Like lots of Adventist kids I grew up reading the books published by our SDA publishing houses — Swift Arrow is the one that comes to mind since our elementary-school teachers read it aloud almost every year. My guilty little secret, though, is that these were never my favourite books — they were almost [...]
Someday I’m going to make up a list or writers who were my spiritual guides and mentors, and like a lot of Christians I’d put C.S. Lewis at the top of my list. I read the Narnia books as a child and got into his spiritual/devotional nonfiction as a teenager. Mere Christianity was an important [...]
There’s nothing deep or life-changing about this book — it’s just a lot of fun, and I’ve always enjoyed the love story of unsuccessful photojournalist Gretchen Griner, who decides to take a stab at writing a romance novel and improbably has a romance hero fall practically into her lap. Rye St. John fulfills every romance [...]
Here’s another book I read as a young adult that had a huge impact on my view of life and particularly of love. It’s also one of the very few novels by a male author that has remained a favourite over the years. I read it first as a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book — yes, [...]
I’m sure I can’t be the only young woman whose expectations of romance were set unreachably high by reading Gaudy Night at an impressionable age. Let’s not detail exactly how many Lost Years I spent looking for Lord Peter Wimsey, and cut straight to my review.
My cousin Alison put this book into my hands, [...]
Originally published in French as Jeanne, Fille du Roi, this is another work of young-adult historical fiction I’ve loved for years, although I was older when I read this one — probably 19 or 20. It’s aimed at teenaged readers, but I enjoyed rereading it just as much as I enjoyed it the first [...]
Mistress Malapert probably wasn’t the first work of historical fiction I read, but it was certainly the book that made me fall in love with the genre. It’s the story of the headstrong and selfish Valerie, who disguises herself as a boy and runs away from a harsh guardian in Elizabethan England. [...]
The “Julie Edwards” who wrote this book is actually “Julie Andrews” of Mary Poppins and Sound of Music fame — she went through a period of writing children’s books under her married name in the 70s (Her name appears as Julie Andrews Edwards on newer editions). Both this one and her Last of the [...]
For my first Old Favourite, I chose the book that I was completely in love with when I was about 13. I like everything I’ve read by Canadian children’s author Jean Little, but Kate is not only my favourite of hers, it’s my favourite YA novel of all time.
I guess I met [...]
