BOOKS I READ IN 2013

In spite of the popularity of the Kobo and Kindle readers I still prefer the texture and mustiness of paper pages in the used books I read. There is a quaintness in the used book store that I frequent with the somewhat eccentric, heavily bespectacled gentleman owner who so kindly considers each book brought in to sell, and the ones I purchase, as he tabulates the final price with a pencil in a well worn, coiled notebook. The shop always has indistinct odors of either the lunch the owner has cooked in his back room, or possibly from the spices that seep through the floorboards from the bulk food store next door. Nevertheless, it is always a pleasurable and rewarding experience to leave with an armful of potentially good reads. Besides this I can always rely on books to borrow from my daughter's laden bookshelves or to be slipped unusual titles by a son-in-law like, "How to Write a Good Sentence: And How to Read One" by Stanley Fish. I smile at this as I know how much help I need in this area of my feeble attempts at writing. ( not finished reading so I couldn't add it to my list)

Looking over this list I realize that I explored a variety of genres, so much so that I often had more than one book on the go as I balanced a novel with some thought provoking spiritual works.

* Non-fiction

1. World Without End - Ken Follett
2. * Garlic and Sapphires - Ruth Reichl
3. * Christ Play in Ten Thousand Places - Eugene Peterson
4. * Between two Worlds - Roxana Saberi
5. * Tolstoy and the Purple Chair - Nina Sankovitch
6. The Distant Hours - Kate Morton
7. * A Mountain of Crumbs - Elena Gorokhova
8. Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
9. * Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse - Jennifer Worth
10. The Return - Victoria Hislop 
11. * Call the Midwife, Farewell to the East End - Jennifer Worth
12. * Escape from Camp 14 - Blaine Harden
13. Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy
14. * Comfort Me With Apples - Ruth Reichl
15. * Where God was Born - Bruce Feiler
16. Sweetness in the Belly - Camilla Gibbs
17. * Sacrilege - Hugh Halter
18. Two Lives - Vicram Seth
19. A Moonlit Cage - Linda Holeman
20. From Dust and Ashes - Tricia Goyer 
21. The Stone Angel - Margaret Lawrence

“A house without books is like a room without windows.”

 ― Horace Mann