Mercy

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Reading


...one of several reading areas in our hou

BOOKs
 READ
2019
The Red Address Book, Sofia Lundberg
Mother Angelica, Raymond Arroya
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
English Lessons, Andrea Lucado
Home, Marilynne Robinson
Lila, Marilynne Robinson
2018
Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
The Paradigm, Jonathan Cahn
 An Autobiography, Anthony Trollope
Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton
At Seventy, May Sarton
Madison Park:  A Place of Hope, Eric L. Motley
Daybook: the Journal of an Artist, Anne Truitt
The Walk, Richard Paul Evans
Miles to Go, Richard Paul Evans
 Rachel Ashwell: My Floral Affair: Whimsical Spaces and Beautiful Florals  (Thumbed through this in library.  Definitely worth a slower "read"!
The Paper Garden: An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) At 72, Molly Peacock
Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, & Spin, Os Guinness
Seasons of My Life, Hannah Hauxwell & Barry Cockcroft
The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman
 Once Upon a Tree. Calvin Miller
Becoming Dallas Willard, Gary Moon  (disappointing; disorganized)
The Confessions of X, Suzanne M. Wolfe
High Tide in Tucson, Barbara Kingsolver
The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, Jennifer Ryan
The Music Shop, Rachel Joyce
The Maverick Soul, Miv Watts & Hugh Steward *  (Would love to own this "picture" book sometime)
My Bringht Abyss: Mediation of a Modern Believer, Christian Wiman
The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, Wendy Welch
Under Magnolia, Frances Mayes
Francis of Assisi, an essay by Walter Nigg
Homestead Rosini Lippi
The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ, Henri Nouwen
The Things We Keep, Sally Hepworth
When the English Fall, David Williams
Vintage Saints and Sinners, Karen Wright Marsh
Middlemarch, George Elliot
Catherine Marshall, Kathy McReynolds
Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver
Sacred Slow, Alicia Britt Chole
A Gathering in hope, Philip Gulley
Living with the Monks, Jesse Itzler
The Heavenly Vision, B.E. Rediger
A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler
A Well-behaved Woman,  Therese he Anne Fowler


2017
Everybody Was So Young, Amanda Vaill (re. Gerald & Sara Murphy, 1920s ff, Paris, etc.) Leopard at the Door, Jennifer McVeigh (Kenya, Mau Mau Uprising, etc.)
Village Centenary, Miss Read ♥
Bringing Tuscany Home, Frances Mayes
The Summer Before the War, Helen Simonson
Hallelujah Anyway, Anne Lamott
Heart of the Family, Elizabeth Goudge
The Lady of the Limberlost, Jeanette Porter Meehan
NewHarmony Indiana: Like a River, Not a Lake, a memoir, Jane Blaffer Owen
Distant Neighbors:  The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, edited by Chad Wriglesworth
the art of the commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington, Joanna Moorhead
Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard
The Memory of Old Jack, Wendell Berry
 My Spirit Rejoices: the diary of a Christian soul in an age of unbelief, Elisabeth Leseur (truly found in E.L. a kindred spirit.)
Wabi-Sabi Welcome
A Small Place in Italy, Eric Newby
Elizabeth Leseur: Selected Writings
not a fan, Kyle Idleman
New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton
Secrets in the Dark. Frederick Buechner (sermons, powerful sermons)
Dorothy Day:  The World Will be Saved by Beauty,  Kate Hennessy
To Be Where You Are, Jan Karon
Provence, 1970, Luke Barr (about Julia Childs, Beard, MFKFisher, etc)
West with the Night, Beryl Markham    (SO good!)
The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls (an easy hard book....)


 2016
Half Broke Horses, Jeann
ette Walls
The Forever Girl  Alexander McCall Smith
 The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
Sensible Shoes, Sharon Garlough Brown
The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd
Small Victories, Anne Lamott
etta and otto and russell and james, Emma Hooper (Didn't finish - it kept getting weirder!)
The Wisdom of Solitude: A Zen Retreat in the Woods, Jane Dobisz
Come Rain or Come Shine, Jan Karon
 Martha's Vineyard: Isle of Dreams, Susan Branch
Emma, Alexander  McCall Smith
The Fairy Tale Girl, Susan Branch
A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside, Susan Branch
Circling the Sun, Paula McLain  (REALLY liked this)
The Enchanged Places, Christopher Milne (Good book)
The Enchanted April, Elizabeth Von Arnim (Enchanting!  Humorous, descriptve)
The Burning Heart, with John Mair, Gregory Ryan, ed.
Make Me a Sabbath of Your Heart, David M. Knight (This was good!)
A Retreat with Thomas Merton, M Basil Pennington
Encounters with Merton, Nouwen
Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours, K Diegman, ed.
The Hermitage Journals, John Howard Griffin
Quartet in Autumn, Barbara Pym
Pilgrim's Inn, Elizabeth Goudge
Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
The Sound of the Hammer, Carl Conrad Britsch
Elizabeth is Missing, Emma Healey
One Hundred Pieces of Me, Lucy Dillon
A Lowcountry Heart, Pat Conroy
The Life She Wants, Roby Carr
The Whole Town's Talking, Fannie Flagg

