Carrie at Reading to Know is once again hosting the Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge and dovetailing it with her book club choice for July.

During last year’s Narnia challenge I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn-Treader, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Graphic Novel. and The Way Into Narnia (all links to my thoughts) plus I thought through the use of Narnian Magic.

I’m reading the books in publication order, so the next in the series are The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy. They do read rather quickly so I might be tempted to go ahead and read the last two books and finish the series, but I’d also like to hold something back for next year. So right now I am just planning on those two, but we’ll see. I also have the Focus on the Family’s dramatizations of the series, so I may listen to some of those.

Someday I’d also like to read The Narnian by Alan Jacobs and What I Learned in Narnia by Douglas Wilson — I heard good things about both books during last year’s challenge — but at this moment I am not planning to work them in this month…unless I change my mind. 🙂

(I’m revising. updating my goals: I just looked back over my review of The Way Into Narnia and realized I had skipped the chapters devoted to the books I hadn’t read yet, to wait until I had read them. So I’ll be reading those chapters pertaining to The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy.)

If you’ve never visited Narnia, or if you’ve visited many times, I invite you to make a journey back with us this month!

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

It’s been a great reading month. A couple of road trips provided more time for reading as did summer nights with not much on TV.  🙂

Here is what I’ve finished since last time:

It Is Not Death to Die: A New Biography of Hudson Taylor by Jim Cromarty, reviewed here. Good.

When Christ Was Here: a Woman’s Bible Study by Claudia Barba. I’ve immensely enjoyed and been blessed and convicted by hearing Claudia speak several times and enjoyed this Bible study, reviewed here. Excellent.

Infinitely More by Alex Krutov, true story about an abandoned orphan in Russia whom God brought to Himself, reviewed here. Wonderful book.

Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching, and Appreciating Boys by Hal and Melanie Young, reviewed here. Excellent resource.

Feminine Appeal by Carlyn Mahaney, reviewed here. Excellent.

Mentalpause…and Other Midlife Laughs by Laura Jensen Walker. Not reviewed. Meh.

Chasing Mona Lisa by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey, about Swiss OSS agents trying to keep the famous painting from German hands, reviewed here. Great story though a little too descriptive for me when someone was killed.

Wives and Daughters (audiobook) by Elizabeth Gaskell, reviewed here. Loved this!

When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin. reviewed here. Wonderful writing but a couple of troubling elements.

Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter (audiobook), reviewed here.

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter (audiobook and book): just finished and will review in the next day or two.

Currently:

I am bouncing around between a few, trying to decide which one to pursue next. I have Freckles Comes Home by Jeannette Stratton-Porter (Gene’s daughter) from the library, but I am a little tired of the Limberlost just now and popular opinion seems to indicate this isn’t as good as the others.

I started Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns, but it’s not grabbing me yet. It came highly recommended, but I can’t remember by whom. But I’ll keep with it for a while at least.

I’m also reading Walking on Broken Glass by Christa Allan, about an alcoholic woman checking herself into rehab and trying to salvage her life. I love the writing, but there is a particular area of concern that I’ll reserve judgement on til I read more.

Next up:

Coming Home by Karen Kinsbury

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. I’m sorry to have listed this here. The story ended up being very sordid with some use of vulgar language and I cannot recommend this book or author.

Beyond the Shadows by Robin Lee Hatcher (audiobook)

The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy for Carrie‘s The Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge in July. I will probably be tempted to finish the last two as well — we’ll see.

I’m thinking about Not By Chance: Learning to Trust a Soveriegn God by Layton Talbert. I’ve had it on my shelf for years and really enjoyed his book Beyond Suffering about Job.

I had also seen at Joyful Reader a button for a Louisa May Alcott reading challenge over the summer — I may try to participate in that, too. I do like to revisit her books every few years.

That should keep me busy for a while. 🙂

What’s on your nightstand?

The choice for for Carrie’s book club for the month of June is A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter, chosen by Stephanie at Simple Things. I had read both Freckles (linked to my review) and A Girl of the Limberlost as a child and for years had wanted to read them again, so I was glad this challenge gave me the impetus to do so.

A Girl of the Limberlost is a sequel to Freckles, but it can easily be read alone. Freckles and the Swamp Angel are referred to and appear later in the book, and the events of this book take place near the Limberlost forest and swamp.

