What are you reading?

This is a tag my sister-in-law started in order to add books to her reading list. I am always looking for more books so I decided to join. All you do is give a list of some of your favorite, recent reads. Feel free to join if you want, or not. Make it long or short, with reviews or just lists...I don't care. But if you do..please let me know so I can mooch off of your good reads.

What follows are some of my favorite reads from the last few months. Most of these fall in the "books I had to own" category, but not all. I try to give disclaimers if I can. And yes some of the plot summaries are from the back of the books and Amazon because I don't want to reinvent the wheel....and I'm busy/lazy.

Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

If you only read one book on this list, please let it be this one. This inspiring memoir tells the story of Greg Mortenson a mountaineer who drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakorum mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2(The second tallest mountain in the world.) He is taken with the children of the village and their determination to learn, even if it means doing math problems with sticks in the dirt in the freezing cold. In response to the kindness of the villagers Greg promises to build the village a school; a promise which snowballs into a life changing quest both for Greg and the hundreds of child en he ends up serving throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan. Greg is an inspiration. His life is a testament to the goodness of people and that all children everywhere are God's children.


The Book Thief Markus Zusak


The book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger's life in Nazi, Germany. Her life is changed when she picks up a copy of The Grave Digger's Handbook, while still illiterate. Through this book and with the help of her foster father Liesel begins a love affair with books and words. A love affair that is appropriate because this book elevates the power of language with the very telling. The imagery created by Death, the narrator is haunting, striking, and humorous, view at a dark time in history. More than even the story --which is fascinating unto itself -- this book displays the power of words to affect not only the protagonist but the reader as well.

The Glass Castle Jeanette Walls

The Glass Castle is a memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. The fed, clothed and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. This story shares the authors and hopefully all of our ability to love those in our lives that are less than perfect, overcome amazing obstacles to success and find joy in life, even when it seems impossible.

Gift from the Sea Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This is a book that every woman should read at least once in her life, but hopefully again and again as she goes through each of the stages of life described by Lindbergh in the book. This book contains the meditations on youth and age, love and marriage solitude, peace, and contentment written during a summer at the beach by Lindbergh after the kidnapping of her baby. The thoughts are framed around seashells giving beauty and validity to every phase of life. This book is surprisingly relevant to women today while containing thoughts written more than fifty years ago.


The Thirteenth Tale Diane Setterfield

This book is a masterful modern take on Victorian Gothic (Think Jane Eyre. Really.) Vida Winter famous for her collection of Thirteen Tales which contains, only twelve stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she mean to bury for good. This book has all of the elements of a classic story secrets, ghosts, sexual obsession, murder, and madness. I will admit there are some disturbing moments but well worth them for this fascinating read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer and Ann Barrows

(Most of this review is from Amazon..Hey I have got other things to do today..:) The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with their stories putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person . This is a delightfully uplifting and enjoyable read.



A Mercy Toni Morrison

(Much of this review is from Amazon.) Set at the close of the 17th century, the book details America's untoward foundation: dominion over Native Americans, indentured workers, women and slaves. A slave at a plantation in Maryland offers up her daughter, Florens, to a relatively humane Northern farmer, Jacob, as debt payment from their owner. This gift, while offered mercifully, is seen by Florens as the ultimate rejection by her mother. The ripples of this choice spread to the inhabitants of Jacob's farm, populated by women with intersecting and conflicting desires. Jacob's wife, Rebekka, struggles with her faith as she loses one child after another to the harsh New World. A Native servant, Lina, survivor of a smallpox outbreak, craves Florens's love to replace the family taken from her, and distrusts the other servant, a peculiar girl named Sorrow. When Jacob falls ill, all these women are threatened. This is a powerful book that forces you to look at the harsh realities faced by women of all backgrounds through the centuries. Note: This book contains some graphic imagery.


1000 White Women: The Journals of May Dodd Jim Fergus

(Okay this is from Amazon too...I'm tired. It doesn't mean I don't like these books, just that I've got other stuff to do. Promise.) Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. Grant secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutions offering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnapped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. While I think it was obviously written by a man the story is captivating and thought provoking. Not only at the collective shame of our history but at the individual lives of these women outcasts in their own society. Note: This book contains some graphic imagery.