Hello, friends! For this post, I am taking a quick break from my series of post about three things writers get wrong. You can expect the final post (which is about fainting) around Wednesday or Thursday.
I love books—I really love books.
Of course, I love to read them, but I also adore the smell of books (I may or may not be known in my family to fall asleep with a book in my arms….) I have long lists of books which I want to read, and never enough time or money to buy them all.
So yesterday, I stumbled upon a golden treasure (probably left over from Smaug’s hoard) which turned out to be a Barnes and Noble gift card from my wonderful aunt. I am ecstatic. Unfortunately the treasure contains no mirthril, but but I will able to buy so shiny, new books instead! I only have one issue—what books should I buy?
It is enough to buy two books, and right now, I’ve decided on this gorgeous hardcover book with the complete collection of the Sherlock Holmes stories. But I still have enough to buy one more book. And oh boy, there are so many good books out there! So I want to hear what your favorite books of all time are. So please comment below with the title(s) of your favorite book(s) and why you love them. I always love book recommendations, and I would love to read some of your favorite books.
Have a wonderful day, and God bless,
Gabrielle
*Please note that if your favorite book has swear words or anything with touchy guy/girl stuff going on, I will not be reading it. Sorry!
Write for the King 
Yes, books indeed are a wonderful thing! And oh, I am so jealous of that copy of Sherlock Holmes! I love Doyle’s work tremendously. =)
Among my favorite books are:
The Mysterious Benedict Society — It’s more of a children’s book, but the plot is very-well thought out and it itself is written well. Also it’s very tense. =)
The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson — One of the best Christian fantasy series out there. That’s all I have to say.
I can’t really think of any other books worth to use a gift card for, except for an autobiography I enjoyed: Twelve Years a Slave. However there is violence, mentions of rape, and I may or may not remember there be swearing in it, so you probably wouldn’t be interested. 😉
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Victoria,
I am really excited to read Doyle, again. I read the Hounds of Baskervilles when I was nine years old, and I did not like it at all (probably because I was half frightened to death…) So I am looking forward to giving it another chance!
Ooh! Those books sound really interesting. I really don’t mind dark topics or violence (and I do tolerate selective and an effective usage of cursing), but I try to avoid it. I think I had heard of Twelve Years a Slave, but I have never read it. It sounds very interesting.
Gabrielle
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I hope you enjoy it if you get it, then! ^.^
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I love the smell of books, too! My mom thinks I am weird, but I am a lerd (library nerd).
One of my favorite books series is the swipe series, by Evan Angler. 🙂
It is about end times, and it is written by a Christian author.
It is really funny. You should totally check it out. The library has the series (if you don’t want to buy it). 🙂
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Thanks, Allison! I will definitely check that series out (from the library or buying it, and I will hopefully be able to read it by this summer if I can’t find time before.) “Lerd” is a wonderful word 😉
Gabrielle
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I love giving book recommendations. 😀 All of them below are clean. 🙂
– Resistance by Jaye L. Knight — I can’t go through a book recommendation without giving this one. It’s the first book of a Christian fantasy series and is /amazing./ I love it so much! 😀
– The Makilien Trilogy by Molly Evangeline — Another Christian fantasy series by the same author under a different pen name. (Kinda confusing, but it works. 🙂 ) She offers free ebooks in exchange for an honest review: http://mollyevangeline.blogspot.com/2012/07/free-ebook-review-copies.html
– The Door Within Trilogy — I really like this one. I’ve read it since I was in middle school.
– I agree with Victoria’s comment, I love The Wingfeather Saga!
– The Tales of Goldstone Woods by Anne Elizabeth Stengl — I’m still in the middle of this series, but it is amazing so far! It’s another Christian fantasy series. (as all of these are, I suppose I’m a bit obsessed with that genre. xP)
– The Giver — You might have already read this one. The movie came out a few months ago and is a pretty popular dystopian book. I thought it was really good.
I think these are most of my top favorites… I have a few other series that I like, but don’t love as much as these. Let me know if you read any of them!
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Thank you so much, Katie, for the recommendations!
Resistance sounds especially good, but unfortunately BN does not have it. Christian fantasy has to be my favorite fiction genre, too, but I’ve struggling finding many good titles, so I am excited about the ones you suggested!
