When I opened my notebook (made of paper, people!) to write (with a ballpoint pen!) the titles of the last three books I finished, I was very surprised to see that I had already finished three other books this month. It sure didn't FEEL like I'd read that many, because the last two weeks were totally consumed with one book that I spent approximately 25 hours with, and didn't even really read. But I'll explain when I get there, in the meantime, here are the books I completed in August...
Farewell to the East End, Jennifer Worth I'd never even heard of Jennifer Worth until my husband gave me Call a Midwife last Christmas, and then a friend lent me the second book, and then I found this third one in the give-away pile at the library just before the library closed for the summer! (Aside: the library opens again this Saturday! Yay!) Again, I enjoyed the writing style and the stories, in one of my favorite genres: memoirs that read like fiction.
Gypsy, Lesley Pearse This was a story of the kind I very much enjoy, historical fiction about people braving the trip to the New World in the 19th century, and then even beyond, to Alaska. I can't actually remember having read anything about the Alaskan Gold Rush before, except that it happened. I really could have done without the rather explicit bedroom scenes that seemed dropped into the story just for the sake of having them, rather than to further the plot, and without them, I could have handed this book to Katie to read. Also, too many people died, which I suppose was pretty realistic, but it sometimes felt like the author was killing them off to prove a point, not because it had to happen. And I felt that one rather main character changed character rather suddenly just to make it easy for the author, but that was one of only very few moments during the book when I remembered I was reading a book, rather than living in England, traveling across North America, climbing a mountain, etc. It was awesome reading this in the summer--I was startled sometimes to look up and realize that it was hot out, because I'd thought I was shivering in the snow! Despite my comments of what I DIDN'T like, what I enjoyed stood out to me much more.
Change of Heart, Charlotte Bingham Parts of this book felt totally surreal, all the more so because of how realistic most of it felt. Unusually for a novel (at least, of those I've read), and even more unusually for a novel written by a woman, the main character is a man. Or at least...the main character for the first part and the last part. The middle part (I don't have the book in front of me and can't say what fractions these parts are) is not exactly a flashback, but a backtracking to fill in the childhood of the woman to whom he is attracted. I found it frustrating how dense some of the characters seemed, not realizing what was going on, but also thought that was probably a better reflection of the complexities of real life than the books that have everybody always understanding everything immediately. And I liked the ending, although I had to read the last several pages several times to figure out what exactly had happened!
Housewives Can Change the World, Ann S. Eagle I received this book from the author at the end of July and started reading it immediately. This is her story (but not her real name) from childhood until about seven years ago. The combination of title and content brought somewhat the same feelings as a book I read many years ago that was written by a homeschooling mother of ten, called A Mom Just Like You. In that case, although I enjoyed the book, it was a bit difficult to believe that a mother of ten, who was homeschooling all of her children and whose husband was traveling a lot AND who wrote a book, could realistically claim to be anything at all like me. I think I had three children at the time and couldn't write a page, much less a book! (On the other hand, now that I have six children and the youngest is seven years old, I also realize that time runs differently when they're all small and many things ARE easier now than it was then with only half as many...but not all things.) In this case, "Ann" had rather more challenges to overcome than I've ever had, and moved as a married adult to a foreign country, which I think is considerably more difficult than to do so as a single 20-year-old, which is what I did. She also moved to a considerably more different culture than I did. She claims that she's "just a housewife," but certainly appears to be more involved in the work than I've ever been. (Not to mention that I refuse to call myself a housewife: I am not married to my house. But I do realize that that's just a matter of semantics.) I was fascinated by the story and then misplaced the book not just in the middle of a chapter, but the middle of an emergency scene, and didn't get the book back until the day before yesterday! I didn't actually think there was any chance at all of finishing the book that day, because I had way too much other stuff to do (see the next book...), but ended up reading for nearly an hour during the girls' piano lessons, then drove Jacob somewhere that evening and had to wait for him "just for ten minutes," which turned out to be just over half an hour and exactly enough time to finish the book.
