Category Book Reviews
The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle
Every time I read another of Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks books I find myself amazed at her talent. Somehow she is able to take the liturgical calendar and turn it into a thoughtful, rambling, cyclical book about faith, writing, and motherhood.
My Advent Reading List
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, it’s time to look ahead to my favorite part of the year–Christmas! This year I’ll be reading three books during the Christmas season, one is an annual favorite, but the other two are new for 2015.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Whenever anyone asks me for a fiction recommendation, this is one of the first titles that pops into my head. A friend of mine recommended this book to me a few years ago, and I re-read it this weekend. Good news: It’s just as delightful the second time around. Oscar Wilde said, “If one cannot […]
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte
2015 has been the year of excellent nonfiction, and Joseph Loconte’s book did not disappoint. The full title is A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18, and Loconte does justice to all of those topics in under 300 pages, which is pretty impressive.
Henry IV, Part II
If you ever need proof that history repeats itself, read Henry IV, Part II. Just like Henry IV, Part I, this play focuses on King Henry IV, his son Hal, and Hal’s less than perfect friends. In Part 2, however, Shakespeare plays on the reader’s expectations. He knows we are all waiting for Hal’s reformation, waiting for Hal to “banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.” He knows we are waiting, and he makes us wait. And wait. And then wait some more.
Dog Songs by Mary Oliver
Every year I try to read from several different genres, poetry included. While I’ve read some poetry this year, this was my first book of poetry of 2015. Dog Songs by Mary Oliver is a collection of poems written about and in celebration of dogs. The poems are short and simple, and there is also a great […]
Henry IV, Part I
Prince Hal is the Shakespearean character I want to love–but it’s tricky. At the beginning of the play, he’s a prodigal son. He wastes time in taverns, pulls pranks, and commits petty crimes. It’s easy to like this Prince Hal, the easygoing, carefree friend of Falstaff. But there’s an edge to Hal that doesn’t let you laugh along with him.
Richard II (in Retrospect)
If I had to pick a theme song for the first two history plays I’ve read so far, it would be “Another One Bites the Dust.” The play begins with a king who has blood on his hands. Once Henry deposes Richard, we see a new king with the same old problem. He’s guilty as well, and his hands are not clean.
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle
I must never lose sight of those other deaths which precede the final, physical death, the deaths over which we have some freedom; the death of self-will, self-indulgence, self-deception, all those self-devices which, instead of making us more fully alive, make us less. Yesterday I posted an old review of A Circle of Quiet, the first […]
Hamlet
I’d like to add a note to my definition of a classic. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I think a classic is a book that is widely accepted of being noteworthy. I also strongly believe that a classic book is one that never stops speaking to you–it’s that book you can […]
Book Fifty 