Book Reviews
-
The Door in the Wall is an amazing little novel with a main character who is disabled that has all the elements I want in a book, both for my children and myself. It is rightful a Newberry winner.
-
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis was truly the most horrific and deeply moving book I have read in a good way. It was C.S. Lewis’s last novel and far darker than any of them.
-
Many Christian novels focus on a non-Christian believing on Christ. Pilgrim’s Progress does this at the beginning, but the vast majority of the novel is about how to stay on the Christian walk your entire life. I
-
The Mermaid’s Apprentice is a young adult novel that follows Mabel Sinclair as she tries to rescue her brother and follows Antonio Cortez as he tries to finish his required time in the navy before opening his tailor shop. It is a fun story about mermaids and pirates that is part of Palmer’s world of…
-
The Walking Drum is a historical novel that is very different from the westerns that made Louis L’Amour famous. The book is a stand-alone only because Louis L’Amour never write the sequel he hinted at at the end of the book. Even so, it does have an ending and I found the book very enjoyable.
-
Darts is a small book for those who love traditional fantasy tropes in a fun new setting. The setting I am talking about for this book is a bar game of darts (hence the name).
-
Reuben the Rooster is an engaging and heartwarming children’s book that tells the tale of a courageous rooster who learns the value of standing up for his friends.
-
The Last Unicorn is another one of those older fantasy fiction books that are considered classics. I have been intentionally reading through these greats of the genre to improve my own writing. This one really surprised me with the pureness and lack of many of the modern-day conventions.
-
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written in 1865 by Lewis Carrol, who was a professor at Oxford. His interest in puzzles and word plays is very evident in the written versions of the books and is very difficult to translate well in a play or movie.
-
The Island of the Blue Dolphins is a great award-winning novel for middle school and older readers. It is fantastic as a fictional classic, but also great as a discussion starter.
-
Silver on the Tree is the last book in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Series. As with most of the books in this series, my review is mixed, but I still recommend it as a high-quality middle school and up book.
-
The Hobbit is a classic book for good reason. It was originally marketed for children, and it often still is, but this novel is great for any age. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a sequel to The Hobbit and is more epic.
-
Greenwitch is the third book in The Dark is Rising Sequence. This novel brings back Simon, Jane, and Barney from Over Sea, Under Stone and also Will Stanton from The Dark is Rising. It returns to more of the feel of the first novel, which has less overtly magical elements and odd magic rules.
-
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper is the first book in The Dark is Rising Series. Some times I review a whole series at a time, but these classic young adult fantasy fiction books have been around since the 1960s and are often recommended individually, especially the first two in the series.
-
A Wrinkle in Time is about three kids, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace, who go meet three magical women, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. These women help the kids travel through space to rescue Meg and Charles Wallace’s missing father.
-
The Princess Bride is perhaps the only book in which I think the movie was better. That being said, the book was still pretty good, but the movie is one of my all-time favorites.
-
I had read Tom Sawyer when I was a kid and remembered it vaguely as a good book. My oldest son and I decided to reread it together, and as a mother, I had some different responses.
-
The Island of the Blue Dolphins was one of the first novels I ever read, and its descriptions still linger vividly in my imagination.
-
Treasure Island is a classic young adult book for good reason, but I have been surprised at how many adults remember this book negatively. Mostly the complaint has been that it was boring. I honestly find this baffling.
-
Dragon’s Fire is a well-written epic fantasy very focused on the epic. It includes all the traditional elements I love from fantasy: dragons, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and gryphons. At the same time, it holds a very solid Christian message.
-
Men of Iron was written in 1891 by an American author, Howard Pyle. It is a classic young adult novel that is clean, fun, and easy to read.
-
The novel Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie is about Wendy, the Darling children, and the lost boys all choosing, on their own… without an adult, to grow up.
-
I decided to review both of these books at the same time because they take place in the same fantasy world, but really, they have two very different tones.
-
Etania’s Worth is a Christian young adult fantasy fiction book that checks all the boxes for the genre’s stereotypes while, at the same time, being fun with a refreshing new spin on some important issues.
-
Don’t Panic is one part a biography of Douglas Adams and one part a guide to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘s assortment of works. The biography part stops about three quarters through the book, and the guide doesn’t start until about halfway into it. All of it is written with Neil Gaiman’s particular style
-
I am back reviewing some young adult fantasy fiction, this one fits the category perfectly. The Nameless Soldier by Annie Douglass Lima checks all the boxes for me as being the perfect summer book for young adults ages 12 through the young at heart adults.
-
I have been trying to focus my book reviews on young adult fantasy fiction, but periodically, I also review books that help me on my journey in my writing career.
-
I usually review only one book at a time, but since I haven’t written a review of any of these books, I am going to review the whole Winternight Trilogy in this single post. First of all, before I even get to these amazing books, I have to say that I have never seen more…
-
The Finding by R.E. Joyce is a young adult epic fantasy novel very much in the fashion of Tolkien. The story starts with Ariah, an adopted speaking horse who transforms into the unicorn she had always been but had not come to age yet.
-
Raising Steam is one of the last books Terry Pratchett wrote and the second to last of his Discworld Series. Since I have only read his collection of short stories that he wrote as a teenager, Dragons at Crumbling Castle and Other Stories, I don’t have much to compare this book.
-
Since it’s Christmas time and everyone is putting out their list of top books, I decided to do the same. This is not my list for just this year though.
-
How to Write Funny is a Writer’s Digest book that is a collection of essays and interviews like many of their other how-to books. In general, I liked the book and learned a lot, but I do have a few complaints.
-
Heart Song is a well-written teen science fiction novel about space colonization. The protagonist is a thirteen-year-old orphan girl who is part of a space colonization program to build the first base on a planet outside our solar system.
-
All Things Now Living by Rondi Bauer Olson is a young adult science fiction novel. Amy is a sixteen-year-old girl whose father shoves her into the dome-locked world of New Lithisle with coding to stop the dome from collapsing.
-
I have read a few writing books, and I think this is one of the better books out there. It is optimistic and encouraging. Rather than telling you all the things you shouldn’t do when writing fiction, Jack Smith focuses on all the options of what you can do.
-
The Retail is a satire on modern American under-employment. Penn, the main character, gets a job at a home improvement store which all but destroys his life. It is so funny and yet I find it also disturbingly sad.
-
I had kind of expected this book to be just another cutesy home decorating book which I tend to read one after another like some guilty obsession akin to chocoholics eating chocolate. It turns out this book ended up being more than what I had expected.
-
I had been very excited about this book because I had hoped from the description of it that I could learn what good conversation past and present was like and therefore improve my own style of conversing.
-
Forever Chic by Tish Jett is a well-written survey of French culture that highlights the strengths that brings so much admiration while dispelling myths such as “French women don’t go to the gym”.
-
I read a biography of Abigail Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin this past month. This is probably one of the best biographies I have ever read (and I LOVE reading biographies!).
-
The book I chose was by Justine Picardie. She was very thorough, and I enjoyed her book, but like a lot of modern British writers, she was a bit over dramatic and liberal with her opinions.
