Karl's Reading List

Published by Candlewick Press: Somerville, Massachusetts, 2012. The main character in this book, Daniel, is obsessed with death. Ever since his older brother, Eli, was killed in the Iraq War, Daniel has been keeping a 'book of the dead', writing down the cause of death of various historical figures. Although Daniel doesn't recognise it, this is his way of coping with the grief surrounding his brother's loss. His parents are coping far worse. Although the 'book of the dead' is an important feature of After Eli, the plot doesn't focus on it too much, mostly including facts from the book as epigraphs to open each chapter (and tie into the theme of the chapter slightly). Instead, After Eli is far more reminiscent of something like Bridge to Terabithia : a slightly melancholic story about a young boy falling in love with a girl who draws him out of his shell, even though foreshadowing makes us predict they will not end up together. In After Eli, the girl is quest...

Published by Bethany House Publishers: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1991. Book 2 in 'An Emerald Ballad.' Preceded by ' Song of the Silent Harp. ' Followed by 'Land of a Thousand Dreams.' Last year, Elise and I read Song of the Silent Harp , the first book in this series, and we blown away by how sad it was. Heart of the Lonely Exile still has some sad moments, but these are more spread out, and now the characters even get to have some good experiences!! We pick up where we left off: Nora and Daniel Kavanagh are living in New York, where Nora is being wooed by her old friend Michael Burke. Meanwhile, Evan Whittaker - the one-armed and stuttering Englishman - is also harbouring feelings for Nora, and Sara Farmington may have some feelings towards Michael.  A class love-square situation. Yes, the word 'heart' in the title of this book does have some significance, as much of the book is filled with angst, pining, and sweet declarations of love. And, having walked...

Published by Lothian/Hachette Australia: Sydney, NSW, 2016. This is a book I grabbed from the English department while looking for a Year 11 text. I actually thought that I had already read this book at some time in the past, but it turns out I must have been thinking of something else! Maybe Krystyna's Story ? The Bone Sparrow is set in an Australian refugee camp and stars nine year old Subhi, who has lived there his whole life. With such a setting, you know The Bone Sparrow is going to have some intense moments, and it does, but what surprised me is how strangely hopeful and optimistic the book is despite this! Yes, there are abusive guards. Yes, there are tragic deaths. Yes, there are sick relatives who may not survive. Yes, there are depressing backstories. Yes, the actual events happening around Subhi are heavy and sobering. And yet Subhi - for the most part - is upbeat. Later in the book he meets Jimmie, an Australian girl who is also upbeat, and who continually sneaks into t...

Published   by Bethany House Publishers: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1991. Book 1 in 'An Emerald Ballad.' Followed by ' Heart of the Lonely Exile. ' This is the first in the series of Christian novels that I remember reading when I was younger. After finishing the Mark of the Lion series, Elise and I were looking for a new series in a similar vein, and decided to give this one a try. All I could remember about the book was that it was very sad, and was set during the Irish Potato Famine.  So... This book is set during the Irish Potato Famine, and it is very sad! We follow the quickly dwindling Kavanagh family as they seek to survive the horror of those times, mostly focussing on the middle child Daniel and his frail yet stubborn mother Nora. The main support they have comes in the form of Morgan Fitzgerald, a revolutionary man who has loved Nora since they were both children, and whom Daniel idolizes. Also gradually gaining prominence as the plot progresses is the character...

From an original idea by Siobhan Dowd. Published by Walker Books: London, England, 2012 (2011). This is one of those books I've heard people rave about, and now I understand why. Technically a children's book, and definitely written with (older) children in mind, A Monster Calls nevertheless confronts some very heavy topics. Conor faces bullying at school, constant nightmares, and now the nightly visit of a monster, but all of this pales alongside the fact that his mother is dying of cancer. I don't remember the word 'cancer' being actually written in the book, but it is very obvious that this is what she is suffering from. It is also very obvious from the beginning that Conor's mother is dying. The titular monster begins visiting Conor at 12.07 at night, and explains that Conor has 'called' him. The monster says it will now tell him three stories "from when I walked before" (page 45), and then Conor will tell the monster a final story, which w...

