Friday, December 29, 2017

Reading Year in Review - 2017

By November of this year I had read over 100 books and still hadn't found "the book of the year" that I love to rave about in my year-end blog post. Happily, that changed when I read four amazing books in one month! (The first four titles listed below) Here's a recap of the "best of" 2017.

Book that brought the most unalloyed pleasure: Beauty - a Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley

Best Classic: Dombey and Son (narrated by the amazing Mil Nicholson at Librivox, worth every minute of the 40 hours!)

Best devotional classic: The True Vine by Andrew Murray. PLEASE buy this beautiful, humbling explanation of each verse in John 15 for yourself for Christmas. The e-version is less than a dollar.

Best new authors: Poet Alexander Pope (He lived from 1688 to 1744 so he was new to me, but apparently not to the rest of the world. Wikipedia says he is the most quoted man in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations next to Shakespeare. Gorgeous language !) I also enjoyed CF Newbie Amanda G. Stevens.

Best audiobooks: Watership Down, Classics of British Literature (48 lectures by Professor John Sutherland)

Biggest Duds: Pax by Pennypacker (my review), Charity's Cross by Tyndall (my review, this is why I rarely read Christian fiction)

I chipped away at my classics challenge (only 8). Maybe that's why my year was only so-so as far as quality. For my Christian Books Challenge I read 20 titles, which was my goal. Sadly, only a handful of those were worth my time.

I also completed a two-year Bible reading plan that followed the liturgical year and included Old and New Testament readings each day. LOVED IT. It required me to read the New Testament 6 times, which helped me to become more familiar with many beloved passages.

Blessings,

2 comments:

Amy Marie said...

I loved reading through this, Hope! So interesting!

Barbara H. said...

I had read The True Vine back in college days - I used to read a lot of Andrew Murray then and haven't since, for some reason. I ought to give that one another look.

I am listening to Watership Down now! Somehow I had missed it all my life.
A couple of Dickens' books are my favorites, but there are many of his books I still haven't read, so I have been trying to read one new one a year lately. I didn't make it last year, but I'll put Dombey on my list to consider.