elizabeth Sherrill. God’s Smuggler. Another book that made a deep impression on me when I was a teen. Vanauken, Sheldon. A Severe Mercy.
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery.
Wilkerson, David. The Cross and the Switchblade.Semicolon thoughts about Pastor David Wilkerson and his book about gangs and Jesus in NYC here.
Williams, T. Harry. Huey Long. I read this twenty years ago when Engineer Husband was in college and brought it home for a class he was taking. I still remember scenes and details from the life of this larger-than-life politician.
Winner, Lauren. Girl Meets God.Semicolon review here.
Yutang, Lin. The Importance of Living.A Chinese American man writes about Chinese philosophy and life.
Zacharias, Ravi. Walking from East to West.
So, in honor of Wisdom and Wit and 55, here is collection of 55 “words of wisdom” gathered mainly from children’s literature, picture books and the like. Follow these bits of sage advice, and you’ll likely stay well.
1. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. … ~Dory, Finding Nemo.
5. “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
6. “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ~The King, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
8. “Housekeeping ain’t no joke.” ~Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
9. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” ~Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who.
10. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
~Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
11. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
~Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
12. “No fighting, no biting!’ ~Else Holmelund Minarik.
13. “People in masks cannot be trusted.” Fezzik, The Princess Bride.
14. “Never get involved in a land war in Asia; never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!” Vizzini, The Princess Bride.
17. “When you say what you think, be sure to think what you say.”
~Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup.
18. “If you don’t look for Trouble, how can you know it’s there?”
~Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup
19. “The best thing to do with a bad smell is to get rid of it.”
~Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup
20. “In some cases we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”
~Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three
21. “Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives.”
~N.D. Wilson, Dandelion Fire
22. “Always sprinkle pepper in your hair!” ~Shel Silverstein.
23. “It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.” ~Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.
24. “Get a pocket.” ~Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne.
25. “Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.” ~The Horse and His Boy by C S Lewis.
28. “If this island is all there is, and we are trapped here with a sleeping giant, we have little hope. But . . . what if there are things under our feet and things beyond the sea that we have never dreamed of?” ~The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton.
29. “Where there’s life there’s hope, and need of vittles.” ~The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien.
30. “Books we must have though we lack bread.” ~Alice Brotherton.
31. “You can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking.” ~The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White.
32. “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ~Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne.
33. “Any time you want to spend a nickel, you stop and think how much work it takes to earn a dollar.” ~Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
34. “All get what they want: they do not always like it.” ~The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis.
35. “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.” ~The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis.
36. “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” ~The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.
37. “Don’t be afraid to be afraid.” ~A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
38. “Read in order to live.” ~Gustave Flaubert.
39. “There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.”
~ Montesquieu
40. “Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.” ~Lemony Snicket.
41. “Never explain anything.” ~Mary Poppins.
42. “Vote for Pedro and all your wildest dreams will come true.” ~Napoleon Dynamite.
45. “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” ~William Morris.
46. “When you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.”
~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables.
47. “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” ~G.K. Chesterton.
48. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” ~G.K. Chesterton.
49. “Never hurry and never worry!” ~E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
50. “Be obscure clearly. Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.” ~E.B. White
50. “You need two when the road is rough.” ~One Is Good But Two Are Better by Louis Slobodkin.
51. “Put it all back where it belongs.” Bored–Nothing To Do by Peter Spier.
52. “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
53. “There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.” The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
54. “If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.” ~Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
55. “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.” ~C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
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