I don’t read a lot of physical books—I mostly read ebooks.
I’m reading more physical books now I’ve moved to Wellington and joined the local library (which I walk past on my way home from work).
What I do have is the non-bookmark bookmark I use most often … which is the receipt for the books I’ve just borrowed from the library.
Since moving to Wellington I’ve been making use of the local library. Borrowing and reading physical books means using physical bookmarks again.
I do have a collection of “real” bookmarks, including souvenirs from writing conferences and bookmarks I’ve bought or been given over the years.
However, I don’t have any of my “real” bookmarks in the apartment, so I’m mostly using either library checkout receipts (which make handy bookmarks because they serve the added function of reminding me of the due date), or junk mail flyers.
There have been a few books from authors I’ve previously read and enjoyed that just haven’t captured my attention.
For example, I bought and Her Mother’s Hope and Her Daughter’s Dream by Francine Rivers. I read the first and while it was well-written, I found the story depressing (which shouldn’t be a surprise: it was set in the 1930s Depression, and ended just as the USA entered World War II). I never even read the second book.
I’m glad she enjoyed them, even if I didn’t.
There are other authors (more than a few)I’ve tried to read based on reviews and the recommendations of multiple other Christian readers, but I haven’t been able to get into their stories.
One of the culprits might be the attitude of Christians toward book reviews. There’s a view that if reviewers can’t give a glowing five-star review, then they shouldn’t review the book at all (a variation of Thumper’s rule, perhaps?).
So perhaps I’m not the only person disappointed by certain books. Perhaps we’re all ignoring Matthew 7:5, John 8:32, and similar verses because we’re following the Bambi rule, not the Bible.
I spent most afternoons in the school library (not least because it was a warm and dry place to wait for the school bus), and the librarian would often recommend titles to me.
But I didn’t track what I read back then, so don’t remember a lot of what I read.
A lot of the books I read were library books, so I didn’t get the opportunity to re-read them.
One series I read and re-read was the Trebizon series by Anne Digby, which were set in a girls’ boarding school in England but which were new books so were contemporary to my era (unlike the Mallory towers books by Enid Blyton, which were written and set in the 1950s).
I’d always been fascinated by Enid Blyton’s English boarding school stories, and thoroughly enjoyed reading about Rebecca, Tish, and Sue and their adventures in Cornwall.
When I was at primary school, we had Bible in Schools every Thursday morning for an hour. Bible in Schools is how I first learned about Jesus and became a Christian, so big shout-out to all the dedicated Bible in Schools teachers over the generations!
One year, our teacher used the Maori Postal Sunday School (now Maori Postal Aotearoa) curriculum. If we completed a full year of lessons, we got a prize.
I loved that book, and read it over and over again. It was actually part of a six-book series, but I never found any of the other books. Never mind: if a child was only going to have one book in the series, the story of Jesus was the best choice.
I read a lot of books. And the more books I read, the harder it is to find stories that stick in my memory after I’ve closed the book (or switched off the Kindle.
The title that sprang to mind for this question isn’t a book I’d normally read, but I’ve seen it mentioned online and have been waiting for it to come on sale on Kindle. Then I saw it at my local library, so checked it out.
(which I did recently feature in a First Line Friday post).
Jesus and John Wayne is probably best described as a history textbook, showing how the modern church has, step by tiny step, morphed the collective understanding of Jesus from the man who healed the sick and ate with sinners to some kind of nationalistic patriarchal authoritarian who was the opposite of politically correct.
Like John Wayne.
Yet Jesus was nothing like John Wayne. Jesus stood up for women, for widows (the single parents of his day), for orphans, for the oppressed, for the immigrants, the refugees (Jesus himself was a refugee in Egypt).
Du Mez makes a compelling argument for how the US Christian church has come to misinterpret Jesus by conflating him with people like John Wayne, and how that has hurt the church in the USA (I would add that it’s hurt the church globally).
You might not agree with everything she says, but it’s a well-researched and strongly written case, and well worth taking the time to read.
It might just make you think.
I tend not to read novels based on true stories. I think that’s because I like to not know what’s going to happen during the story (even if I can guess how the novel is going to end, which is pretty much the case with every romance novel ever published).
(And I have done so.)
So if I do read novels based on true stories, I’d rather not know until I finish reading.
(Which might have been why I stopped reading stories set in Tudor England.)
I’d never heard of Georgia Tann or the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage scandal, which made the story a powerful read.
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.
Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.
Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
It’s an older book, first published in the 1980s, and I haven’t read it in more than thirty years …
It’s my favourite book because it’s about the life of Queen Elizabeth I. We studied Tudor England in my final year of high school, and Elizabeth I was obviously a key figure in the Tudor period.
The novel brought Elizabeth to life for me (and several of my classmates) in a way that the textbooks didn’t, and we were all convinced that helped us pass our final exam.
What is one character trait that will cause you to close the book? I finish most of the books I start, so it didn’t take long to come up with an answer to this question.
I don’t like stupid characters. I don’t like characters who make stupid decisions then spend the rest of the book (or movie) complaining about or trying to fix the mistake.
I would like to qualify that statement by saying stupid is not the same as naivete or immaturity or lacking conventional intelligence. Forrest Gump is an example. He is not clever, but he is not stupid. His actions are consistent with his character.
Stupid is a character doing something when they should know better.
Stupid is doing the thing everyone said not to do, then expecting the reader to sympathise when something bad happens.
Stupid is the main character moving to a small town in another country where they stand out as the only non-local, then joining all the local clubs when they’re trying to hide from the evildoers.
Stupid is the main character quitting a well-paid job with health benefits to do … well, pretty much anything, then not knowing how they’re going to pay for their sick child’s health problems.
Stupid is the main character going to investigate the strange noises in the basement, even though the 911 operator told them to stay upstairs until the police arrive.
I used to finish these books, but no more. There are too many other books to read.
I’m not a big fan of either trope, and can’t remember the last time I read either a jilted or a runaway bride.
As long as she’s a likeable character–and romance heroines tend to be likeable.
For a jilted bride story to work as a romance for me, one of two things need to happen. Either the initial couple either have to end up together (which means he needs to have a really good reason for jilting her in the first place, and he needs to convince me he’s not going to do the same thing again).
Or she ends up with a different guy, one who will treat her right. For this to work, we need to find out something about the first fiance which shows she never really knew him.
Otherwise, I’m left wondering if she really knows what it means to love someone until death us do part.
For a runaway bride story to work for me, I have to understand why she ran away. Did she decide she didn’t love him enough (or at all)?
Did she discover something about him that shows her he’s not the man she thought he was (this probably works best in romantic suspense, when she finds out he’s an assassin for hire or something similar).
Even in real life, I would absolutely say to anyone that if they are having any second thoughts about marriage, they should call off the wedding. Despite the inconvenience and the expense, that’s going to be easier than working through a divorce later.
