The Goodbye Season

I just listened to The Goodbye Season by Marian Hale, and recommend it. I wish I had read it, simply because I kept getting distracted while I was listening so didn't pay quite enough attention.

It's about a girl who loses her family to the Spanish flu, and she goes around trying to find work. One of her main hopes in life is to not end up like her mother, trapped in a marriage instead of living her dream, so that desire shapes her decisions.

From the Christian Genre

Having found myself in a home with shelf upon shelf of Amish/Christian books and plenty of time on my hands to read, I'd like to announce that with the exception of being clean, a lot of these books are poorly written and not worth reading. So of the four authors I've read in the last several days, here's how I rate them, worst to best:

I won't bother to read another of Wanda E Brunstetter's books. I read Going Home and the plot was totally predictable and the dialogue was horrible.

Even though I only skimmed the second half of B.J. Hoff's A Distant Music, I was just curious enough to read/skim the second book in the series. But I didn't bother with the third.

Beverly Lewis is a pretty decent author, with an intriguing insight into Amish culture in the book I read, The Parting.

I was about to give up on the shelf of books when I read When the Heart Cries, by Cindy Woodsmall. And then I stayed up too late last night finishing it. The plot was in-depth and heart-wrenching, and made me cry. Today I'm almost through the second in the series, When the Morning Comes, so except for the titles that shout pretty loudly that they are Christian books, I do recommend them. They aren't your typical "everything works out in the end because of their faith" books.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day, Katrina Kenison

If you google the title of this book you will find a YouTube video of the author reading a portion of the book. Just that made me want to buy this book to keep in my home library. Tammy Langill said she bought it and is reading it now and the report is "it's very good"! So I'll be making an Amazon order soon.

Thanks for the tip

I just listened to Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and really enjoyed it, thanks for the recommendation Tawn. It's a book that I would like to read in book form because I think I missed a lot by listening to it and not being able to re-read and focus on some parts. Plus when I listen while I walk it's hard to grab a dictionary.

Gordon Korman

I remember enjoying Korman's books as a teen, and recently have read a few of his newer books and enjoyed them too. Korman's first books to be published were written while he was still in high school. I just read No Coins, Please, one of his earlier books, and there was a definite lack of believability in it--no parent in their right mind, even in the 80s, would send their 11-year-old child on a road trip with a couple of 18-year-olds they had never met--but I still enjoyed the sense of humor.

Awhile back I listened to Pop, which I recommend for an entertaining read that also has some depth to it.

Another Jodi Picoult

I just finished Picture Perfect, one of Jodi Picoult's older books. It's about a girl married to a movie star who ends up being abusive, and her struggle to get out of the relationship. It was intense, especially the second half, but I felt like there were too many things going on at once: a movie star's career, anthropology, Native American culture, whirlwind romance, amnesia, pregnancy, abusive backgrounds. It felt a little like Picoult was trying to bring way too many things in to the story. The ending felt rushed, too--like you had just begun getting into the heart of the story and she ended it. Still, a good book, but I would say her writing has improved through the years.

Brooklyn - by Colm Tóibín

I'm a sucker for character driven novels. I discovered this book by accident while randomly pulling books off the shelf in the library and looking at their covers to see if they looked interesting. Toibin is an Irish author, and in this story the main character is an Irish young woman who sails across the ocean to Brooklyn because she can't find work in Ireland.

The story follows her from Ireland to Brooklyn and is narrated, albeit in the third person, in her voice. It tells of her experiences in the strange world of America and about how she copes with her distance from her family, and how she falls in love with an Italian boy. I think what I loved so much about this story is that the reader grows and changes with the girl (I keep calling her that because I can't remember her name!) as she experiences new things. The writing style is not fussy or overdone; the prose is elegant and interesting and doesn't interfere with the story.

Although this work is fiction, long after I've finished this book I find myself wondering what happened to her, and what her life was like after the story ended. The book covers only about a year and a half of her life. Definitely worth reading if you like in depth character studies.