2015
The Bookseller: The First Hugo Marston Novel, Mark Pryor
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good, Jan Karon
The Shape of a Year, Jean Hersey
The Sanctuary of the Soul, Thomas Kelly
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Rachel Joyce
An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, Susan Wittig Albert
Perfect,  Rachel Joyce
The Season of Second Chances, Diana Meier
 Souvenirs of Silence, Brennan Manning
The Supreme Macaroni Company, Adriana Trigiani
Unusual Uses for Olive Oil, Alexander McCall Smith
The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day
Rich Mullins: an Arrow Pointing to Heaven, James Bryan Smith

2014  
The Storyteller, Jodi Piccoult (painful story, but I finished it)
The Midwife:  A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times, Jennifer Worth
Living Blessed, Ruthie Jacobson
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce (VERY good)
Wish You Were Here, Stewart O'Nan
Emily, Alone, Steward O'Nan
My Garden, the City and Me: Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London, Helen Babbs
 Chasing Francis:  A Pilgrim's Tale, Ian Morgan Cron
The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality Ronald Rolheiser 
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, Meryl Gordon  (The mysterious life and scandalous death of heiress Huguette Clark)
Playing with water: A Story of a Garden, Kate Llewellyn
Drinking the Rain, Alix Kates Shulman (solitude, coast of Maine, etc.  I've read better.) 


          I have NO idea where the rest of my 2013 books went to!
A Week in Winter, Maeve Binchy
Speak What We Feel Not What We Ought to Say, Frederick Buechner (Four Who Wrote in Blood)
On Rue Tatin:  Living and Cooking in a French Town, Susan Herrmann Loomis
Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet, Stephanie Cowell
The Peasant Girl's Dream, George MacDonald
Those We Love Most, Lee Woodruff
The Painted Bridge, Wendy Wallace (a very difficult book to read because of subject matter)
2012
Resolved:  to read more books in 2012! 
*Rural Free:  A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living, Rachel Peden
*Real Love for Real Life, Andi Ashworth 
The Beach House, Jane Green
Woman in Red, Eileen Goudge 
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, Alexander McCall Smith 
Gatsby's Girl, Caroline Preston
A Testament of Devotion Thomas R. Kelly
My Connemara Paula Steichen (SO good after visiting Carl Sandburg's home)
This Momentary Marriage  John Piper.  (Read on way home from vacation.  A lot of repetition from chapter to chapter, but some good stuff here.)
Vittoria Cottage, D.E. Stevenson.  Simple, English tale
Elizabeth and her German Garden, Elizabeth Von Arnim  (REALLY good!)
Mr. Skeffington, Elizabeth Von Arnim  (witty; about a woman turning 50)
The Shoemaker's Wife, Adriana Trigiani
The Solitary Summer, ANOTHER incredible book by Elizabeth Von Arnim.  Of books, gardens, and
     people...
From HEctic to Healthy: The Journey to a Balanced Life, Craig & Mary Jutila (some solid marriage/family advice/help)
Killer Stuff and Tons of Money, Maureen Stanton (an insider look at the world of flea markets, antiques, and collectables)
The Soldier's Wife, Joanna Trollope
The Hawk and the Dove Trilogy, Penelope Wilcock
Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France, Vivian Swift
the well-worn interior, robin Forster and Tim Whittaker
Help, Thanks, Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott
Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver   (really, REALLY good!) 
anonymous: Jesus' hidden years...and yours, Alicia Britt Chole
Know what not to read. Life is too short to spend it reading useless books. 
~David Chrzan
 
 “Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, 
my pile of books is a mile high. 
How I love them! How I need them! 
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” 
~Arnold Lobel

