Katrina at Callapidder Days hosted another Fall Into Reading challenge these last few months, and since today is the last day of autumn, it’s time to wrap up the challenge.
Here is my list with links to my reviews of the ones I finished. I’ll answer Katrina’s questions at the end.
Spirit of the Rainforest: A Yanomamo Shaman’s Story by Mark Ritchie, recommended by Jungle Mom, reviewed here.
In the Best Possible Light by Beneth Peters Jones, about Biblical femininity. I started this one but didn’t finish it. I could tell after a chapter or so into it that I wouldn’t get as much out of it from my usual piecemeal style of reading. Usually with Christian non-fiction I incorporate them into my devotional time. I want to do that with this one after Christmas. With everyone on a break from work and school, I have a little more time in the mornings without having to keep one eye on the clock. It’s a timely and important subject that I’ve been wanting to explore.
Return to Me by Robin Lee Hatcher, about a prodigal daughter, reviewed here.
Simple Gifts by Lori Copeland, read but not reviewed yet. Maybe in a few days. 🙂
The Parting, the first in a new series by Beverly Lewis, who is always good, reviewed here. Most, if not all of her stories are stem from her grandmother’s Amish heritage.
Just Beyond the Clouds by Karen Kingsbury, a sequel to A Thousand Tomorrows, continuing the story of Cody Gunner, dealing in this book with the care of his brother who has Down Syndrome, reviewed here.
Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon, a new novel about Father Tim of the Mitford series, reviewed here.
I also like to include at least one classic, and this time it was supposed to be The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas pere, but I never made it to the library to check it out. So I’ll look forward to doing that in the next few weeks.
I included my daily/weekly reads this time:
Queen of the Castle: 52 Weeks of Encouragement for the Uninspired, Domestically Challenged or Just Plain Tired Homemaker by Lynn Bowen Walker. I finished it a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t formally reviewed it — I might after Christmas — but I have mentioned it many times. Love it! Lots of good stuff. I will probably read it again week by week this year, too. My interview with Lynn is here.
Daily Light on the Daily Path compiled by the Samuel Bagster family. I use this to begin my devotional times and help me get my mind in gear. I’ve used it for years and have mentioned it many times. On Sundays and occasional busy or sick days this might be all I do, but it gives much food for thought.
Wonderful Words by Stewart Custer. It is another daily devotional with a different word for each day and various verses containing that word. It’s interesting and the Lord has used it to speak to me, but I think it would be better if the verses weren’t listed in the order they appear in the Bible but were rather connected by meaning.
The Bible: Finished Psalms, which I was partway into when the challenge started, and went on to complete Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. I’m now about 30 chapters into Isaiah.
Books I read that weren’t on my list:
Shopping For Time was written by the authors of the girltalk blog, mom Carolyn Mahaney and daughters Nicole Mahaney Whitacre, Kristin Chesemore, and Janelle Bradshaw, reviewed here.
The Restorer’s Son wasn’t originally on my Fall Reading List simply because I forgot it was coming out in that time frame. How could I have forgotten? Sharon Hinck is one author whose books I eagerly anticipate. The Restorer’s Son is a sequel to The Restorer (previously reviewed here), second in The Sword of Lyric trilogy. My review is here.
I also read When Crickets Cry after I won it from Deena’s (thank you, Deena!) I haven’t reviewed it yet — I am still pondering it. The writing is excellent, the story is good, but there are a couple of odd situations or people that seemed out of sync to me.
Currently I am mostly through A Victorian Christmas Keepsake, a book of three short novellas. It was part of a set of book all with “Victorian Christmas” in the title that caught my eye at a yard sale because the lead writer in the set was Catherine Palmer, whose other novels I had very much enjoyed. Plus I am also reading Never Say Can’t by Jerry Ballard about Tom Willey. I had first read it maybe 20 years ago from a lending library kept by the ladies’ group of the church we attended then and it made a major impact on me. Mr. Willey didn’t have a lot of confidence and didn’t feel he was very gifted, nor was he very educated (he only had a third grade education when he applied for college: when asked how many credits he had, he told about how much money he had in the bank), but he determined that by God’s grace he would never say “I can’t” do something God wants done, and he was marvelously used of the Lord. The book is out of print, but I just recently found used copies at Amazon.com.
Katrina asks:
* Tell us how you did. Did you finish all the books you had on your original list? If not, why not? Did you get distracted by other books? Were you too busy to read as much as you would have liked? And if you did finish them all, did you read more?
Most of that is answered above book by book.
* Tell us what you thought. What book did you like most? Least? Did you try a new author that you now love? Have you written off an author as “I’ll never read anything by him/her again!”?
I enjoyed Return to Me and The Parting a lot, but I think I benefited most (aside from Scripture directly, of course) from Spirit of the Rainforest. It touched me and instructed me in so many ways.
I don’t think I had read Lori Copland before, but I want to read more of her books.
* Tell us what you learned. Maybe you learned something about yourself, your interests, your reading patterns. Maybe you learned that you love/hate a particular genre. Maybe you learned some fabulous little nugget of truth from one of the books you read. Whatever it is — please share!
I don’t think I learned anything new about my interests and reading patterns that I didn’t already know — I love Christian fiction and missionary stories and read every chance I get. I think I learn something — maybe not something new, but sometimes spiritual truths are reinforced — by most of the books I read. Probably out of this list, though, I was impacted again by the power of the gospel to change lives in Spirit of the Rainforest and by the people’s dismay at learning that some think they should be left alone in the jungles.
By the way, many participants posted reviews of the books they read for the challenge on a post of Katrina’s site here if you’d like some good book recommendations.
Stray Thoughts 