I decided I would keep a book list this year! I compiled one at the very end of last year, but it was a lot of work. I had to try and remember exactly what I'd read and then if I even liked it. That is quite a feat when it is December and you are trying to remember the previous January!
I thought I would wait and "publish" this list at the end of 2010, just like I did last year. But now that we have arrived at the first day of July I thought I would share my first six months with you and mark the halfway point. I will finish this list in December or early January.
I would also LOVE recommendations for new books! I love to read and I am always looking for great new finds.
2010 Reading List
• January“Above the marge of night a star still shines,
And on the frosty hills the sombre pines
Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low
Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow.
Through the pale arch of orient the morn
Comes in a milk-white splendor newly-born,
A sword of crimson cuts in twain the gray
Banners of shadow hosts, and lo, the day!” -L.M. Montgomery
1.
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens.
Description: Fiction; David Copperfield is the story of a young man’s adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature’s great comic creations. In David Copperfield—the novel he described as his "favorite child"—Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of his most exuberant and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure.
Grade: A
2.
Sara Snow's Fresh Living - Sara Snow.
Description: Non-Fiction; "Sara Snow's Fresh Living not only provides information on how to live green, but also why it is important to think about sustainability and lessening our impact on the environment—something we can do step by step in our everyday lives, in our homes, in our diets, and at work and play. All these small steps add up to contribute significantly to healthier families, healthier homes and a healthier planet—and a happier, more fulfilling life. After all, it’s not just what we put in our bodies, but also what we put our bodies in. And Sara’s book covers it all—inside and out."—Steven Hoffman, Managing Director, The Organic Center
Grade: A
3.
Pottery Barn Storage & Display - Martha Fay et. al.
Description: Non-Fiction; An essential part of keeping a stylish home is having a place for everything. Whether you want to keep things out of view or showcase them in the spotlight, Pottery Barn's Storage & Display provides practical advice and creative inspiration. From family rooms and kitchens to entryways and utility rooms, this invaluable guide offers ideas to keep every part of your home organized-and to do it with ease and style. With more than 250 specially commissioned photographs and helpful tips that demystify the principles of arrangement and organization, Pottery Barn's Storage & Display will help make creating a beautiful, clutter-free home a pleasure.
Grade: A
• FebruaryFrosty-white and cold it lies
Underneath the fretful skies;
Snowflakes flutter where the red
Banners of the poppies spread,
And the drifts are wide and deep
Where the lilies fell asleep.
But the sunsets o'er it throw
Flame-like splendor, lucent glow,
And the moonshine makes it gleam
Like a wonderland of dream,
And the sharp winds all the day
Pipe and whistle shrilly gay.
Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie
Rainbow buds of by-and-by;
In the long, sweet days of spring
Music of bluebells shall ring,
And its faintly golden cup
Many a primrose will hold up.
Though the winds are keen and chill
Roses' hearts are beating still,
And the garden tranquilly
Dreams of happy hours to be¬
In the summer days of blue
All its dreamings will come true.
-L.M. Montgomery4.
A Woman After Gods Own Heart - Elizabeth George
Description: Non-Fiction; Filled with rich advice, spiritual wisdom, and practical applications; With passion and personality, Elizabeth George shares how a woman can follow God and seek His heart in every area of her life including her husband, her children, her home, her walk with the Lord, and her ministry. There is peace and purpose for the woman who prepares her heart and mind to embrace God's plan every day.
Grade: B-
6.
Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ - Lew Walliace
Description: Fiction; Bestseller Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880) combines the romance, melodrama, and spiritual piety common in the sentimental novels of the nineteenth century with the action, adventure, and intrigue found in the more lurid tales of the day. The story takes its Jewish hero, Judah Ben-Hur, across the Roman Empire of the first century, initially on a quest for revenge against the Roman childhood friend who betrayed him and then finally on a more spiritual quest to understand the nature of the new teacher Jesus Christ.
Grade: A-
• AprilThe moon comes up o'er the deeps of the woods,
And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,
Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds
Over the pools and the whimpering rills;
And with her the mists, like dryads that creep
From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,
Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,
With the wind on the hills their gay revellings.
