I just watched the movie that’s based on this Christian romance novel by Jenny Jones. And I can say that my book review goes double for the movie. If it hadn’t been for the setting, Ireland, I don’t think I would have made it through the entire movie. It’s sort of a Hallmark movie with cute actors and very poor plotting and dialog. So many unbelievable and disconnected twists and turns, and yet at the same time so predictable. Of course the two sisters who are the enactors of a lifelong feud, manage to reconcile just before one of the sisters dies. Of course, boy manages to end up with girls despite the many obstacles along the way. However, the course of true does NOT run smooth. Oh, and there’s a town drunk who magically becomes both wise and sober whenever
Watch it via Amazon when you’re in the mood for something mindless and sort of Irish. Well, at least the scenery is Irish.The accents are sometimes Irish. The story is, well, not to be blamed on the Irish. (Oh, the movie leaves out any God-talk, except for a brief shot of a Bible verse on a tombstone.)
Wild Swans is the story of three generations of a Chinese family during the rise of Communism, and Mao Tse Tung, and the Cultural Revolution. Jung Chang’s grandmother was a concubine to a Chinese general. She had her feet bound as a child in the traditional Chinese way. But her daughter, Chang’s mother came of age during the conflict between the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek the Communist idealists who followed guerrilla leader Mao Tse-tung. The Changs, mother and father, became dedicated Communists who believed in Chairman Mao and the ideals of the Communist Party without question. True believers, Jung Chang’s parents endured great suffering and hardship for the sake of changing Chinese culture and society into a Marxist Communist paradise. Because she was taught the virtues of communism under Mao and the evils of a capitalist society, Jung Chang came to share their philosophy and to idolize Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book. But eventually, it all came crashing down when Chang’s own family became the persecuted instead of the persecutors during the Cultural Revolution.
“The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people’s real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings—and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.”
The state of China in 1958, from Wild Swans by Jung Chang
It was horrible, yet instructive, to read about an entire society gone mad in twentieth century China and about how slowly and subtly a utopian ideal can become a nightmare, especially with a power-hungry madman in charge. It happened in Russia with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez and Maduro, and in China with Mao. From 1958 to 1962, Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people in a famine that starved people throughout China. The Cultural Revolution that followed in the late 1960’s killed somewhere between 500,000 and two million people. The number of people who didn’t die but suffered great injury and trauma under Mao’s Communist rule is literally incalculable. Jung Chang’s Wild Swans brings the story of this historic horror down to an understandable but terrible story of one family. The book shows how the first generation suffered in the political corruption and prejudice against women that characterized Chinese culture before Communism, how the second generation came to idolize Mao as the embodiment of their dreams of a socialist paradise, and how Jung Chang herself and her siblings, the third generation, paid the price for their own and their parents’ mistaken ideals.
I think everyone should read this book or another book that shows the true story of what can happen in an authoritarian society run by a charismatic but evil ruler. “Mao hoped his movement would make China the pinnacle of the socialist universe and turn him into ‘the man who leads planet Earth into communism.'” Instead, he became the bloodiest dictator the world has yet known. Some other accounts of twentieth century China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the aftermath of the late twentieth century.
Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang. Middle school/high school account of the experiences of one girl, twelve years old when the Cultural Revolution began.
China’s Long March by Jean Fritz. Describes the events of the 6,000 mile march undertaken by Mao Zedong and his Communist followers as they retreated before the forces of Chiang Kai-shek.
Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China by Lian Xi. Not the best written book, and definitely for adults. The title pretty much sums up this harrowing and true story of a Catholic girl martyr.
Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker. This picture book manages to tell about the backward disaster that Mao’s Great Leap Forward precipitated without being unnecessarily traumatic for young readers. Based on real events in China, when Chairman Mao ordered the people to kill all of the sparrows because they were annoying and stealing too many seeds.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ling Chang Compestine. Nine year old Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the Cultural Revolution. Young adult to adults.
Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing by Guo Yue. In Communist China in 1966, eight-year-old Leap Forward learns about freedom while flying kites with his best friend, by trying to get a caged wild bird to sing, and through the music he is learning to play on a bamboo flute. A gentle introduction to this difficult period of history for younger children.
I’ve not read any of the mostly adult books on these lists, but I’m interested in pursuing at least some of them.
Every year I try to collect a list of the most interesting and inspiring book lists for the end of the year. I get a lot of ideas from these lists, and every year I add more and more books to my own never-ending TBR list. Ah, well, as they say, so many books, so little time. Nevertheless, this exercise is one of the most enjoyable parts of the holiday season for me.
2021 For the Church Book Awards. From this list of favorites chosen by several evangelical church leaders and pastors, I am most interested in Jackie Hill Perry’s Holier Than Thou: How God’s Holiness Helps Us Trust Him, Andrew Peterson’s The God of the Garden, and the joint biography of J. Frank Norris and George W. Truett by O.S. Hawkins, titled In the Name of God.
John Ehrett: The Best Books I Read This Year. Until I read this list, I didn’t know that Kashuo Ishiguro has a new novel out: Klara and the Sun. It sounds intriguing. And I might also need to read Andy Weir’s newest, Project Hail Mary.
David Quaod: My Top Ten Books of 2021. I thought to read Calvin, one would have to read The Institutes, a somewhat daunting task especially for a person who doesn’t consider herself a Calvinist. But Mr. Quaod’s top book for 2021 is A Little Book on the Christian Life by John Calvin, a distillation of Calvin’s writings on living the Christian life. I think I might be up for that.
Delightfully Feasting: Crystin’s Top Ten Books of 2021. I’ve read about half of these, and I agree that those I’ve read (Cry, the Beloved Country, What Is a Girl Worth?, Till We Have Faces, and others) are worthy of a top ten list. I would like to read Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner and Why I Read by Wendy Lesser.
Anthony Kidd: Theology in Practice, Top Books for 2021 Reading. Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer may become my “challenge” book for the next year. Written by a self-proclaimed liberal and an Atlantic journalist, this book sounds as if it would be readable while still showing me a very different perspective. I agree with Mr. Kidd that Live Not by Lies (Dreher), Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson are all good and challenging, too.
W. Jackson Watts’ Top Books in 2021: Mr. Watts is a Free Will Baptist. (I am not.) He also listed Live Not By Lies and Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. I’m interested in the Herbert Hoover biography by Glen Jeansonne that he also listed.
Nomadic Matt: The Best Books I Read in 2021. Matt runs a travel blog, but he read a lot of books while stuck at home in 2021. One of those books, Scotland Beyond the Bagpipes by Helen Ochyra, sounds like a book I could fall for.
Bob on Books: Best Books of 2021. Bob lists the Eugene Peterson bio, A Burning in My Bones by Winn Collier, a book I’ve had my eye on. And he has as his best children’s book St. Nicholas the Giftgiver by Ned Bustard, a book I’d also like to take a look at. And I’ve been intending to read Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren all year long. 2022 is the year.
Sheridan Voysey: Best Books I Read in 2021: Mr. Voysey read The Yellow House by Martin Gayford, about roomies Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin. I’d like to read this one in this my spring of Van Gogh studies. And the novel Summer’s Out at Hope Hall by Pam Rhodes sounds good.
Catholic World Report: The Best Books I Read in 2021. Over forty book lovers tell this Catholic publication the titles that they most enjoyed in reading year 2021. Dale Ahlquist read Sigrid Undset’s Kristen Lavransdatter trilogy, which I also highly recommend. Alan Anderson read Peter Kreeft’s Wisdom from the Psalms, which sounds great. Michael Ward has written After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, which might need to be added to my reading list since I plan to re-read Abolition this year. The Light of Caliburn by Jake Frost is a tale of Merlin’s activity in modern day Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a children’s book recommended by David Deavel’s son. Another children’s book I’ve never heard of, although I am familiar with the author, is Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy, recommended by Eleanor Nicholson. In a Far-Off Land by Stephanie Landsem is Christian fiction (from Tyndale House) by a Catholic author, described as deeply moving, recommended by Rhonda Ortiz who is a novelist herself. Tolkien’s Modern Reading by Dr. Holly Ordway is another book I’m going to need to check out. I’m not any more Catholic than I am Free Will Baptist, but this article was a treasure trove of reading recommendations.
Debra at Readerbuzz: Best Books I Read in 2021. Debra suggests quite a few books that sound delightful, including books on healing, happiness, food, nature and children’s books, too. I need to ask her what she thinks is the very best book of all time on happiness/joy since I think she’s read a lot of them. I’m skeptical about self-help reads, but I do tend to reflect that which I read. So, maybe books about joy can bring joy?
Savvy Verse & Wit: Best Books of 2021. Serena has six poetry books on her best of 2021 list, narrowed down from twelve. From which I deduce that she reads a lot of poetry.
Mary at BookFan: 2021 Favorites: I guess I’ll have to try Once Upon a Wardrobe and Surviving Savannah, both by Patti Callahan, who also wrote Becoming Mrs. Lewis. I didn’t much care for Becoming Mrs. Lewis, but I’m willing to give Ms. Callahan another chance.
Martha’s Bookshelf: My Year in Books.Chicken Talk Around the World, a book about how chickens sound to speakers of different languages around the world, sounds like a great addition to my library. I’m going to have to find a copy of this one.
Dewey’s Treehouse: Mama Squirrel’s Reading List. Not squirrelly at all, she’s got some good ones. Maybe I need to read some Alan Jacobs: How To Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds. Goodness knows, I could use some help in the thinking department. (Oh, my, I just figured out that this blog, one I have visited frequently in the past, is Ambleside Online author Anne White’s blog.)
Well, that’s all of the lists I’ve had time to search out and link. If you have an end of the year favorite books list that I didn’t link to, please share in the comments. And Happy New Year, and here’s to more good books in 2022.
I got this book for Christmas, and it was the last book I read in 2021. Author Robb White wrote for magazines and for television (several episodes of Perry Mason) and the movies, but he is best known for his 24 novels for young people. His books would be classified as “Young Adult” nowadays. Although they are full of adventure and feature somewhat rebellious and independent heroes, by today’s standards they probably wouldn’t be quite edgy enough for the YA market. I have read four of his books now, and I like them very much.
The Lion’s Paw is the tale of three runaway children who sail fifteen year old Ben’s father’s boat through the inland waterways of south Florida, down the Atlantic coast all the way to Captiva Island in the Gulf of Mexico. Ben is running away from a guardian who wants to sell his father’s sailboat because the uncle/guardian believes that Ben’s father, a Navy sailor, is dead. (The book was originally published in 1946, so Ben’s dad is assumed either dead or captured by the Japanese in the Pacific during WWII.) The other two runaways, Penny and her little brother Nick, have escaped from an orphanage. The orphanage doesn’t sound exactly cruel, just sterile, regimented, and uncaring. The story begins with Penny and Nick deciding that that they aren’t likely to be adopted by anyone decent and they just can’t stand life in the orphanage anymore. So they run away and meet up with Ben, and off they go!
The story includes tropical storms, bounty hunters, alligator encounters, near escapes, and the hunt for a seashell called the Lion’s Paw. Ben is convinced that if he can find a Lion’s Paw for his dad’s seashell collection, then his dad will come home. The story itself is beguiling with three plucky, courageous, and determined children facing both the dangers of sailing and surviving on the ocean and the strictures of the adult world which threatens to put an end to their freedom and adventure. There are couple of caveats: the children and an adult in the story use slang to refer to the Japanese (“Japs” and “Japoons”), and at one point the children use some potentially deadly weapons to fight a man who wants to turn them in to the searchers for a reward. Being prepared to use deadly force to counter an intruder would probably be disallowed or at least disapproved of if the book were written and published in the twenty-first century.
Still, I thought it was an exciting story with some brave and admirable characters. Both boys and girls, anyone over the age of twelve or so, would enjoy the tale and be inspired, not to run away from home or go out alligator hunting alone, I hope, but to “do hard things” and face difficulties with courage and ingenuity.
I read 22 books of biography, autobiography or memoir in 2021. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot was probably the best of the lot, although The Hiding Place is a timeless classic worth reading over and over again.
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom (re-read) If I had a book I read every year, this one would probably be worth the re-reading. I was inspired once again to live for Christ where I am in the situations and with the people where God has placed me.
When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story. Singer, song writer, and worship leader, Laura Story writes about her husband Martin and his struggle with a brain tumor, but also about her life as the wife of a man with short term memory loss and other issues as a result of the brain tumor. We did a study of this book at church, and it was excellent and encouraging, even though it’s about “Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can’t Live Without.”
Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn. Fantastic, not hagiographic at all, but also not a tearing down of a woman I greatly admire. Reading this story of the first half (approximately) of Elisabeth Elliot’s life made me anxious to read promised sequel as well as wanting to re-read Ms. Elliot’s books, especially her one novel, No Graven Image. Or I might want to read some of her books that I haven’t read before.
Witness by Whittaker Chambers. Long, but worth the time and effort. I learned more about Chambers and Alger Hiss and the Communist Party and spying in the 1920’s in the the U.S. than I ever dreamed of asking.
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. Good stuff about Laura Ingalls Wilder, made me even more anti-Rose Wilder.
The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh by Candace Fleming. Excellent biography of a flawed man.
The Best Cook in the World: Tales From My Momma’s Table by Rick Bragg. Humor, with recipes.
To Live Is Christ by Beth Moore. A biography of Paul, the apostle, as well as notes on the book of Acts. Ms. Moore write good, well-researched, accessible Bible commentary.
The Genius Under the Table by Eugene Yelchin. I guess (???) it’s autobiographical, somewhat fictionalized, told from a child’s point of view, about the author’s childhood and family growing up in Soviet Russia. I’m not sure how much is fact and how much is fiction. I did like it, but Yelchin is an odd writer for me. Maybe there’s a culture gap? I’m not always sure when he’s joking and when he’s serious.
Autobiography by Fanny J. Crosby. Not the best writing I’ve ever read, but some of the best, time-tested, Christ-infused ideas.
“People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives . . . and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”
~Nate Saint in Becoming Elisabeth Elliot
“[Communist faith] is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of man without God.”
~Witness by Whittaker Chambers
“At that end, all men simply pray, and prayer takes as many forms as there are men. Without exception, we pray. We pray because there is nothing else to do, and because that is where God is—where there is nothing else.”
~Witness by Whittaker Chambers
“The mind appears to me like a great storehouse into which we place various articles for safekeeping and sometimes even forget that they are there, but sooner or later we find them; and so I lay aside my intellectual wares for some future day or need; and in the meantime often forget them, until the call comes for a hymn.”
Fanny J. Crosby’s Autobiography
“Kindness in this world will do much to help others, not only to come into the light, but to grow in grace day by day. There are many timid souls whom we jostle morning and evening as we pass them by, but if only the kind word were spoken they might become fully persuaded.”
Fanny J. Crosby’s Autobiography
“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil.”
~Anne Lindbergh, quoted in The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh
“Am I going to let my circumstances determine my view of God, or am I going to let God determine how I view my circumstances?
~When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story
“Look at the Psalms. David wrote many of them when he was broken; and in them he poured out some painful and intimate questions. Sometimes David got answers. Sometimes he got silence. But even when David’s questions weren’t answered, his faith in God was stronger than his need to know.”
~When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story
“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts. It is easier to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence, than to wait patiently.”
The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo. My second favorite. At the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, covered in dirt and blood, and holding on to the ear of Answelica the goat. (Answelica is the stubborn star of the book.) It turns out that the king’s men are searching for Beatryce, but Beatryce doesn’t remember who she is or why the king wants to capture her. Can she elude the search long enough to recover her own story?
Stowaway by John David Anderson. A little bit Star Wars and a little bit Ender’s Game or even Dune, Stowaway takes space opera into the middle grade fiction genre and does it well. When Leo is separated from his father and his older brother and lost in space with a bunch of space pirates, he truly doesn’t know whom to trust. But he’s determined to find his father who has been kidnapped (maybe?) by the enemy Djarik soldiers. Can he trust the pirates to help him? Are the Aykari, Earth’s allies in the universal war to control the valuable mineral ventasium, even trustworthy? Can Leo be smart enough to get to his father beforetime runs out, and can he find his brother, too?
These are nonfiction books that are NOT biographies or autobiographies.
Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman
Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher. (re-read)
Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love by Cindy Rollins
The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer (re-read)
Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings by Diana Pavlac Glyer
Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson
A Praying LIfe: Connecting With God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller.
“Speaking of the history of stories and especially of fairy-stories we may say that the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty.”
JRR Tolkien, quoted in Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer
“The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them.”
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
” . . . institutions cease too be places for the formation of individuals via their schooling in the various practices and disciplines that allow them to take their place in society. Instead, they become platforms for performance, where individuals are allowed to their authentic selves precisely because they are able to give expression to who they are ‘inside’ . . . institutions, such as schools and churches, are places where one goes to perform, not to be formed.”
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
“Christianity has become a shallow self-help cult whose chief aim is not cultivating discipleship but rooting out personal anxieties. Christianity without tears.”
Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher
“If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for our appreciation.”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer
“Why does man have creativity? Why can man think of many things in his mind and choose and then bring forth something that other people can taste, smell, feel, hear, and see? Because man was created in the image of a Creator. Man was created that he might create. It is not a waste of man’s time to be creative. It is not a waste to pursue artistic or scientific pursuits in creativity, because this is what man was made to be able to do.”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer
“Without the Good Shepherd, we are alone in a meaningless story. Weariness and fear leave us feeling overwhelmed, unable to move. Cynicism leaves us doubting, unable to dream. The combination shuts down our hearts, and we just show up for life, going through the motions.”
A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller
“Learned desperation is a the heart of a praying life.”
“Something mysterious happens in the hidden contours of life when we pray. If we try to figure out the mystery, it will elude us. The mystery is real.”
A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller
“I need to develop a poet’s eye that can see the patterns in my Father’s good creation. Like a good storyteller, I need to pick up the cadence and heartbeat of the Divine Storyteller. . . . Don’t pray in a fog. Pray with your eyes open. Look for the patterns God is weaving in your life.”
A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller
What have I learned from all of these books? Our culture and the individuals who make up “our culture” are in trouble. I can understand some of the problems to some extent, but I can’t fix it. I can pray, seek beauty and truth, and wait for God to work.
If I have truly learned that much, it is enough for one year.
I love making reading plans. I like lists of books, books in categories, reading challenges, lots of reading plans. And I do follow through to some extent. However, I always get more ideas for books to read, both inside and outside the plans’ parameters, than I have time to read them all. So, my success a reading lots of books is good, but my success at reading strictly what I planned to read is bad.
Nevertheless, I have lots of reading plans for 2022. First of all my Facebook (private) page, Cultivating Beauty and Truth, which boasts 64 members, did a fall feast Charlotte Mason-style study including literature, poetry, art, music, hymns, Bible study, and psalms, and it was well received. So, I am planning a “Spring Picnic” of the same kind of study, and if you would like to join the group on Facebook, you can request to do so with this link.
For Cultivating Beauty and Truth, we will be reading The Hobbit, studying Romans and the first eighteen chapters of Exodus, looking at the art of Vincent van Gogh, reading poetry by Longfellow and Poe, and more, beginning in late January and lasting over the course of twelve weeks. I’ll try to remember to post the schedule here on Semicolon for those of you who are not on Facebook and who would like to join in. But most of the discussion will take place on Facebook or in person here in southeast Houston.
I also have a reading challenge for every one at Cultivating Beauty and Truth: 12 books for 2022. I’m challenging those who want to participate to read at least 12 books in 2022, in the following categories:
Read a book of the Bible, any book, as long as Genesis or as short as III John. I’m looking at either Exodus or Romans for our Spring Picnic, or maybe parts of both. Read it slowly and carefully and prayerfully, and it might be the best book you read in 2022.
Read one book that encourages you to pray. There are many books about prayer, but not all of them actually get a person praying. Suggestions anyone?
Read one book that makes you laugh. I think we all need to laugh.
Read one biography of an inspiring person. If you need suggestions, I can certainly give you some.
Read one book meant for children: a picture book, a fiction book for older children, or even a Young Adult novel, or a nonfiction book for children. There are so many good children’s books, both classics and recently published.
Read one book of poetry. Read it slowly, one poem a day or read it all in one day. I’ll be posting, and soliciting, suggestions for this category. We need more poetry in our lives.
Read one book about art or music. Read about an artist (our Spring Picnic artist is probably going to be Van Gogh) or a musician, or read about how music works or how to draw or how to look at paintings or whatever fits into this category.
Read one book about the Bible or commentary on a portion of the BIble or Bible study book.
Read one book that challenges your thinking, one well written book that has ideas that you disagree with or think you disagree with. Try to understand the opposing point of view thoroughly before you discount it.
Read one classic book, fiction or nonfiction, that was published over 100 years ago. Get out of the rut chronological snobbery, and listen carefully to what someone from another time period had to say.
Read one book that your spouse or friend wants you to read.
Read one Christmas book.
If you’re interested in joining my reading challenge, you can sign up here or at the Cultivating Facebook page.
I’m also participating in the Literary Life (podcast) Reading Challenge: Two for 2022. I’ve already started reading Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth for my “book about an Inkling” category in this challenge. It’s a bit dry starting out, but I have learned some things about Tolkien that I didn’t know or had forgotten. For instance, I had forgotten that Tolkien was orphaned at the age of twelve when his mother died after having lost his father when Tolkien was very young, three or four years old.
One more reading challenge that I’m taking is the Spread the Feast Challenge from my new friend Crystin Morris at Delightfully Feasting who also does seminars on Charlotte Mason homeschooling and philosophy and has lots of online and print resources for CM educators. I plan to begin reading The Children’s Own Longfellow for my poetry book for this challenge, and it will fit into the Cultivating challenge and the Literary Life challenge, too.
I also have a Big Plan to do a century of reading, one book published in each year from 1851-1950. This will necessitate reading a couple of books a week on the list I’ve made, if I’m going to finish reading all 100 books by the end of 2022. So, for January, I have the following lined up:
1851: The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin.
1852: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
1853: Ruth by Mrs. Gaskell.
1854: Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
1855: The Warden by Anthony Trollope.
1856:
1857:
1858: The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
1859: Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy.
1860: The Professor at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
As you can see, I don’t have anything for 1856 or 1857. It had better be something short for both of those years since the other books are mostly rather long and dense. If you have suggestions for something good and short, published in ether 1856 or 1857, please comment.
If you think I’m crazy to make all of these reading plans, in addition to my regular impulse reading, you’re right. But crazy is fun. What are your crazy reading plans? Happy reading to all in 2022!
First there are the re-reads: Hannah Coulter, That Hideous Strength, and Mansfield Park. Hannah Coulter was just as good as I remembered it. This fictional memoir of an old woman remembering her life and the lives of her children made me think about my grown children and how their lives have taken such different turns and directions from what I expected. Russell Moore writes about “why you should read Hannah Coulter”, and I second his motion.
“Most people now are looking for a ‘better place’, which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. . . . There is no ‘better place’ than this, not in this world. and it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it, and keeping of it, that this world is joined to heaven.”
~Hannah Coulter, p. 83
I re-read all three of Lewis’s space trilogy books this year: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. I must say that I enjoyed That Hideous Strength the most of the three, whereas previously I thought Perelandra was my favorite. That Hideous Strength is just so prophetic. How did Lewis know that men and women would become so confused about gender roles or that mixing Christianese (talk) with pagan concepts would become such a problem? Or that many would move past naturalistic materialism straight into the occult? Just like 1984 by George Orwell, which I understand was written partially as a response to Lewis’s book, That Hideous Strength is full of images and ideas that speak directly to today’s issues: the manipulation of the press/media, police brutality and accountability, psychological techniques used for rehabilitation, crime and punishment, education, gender roles, procreation or the lack thereof, and much more. I read That Hideous Strength with Cindy Rollins’ Patreon group, and we had lots of good discussion about all of these ideas.
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Reunion were two more books I read along with the Literary Life podcast folks (Angelina Stanford, Thomas Brooks, and Cindy Rollins), and I’m sure I enjoyed them extra-specially because of the podcast discussions. Both books are novellas, rather than full length novels, and both are well worth your time.
“He felt that he was trapped in such a mesh of lies that it was difficult to make sense out of anything. Everything she did for him was done strictly for her sake; and she told him she was doing for her sake what she actually was, making this seem so incredible that he was bound to take it to mean just the reverse.”
~The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham was a book read back in February, about a woman torn between fidelity to a seemingly loveless marriage and adultery with a seemingly exciting and passionate man. The keyword is “seemingly.” I didn’t review this book, but here’s a review at Educating Petunia that includes thoughts on the movie version as well. I think I’d like to watch the movie sometime, and I was reminded of this reading project that I’d like to restart in 2022. So many projects, so little persistence.
“You know, my dear child, that one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.”
~The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham
Our Mutual Friend was my Dickens novel for the year, and although it’s not my favorite Dickens, any book by Dickens stands head and shoulders above the pack. I also watch duh mini-series of OMF and enjoyed that quite a bit. I plan to read Hard Times (with the Literary Life folks) and maybe re-read David Copperfield (my favorite Dickens novel) in 2022.
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.”
Our Mutual Friend, Mr. Rokesmith
I discovered Naomi Novik’s fantasy novels early in 2021, both Spinning Silver and her Temeraire series about Napoleonic era dragons and men working together to defeat Napoleon and remake the world, especially England, as a comfortable and welcoming place for friendly working dragons. These book are just fun, and if you like adult fantasy, with some non-explicit hanky-panky going on (not the focus of the novels), then I recommend these.
I also read Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive trilogy in early 2021 while I was coughing with Covid, beginning with The Way of Kings. It was good, absorbing, with lots of good character development and plot twists that I didn’t see coming. This author is so prolific, more than thirty, mostly huge, sprawling novels published, that I will never read all of his books, but I may dip back in again to his Cosmere (fantasy world), from time to time. The following quote was particularly timely:
“There are worse things . . . than a disease. When you have one, it reminds you that you’re alive. Makes you fight for what you have. When the disease has run its course, normal healthy life seems wonderful by comparison.”
Brightness Shallon in The Way of Kings, p. 506
Fanny Price and Mansfield Park. I knew I had read Mansfield Park before, but all I could remember was the play-within-a-novel that turns into a disaster. I initially found both the book and the protagonist somewhat lackluster and plodding, but the more I read, and the more I listened to The Literary Life podcast episodes about the book, the more I grew to love Fanny. I can only aspire to the humility and servanthood that she exemplifies. (Aspiring to humility is something of an oxymoron, but it actually makes sense in a Chestertonian sort of way.) Anyway, I would like to be able to keep my mouth shut more often as Fanny does and to think of myself less and others more. I think that sort of attitude comes by practice, though, and it’s hard to be willing to practice humility.
So, what are the themes that emerge from all this fictional reading? Endure hardship patiently. And brighten the corner where you are. If I could learn these two lessons, deep in my soul, by means of story or situational experience, I’d be, well, certainly better, farther along the path to virtue. Not that I read to become virtuous, but stories do seep into the soul.
What fiction formed your life in 2021? What novel(s) will you be reading in 2022?
The Ark by Margot Benary-Isbert. Set in post WW2 Germany and published first in 1954, The Ark tells the story of and the Lechow family and how they began to rebuild their lives two freezing attic rooms in Mrs. Verduz’s house on Parsley Street.
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell. This British author was recommended to me when I was in Ireland a couple of years ago, and this book , set partly in Zimbabwe and partly in England, is about a girl who grows up wild and free on a farm with very few rules and very little “civilization”. However, about one third of the way through the book Wilhelmina’s life changes drastically when she is sent to boarding school in England.
The Elephant in the Room by Holly Goldberg Sloan (published in 2021). Sila’s mom has been in Turkey trying to resolve her immigration issues for a whole year, and although Sila’s dad is great, both Sila and her dad miss her mom a lot. Sila makes a couple of new friends, an old man named Gio who lives in an old house with high walls around it and a boy named Mateo, who is autistic and very interesting. Then the new friendships and the advent of an elephant named Veda help Sila to deal with the absence of her mom.
The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho. “Fleeing war-torn Cambodia in 1980, Dara, her mother, and her older brother find sanctuary in a refugee settlement on the Thailand border, but when fighting erupts, Dara finds herself separated from everyone and everything she loves.”
The Swallow’s Flight by Hilary McKay. Another World War II book, the story takes place in several different threads with characters, both German and British, who all come together in the final chapters of the book. The characters, two German boys, two British girls, and their families, are all well drawn, quirky, and full of life.
I read a total of 48 middle grade fiction books this year. 35 of those were middle grade realistic fiction. 13 were fantasy or science fiction.
