Glimpses of Truth

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My tenth and final book of the Sisters Book Challenge was Glimpses of Truthby Jack Cavanaugh.  To complete the the challenge, I needed to read 5 of the 10 books on the master list, but it was my personal goal to complete all 10.

Glimpses of Truth is historical fiction set in the 1300s during the Middle Ages.  That time period always scares me because I imagine it to be so dark and dismal.  I dreaded  teaching this time period when we reached it in history last year, but it's never as intimidating once I delve in to the era.

This book is neither dark nor dismal, though it does picture real life in a time of rough survival, a time when it was a struggle to provide for daily needs and when religious freedom was tenuous. The plot focuses on Thomas, a young scholar who works with John Wycliffe, translating the Bible from Latin into English. After Wycliffe's death, Thomas is caught in a battle for freedom that puts his life in danger and endangers some of the people he loves.

I'll admit, the Sisters Book Challenge brought me out of my comfort zone this year. I was challenged to read books in genres I rarely consider and revisit books I struggled to read in the past.   It was fun to stretch my possibilities and read and enjoy literature I may have never attempted on my own.

I'll be back on Monday for a year-end book talk where I round up my favorites and talk about the disappointments, too.  Until then, here is last year's book post.

Weaver's Daughter

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I read steadily through the books on the Sisters Book Challenge in the early part of the year. And then at the end of summer I stalled.  It wasn't that I didn't want to read the last two books, but I had so many, many more books on my list for the year and I had to make choices.

With November coming to a close and a December often being devoted to pursuits other than reading, I evaluated my reading list and narrowed down the few books that I wanted to finish before year's end.

Weaver's Daughterby Kimberly Brubaker Bradley was an ideal choice for a busy holiday week. I brought it along on our road trip, but between chatting with Brian in van, viewing the sights out the window, and visiting with family for the few short hours we were there, the book never left my purse. 

Instead I started it on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, the same week with a full to-do list that included cooking holiday food (not mention our regular meals plus cooking and freezing the sweet potatoes I purchased on sale), two days of school, errands, moving in a new-to-us piano, and caring for a sick child.

I was able to do it because Weaver's Daughter featured my favorite element that enables me to keep reading on busy weeks: short chapters.  The book was less than 200 pages which would make for a quick read anyway, but the short chapters made it easy to pick up for short snippets at a time. 

I love medical memoirs and medical drama, but while this book focuses on the health concerns of a young girl growing up in the Southwest Territory, the story is gentle and appropriate for its juvenile audience. Lizzie is ten years old and suffers a debilitating respiratory illness each fall.  It gets worse every year until she and her family fear she will not live through another episode. 

Nine books down...one to go!

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey

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This is book 8 of the book challenge I'm doing with my sister, Kati.  I more than fulfilled the challenge a few months back after I read my 5th book, but I decided to keep going in an effort to finish off the entire list this year.

When Kati gave me the list of ten in January, I was not immediately drawn to Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle by The Countess of Carnarvon because I had never watched Downton Abbey (!).

Actually, I had watched one episode, wasn't excited by that brief encounter, and abandoned the series. This says two things about me. One, I don't like to jump on bandwagons.  If everyone else is doing it, I tend to run away!  And two, as a result I often arrive late to the proverbial party and can't believe what I've missed.

But I digress.

This summer I binge-watched all four season of Downton Abbey and knew it was time to read this book. I love books with glossy sections devoted entirely to photographs...and this book had four!  I turned to those sections repeatedly as I read. 

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey is the biography of Almina Herbert, who became the Countess of Carnarvon when she married the 5th Earl of Carnarvon.  The book chronicles her life from birth to death, but focuses on her adult life, specifically the time during World War I and the early 1920s. I was surprised and interested to read how the family was involved in the discovery of King Tut's tomb!

While I liked the book, I'm a picky reader and  I'm finding that I enjoy memoir-style books over true biographies.

Now the countdown is on for the United States premier of Season 5... 114 days to go!

Life of Pi

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The original idea of The Sisters Book Challenge was that my sister, Kati, and I would compile a list of ten books for each other. Then each of us would choose five from the list we were given and blog our thoughts. This year, many of the books on the list intrigued me and I made it a personal mission to read more than five and to choose one a month. 

I got a little behind on my June selection and didn't finish it until the first week of July, but I decided to go ahead with my July selection as planned. I chose Life of Piby Yann Martel which I knew almost nothing about. I knew it was a survival story of a boy who had lived on board a boat with a wild tiger and that the book had been adapted into an award-winning movie. I also knew Brian enjoyed the movie when he watched it last year.

It was tough going at the beginning.  I will stop short of saying I hated the book, but I strongly disliked it and after the first few chapters, I dreaded picking it up.  I considered quitting and pretending I never started it.  Part 1 of the book delves into the main character's back story, about his family life and his religious choices.  The chapters were short (which is usually a big plus for me!), but I felt as though the book wandered with no purpose.  

I mentioned to Brian how I was dragging through the book and how boring I was finding it and he seemed surprised.  He said, "It was such an interesting movie,"  to which I replied, "But I'm 80 pages in and I've yet to see a tiger or a boat!" In uncharacteristic fashion, I flipped ahead and discovered that Part 2 took place on the Pacific Ocean.  As soon as I could wade through the rest of Part 1, I would get to the heart of the story. 

I persevered and when I reached Part 2 and then Part 3, the plot captured me.  By the time I was nearing the end, I was propped up in bed when I should have been sleeping, reading another few pages to see what was going to happen. 

I love a book that makes me think about it even after I finish.  (Read Still Aliceand see if it doesn't have you pondering for months afterward.) In the last few pages of Life of Pi, there is a twist that totally flummoxed me and made me rethink everything I had read in the previous chapters.

Have you ever read  Life of Pi? What did you think and did the ending make you wonder?

The Yearling

I intended to read The Yearlingby Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in June, but the copy I wanted was checked out from the library so I waited.  It seemed a little silly since I had a copy sitting on my own bookshelf at home, but I wasn't sure I'd finish it if I started it.  You see, I've started The Yearling twice before and never got past a chapter or two.  I suspect it had something to do with the fat chunky paperback version I picked up every time.  The font was tiny, the book was short and thick, and I was intimidated.

And so I waited for my preferred version to be returned to the library.  The copy I chose was a tall hardback with medium print and had illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, plus had the lovely smell of an old (not musty!) book. 

Maybe you've seen the movie version of this story.  I haven't, but I did know the story was about a deer and had some sad story elements.

What I didn't know was how well you get to know the characters: Jody, a young boy who is coming of age in back-country Florida in the 1870s; Penny, his gentle, hardworking father; Ora, Jody's rough world-weary mother; even Slewfoot, the bear who just can't be caught. I didn't know I would feel what they were feeling and identify with people whose situation is nothing like my own.

I didn't know this book was so much more than an animal story.  I didn't know it was a story about a boy becoming a man, about learning that people aren't always what they seem, and that in real life, the lines between hero and villain are a strange blur.

I didn't expect to love this book, given that I struggle with classics and that I'm not a fan of historical fiction. And yet, when I started reading, I read if from cover to cover, all 400+ pages in a handful of days.

Have you ever started a book with a preconceived idea...and had it totally surprise you?

Dana's Valley

I read Janette Oke's Love Comes Softly series about 20 years ago and I didn't like it.  That statement makes me feel incredibly old, by the way. The books were (and still are) wildly popular, but they just were not my thing.  I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction,  plus I remember thinking the stories were a tad fluffy.  Perhaps I simply got burned out with the number of books in the series. Whatever the reason, I never read anything else by Janette Oke. 

Fast forward a few years.  One of my sister's favorite authors is Janette Oke.  She included an Oke book on the first Sisters Book Challenge that I never got around to reading, and when she included another on this year's list, I knew I needed to give the author another try.

Dana's Valley by Janette Oke and her daughter, Laurel Oke Logan is the story of an average Christian family-- average income, average jobs, average kids-- who faces a tremendous trial that tests their dedication to each other and makes them question their faith in God. Saying any more about the plot will give away elements of the story.  The book is told in first person, from the perspective of one of the children, an adolescent girl.  As the story unfolds, we hear details and thoughts from several years of her life.

This is not one of those books that introduces a dilemma and has you on the edge of your seat waiting for the outcome.  It does, however, bring you back wanting to go alongside the narrator and her family as they walk their journey.

I did not find the writing light or shallow so perhaps my impression from 20 years ago was inaccurate.  The time period was modern, too, so I didn't have to get around my fear of historical fiction.  Did this book mold me into a new Janette Oke fan?  Probably not.  But the story was well-written and enjoyable. 

Ordeal By Innocence

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I got a little OCD about the book challenge this year.  Because Kati put so many intriguing choices on the list (and because I was overwhelmed with wanting to read them all!), I am adding one of Kati's books to my to-read list per month. The book I picked for April was Ordeal by Innocenceby Agatha Christie.

The first book I read off of the Sisters Book Challenge in 2013 was Crooked House (also by Christie).  I mentioned then that since reading the most excellent And Then There Were None in my teenage years, no Agatha Christie book or any "whodunit" for that matter could ever live up to the gold standard. For that reason, I began Ordeal by Innocencewith apprehension, but though it was not as thrilling as And Then There Were None I thoroughly enjoyed it!  It earns it's rank in my mind as 2nd place Agatha Christie thriller. Even the author herself named it as one of her own top ten favorites. 

The book begins with the revelation that the person who was convicted of killing matriarch Rachel Argyle two years prior is actually innocent.  That fact opens up the question of who really did kill her.  Suspicions begin to simmer among the family members who were in the house the evening of the murder. As police begin to re-investigate, new evidence emerges that hints that every member of the house (and a few outside of it) may have had motive to kill. 

Do you read mysteries? Do you have a favorite to recommend?

Pygmalion

This is part 4 of my Based on the Book series and also a book review for the 2014 version of Sisters Book Challenge.  When Kati gave me my list of ten books for the year, there were so many good choices and I wanted to read them all at once.  Instead, I broke the list down into manageable pieces and decided to read 1 selection a month. My choice for March matches perfectly with my discussion of books and their movie counterparts.

For every Sound of Music {swoon}, there is a Seven Brides For Seven Brothers {ugh!}. Not every musical is created equal.  For me, My Fair Lady sits neatly in the swoon category. However, I had never read the play on which it was based, Pygmalion(affiliate link) by George Bernard Shaw.  I snapped it up for free on my Kindle and started reading it in the van while waiting for Brian to run an errand.

In the beginning, I found it hard to read.  While a story fills in details and uses creative imagery, a play states it directly.  Instead of describing how a character may be standing, a play simply says [Character] standing upright by the desk with her hand on the corner. It took some getting used to. 

The other thing that surprised me was how bare-bones the play was compared to the movie musical. It shouldn't have surprised me, given that the play was short, but I kept waiting for certain plot points from the movie that never happened.  And I hope this is not too much of a spoiler alert, but the ending of the book and the ending of the movie are complete opposites.  All through the play, I thought I knew how it would all turn out in the end, but I didn't know at all!

Have you ever read a play?  Maybe Shakespeare? What did you think? Did you find it awkward or did you love it?

Come back next week when I discuss a list of books I want to read before they are made into movies. 

The Upstairs Room

Without setting out to do so, I read three Newbery Medal or Honor books in the second half of 2013.  I didn't read them aloud to my children.  I read them as part of my own pleasure reading. Never underestimate the quality, the story-telling, or the depth of children's literature. 

{For what it's worth, I thought The Wednesday Warsby Gary Schmidt was superb, One Crazy Summerby Rita Williams-Garcia was good, and  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweilerby E. L. Konigsburg was only mediocre.}

As part of this year's Sisters Book Challenge, Kati recommended I read The Upstairs Roomby Johanna Reiss which was a Newbery Honor book in 1973.  Despite starting it on a hectic week, I zipped through it in two (busy) days. 

The Upstairs Room is an autobiographical account of the author's time spent hiding with her older sister for two years in German-occupied Holland. While the book is packed with fact, it reads like a story. There are well-developed characters, and natural dialogue is included.

"Annie" recounts the boredom of passing the days as quietly as possible while staying away from the windows.  She tells about the monotony of never feeling fresh air in her nostrils.  She recalls the joy of being allowed to join her host family for a risky meal in the downstairs dining room. 

While this was a book written for children (in fact, the author wrote it as a record for her own daughters), I would hesitate before putting into the hands of someone too young.  The book includes a bit of language, mostly spoken by the rough, yet loveable, farmer who houses the girls.  The subject matter could be a dicey for young children also, but while the author does mention the concentration camps, she does not address either in intimate detail.