Down on the marshlands with flicker and glow
Wanders Will-o'-the-Wisp through the night,
Seeking for witch-gold lost long ago
By the glimmer of goblin lantern-light.
The night is a sorceress, dusk-eyed and dear,
Akin to all eerie and elfin things,
Who weaves about us in meadow and mere
The spell of a hundred vanished Springs. –L.M. Montgomery7.
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Description: Fiction; (Re-read) From its sharply satiric opening sentence, Mansfield Park dealas with money and marriage, and how strongly they affect each other. Shy, fragile Fanny Price is the consummate "poor relation." Sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of a pair of witty, sophisticated Londoners, whose flair for flirtation collides with the quiet, conservative country ways of Mansfield Park.
Written several years after the early manuscripts that eventually became Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park retains Austen’s familiar compassion and humor but offers a far more complex exploration of moral choices and their emotional consequences.
Grade: A+
8.
Emily of New Moon - L.M. Montgomery
Description: Fiction; Similar to her earlier and more famous Anne of Green Gables series, the Emily novels depicted life through the eyes of a young orphan girl, Emily Starr, who is raised by her relatives after her father dies of consumption. The series was less romanticized and more realistic than the Anne novels. Montgomery considered Emily to be a character much closer to her own personality than Anne, and some of the events which occur in the Emily series happened to Montgomery herself. Emily is described as having black hair, pale skin, and a unique "slow" smile.
Emily Starr is sent to live at New Moon Farm on Prince Edward Island with her aunts Elizabeth and Laura Murray and her Cousin Jimmy. She makes friends with Ilse Burnley, Teddy Kent, and Perry Miller, the hired boy, who Aunt Elizabeth looks down upon because he was born in 'Stovepipe Town', a poorer district. Each of the children has a special gift. They also each have a few problems with their families.
Grade: A+
9.
The Shell Seekers - Rosamund Pilcher
Description: Fiction; (Re-read) On the heels of a hasty wartime marriage, Penelope Keeling is left to repent at leisure in the English seaside town of Porthkerris, where her artist father and her French mother are spending the duration of World War II. Safe in the embracing arms of that warm household, Penelope forgets her sour husband and takes a lover, and in that relationship, too, she weathers the war's privations and its hardest blows. In a beautifully detailed family saga that shifts effortlessly back and forth in time, Pilcher (Under Gemini) recounts Penelope's story and that of her three children. When their grandfather's work suddenly comes into vogue, Nancy, obsessed over status, and sleek Noel, adept at getting the most and giving the least, join in urging their mother to sell The Shell Seekers, a painting that gives her great joy. Only Olivia, a cool and collected magazine editor, refuses to be party to their barely concealed avarice. Pilcher's 13th book is a satisfying and savory family novel, in which rich layers of description and engagingly flawed characters more than make up for the occasional cliche.
Grade: A+
• MayWhen the salt wave laps on the long, dim shore,
And frets the reef with its windy sallies,
And the dawn's white light is threading once more
The purple firs in the landward valleys,
While yet the arms of the wide gray sea
Are cradling the sunrise that is to be,
The fisherman's boat, through the mist afar,
Has sailed in the wake of the morning star.
The wind in his cordage and canvas sings
Its old glad song of strength and endeavor,
And up from the heart of the ocean rings
A call of courage and cheer forever;
Toil and danger and stress may wait
Beyond the arch of the morning's gate,
But he knows that behind him, upon the shore,
A true heart prays for him evermore.
When a young moon floats in the hollow sky,
Like a fairy shallop, all pale and golden,
And over the rocks that are grim and high,
The lamp of the light-house aloft is holden;
When the bay is like to a lucent cup
With glamor and glory and glow filled up,
In the track of the sunset, across the foam,
The fisherman's boat comes sailing home.
The wind is singing a low, sweet song
Of a rest well won and a toil well over,
And there on the shore shines clear and strong
The star of the homelight to guide the rover:
And deep unto deep may call and wail
But the fisherman laughs as he furls his sail,
For the bar is passed and the reef is dim
And a true heart is waiting to welcome him! –L.M. Montgomery10.
