Reading Update

Lately I have been kept busy by things mostly unbloggable - family illness, work work work, assorted frustrations - and meanwhile my list of books read has been growing and growing. I'm not sure I can fit them all in one post. Here goes...

Book #11 of this year was Miracle at Tenwek, a biography of missionary doctor Ernie Steury. I love missionary biographies and enjoyed this one especially as I was familiar with so many of the people and places in it.

Book #12 was Three Weeks with my Brother, my first Nicholas Sparks book. This one is a memoir, telling the story both of Sparks' trip around the world with his brother and the broader story of his family. I've read far better travel books, and most of the amazing places the men visited together didn't come alive at all with his descriptions, but as a story of how this family dealt with adversity, it was worth reading.

Book #13 was The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia, by Daniel Coleman. I loved this book and its nuanced, often ambiguous portrayal of a childhood between cultures.

Book #14, Armageddon Summer, is by Jane Yolen and Bruce Coville, two well-known YA writers. It's the story of two teenagers taken by their respective parents to a mountaintop to await the end of the world, forecast by Rev. Beelson. I have an eighth grader reading this right now, and he was drawn right in by the first chapter.

And I'll end this update in the manner of so many of my students' stories....to be continued...