I’ve read The Door Within trilogy (and own it), and though it is geared more towards younger teens, I still love it, and it was part of what inspired my own fantasy series (and I list it as one of my “comp titles” in my query letters.) I also read the Giver, a while back, and I liked it, but it is not one of my favorites– probably because of the ambiguous ending.
I’ll let you know when I read any of the titles you listed, but it may not be until the beginning of May. School slows down my pleasure reading way too much…
Gabrielle
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Resistance is self-published, and you don’t find many of those books in bookstores these days…
Yeah, I didn’t like The Giver’s ending, but enjoyed the rest of the book. I feel like the author could’ve dealt with it differently.
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That Sherlock Holmes book is so pretty!
I thought of another good series. The library has it as well.
The book series is the Lost Book series by Ted Dekker.
I am on the third book, out of six.
It is a Christian teen series. About these kids that are chosen to go look for these lost books that contain a lot of power. I can’t really describe it without spoiling it. Sorry!
School slows down my pleasure reading as well. 😦
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Unfortunately, this year’s school has entirely halted my pleasure reading (I make it a point not to read two books at once, so I can get the full effect of each one, and this year all of the books I am reading for school have been quite uninteresting to me, so I haven’t read them fast enough to squeeze in a pleasure book).
I would recommend the Battletech/MechWarrior series to you. It is written by various writers, and some of the books are cleaner than others (and as a result I have skipped a couple of books), and one author to stay away from in the series is William H. Keith Jr., but the series can mostly do without his books, and it is still a great series. It is also fairly hard to find some of the books, so your progress may be fairly patchy (I am fortunate enough
However, you only have enough money for one book, I would recommend The Hidden Hand. It is a Christian…um…adventure book? by E. D. E. N. Southworth. It is set around 18th-19th century (it’s been a while since I’ve read it), and is about a young girl named Capitola Black who has been taken in by Major Ira Warfield, an old man generally called Old Hurricane (I know the names I have presented don’t make a very good impression–I mean, Ira Warfield? Ira/Mad War-field?–, but it’s a high quality book) and doesn’t know where she came from, so she is trying to find out. The title comes from how the hidden hand of God works in subtle ways to bring a large (and diverse–one of them is a thief, if not a murderer–I can’t remember for sure) cast of characters together for the final conclusion. Apparently there is a sequel called Capitola’s Peril….I’ll have to read that.
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Oh, and I also like the smell of books, though not as much as it sounds like you guys do.
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Yeah, I’ve had a really hard time being able to pleasure read, too, Zane. Mainly, I’ve been sneaking in reading at ridiculous times (Thursday, I started a book at 9:30pm and then finished it at 1:30am– not a smart move.) But I do read multiple books at a time, so that helps getting more books read. I haven’t really enjoyed many of the book for school this year either (with the exception of Hamlet, The Odyssey, and Frankenstein.)
Those books sounds really interesting (especially the Battletech one– it looks like a military focused sci-fi which is possibly my absolute favorite genre.) But the other book sounds interesting, too. Do you have a list of the books for that series, though? I’s having trouble looking them up.
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The Battletech universe is set in the 31st century, after mankind has expanded to more of the galaxy (though not even close to all of it), had their leader assassinated and then fought a war over control of the human race, and ended up losing most of their technology, so it’s a futuristic world that can do many things that we can’t (holograms, lasers, nuclear fusion–though they just know how to run the factories that make the fusion engines; they don’t actually know how to make them), but can’t do many things that we can (nuclear bombs, targeting systems, the knowledge of how the things they do have work). It’s a very unique science fiction series. Here’s a list of the novels (it’s extensive): http://www.sarna.net/wiki/List_of_BattleTech_novels
I just noticed that my parenthetical at the end of the second paragraph of my first post was left unfinished. It was supposed to say, “I am fortunate enough to have a dad who has many, if not almost all, of the books in the series and has read them so he knows which ones I shouldn’t read.” Just read a review of the book before you read it to make sure it is clean.
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For more information about the BattleTech series, look at my post in the Student Café (Haikus and ‘MechWarrior/BattleTech). I meant to include this in the last post–I wish you could edit these posts
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