But this is the story of Elnora Comstock, a teen girl about to enter high school, indeed to enter public school for the first time. Her mother doesn’t place much value in school and doesn’t give Elnora any encouragement or even advance preparation. So Elnora goes the first day and embarrasses herself by expecting books to be provided only to find out she has to pay for them and tuition as well. She is embarrassed by her clothing, hat, and shoes, too. Knowing her mother will never grant her the needed money, Elnora stresses over how to come up with it and then is told that the Bird Woman (also from Freckles and still not given another name) will pay for certain items of nature: moths, nests, cocoons, etc.

Elnora’s mother cares for her on some level, but that care is eclipsed by grief over her husband, who died in the swamp years earlier, and by resentment toward Elnora as the reason Mrs. Comstock couldn’t go to him.

The Comstocks’ neighbors, the Stintons, are friendly with Elnora and help her as much as they can. About the only time Mrs. Comstock ever takes any pains with Elnora is in a type of competition with the Stintons, or when she thinks others will see and care, such as with Elnora’s school lunches.

Things continue on this way until a couple of major incidents threaten to affect Elnora’s relationship with her mother permanently .

That’s the first half or so of the book: that crisis is resolved and the second half covers another storyline: a young man who is a relative of one of the townspeople comes to recuperate after being seriously ill. He sees Elnora hunting moths, knows something about them from his studies, and begins to help her. Her mother immediately sees him as a possibility for Elnora, but he is engaged to a “strictly ornamental” high society girl back home, and the rest of the book plays out that situation.

Elnora is not quite as idealized as Freckles was in the previous book, but she is still admirable for her pluck, determination, hard work, thriftiness, intelligence, and kindness. And there is again the theme of someone coming from humble circumstances yet working hard and making something of themselves, but without reference to “noble blood” this time.

I don’t know Porter’s religious background — I thought I had read that her father was a pastor, but I can’t find that piece of information now. But though I would not call this a Christian book, there are a couple of passages in the book that refer to God in a wonderful way, particularly when Mrs. Comstock watches a newly-hatched moth expanding its wings and is so caught up in wonder that she glorifies God for His wisdom in its creation and declares she never felt so in His presence as at that moment. In another place, when a different character has to face the consequences of her sin, the author says, “The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.” My first thought was that I am glad that we don’t have to pay them, that Christ did for us. But she wasn’t speaking of that so much as the consequences or “come-uppance” a person has to deal with when their sin “finds them out.”

I spoke in my review of Freckles about the difference between naturalism and environmentalism. There is not as much of that kind of topic in this book, but one passage stood out to me. Elnora says “Sometimes I think it is cruel to take such creatures from their freedom, even for an hour, but it is the only way to teach the masses of people how to distinguish pests they should destroy from the harmless ones of great beauty.”

I had to admit I smiled a bit at all the mention of the beauty of moths: I tend to see them only as pests that eat clothes. And I thought it was absurd that a high society girl allows a whole ball given in her honor to be decorated in the colors of a rare moth when she personally couldn’t stand them.

I listened to most of this book as an audiobook and then finished it by reading the rest. Even though it is written in an old-fashioned style that is a little melodramatic and drawn-out in places, it was enjoyable.

The choice for for Carrie’s book club for the month of June is A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. I had read it and Freckles by the same author when I was a child and wanted to read them both again: the book club choice provided a good opportunity.

Actually, I listened to them via audiobook, and I started with Freckles since it comes first chronologically before A Girl of the Limberlost.

Freckles first appears as an older teen-ager of Irish descent seeking a job at a logging camp in Indiana’s Limberlost forest. He had grown up in an orphanage where he had been left as a baby newly missing one hand. He was never given any other name. The boss, McLean, takes a liking to him and gives him a chance as his guard to walk the perimeter of his property twice a day and check the lines, making sure no one has trespassed. A former disgruntled employee had marked some trees to sell to a rival logging company, so theft was a real danger, as were rattlesnakes and other creatures native to the forest and the swamp.

Various noises and movements in the forest scare him at first, but soon he becomes used to them and then enthralled with the creatures and plants there. An urge to learn more about them leads to a purchase of nature books from the city.

After Freckles tells one of the men about the antics of one of the birds, the man suggests sending for a lady only known as the Bird Woman who travels around to photograph various birds. When she comes, she brings a teen-age girl as a helper. When Freckles first sees her, he dubs her the Swamp Angel, and that’s the only name we know her by. My main memory of reading the book the first time was the scene where he first meets her, and I couldn’t remember if she was a person or an image or what: it all seemed very ethereal in my memory. But she is very much a real girl.