"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."  C.S. Lewis

 
              2011
A Trick of the Light,  Louise Penny
Minding Frankie, Maeve Binchy
The Lady in the Palazzo:  At Home in Umbria, Marlena De Blasi
My Reading Life, Pat Conroy
God's Guest List, Debbie Macomber 
The Olive Farm, Carol Drinkwater
The Charming Quirks of Others, Alexander McCall Smith
The Pure Joy of Monastery Cooking, Brother Victor-Antoine
Heaven is for Real, Todd Burpo with Lynn VincentAches and Pains, Maeve Binchy
Twenty Wishes, Debbie Macomber
The Red Sea Rules, Robert J. Morgan
Leaving Church: a memoir of faith, Barbara Brown Taylor
The Pastor:  A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
An Unfinished Marriage, Joan Anderson (finished on our 40th anniversary)
*The Reluctant Tuscan, (How I Discovered My Inner Italian), Phil Doran - fun & funny
*A Cottage in Portugal Richard Hewitt - another good one, illustrations in each chapter by his wife, Barbara
*A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France, Betsy Draine & Michael Hinden
   *I came upon  these when I googled to find books in the Peter Mayle genre.  I was NOT disappointed!
A Killing in Antiques, Mary Moody.  Good mystery taking place at Brimfield Antique Show.  I enjoyed it.
The Paris Wife, Paula Molain.  SO very good!   8/27/11
The Lady and the Poet, The story of Ann More and John Donne.  Another excellent love story 8/30/11
A Cluttered Life:  Searching for God, Serenity, and my Missing Keys, Pesi Dinnerstein

Now I am surrounded by books all the time: my bedroom alone has five bookcases in it, not counting the entire wall I converted to shelving when I first moved in. I love it. The smell of ink and paper, the rustle of pages turning, the stateliness of a line of titles standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a shelf. That magic contained in a book goes beyond just words on pages. A book lives through time; it doesn't just exist the way an appliance might, and it collects readers the way a reader might collect books. It keeps a piece of every reader with it: a bookplate, a signature of ownership, a dog-eared page or underlined passage, a hint of wear on the jacket. Books can change lives, and they do. (from THIS POST)


Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, 
for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it,
except sitting in a corner by myself...
with a little book. Thomas a Kempis

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building more bookshelves." ~Anna Quindlen

2010 

Composing a Life, Mary Catherine Bateson
Crossroads, Belva Plains
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith
A Good Distance, Sarah Willis
Stillmeadow Daybook, Gladys Tabor
Agatha Christie at Home, Hilery Macaskill
The 3,000 Mile Garden, Leslie Land & Roger Phillips
Mrs. Fytton's Country Life,  Mavis Clark
Prayer's Apprentice, Timothy Jones
Imperfect Birds, Anne Lamott
Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes
Sin Boldly, Cathleen Falsani
Walkiing with God, John Eldredge
If the Church Were Christian, Philip Gulley
The Journal Keeper, Phyllis Theroux
Bravo, Valentina, Adriani Trigiani
Secrets of a Family Album, Isla Dewar
The Vintage Capers, Peter Mayle
The Diary, Eileen Goudge
Why I Stayed, Gayle Haggard
Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Playing by Heart, Deborah Raney

Several more....I just failed to record them.


Dr. Mark Dever's site - list of recommended books here.

 Biographies that Tim Keller lists as influential in his life:

If we are bored our minds are under-employed. Reading is a cure. Read something that stirs the mind and comforts the spirit.
(Patsy Clairmont)

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. ...it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.  (C.S.Lewis)

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,"said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one.”  - George R.R. Martin,  A Dance With Dragons  


Books you really love are bound by a secret thread. You know the common quality that makes you love them though you cannot put it into words. (Jonathan Bailey)

 Erik Spiekermann - “It’s almost like a safety net having all my books here. I have a lot of cool stuff that other people don’t have, and I love browsing and discovering books I’ve had 50 years. I’d love to spend time just browsing through my bookshelves. Every time I go to look for something I find something else, you get totally stuck. There’s nothing better than getting stuck on a Sunday afternoon with books you’ve forgotten about.”

G. K. Chesterton - "There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.”

 In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself…I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. (C.S. Lewis)


"Whatever you read, read the Bible first. Beware of bad books: there are plenty in this day. Take heed what you read."( J.C. Ryle)

 “Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.” (C.S. Lewis)

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two."  
~Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

"But even if music fails, I still have books!"  (C.S. Lewis)

In a good bookroom, you feel in some way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.
Mark Twain

 "A room without books is like a body without a soul." -- Cicero

“Master those books you have…Let them go into your very self. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading.” —Charles Spurgeon

Never judge a book by its movie.  (Rick Warren)

 “"When I get a little money I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.”"  Desiderius Erasmus

We raked books off the shelves by the dozens and hauled them along on picnics, to haylofts, up oak trees, to bath and to bed. The one terrifying possibility wasof finding oneself without a book                          (Kathleen Norris, 1941)

 The time to read is now, not hereafter. We must make time or miss our joy. George Holbrook Jackson

"Reading a great work of literature can truly be likened to having a conversation with a great mind." -Jennie Chancey
 .. said Grandfather.  "In my experience when people once begin to read they go on.  They begin because they think they ought to and they go on because they must.  Yes.  They find it widens life.  We're all greedy for life, you know, and our short span of existence can't give us all that we hunger for, the time is too short and our capacity not large enough.  But in books we experience all life vicariously."  A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge