by Kazuo Ishiguro, 1988 Winner of the Booker Prize in 1989 About Mr. Stevens, an English butler for “Darlington Hall. His whole adult life was spent (wasted?) on becoming and being the perfect butler. He misses being with his father (who was also a perfect butler) as he dies (in a small attic room like […]
Author: bookhound
The Prince and the Pilgrim
by Mary Stewart, 1995 A wonderful book about Prince Alexander, the fatherless, and Alice the motherless in King Arthur’s days. Alexander takes off to avenge his father (Prince Baudouin’s) murder at the hands of his brother, King March. On the way he falls under spell of Morgan LaFey and he goes on a quest for […]
Leaf by Niggle
Short story by JRR Tolkien, 1938-39, first published 1945 Niggle was a painter always trying to finish a painting that started as a leaf and grew to be a huge landscape with tree, forest, mountains in the distance. He loved thinking about the painting and working on it – in his shed – but hated […]
Eragon
by Christopher Paolini, 2003 How does a book this bad get to be a best seller? “An authentic work of great talent.” – The New York Times Book Review. Don’t ever believe any review by them! (Or, read the entire review…) Authentic? Hardly – stolen from Lord of the Rings, but he never gives JRR […]
The Testament
by John Grisham, 1999 Recommended by the church newsletter library writer, Wayne Clegern. Very interesting characters – page-turner. A billionaire leaves his entire estate, 11 billion dollars, to an illegitimate daughter, Rachel Lane, who is a missionary in the Pantanal of Brazil. Nate O’Riley, an alcoholic lawyer, is sent to find her. No one knows […]
The Language of Flowers
by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, 2011, First novel What a fantastic book! I could not put it down! Had to keep reading to see what was going to happen to Victoria! She had a horrendous childhood – in and out of foster homes and then group homes, with only one good experience in her entire life, but […]
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
by Ernest Hemingway, 1936 Short story in Wayne’s college literature book – very, very good! An American couple, Francis Macomber, and his wife, Margot/Margaret, are on safari in Africa. Their white hunter, Wilson, a “red-faced” man, takes them out to shoot a lion, who has been roaring all night near the camp, Macomber chickens out […]
Blood Lure
by Nevada Barr, 2001 Anna Pigeon, District Ranger, is working in Glacier National Park with Joan Rand, a National Park Service bear expert, and Rory, a young man interested in bears. They are attacked at night in their camp by a bear, which they don’t see, but which destroys their tents. Rory runs away. Anna […]
Radical
by David Platt, 2010 The American Church has lost its way in the American Dream. “We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” Christian news publication, 2 headlines side-by-side: “First Baptist Church Celebrates New $23 Million Building.” On the right […]
Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese, 2009 Amazingly original story! Twin boys, Marion and Shiva, born at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to a nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, who died in childbirth. Their father, a gifted surgeon, Thomas Stone, abandons them at their birth. The twins are raised by Hema and Ghosh, 2 doctors at Missing. […]
Mockingjay
by Suzanne Collins, 2010 (final book of the Hunger Games) Katniss is rescued out of the Hunger Games at the capital before she is killed (end of Book 2) and taken to District 13, the District everyone thought was destroyed 75 years ago by the Capitol. But really they went underground and have been planning […]
Angle of Repose
by Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize winner 1971 A man, Lyman Ward, is stuck in a wheelchair and moves to his Grandma’s cottage in the California mountains. He decides to write a book about her life. What an interesting life. She is part of “gentility” in northeastern part of America in late 1800’s but marries a […]
Catching Fire
by Suzanne Collins, 2009 Book 2 in the Hunger Games Trilogy Katniss and Peeta go on their Victory Tour and see that some of the Districts are starting to revolt against the Capitol. Supposedly started by Katniss and the berries of the first book, the Hunger Games. (I can’t remember the berries – but they […]
Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
by Sara Miles, 2007 “The spiritual memoir of a twenty-first century Christian” Written by Sara Miles, a lesbian raised by atheists who wanders into St. Gregory’s Episcopalian Church (in S.F.) one day and is served communion and cries and cries and can’t stop thinking about Jesus. She becomes a believer and eventually opens up a […]
Heaven is for Real
by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent, 2010 True story about 4 year-old Colton Burpo from Imperial, Nebraska, who almost died of a ruptured appendix but gets a trip to heaven and relates what he heard and saw over the course of 6 years to his mom and dad, Sonja and Todd Burpo. Todd is a […]
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See, 2009 Set in Shanghai and then Los Angeles from 1937 to 1957, two sisters, Pearl and May, grow up in Shanghai, loving life – rich, beautiful, “beautiful girls,” – painted on calendars. Then their Dad (Baba) gets in trouble with gang due to his gambling and he has to sell his daughters […]
Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House
by Stephanie Barron, 2002 Being the sixth Jane Austen mystery. Not well-written! Contradictions – started out with tea and then “finished my chocolate.” Hard to follow. Story about Jane and her brother, Frank, a Navy captain, and the Navy and someone (a Navy captain, Thomas Seagrave) being wrongly accused of murder. A French gentleman posing […]
Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson, 2011 Interesting novel, set in England, about a retired police superintendent, Tracy Waterhouse, who purchases a little girl, Courtney, from a drug-crazed, abusive prostitute, Kelly Cross, at a bus stop. At the same time, Jackson Brodie, a private investigator, saves a little dog beaten by a thug. Their lives intertwine while Jackson […]
An Altar in the World
by Barbara Brown Taylor, 2009 Her philosophy on how to find God in the everyday world. I think Danette recommended this book.
People of the Book
by Geraldine Brooks, 2008 Fictional tale of the true “Sarajevo Haggadah,” an ancient (1350) Jewish prayer book beautifully illustrated — “Illuminations.” It is now in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, valued at $700 million in 1991 – most valuable book in the world. She goes back in time from Hanna Heath, […]