Published by Marshall Morgan and Scott Publications Ltd: Basingstoke, Hants, UK, 1987. This book was recommended to me by my parents and my grandmother, from whom I borrowed the copy I read. The author, Jennifer Rees-Larcombe, tells her story of learning to care for others, inspired by a remark made by her son that Jesus "hasn't got arms any more to cuddle sad people" (page 16). Rees-Larcombe gradually learned to open her home and life to others far more than she had been doing, and later in life began to receive similar care after being diagnosed with "a disease rather like Multiple Sclerosis " (page 9).  The book is full of examples of caring for others (both by and to the author and other stories that she has learned of) and the impact this can have on both giver and receiver. It also highlights how often caring for others can help others on their faith journey. Knowing that people can often feel inadequate when faced with difficult situations, Rees-Larcombe...

Published by Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, England, 1992. First published in 1847. This is my first time reading anything by one of the Brontë sisters, and whoa, its fairly intense! I thought I knew a bit of the plot, but upon reflection I think I might have been thinking of Jane Eyre instead. In this story, we meet Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, two siblings living in the titular Wuthering Heights, a remote farmhouse in West Yorkshire. At a young age a third child joins their household, 'Heathcliff', a child found by Mr Earnshaw and brought home to be raised with the family. Heathcliff and Catherine are close, and it becomes more and more apparent that Heathcliff is in love with Catherine. These two wander the moors together, and when spying on their neighbours at Thrushcross Grange, Catherine is attacked by the family's dogs and is forced to recover there. This causes an attachment to grow between her and Edgar Linton, the son in the Thrushcross Grange hous...

Published by Wordsworth Classics: Hertfordshire, England, 2010 (1996). Translated from Russian by Constance Garnett, 1913. Originally published in Russian 1868-1869. This was a hard slog. You may have noticed lately that my reading output has dropped. Although I can put some of it down to busyness or other external factors, a good chunk of my actual reading time over the last month (at least) has been devoted to getting through this novel. It is a slightly longer novel than some I've read this year (559 pages), but the style has been the hardest factor - I have managed to get through longer novels far quicker.  I'm still a little torn as to why this is, particularly as I really enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov , which is also by Dostoevsky. For a while I thought it might be the translation, but both novels were translated by the same person, so that also seems unlikely. One thing that might explain it came up when I began looking into the book's creation a bit further after f...

Published in an omnibus edition as "The Scarlet Pimpernel Omnibus" containing: " The Scarlet Pimpernel "; " I Will Repay "; "Eldorado"; "Sir Percy Hits Back". Omnibus published 1957 (1930). "I Will Repay" first published 1906. The second novel in the Scarlet Pimpernel series, I Will Repay repositions the Scarlet Pimpernel as a supporting character, instead focussing on Paul Déroulède (a French lawyer) and Juliette Marny, whose brother was slain by Déroulède years earlier (in a fair duel) and has been sworn to revenge against the killer by her dying father. In order to aid her chances as revenge, Juliette manages to ingratiate herself into Déroulède's household, and while there finds herself beginning to fall for her host. Try as she might, however, Juliette cannot bring herself to simply ignore the oath she has taken... This, like its predecessor, is a fairly melodramatic work, with this one even more so. Both Juliette and...

Published by Canongate Books Ltd: Edinburgh, Scotland, 2020. Audiobook released by Audible 13-08-2020.  Narrated by Carey Mulligan. A book that I only listened to because it was offered for free by Audible and a book with a little bit more language than most I would read, I found The Midnight Library to fairly enjoyable. Considering it is a book that begins with the main character attempting suicide ('offscreen'), I am surprised to announce that it is quite an uplifting and encouraging book overall. Nora Seed's life is going from bad to worse. Not only is she estranged from her brother, regretting past decisions and being made redundant from her low-paid job at a music store but this morning her cat was found dead on the road as well. Convinced that she doesn't want to live anymore, Nora attempts to end her life. Instead of dying, however, she finds herself in the titular Midnight Library, where Mrs Elm - her former school librarian (!) - gives her the chance to live al...