Intercession through Creative Expression, Jörn Lange You may be very interested in this book written by my husband, which is available at Amazon and at CreateSpace, but please do NOT order it until at least the 5th of September or so, because the version currently available is NOT the final proofread version! The new one was uploaded in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday (29th to 30th), but could take 5 business days to actually have the changes. I wasn't entirely sure whether I should include this book, because although I read every single word of it, much of it out loud, and took approximately 25 hours over 12 days to do so (over half of that in the last three days of that time), I can't say that I took a whole lot of it in. I wasn't actually going to have anything to do with the proofreading of this book, nor did my husband want me to, because, so he claims, he wanted "British English" rather than American. But when I saw the proof copy and saw about ten errors on the first page, I more or less begged to proofread it, although I do not at all enjoy proofreading and am sure that I missed many things. And, of course, with very few exceptions, I much prefer American spelling, so it wasn't like I was even going to notice things like "realize"...until I saw "realizing" and "realising" both in the very same paragraph. The biggest issue wasn't errors so much as inconsistencies, in punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. Our friend Richard spent countless hours on the layout of the book (and also designed the awesome cover), during which he found and corrected plenty of typos himself although he wasn't even intentionally reading the text, and then countless more making all the changes I'd marked. Richard is very good at very many things, and one of them is using "search and replace" effectively. So they searched for the letter-combinations "ize" and "izing" and if the word was realize or symbolize or such, he changed it to realise or symbolise. And if it was size or seize, he of course did know better than to change it to sise or seise, although that would have been interesting. ;-) Likewise capitalized Nouns (my husband is German, and in German, ALL nouns are capitalized...) I definitely should add that the parts of the book that got through to me I found quite interesting, and not too much to disagree with theologically. It's not at all the type of book I would read normally, but I think it's an excellent book for the people to whom it will be interesting, namely, artists who seek to use their arts (painting, dancing, composing, etc.) in worship and intercession. I apologize (not apologise) in advance for typos and inconsistencies I missed.
It's a Sunrise, Not a Sunset, Ann S. Eagle After finishing the proofreading of Jörn's book Tuesday night (August 29th) just before 10:30 p.m., and handing the final page to Richard while he was working on the third to last page (timing...), I most certainly did not expect to finish reading another book this month, or at least, not one that I wasn't nearly finished with anyway. However, yesterday the children wanted to go to the playground to meet with some friends who have been here for the summer and are going home on Sunday. I do not DO the playground in the summer. But it's been a little bit cooler (well, less hot) the last few days, and there is some shade there, so I finally agreed to take them, with the understanding that I was going to sit and read and was not going to play. (I do usually play when we go to the playground, just ignoring the signs that have some random comments about ages on them...) So I took this book with me and read for over two hours, and at the risk of using Christianese, it really "spoke to me." I must admit, that after 25 hours proofreading one 300-page book, I had considerably more sympathy with proofing errors in this book than I had had while reading the first one by this author, and was able to appreciate the content more. Either way, I think I could relate personally to this book more than to the first anyway, because it's about Ann in the last several years, as a mature woman with children of ages similar to my children's ages, facing changes in her life similar to ones that we may be facing soon. So when the children all wanted to meet up again in the afternoon at the beach, I said yes, as long as I could stay in the shade. (I normally only go to the beach in the early morning or late afternoon/evening: in 8 1/2 years in Cyprus, yesterday was the SECOND TIME I was at the beach during the day.) And so I got to read for another hour or so (we were there for two hours, but the time was much more interrupted, with keeping an eye on the children, and talking with them, and talking with the other children's grandmother, etc.), and then tonight after Helen and Elisabeth had gone to bed (and after I'd finished reading the last chapter of Peter Pan to them--now THERE'S a weird book!!), I actually finished it.
I'm fairly sure that I read some books on my Kindle this month, but didn't write them down. I have another three weeks to read books on paper, and then it will be pretty much only my Kindle for at least...well, I don't really know how long. That's another story. Which I don't know yet.
Oh yes, one paragraph in particular in It's a Sunrise, Not a Sunset that I felt like I could have written:
"Have you ever been so hurt, disappointed, disillusioned, without hope of any reconciliation and yet not giving up on God? It's a weird feeling. To have peace with God, feel secure in His love, not blame Him for all that happened around you, yet feel absolutely hopeless with your surrounding circumstances."
Yep.
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