Today's selections are all from G.K. Chesterton, an amusing British author from the first part of the 20th century who one of my friends told me about. At her suggestion a couple years ago, I read from parts of a compilation of his writing and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I checked out:
- The Spirit of Christmas
- Chesterton's Stories, Essays, and Poems
- The Ball and the Cross
- The Collected Poems of G.K. Chesterton
- The Spice of Life
Apparently he was an extremely prolific writer, and I didn't look up these books beforehand, so I hope they turn out to be as entertaining as my first reading was.
Some ideas for the long-term ideal reading list:
- Shakespeare
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- J.D. Salinger
- The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
- Crime and Punishment
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
- 100 Years of Solitude (originally a book in Spanish, but I can't find the keyboard symbol to spell it correctly...), Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes
- Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
- Siddhartha
- David McCullough
- Things Fall Apart
- The Tortilla Curtain
- The Tortilla Curtain
I also read a novel called Edenbrooke, by Julianne Donaldson, this week and loved it. It's like Jane Austen's novels, but at a much more modern-reader-friendly pace. I felt like it was more than a fluffy romance though - I appreciated the character development and psychology of the narrator. There were some convenient plot turns towards the end, but I felt like it was a fairly genuine and definitely uplifting book. And after reading about the characters' love story, I felt more loving and appreciative towards my husband, which is probably a less-common phenomenon after wives watch sugary chick flicks. This book was a love story with more substance to it.
Grandma Hafen had me read Edenbrooke over the summer-- I loved it.
ReplyDeleteYou should find "Real Enemies" by Kathryn S. Olmsted. It's a non-fiction that you won't be able to put down-- and you'll feel smart after reading it.