Never Change

Never Change by Elizabeth Berg

 

A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinski is reasonably content with her quiet life, her dog, Frank, and her career as a visiting nurse. But everything changes when Chip Reardon, the golden boy she adored in high school, is assigned as her new patient. Choosing to forgo treatment for an incurable illness, Chip has returned to his New England hometown to spend what time he has left. Now, Myra and Chip find themselves engaged in a poignant redefinition of roles, and a complicated dance of memory, ambivalence, and longing.

I found this to be a very touching book about learning how to approach death......and life.

-Mona

Sleep, Pale Sister

Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris is a Gothic tale set in  19th century  London.

A domineering and puritanical artist finds, in nine-year old Effie, the perfect model he has been seeking, and she later becomes his wife.  Bur Effie is drawn into a dangerous underworld of vice, blackmail and murder.

Reminiscent of Poe, Joanne Harris engages the reader as few others can.

I find Joanne Harris' books to be difficult to put down.  I may not always "enjoy" the subject matter, but her writing is so compelling that she truly places one "into" the story so well that one cannot escape.

-Mona

Cloud Mountain

Cloud Mountain by Aimee E. Liu

 

The story begins in California in 1906.  Hope Neufeld, a vibrant young American girl, and Liang Po-yu, an aristocratic young Chinese man, meet and fall in love in a time and place where it is a crime for them to even touch.  Defying the taboos, they marry and in following years move from San Francisco to China to raise their family.  Their love is tested by prejudice, revolution, conflicting loyalties and their own drastically different traditions.

This book kept my attention especially well with it's realistic and historically accurate back story.

-Mona

Peaches for Father Francis

Peaches for Father Francis, the third book in in her Chocolat trilogy, is every bit as marvelous as the first two....Chocolat and The Girl With No Shadow.

 

Vianne Rocher returns to Lansquenet after eight years upon receiving a letter from the dead. 

 

Chapter One (in it's entirety) reads:

"Someone once told me that, in France alone, a quarter of a million letters are delivered every year to the dead.  What she didn't tell me is that sometimes the dead write back."

 

Truly a feast for the senses.  "Try me. test me, taste me".  You'll not be able to resist.

 

But be sure to read Chocolat and The Girl With No Shadow first to fully prepare you for the beauty of this third book in the series.

-Mona

PS:  and Ken says.... don't miss seeing the movie version of Chocolat as well!

Scandalmonger

You are in the years surrounding 1800 in VERY political early Philadelphia, New York and Washington. Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemming, James Monroe, Meriwether Lewis, Aaron Burr, James Madison and more of the men and women you have only heard or read of before are suddenly alive and struggling for their new country, their now old revolutionary ideas, and sometimes just for themselves.

William Safire offers an historical novel about what we call checkout rippers, or scandal sheets, written by persons we still call Scandalmongers: Persons who make money selling SCANDAL. You think scandal and mongering it is new in the world?  Never.  Each page will feel like it's taken from today's Huffington Post, Daily Show, or Politico article.

After reading this book I came away with a new appreciation for how scandal may destroy one and elevate another.  And for how the best meaning people may cause the worst things to happen in the name of what they believe.

Scandalmongers is a book about the first decade of the 19th century in American politics. Deftly written. Exhaustively researched, as accurate as a novel can be to historical truth.

-Ken

Desire of the Everlasting HILLS

"As Cajun Country is to New Orleans and Kerry is to Dublin, the Galilean hills were the ultimate boonies". With these words Thomas Cahill, the self taught historical and biblical scholar who speaks two languages and reads four, including ancient Hebrew and Greek, describes in his own fascinating way the image of the land of Jesus as he no doubt understood it himself.  After all, it was the future disciple Nathaniel who said about Jesus when first hearing of him, "What good can come from Nazareth?"

This is not a book that waffles over what is and is not a fact of history. Cahill focuses boldly upon what the vast majority of Christian scholars believe is historically true of Jesus and he does not wince at miracles and the supernatural of Jesus which has never been 'proven' false.

On the other hand Thomas is no biblical literalist either. He shares his knowledge of the ancient languages which at times corrects King James Version assumptions of what the original words meant.

A biblical guide book for the home-scholar looking for a modern, educated take on Scripture that is fun to read and worthy of being read. Who was and is this Jesus? Read it and know more.

-Ken

Just One Evil Act

Elizabeth George does it again!  Just One Evil Act is the 18th book in her Inspector Lynley series of psychological suspense....and every bit as good as the previous 17 novels in this series.  But do yourself a favor.  Read them in order, beginning with The Great Deliverance.  Although the plots vary, of course, the personal lives of the major characters evolve from one book to the next.  She often refers to something or someone who appeared in a prior book. 

 

The correct order of the books can be found in the website

 www.fantasticfiction.com

 

Elizabeth George is truly a master of suspense.  Sit back...and ENJOY!

-Mona

A Christmas Carole

First page of the original manuscript on display at the J P Morgan Library in New York City

'Marley was dead, to begin with.' With these iconic words one of the best known tales of the 19th century, and the best known of all the Christmas season began.  Charles Dicken's own Christmas gift to the world, his Christmas Carole.

My brother Jim and I didn't start our lives only reading this story, but also listening to it.  Our father made sure we heard British recording of it on our 1948 Magnavox automatic drop 78 rpm record player, (with am/shortwave radio receiver and accessory outlet for future television installation!). Dad would place all 6 of the records on the stacker above the turntable inside the heavy wooden record player cabinet and we would lie belly down and heads on palms facing the floor level cloth covered 16" speaker from the first mention of Marley straight through Tiny Tim's, "God bless us, everyone!".

Every Christmas our joy and anticipation of this family event, sometimes with grandparents joining our parents on surrounding chairs or sofa, was a high point of our season. This pleasure, along with the 11pm Christmas Eve service at Twenty Ninth Street Evangelical United Brethren Church, decorating the tree (I still remember the first year I got to help string lights), cookie baking and decorating with mom, baby Jesus' birthday with a candle lit cake (dad always got to eat Jesus' piece. Hmmm) and the Christmas morning presents themselves made Christmas for all of us in the DeWalt home at 740 South Twenty Ninth Street, Harrisburg, Pa..

I still try to see at least one movie version of the old tale every year.  My favorite is the 1930's Alistair Sims version of Scrooge.  Black and white and scratchy, just like those old 78 recordings.

Christmas is a time for traditions and eternal truths to be revisited.  Christmas Eve services, and Dicken's Christmas Carole, are two of my favorite ways of celebrating both.

-Ken

Relic

The Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child series of mystery-thrillers that all began with the cult classic

RELIC

The Dovekeepers

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

 

Nearly 2000 years ago, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert.  According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived.  Based on this tragic event, Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four bold, resourceful women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.  The lives of these women intersect in the desperate days of the siege.

Magic Time

MagicTime by Doug Marlette

 

Following a terrorist bombing in New York City, Carter Ransom returns to his home town in Mississippi to recover from an emotional breakdown.  There he learns that a twenty-five year old murder case has been reopened  involving a church bombing that killed Carter's first love. Carter's father, recently retired, was the judge in the case and now there is evidence that the trial may have been flawed.

 

Moving between the 1990's and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's in the south, Magic Time is a love story, courtroom drama and eloquent description of the civil rights revolution.

-Mona

The books that made me want to FULL TIME it on the road

William Least Heat Moon has, along with John Steinbeck, Jack London, and other authors of the road, inspired me the most to consider living on the highway.  His first book describes an unplanned and almost unmade journey in a beat up old van around the continental US. Moon's first wife was breaking up with him and he needed some way to get fresh air and a fresh perspective on life.  From his book I saw the amazing wonders awaiting anyone willing to journey to small towns as destinations instead of big cities; to walk through wondrous forests, mountains and deserts instead of fiberglass amusement parks. The 'call of the wilder' beckoned.

His second book, illustrated above, was about several small journeys taken this side of the millennium by he and his current wife whom he calls Q.  Journeys of detail and substance well written by this now best selling author.  Journey's in search of QUOZ, the undefinable somethings that each and every community or barren space on our planet seems to store up waiting for the Quoz hunter to find. Surprises of history, science and faith just waiting to make you suck in your breath and say, "OH!!"

Enjoy!

-Ken

A few of the books that have gotten us HERE

Enclosed in this first post to our BOOK BLOG are only a couple of my favorite books of the past which have directed us to this place in our three score and ten (we are hoping more for twenty or thirty actually). Mona will keep you abreast of her own interests and I mine so you may discern how different our reading choices are, and therefore, perhaps, what is making either of us tick.  And if you figure that out, would you tell our kids?  They've never figured it out!

First, and more than foremost, is the Holy Bible.  God's very word in both it's Christian and Hebrew Testament. Yes, I've read books that keep me up all night in more suspense.  But I have never done more or better reading in drama, war, love, poetry and understanding of life and relationship than this amazing revelation of God's will for all of His children.  Thank You Jesus!

My earliest recollection of great reading comes from Mark Twain.  I must have read Tom Sawyer over 20 times in my life.  And Treasure Island, Ivanhoe, the short Sci-Fi's of Asimov and the epic drama of Ben Hur by Wallace soon followed. Jules Verne and the Hardy Boys were both on my bedroom shelves.

Sure, I loved Mad magazine and countless comic books too, but I always came back to classics of fiction and non-fiction.  Then I met Ian Fleming, known by all his fans through his lead character's introduction, "I'm Bond. James Bond."

Fast forward to today.  Not only have Mona and I read a ton of books in our 60 plus years (she actually several tons) we find as we prepare to journey into our own Terra Incognito (undiscovered country) we have been preparing all along through the books we have read to do so ready and willing for the adventure to come.

So each of us shall occasionally be recording some thoughts on a book we are, or have, especially enjoyed on the journey here.  Our travels we'll post in our main blog, but here, just rambles on what we read.  Enjoy!

-Ken & Mona