I can't stand to not have a good book within reach these days. I feel a little like I am floundering without one ... even if it sits on the table for a week untouched. A good book has become something of a security blanket to me. I am quite the addict.
And today I finished a fantastic read, another novel of the historical fiction sort. Another by Philippa Gregory, who after this read, is my new favorite author. I read a number of her books last year from the Tudor time frame. The book I finished today was called The White Queen and is the first in a series from the Plantagenet time frame. While I have appreciated her stories and her storytelling, this time around I was also impressed with her expression. I didn't realize until half way into the book that I should have been marking up the fantastic writing that caught my fancy along the way. And by the middle of the book it was too late for me to start, if you think the way I do; my brain would just explode if I started documenting in the middle, missing the first part. Now all that's left to do is go back and read it again (after I loan it to my sister, of course), for the sole purpose of underlining my favorite lines and phrases. There were that many. I so relish good writing in this way. And while I did not mark and save my favorite lines as I should have, I did at least jot down some really good words she used. I added the following to my word-junkie collection: anchorite, inimitable, denigrate, beguilingly, troubadour, cuckold, doff, simper, dearth, hotly, unrest, watch care, pretenders, errant, and hagridden.
Upon finishing the book this morning, like Tarzan dangling at the end of a vine, I needed to find my next lifeline. So I picked up a book I got in the mail this week, and after reading the summary and preface, I am chomping at the bit (pen in hand from the get go, this time) to get started. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. I kid you not, just the page and a half preface had me moved to tears, rereading passages that were beautiful and inspiring and gripping all at the same time.
And that's all I've got for this post.
Just finished a great book -
Diving into a new one -
And for those reasons, I am feeling pumped.
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5 comments:
I still can not understand ... and probably never will ... how you can find books to read just be browsing. But at least you can, and then I get ot benefit from it when you're done. :) You should seriously get a Kindle...WAY cheaper for you in the long run. Mom too for that matter. :)
Are you kidding? If I just randomly browsed for all my book choices, I would never get any actual reading done. There are too many choice, and too much waste of time books, to just browse. I mostly go off recommendations and reviews and book lists.
Me? A Kindle? Have you forgotten how long it took me just to get an iPod?
Oh, how I envy you! With my last final in mid-may I will hit the library and bookstores with a vengeance. Please, please, give me a list of good reads. This nerdly bookworm is starving from the lack of a good read!
I think it'd be just like the pleasure you found in the iPod...you'd think, "why did it take me so long to get one of these!" Then again, you couldn't share them without giving your expensive Kindle away.
Good reads: I said this one before - Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. Also, I love every book Dorothea Benton Frank has written. And Philippa Gregory's Tudor books...
Recent really good reads I would name were: Spectacular Sins by John Piper, Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and The Red Tent. The Red Tent was an interesting fictional historical rendering of familiar bible people....Isaac, Jacob, his sons, their family, women's roles and relationships, their culture and time frame following that. Interesting read.
Obviously The White Queen that I just finished. Barbara Kingsolver is also a great writer to read from. I have read a number of hers.
Hope this helps!
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