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Description: Fiction; What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn's new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you. The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies and mistrusts enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.
Grade: A-
11.
Emily Climbs - L.M. Montgomery
Description: Fiction; Emily Starr was born with the desire to write. As an orphan living on New Moon Farm, writing helped her face the difficult, lonely times. But now all her friends are going away to high school in nearby Shrewsbury, and her old-fashioned, tyrannical aunt Elizabeth will only let her go if she promises to stop writing! All the same, this is the first step in Emily's climb to success. Once in town, Emily's activities set the Shrewsbury gossips buzzing. But Emily and her friends are confident -- Ilse's a born actress, Teddy's set to be a great artist, and roguish Perry has the makings of a brilliant lawyer. When Emily has her poems published and writes for the town newspaper, success seems to be on its way -- and with it the first whispers of romance. Then Emily is offered a fabulous opportunity, and she must decide if she wants to change her life forever.
Grade: A+
12.
Emily’s Quest - L.M. Montgomery
Description: Fiction; Emily knows she's going to be a great writer. She also knows that she and her childhood sweetheart, Teddy Kent, will conquer the world together. But when Teddy leaves home to pursue his goal to become an artist at the School of Design in Montreal, Emily's world collapses. With Teddy gone, Emily agrees to marry a man she doesn't love ... as she tries to banish all thoughts of Teddy. In her heart, Emily must search for what being a writer really means....
Grade: A++
13.
Evening Class – Maeve Binchy
Description: Fiction; An involving tale about ordinary people that brings out the extraordinary in everyone. In Evening Class, Binchy zooms in on the working-class of Dublin. Schoolteacher Aidan Dunne organizes an evening class in Italian with the help of Nora O'Donoghue, an Irishwoman returning home after 26 years in Sicily. When the somewhat squashed-by-life denizens of the surrounding neighborhood take the unexpected step of enrolling in the class, they find their lives transformed.
Binchy tells her story from the viewpoints of eight different characters and rewards both them and her readers with happy endings after the requisite rocky road. Reading a novel by Maeve Binchy is like catching up with old friends--you know everything will turn out fine in the end, but you're still interested in how things get that way.
Grade: A
• JuneDown home to-night the moonshine falls
Across a hill with daisies pied,
The pear tree by the garden gate
Beckons with white arms like a bride.
A savor as of trampled fern
Along the whispering meadow stirs,
And, beacon of immortal love,
A light is shining through the firs.
To my old gable window creeps
The night wind with a sigh and song,
And, weaving ancient sorceries,
Thereto the gleeful moonbeams throng
Beside the open kitchen door
My mother stands all lovingly,
And o'er the pathways of the dark
She sends a yearning thought to me.
It seeks and finds my answering heart
Which shall no more be peace-possessed
Until I reach her empty arms
And lay my head upon her breast. - L.M. Montgomery14.
The Choir - Joanna Trollope
Description: Fiction; As in the music that pervades the plot of Trollope's absorbing novel, contrapuntal technique results in a brilliant composition. Like her ancestor Anthony, Trollope focuses on an English cathedral town and its dissonant voices. Hugh Cavendish is dean of Aldminster Cathedral. The father of mutinous, unorthodox children, he is a bitterly disappointed man who craves administrative and spiritual authority. The prized boy's choir, however, is under the authority of King's School headmaster Alexander Troy and music master Leo Beckford. When the cathedral needs a quarter-million pounds worth of roof repairs, all matters of God, pedagogy, politics and music become matters of funds. Cavendish prefers to pay off the roof costs by sacrificing the expensive-to-maintain choir. Meanwhile, socialist/atheist city councilman Frank Ashworth wants the town to buy the headmaster's house out from under him to use as a community facility. Into the fray fall Sally Ashworth, married to Frank's long-absent son and in love with Leo; Sally's young son, Henry, the choir star; Alexander's untethered wife, Felicity; and Hugh's daughter Ianthe, an up-and-comer in the music business, who helps give her father what he deserves. Sacred music, the perfect treble of pre-pubescent boys and delicious deadpan understatement create a uniquely rich soundtrack on the pages of this beautifully crafted tale, which was first published in Britain in 1978.