The rest of the book details the various adventures and troubles they encounter and seems mainly to show Freckles’ character. It’s very much an old-fashioned book with the two main characters idealized to the point of almost no wrong, but they are both admirable: noble, loyal, kind, trustworthy, hard-working, going above and beyond the call of duty. There are some unrealistic places, such as the Swamp Angel giving suggestions to the logging camp men about how to best set up their tents and to the cook about how to prepare his meals, and they all take it appreciatively because she’s so wholesome and beautiful…

Though the book is not primarily a romance, the two do fall in love, but it is a problem because the Angel is from a rich family with a long and noteworthy bloodline, and Freckles’ heritage is unknown. It’s strange, but evidently the thinking of the time must have been that one’s character is determined by one’s bloodline: such a view doesn’t leave much room for salvation or a bettering of oneself. Freckles thinks he is unworthy of the Angel because of the people his must have been, but she feels his exemplary character must have come from a noble people. It’s sad that Freckles’ character and what he has made of himself doesn’t speak for itself.

Knowing Porter was a naturalist, I am not sure if her reason for writing the book was just to display a noble character in various circumstances or to place a story in her beloved Limberlost. I had a feeling the Bird Woman was based on herself, and there is much detail about the flora and fauna of the area.

The book also caused me to think about the differences between a naturalist, a conservationist, and what we would know today as an environmentalist. At least in this book Porter seems to love nature and want it preserved as much as possible and not wasted, but she also seems to have no problem with cutting down trees to make furniture or killing an otter expressly to make a muff as a gift for a lady. Nature is not intended for worship, it can be used, but it needs to be used carefully and wisely and not wasted or ravaged.

I was surprised at the number of occurrences of variations of the word “damn” in the book.

Though I usually enjoy reading actual ink and paper books more than listening to them, I think I might have grown a little tired of this one as a book. It worked well as an audiobook I could listen to while driving, etc. The production value was not as good as others I have heard: there was a little background noise, and it seemed as if it were read by a teacher or librarian, whereas with other audiobook narrators I had the sense the story was being told rather than read. Although the narrator didn’t employ different inflections or voices with different characters, I did enjoy the musicality of Freckles way of talking, tinged with an Irish lilt but not quite a brogue.

I’m glad I revisited this story. I don’t know that I would do so again any time soon, but it was neat to flesh out the memories of this book from my childhood.

(Updated to add: I just noticed that at the moment this is free for the Kindle. I don’t know how long it will be.)

I don’t usually quote from the backs of books when reviewing them but in the case of When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin, this says it much more succinctly and much better than I could.

Alexander Krutov was born December 6, 1977 in St. Petersburg, Russia. When his teen-aged mother left the hospital three days later, she discarded him in a nearby dumpster. Thankfully God allowed someone to hear his crying, and since he still had his hospital bracelet on, they returned him to the hospital.

He spent the rest of his growing-up years in various orphanages. His humor shines through when he mentions Orphanage Number 9 and comments, “Though the Russians have written some of the greatest works of literature and music, our creativity apparently does not extend to naming orphanages.”

He describes growing up in the orphanages, the general lack of individual attention and care except by a few, the physical lacks (no hot water or shower, only a bucket of water once a week) the lack of individuality (three sets of new clothes once a year that looked exactly like everyone else’s). Yet there were bright lights along the way in a few close friendships and a special caretaker named Melana. He was adopted at one time, but it was a horrid experience resulting in his running away several times until a couple found him asleep in a park, intervened for him, and the orphanage took him back.

He had some experiences with the Russian Orthodox Church, even rising to a level of leadership, but found after a crisis that “my religion had nothing to offer me when I needed it most, and I in turn had nothing to offer the others. I turned my back on the Russian Orthodox Church that day, and accelerated my journey into darkness, despair, and hopelessness.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union 1991 brought many changes to the orphanages, some good and some not so good. But one significant difference was that missionaries were allowed to come into the country. Several encounters with short-term missionaries planted seeds in Alex’s life. Though at first he was not convinced that there was a God who cared about him, he did see a difference in the lives of these people and felt drawn to them. Some missionaries from the Navigators came, and Alex was able to spend much time with them and go to church with them and began reading the Bible on his own. When he was 16 he accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. His faith was still fragile at first, but gradually it grew and became firm. He had a teachable spirit when the American Christians had to talk to him at times about wrong attitudes.

The Soviet system did not really prepare orphans for any kind of productive life when they became adults. Alex says in one place “the Russian society honestly believed it would be better for everyone if they just died.”

Eventually God led Alex to help in the formation of a ministry to help prepare older orphans for life as responsible adults and tell them of Christ, and it is my understanding that he is still involved with that ministry today in his 30s.

I don’t know if I am doing this book justice, but it was a wonderful read. It was hard in places, seeing what Alex and other orphans went through, but there were so many times the grace of God was manifested in his life, protecting him and bringing him to Himself. I highly recommend it, five stars and two thumbs up!

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell follows the story of Molly Gibson, the young daughter of a widowed country doctor in 19th century England. In the first chapter Molly is a young girl going to her first “open house” of the town’s Earl and family, held once a year at what the townsfolk call “The Great House.” She doesn’t have the best experience there and never attends another.

Some years later she’s a young lady, and one of the pupils her father has taken on has decided he is in love with her. Molly knows nothing of this, but her father feels she is too young for such things and sends her to Hamley Hall in hopes that his young protege’s ardor will cool. Mrs. Hamley has been one of his patients for years, not quite an invalid, but not very active, and for some time she has wanted Molly to come and visit. Through their time together they become quite close, and the Hamleys regard Molly as close as a daughter.

The Hamleys are landed gentry but have fallen on hard times. They have two sons away at Cambridge: Osbourne carries the family’s hopes, handsome, charming, fashionable, and expected to do brilliantly, and Roger is a man of science, plainer, but steady as a rock. Squire Hamley loves Molly as well and regards her father as a dear friend but strongly feels that marrying Molly would be beneath either of his boys because her father is a “professional” man.

While Molly is away her father contemplates his situation. Molly is at the age where it is awkward for him to keep taking young men as pupils, as his pupils live with him. He hadn’t really thought of remarrying, but begins to think it would be good for Molly if he did. Circumstances bring him into contact with Miss Claire, former governess at the Great House, and in pretty short order he proposes.

Molly is not happy. She feels the loss of having her father all to herself, and her earlier encounter with Miss Claire makes her unexcited about having her for a step-mother. But she tries to make the best of it.

Claire, or Hyacinth, as she prefers to be called after her engagement, married primarily to escape the pressure and tedium of having to support herself and her daughter Cynthia, near Molly’s age, who is at school in France. She speaks great flowing sweet words, but something always seems a little off in what she says. She’s not an evil stepmother, but she is totally self-centered. For instance, when her daughter Cynthia is due to come home, Claire, now Mrs. Gibson, wants to redecorate the girls’ rooms just alike even though Molly begs her not to. Molly’s room is furnished with her mother’s things. But Mrs. Gibson doesn’t want people to think she favored her own daughter by decorating only her room, so she insists that both girls’ rooms are alike.

Cynthia comes home, and the girls become fast friends, though Cynthia is the kind of girl that draws all eyes to herself when she enters a room. She’s beautiful, charming, and worldly-wise while Molly is more plain and naive.

The rest of the book follows the interactions of these and a few others. It’s not an action-packed plot, but it had me smiling in places and in tears in others.

Gaskell did a marvelous job with characterization. Cynthia and Molly, Osbourne and Roger are studies in contrasts, and it’s clear which of each pair is regarded as “good,” yet the others have some good qualities and invite our sympathy. None of her characters are caricatures: each has layers. Squire Hamley is gruff and blustery but not as unfeeling as he seems at times. Dr. Gibson is wise but has a keen wit and some of the best humorous lines. For instance, when his wife is envying someone with more than herself and consoles herself by saying, “But riches are a great snare,” her husband answers, “Be thankful you are spared temptation, my dear.” When Mrs. Gibson goes away for a week and Molly is looking forward to going back to some of their old habits, Dr. Gibson’s “eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was perfectly grave. ‘I’m not going to be corrupted. With toil and labour I have reached a very fair height of refinement. I won’t be pulled down again.'”

It’s hard to say what the theme of the book is, if there is one. It definitely shows the complications of secrets, the devastating harm of gossip, the disappointment of misplaced expectations. Yet perhaps the focus is just on remaining steady and doing the right thing in the face of all of that.

Unfortunately Mrs. Gaskell died before the book’s last chapter was finished, but a Frederick Greenwood concludes the book with what was known of Mrs. Gaskell’s intentions.

I loved this book, and when it ended I was sorry that I wouldn’t be able to spend any more time with these characters.

Audible.com includes a little sample of the reading of their books, and I listened to several before choosing this one read by Nadia May. She was the most expressive, and she did a wonderful job with the different characters’ voices and inflections, from older men to young girls, and one character with a Scottish accent and another who was French.

I also indulged in the BBC-produced film of Wives and Daughters via Netflix (in four parts of about an hour and 15 minutes or so each), and it was remarkably well done. There were some little changes here and there, naturally, some scenes left out and others squished together, a greater liberty taken with the ending, but overall it was faithfully done and much of the dialogue was taken straight from the book.

Here is a trailer from the film — it’s making me want to watch it all over again: