For the first time in my life, I’ve kept a reasonably complete list of the books I’ve read.  This has been a goal for years–it’s quite common to open an old, partly-filled notebook and find a page or two listing some of the books I read over the course of a day, or a week, or a month.  (See, for example, my primary high school notebook: Tarzan of the Apes, finished 2/10/10; The Return of Tarzan, finished 2/10/10; and An Education for Our Time, finished 7/19/10.)  From May 2017 to March 2018, however, I managed to keep this list going in the back of my planner.*  I can’t imagine a better introduction to this blog than a long list of books.

  • The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, John Le Carre
  • Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
  • Crispin: The Cross of Lead, Avi
  • On the Trail: the History of American Hiking, Silas Chamberlain
  • Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
  • Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (re-read)
  • Queens' Play, Dorothy Dunnett (re-read)
  • The Disorderly Knights, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Crispin: At the Edge of the World, Avi
  • Pawn in Frankincense, Dorothy Dunnett
  • The Ringed Castle, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Checkmate, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Crispin: The End of Time, Avi
  • Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
  • The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
  • My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George (re-read)
  • Music Education in the Christian Home, Mary Ann Froehlich
  • The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, Jessica Fellows & Matthew Sturgis
  • The Power of Babel, John McWhorter
  • Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis (re-read)
  • The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis (re-read)
  • The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis (re-read)
  • Out of the Silent Planet, C. S. Lewis (re-read)
  • The First Days of School, Harry K. & Rosemary T. Wong
  • Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, Richard A. Swenson
  • Perelandra, C. S. Lewis (re-read)
  • That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis (re-read)
  • Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly
  • One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
  • Extravagant Grace, Barbara Duguid
  • The Tolkien Reader, J. R. R. Tolkien
  • The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner (re-read)
  • The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner (re-read)
  • The King of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner (re-read)
  • A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (re-read)
  • Thick as Thieves, Megan Whalen Turner
  • Niccolo Rising, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Spring of the Ram, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Race of Scorpions, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Scales of Gold, Dorothy Dunnett
  • Lies Women Believe: And the Truth That Sets Them Free, Nancy Leigh DeMoss
  • A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (re-read)
  • A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle (re-read)
  • Iron Man: The Gauntlet, Eoin Colfer
  • Many Waters, Madeleine L'Engle
  • Holes, Louis Sacchar (re-read)
  • The View from Saturday, E. L. Konigsberg (re-read)
  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet, E.L. Konigsberg
A few notes on the list:

First, who is Dorothy Dunnett, the most featured author on the list?  Dunnett was a Scottish painter and author, mostly of historical fiction set during the Renaissance and Reformation (though the Reformation doesn’t play much of a role in the books).  Her books are probably the most dense fiction I’ve read: dense with imagery, detail, names, untranslated period poetry, chess metaphors, and plot.  So much plotting in those books.  The first series, the Lymond Chronicles, provided marvelous distraction during a period of time when I was desperate for an escape; I highly recommend the first book, The Game of Kings, to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.  The main character of the second series, House of Niccolo, is harder for me to like…and likability matters in a series much longer and denser than A Song of Ice and Fire.

Second, even a casual peruser can see that I am a chronic re-reader.  Sometimes age brings out new aspects of a book.  Sense and Sensibility is different from when I left it at nineteen: I have more sympathy for Edward Ferrars this time, and Elinor’s trials are even more painful.  Same story with Lewis’s Space Trilogy and Till We Have Faces.  As a teenager I didn’t understand everything happening with Jane and Mark or with Orual, and I knew it.  I’d planned on coming back to these stories for a long time, and the journey back was beautiful.  The Tree, the river, and the mask speak to me more clearly than they did in seventh grade, and I’m glad to have returned to Lewis’s greatest work.

Sometimes I re-read to remember.  Upon finding out that the fifth book in Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series had been released under my radar, I began pulling her books off the shelves right away and dropping heavy hints about Christmas gift ideas to my mother.  I read the series freshman year of college, during my inaugural Book Binge week (an unhelpful coping mechanism for the stress of the last week before exams), and a refresher seemed in order.  The Thief remains an excellent book for children, well-written enough for an adult to enjoy, and superbly put together in its surprise ending.  As the characters mature in the later books, Turner maintains the depth of her world and its characters.  (Highly recommended series for teenagers…and anyone else, really.)

If I’m honest, though, the main reason I read and re-read is for comfort, just as I did before my freshman year exams.  Life is stressful and discouraging, and a good story reminds us of what is good and what is true and what is beautiful.  Whether that tale is the familiar, well-crafted story of Holes during the long third quarter or the fresh joy of “Farmer Giles of Ham” during an exhausting night at Heathrow, a good story is a source of hope in the dark.

 

*I have some consistency issues (as should already be clear from this first post) and therefore have resorted to using an undated planner wherein I fill in the months I’m using it and feel no guilt about missing say, February, October, and November.  My planning year is therefore somewhat offset from the norm.  Also, I’m pretty sure I didn’t finish any books in the entire month of April this year.  Mono is hard.