Grade: B-
18.
The Shop on Blossom Street - Debbie Macomber
Description: A Seattle knitting store brings together four very different women in this earnest tale about friendship and love. Lydia Hoffman, a two-time cancer survivor, opens the shop A Good Yarn as a symbol of the new life she plans to lead. She starts a weekly knitting class, hoping to improve business and make friends in the area. The initial class project is a baby blanket, and Macomber a knitter herself who offers tips about the craft and pithy observations from knitting professionals throughout the novel, includes the knitting pattern at the start of the book. Well-heeled Jacqueline Donovan, who chooses to ignore her empty marriage, disguises her disdain for her pregnant daughter-in-law by knitting a baby blanket. Carol Girard joins the group as an affirmation of her hopes to finally have a successful in vitro pregnancy. Alix Townsend, a high school dropout with an absentee father and a mother incarcerated for forging checks, uses the class to satisfy a court-ordered community service sentence for a drug-possession conviction for which her roommate is really responsible. Unfortunately, Macomber doesn't get much below the surface of her characters, and, the only surprise involves Alix's hapless, overweight roommate, Laurel, and even this smacks of plot-driven manipulation. Macomber is an adept storyteller overall, however, and many will be entertained by this well-paced story about four women through their growing friendships.
Grade: C
19.
Cutting For Stone - Abraham Verghese
Description: That Abraham Verghese is a doctor and a writer is already established; the miracle of this novel is how organically the two are entwined. I’ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here. The medical detail is stunning, but it never overwhelms the humane and narrative aspects of this moving and ambitious novel. This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb! And what terrific characters--even the most minor players are given a full history. There is also a sense of great foreboding; by the midpoint of the story, one dreads what will further befall these characters. The foreshadowing is present in the chapter titles, too--‘The School of Suffering’ not least among them! Cutting for Stone is a remarkable achievement. -John Irving
Grade: A
• July
Surely the flowers of a hundred springs
Are simply the souls of beautiful things!
The poppies aflame with gold and red
Were the kisses of lovers in days that are fled.
The purple pansies with dew-drops pearled
Were the rainbow dreams of a youngling world.
The lily, white as a star apart,
Was the first pure prayer of a virgin heart.
The daisies that dance and twinkle so
Were the laughter of children in long ago.
The sweetness of all true friendship yet
Lives in the breath of the mignonette.
To the white narcissus there must belong
The very delight of a maiden's song.
And the rose, all flowers of the earth above,
Was a perfect, rapturous thought of love.
Oh! surely the blossoms of all the springs
Must be the souls of beautiful things. - L.M. Montgomery20.
The Widows War - Sally Gunning
Description: Mystery author Gunning moves to literary historical with this provocative tale of a whaling widow determined to forge a new life in colonial Cape Cod. When Lyddie Berry's husband drowns in 1761, her grief is compounded by the discovery that he's willed her the traditional widow's share—one-third use, but not ownership, of his estate. Lyddie's care, and the bulk of the estate, have been entrusted to their closest male relative, son-in-law Nathan Clarke, husband to their daughter Mehitable and a man used to ordering a household around. Lyddie's struggle to maintain a place in her radically changed home soon brings her into open conflict with an increasingly short-tempered Nathan and his children from two previous marriages. Gunning infuses the story with suspense and intrigue, as Lyddie's plight brings her into the orbit of local Indian Sam Cowett; community censure then brings her an ally in sympathetic lawyer Ebeneezer Freeman. Gunning resists easy generalizations and stereotypes while the story pulls in 18th-century law and Anglo-Indian relations, but the dull period dialogue, of which there is a great deal, reads awkwardly. Yet she makes Lyddie's struggle to remake her life credible and the world she inhabits complex.
Grade: I just started this last night! Check back for my grade in December :)
