by Richard Stearns, 2009 Inspirational! A call to arms!! (Wayne’s book) FANTASTIC BOOK! Biblical truths, stories of the gospel in action, God’s heart for the poor. Everything you ever need to know about what God expects of His people. Full of the truth in plain statistics but also full of hope for what we can […]
Category: Favorites
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain, 1876 What a fun, exciting book! So many adventures by the mischievous Tom, getting his friends to whitewash the fence, going to the graveyard with Huck and witnessing a murder, getting Muff Potter off on the last day of the trial. Going to Jackson’s Island and playing pirates for a week – […]
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens, 1850 (821 pages) Last line: “Oh Agnes, Oh my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed! So may I, when realities are melting from me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!” What a tale – what characters […]
The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck, 1931, Pulitzer Prize winner I miss my messed up Chinese family already! What a great book! Wang Lung’s father arranges marriage for him to O-Lan – kitchen slave in the Great House of Hwang. Wang Lung is a farmer. They work so hard they eventually become wealthy landowners. O’Lan is a […]
Blue Shoes and Happiness
by Alexander McCall Smith, 2006 Beautiful, beautiful book! Mma Ramotswe’s cases include a young chef who catches her boss stealing food for her husband and then is accused of blackmailing the boss. Mma Ramotswe discovers the person blackmailing the boss is Aunty Emang, a Dear Abby-type person who ends up being a tiny, purely evil […]
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins, published in serial form 1859-1860 Walter Hartright runs into the woman in white on a road at night going towards London. She enters his life again while he is teaching painting to 2 young ladies in Fairlie’s Limmeridge House. Walter falls in love with Laura Fairlie, 1/2 sister of Marian Holcombe. But […]
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
by Alexander McCall Smith, 2004, Book #6 in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series Moved me to tears! Mma Ramotswe has a man hiding under her bed. He escapes but loses his pants on a mattress spring. Never figure out who he was. The next day, the trousers are gone (she had hung them […]
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens, 1859 London and Paris, approximately 1770 to 1793 or 1794, French Revolution 1789 Wow! What an incredible story! Dr. Manette is rescued from 18 years in prison in France. His daughter, Lucie, now an adult, cares for him and makes him whole again. They participate in a trial of Charles Darnay, a […]
The Full Cupboard of Life
by Alexander McCall Smith, 2003 (5th book in the ‘No. 1 Ladies Detective’ series) Mma Ramotswe and Mr. JLB Matakoni finally get married! The orphan mgr, Mma Potokwane arranges it all (a surprise) after the parachute jump event, which she had trapped JLB Matakoni into, but Mma Ramotswe got Charlie, one of the apprentices, to […]
Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo, 1862, translated by Norman Denny 1200 pages. What a great book!!! Recommended by Sandy Calhoun. Jean Val Jean – ex-convict, imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving nephews, who changes into a saint after Bishop Digne gives him his silver candlesticks too, rather than having him arrested for stealing […]
The Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Robin Buss, 1996, 2003, first published 1844-5 1243 pages – WHAT A WONDERFUL BOOK! All human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’! Recommended by Tim Wolsey. Edmond Dantes, a fine young sailor, is thrown into prison in Chateau d’If for 14 long years. He befriends Abbe […]
A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini, 2007 Page turner! Set in Afghanistan from 1959 to present. Main characters: Mariam and Laila. Mariam was a harami, an illegitimate child. Yet her father (Jalil) set up her and her mom (Nana) in a nice little shack in the hills by a stream near Herat and visited Mariam every week. When […]
Gates of Fire
by Steven Pressfield, 1998 The 300 Spartans go to battle at Thermopylae where all are eventually killed but not until they have killed millions of the enemy (Xerxes of Persia). What a great book! What warriors! Became intimate with the Spartans-their king, Leonidas, and their officers; Polynikes, Dienekes, Olympieus, and their wives. 480 B.C. Beautiful […]
Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert, 1856 Finished 12/25/08 in Belize. Selfish girl, gets married, doesn’t like her life, has 2 affairs, can’t pay her debts, kills herself by eating arsenic.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne, 1870 The year 1868, the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s fantastic submarine, is thought to be a narwhal. M. Aronnax, a French scientist and his servant, Conseil, end up on a boat aimed to kill it. They end up thrown into the Pacific Ocean and are picked up, along with Ned Land, the Canadian […]
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
John Steinbeck, 1962 At the age of 58, in 1960, John Steinbeck leaves Sag harbor, NY, and his loving wife to travel across America with his French poodle, Charley. “We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” Pg 4. He got a 3/4 ton pick-up with […]
The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins, 1868 Fantastic mystery published in 1868. Story takes place in 1840’s England. Herncastle steals an Indian diamond, the Moonstone, and wills it to his niece on her 18th birthday. Franklin Blake delivers it (her cousin). There is a curse associated with the Moontsone because it is guarded by 3 Indians in perpetuity. […]
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911 Sweet story about two 10 year-olds who turn from being ugly, hateful, unhealthy, spoiled creatures into beautiful, happy, healthy children by the Secret Garden. Mary, the girl, and Colin, the boy, are cousins. Mary is sent to live in the Misselthwaite Manor on the Moor of Yorkshire after her parents […]
The Silver Chair
by C.S. Lewis, 1953 Eustace Scruggs and Jill Pole are at school, Experiment House, and are being chased by bullies. They go uphill to a gate that is usually locked but is open and find themselves on Aslan’s Mountain. Jill pushes Eustace off a huge high cliff, then meets Aslan as he blows Eustace safely […]
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
by C.S. Lewis, 1952 Eustace, Lucy, and Edmund get sucked into a picture in Eustace’s house of a ship at sea, back to Narnia, where Prince Caspian is at sea on the Dawn Treader. He rescues them and they go with him and his crew in search of 7 Lords that Miraz sent off to […]