Published by Orion Books: London, England, 2014 (2013). Over the past few days Elise and I had a mini-holiday in Wellington, staying at the home of some friends. Rather than take a lot of reading material I looked through their bookshelf and ending up reading this novel. I had never heard of Linwood Barclay before, but he is a Canadian author, and writes a lot of detective stories. This is one such story, which borders on the 'thriller' genre in patches. Private detective Cal Weaver, stopped at traffic lights on a rainy night, is approached by a teenage girl wanting a lift. At first he refuses her, but when she admits to knowing Cal's now-deceased son Scott, Cal decides to pick her up. After a confusing set of circumstances Claire goes missing and now Cal is determined to figure out what happened to her. He must face off against a fairly corrupt police force, a killer on the loose, the antagonistic mayor of the town, and try to repair the relationship he has with his wife w...

Published as an audiobook by Audible Studios and released 30-11-2012. Originally published by Macmillan Publishers, 2012. Narrated by Lauren Fortgang. I recently got an offer of 2 months of Audible for 99c a month, so will have access to a few more audiobooks for a little while (though I'm still pacing myself with them better than in the past). Shadow and Bone was actually free to listen to for the month of June, so it seemed like a good excuse to check out a series I've only vaguely heard of until now. This is a Young Adult novel through and through. It is the most Young Adulty of any fantasy book I've ever read. The main character, Alina Starkov, is a typical Young Adult female protagonist: spunky, learning slowly about her special talents (in this case, 'sun-summoning') that will lead her to eventually be recognised as the book's 'chosen one', no real family connections (she is, in fact, an orphan), and, of course, becoming attracted to two different ...

Published by Puffin Books: New Zealand, 2010. (2004). This is the second book by David Hill that I have read, and like No Safe Harbour , this book also focuses around a single event and its aftermath. However, whereas Harbour focussed on the historical sinking of the Wahine, Coming Back focuses on a much smaller-scale, though still life-altering event, a teenager getting hit by a car. Tara is running home from her job working at a fish n chip shop and, slightly distracted and stumbling as she crosses the road, is struck by a car driven by Ryan, a driver on his restricted licence who has been illegally carrying passengers and had also been distracted at the wrong moment. Ryan stops to help, and Tara is rushed off to hospital where she begins a fight for her life. The perspectives shift back and forth between Ryan and Tara, although much of Tara's perspective is whilst still unconscious and trying to understand what has happened to her. The book does a good job of keeping us uncertai...

Published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.: Carol Stream, Illinois, 2002 (1995). Book 3 in the 'Mark of the Lion' series: " A Voice in the Wind "; " An Echo in the Darkness "; " As Sure as the Dawn ." The final book in the Mark of the Lion series, As Sure as the Dawn changes its focus from Hadassah and Marcus to Atretes, the German gladiator who appeared in A Voice in the Wind . Picking up where that book left off, Atretes is an angry wreck of his former self, betrayed by the woman he loved and grieving the apparent death of his son. However, early on he learns (from Hadassah) that his son is still alive, and sets out to reclaim him from the woman who is now raising him: a Christian widow named Rizpah. As with the previous two entries in this series, As Sure as the Dawn focuses a lot on the relationships between the main characters, with Rivers' pre-Christian background as a writer of Romance fiction skillfully helping us to care deeply about ...

Published by Librivox on 2011-02-03. Listened to on YouTube. Narrated by Elizabeth Klett, with other voices provided by various narrators. Originally published as 'Little Women' in 1868 and 'Good Wives' (UK) or 'Little Women Volume Two' (US) in 1869. Republished as a single work 1880. Followed by ' Little Men. ' Wow. What a book/s!  Although knowing the basic outline of the story (I have seen the Winona Ryder movie version years ago, Elise has seen the Saoirse Ronan version and a stage-play) neither of us were prepared for just how sweet, heartwarming, instructional and... well...  Christian the original book is. Each chapter felt like a warm hug, in that the characters would learn and grow in the most ideal ways, even when learning to face some dark moments of life. The tear-jerking moments were appropriately tear-jerking, the heart-warming moments delightfully heartwarming, and the sly (semi-sarcastic at times, though never cruel) nature of the narrati...

Published by Chatto & Windus: London, England, 2002. Translated by Esther Tyldesley. When I started the Alphabet Soup challenge, I knew that some letters would have a few less options to choose from, and felt that X would probably be the hardest. As I approached this letter I did occasionally glance ahead, and would see one or two books at most on display at any one time. In the end, when I went to get a book out for X there was only one fiction book currently in the library by an X author. Skimming through it I was unimpressed, so I browsed through non-fiction for only the third time in this challenge.  The Good Women of China is a collection of biographical stories told by Xinran, who for eight years ran a radio programme in China called Words on the Night Breeze dedicated to telling the stories of Chinese women. Fifteen such stories, including Xinran's own upbringing, are presented here, including some so traumatic that she was never able to share them on air.  The f...

Published by Triad/Panther Books: London, 1986 (1985). First published 1984. The shortest Booker book I've read so far, Hotel du Lac takes place almost entirely in the titular hotel, located in a small town in Switzerland. The author Edith Hope, who writes Romance novels under the pen-name Vanessa Wilde, has come to the hotel to finish her latest book and to have some distance from a traumatic decision she has made back home. While at the hotel she makes the acquaintance of the few other hotel guests, most prominently Mrs Pusey and her adult daughter Jennifer - who seem almost to embody opulence and wealth - and Monica, a quieter woman with a loud dog that is suffering from an eating disorder. She also strikes up a friendship, and possibly more, with Phillip Neville, a fairly loosely-moralled man who has come to the hotel after his wife has run away with another man. Back in London, Edith has been seeing a married man, David Simmonds, and continues to write to him throughout the n...

Published by Pushkin Press: London, 2016. Originally published in French as Tristesse de la terre in 2014. Translated by Ann Jefferson. This is an odd book. A non-fiction text, telling the story of Buffalo Bill's forays into show business, including the end of the life of Sitting Bull and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, the book shies away from going too in-depth into the facts of any of these moments, instead choosing to 're-imagine' the events, focussing more on the little moments, the feelings, the thoughts that may have crossed the mind of those involved in the events. As one example of this prose, after the massacre of Indians has happened at Wounded Knee, Vuillard starts a new section with:  "A violent storm blew up. Snow fell from the sky like a divine ordinance. The snowflakes whirled around the dead Indians, light and untroubled. They landed on hair and lips. Every eyelid was spangled with hoar frost. What a delicate thing a snowflake is! It's like a weary l...

Published by MacLehose Press: London, 2012. First published by McClelland & Stewart: Canada, 2010. This is a very well-written and melancholic book which at times reminded me of The Sea , a Booker-Prize-winning novel by John Banville that I read five years ago! Both are narrated by an older protagonist looking back upon their life as a child, both cover love and loss (with the loss happening in fairly dramatic fashion), both jump around to different time periods, both have a small cast of characters based in a small area, both have the adult in question having returned to the house where the childhood events have taken place, and both have occasional moments that cross the line into uncomfortable reading.  In this book Liz Crane recalls her summers visiting the farm of her uncle and aunt on the northern shores of Lake Erie. She and her cousins are made to play with Teo, the son of one of the Mexican seasonal workers, and over time Liz and Teo begin to form a connection. Meanwh...