At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

What day is it? Yikes! What a week!

I got my mom and sister moved to Omaha and flew back to Portland. But got back to the office to a crazy week. My law partner is home with covid. There is a mountain of work for me to catch up on from when I was gone. And my Instagram account was hacked, recovered, and rehacked because the hackers snuck an email address in there that let them change the password after I had recovered the account. So I've been trying to get my Instagram account back from Bitcoin lunatics while changing the passwords on the 800 other websites, apps, and devices in my life. 

If any of you follow me on Instagram, first, thank you. Second, sorry! Please bear with me while I try to recover my account. I really don't want to start over from scratch. Just ignore all the stories trying to sell you cryptocurrency!

In the meantime, here is a delayed Book Beginnings on Fridays post. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of a book you are reading this week. Or just a book that caught your fancy. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

In the heart of the West End, there are many quiet pockets, unknown to almost all but taxi drivers who traverse them with expert knowledge, and arrive triumphantly thereby at Park Lane, Berkeley Square or South Audley Street.

-- from At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie. I need a nice vintage mystery to calm my frayed nerves. In this case, a Silver Vintage Mystery as this one was published in 1965. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. If you post on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From At Bertram's Hotel:

"Of course you won't get run over," said Elvira. "You know how nippy you are on your feet, and all London traffic is used to pulling up suddenly."

What are they up to? Doesn't sound like a safe plan!

Please wish me luck getting my Instagram back!

The Double Life of Katharine Clark by Katherine Gregorio -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Greeting from Omaha, Nebraska, my Book Beginnings friends! I'm on the road this week, helping my mom and sister move from Oregon back to our hometown of Omaha. We've lived in Oregon for over 40 years, but the Midwest called them home. I will miss having them close by. Fortunately, it is easy to fly to Omaha, since it is right in the middle!

On to Book Beginnings! Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

At half past seven on the twenty-fourth of January 1955, Katherine Clark shivered as she left the dark, run-down lobby of the old, central district courthouse and stepped outside onto its front steps. 

-- from Chapter One, "Belgrade" in The Double Life of Katharine Clark: The Untold Story of the Fearless Journalist Who Risked Her Life for Truth and Justice by Katherine Gregorio.

The Double Life of Katharine Clark is a thrilling new nonfiction book about an American journalist who smuggled an anti-Communist manuscript out of Yugoslavia during the Cold War. Read the publisher's description below because it sounds amazing! I just got my copy and can't wait to read it. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS 

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Double Life of Katharine Clark:

She took a deep breath and turned to Milovan, asking him if he remembered her from the courthouse.

Milovan stared back at her blankly, furrowed lines wrinkling his forehead.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War. While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.

Against the backdrop of protests in Poland and a revolution in Hungary, she risked her life to ensure Djilas's work made it past the watchful eye of the Yugoslavian secret police to the West. She single-handedly was responsible for smuggling his scathing anti-Communism manifesto, The New Class, out of Yugoslavia and into the hands of American publishers. The New Class would go on to sell three million copies worldwide, become a New York Times bestseller, be translated into over 60 languages, and be used by the CIA in its covert book program.

Meticulously researched and written by Clark's great-niece, Katharine Gregorio, The Double Life of Katharine Clark illuminates a largely untold chapter of the twentieth century. It shows how a strong-willed, fiercely independent woman with an ardent commitment to truth, justice and freedom put her life on the line to share ideas with the world, ultimately transforming both herself--and history--in the process.

Family Business: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery by S. J. Rozan -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

Family Business: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery by S. J. Rozan (2021, Pegasus Books)

Family Business is the latest mystery novel in S. J. Rozan's long-running series featuring New York private eye Lydia Chin and her fellow P.I. boyfriend Bill Smith. Here, Lydia and Bill get pulled in to solve the mystery of a murdered Tong leader found dead in a Chinatown building at the center of a real estate development battle.

Family Business is first-rate entertainment. I loved how the story made New York City feel like a village by focusing on the interconnected “Chinatown” community. I put Chinatown in quotation marks because one of the cool things I learned was that there are many Chinatown neighborhoods throughout New York City, not only the one tourists walk through in Manhattan, down near Soho. Lydia, her extended family, and a network of characters who have known each other since high school cross paths on both sides of the law.

The plot centers around the Tong headquarters. Crime boss Big Brother Choi left the building to his niece upon his death. A hotshot young Chinese developer wants to buy the building to tear down for a condo development, which Choi opposed and so does his niece. The Tong members are divided over what to do with the building and who will take over now that Choi is dead. They also believe stolen riches may be hidden in the building. There’s plenty of action, some light humor, and enough complexity to keep your attention right to the end.


NOTES

Even though Family Business is the 14th book in Rozan’s Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, I had no problem reading it as a standalone. Rozan gives enough of the characters’ background to smooth over any blank spots.

Only after I finished it did I remember that I had dipped into the series before with Winter and Night, which won the Edgar Award in 2003. Bill Smith was the narrator and focus of that one, in contrast to Family Business that Lydia Chin narrates. I look forward to reading more of these fast-paced books. The relationship between Lydia and Bill is engaging, as is the way Chin’s mother treats Lydia’s non-Chinese boyfriend.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

It's time again for Book Beginnings on Fridays, where participants share the opening sentence (or so) of the book they are reading this week. Or you can share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

What other weekly blog events do you participate in besides Book Beginnings? I also play along with the Friday 56 (see below). I don't do any others on Fridays. I like Mailbox Monday, where participants share the books that came into their homes the prior week -- a show and tell type of thing. I used to do more, but it's all I can do to keep Book Beginnings going every week! But I'm interested to know what weekly events are out there these days.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms.

-- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. This is one of my very favorite books. I didn't read it as a kid but I fell in love with it as an adult. 

WITW is one of the few books I've reread. My library had the audiobook edition narrated by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame and it is terrific! I’ve since listened to it three times. It is my go-to whenever I need a morale boost.

This month I'm reading WITW with my eyes for the first time and it is just as wonderful. I'm taking part in a WITW real along on Instagram. I've never done an online read along and it's fun. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please link to your Book Beginning post in the box below and use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another weekly teaser event is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice where you can find details and add a link to your post. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book you are featuring. You can also find a teaser from 56% of the way through your ebook or audiobook.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Wind in the Willows:

The Rat looked very grave, and stood in deep thought for a minute or two. Then he re-entered the house, strapped a belt round his waist, shoved a brace of pistols into it, took up a stout cudgel that stood in a corner of the hall, and set off for the Wild Wood at a smart pace.

The anthropomorphization in WITW is the best there is! I laugh at all of it, especially when the animals do things like carry pistols, eat sausages, or as Ratty does in this scene, make their way "manfully" through the woods.  

Champagne Widows by Rebecca Rosenberg -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

Champagne Widows by Rebecca Rosenberg (2022, Lion Heart Publishing) 

If you enjoy fact-based historical fiction with strong women protagonists, Champagne Widows is the book for you. Award-winning author Rebecca Rosenberg tells the story of the founding of the legendary champagne house, Veuve Clicquot, which started 250 years ago in Reims, France.

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin inherited her wine making great-grandfather’s extraordinary sense of smell, referred to in the family as Le Nez, “The Nose.” Headstrong and beloved by her textile merchant father, Barbe-Nicole married her childhood sweetheart, François Clicquot, when she was 21 years old. François went into partnership with his champagne-making father and soon took over the company with Barbe-Nicole’s help. Rosenberg’s attention to historical detail about wine making and distribution brings the struggles of the young couple to life, with scenes of handmade bottles exploding in the summer heat and the excitement of hiring their first commercial salesman to sell the product throughout Europe, particularly in Russia.

But Champagne Widows is not François’s story. When he died only seven years after their wedding, Barbe-Nicole petitioned her father-in-law to allow her to take over the winery. A that time, the Napoleonic Code did not allow most women to own property in their own name or even work without permission from their husbands or fathers. Only widows were allowed to own their own businesses, so it was as Veuve (Widow) Clicquot that Barbe-Nicole planned to run the champagne house.

Rosenberg weaves an irresistible tale out of Barbe-Nicole’s business challenges and her romantic dilemmas. Her father-in-law did not make her takeover easy, apprenticing her to a stodgy winemaker with hidebound ideas about wine and lecherous ideas about the young Veuve. Once she finally gained control, she had to make and sell wine during the Napoleonic wars, in the face of navel blockades that paralyzed commercial shipping and a Russian ban on French products. Her closest sidekick was her loyal sales manager, who tempted her with more than a working relationship. But the Napoleonic Code would force her to turn over ownership of her winery to a new husband. Was marriage worth the loss of her business?

Champagne Widows is a page-turning delight of a novel and a sparkling tribute to "la grande dame de la Champagne."

NOTES

Rebecca Rosenberg has written two prior historical fiction books about real-life women: The Secret Life of Mrs. London, about the friendship between the wives of Harry Houdini and Jack London, and Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor, about a woman who came to run a Colorado gold mine. 

Amy Nordhues, author of Preyed Upon: Breaking Free from Therapist Abuse -- AUTHOR INTERVIEW

 AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Amy Nordhues, author of Preyed Upon: Breaking Free from Therapist Abuse (2021)

Amy Nordhues was groomed and abused as a young adult by the church-based psychiatrist she went to for help with depression. She struggled with the ongoing trauma of her abuse, especially the shame and self-blame she carried with her. After much work brought healing and peace, Nordhues wanted to write a memoir to share her story. She wrote her book, Preyed Upon, primarily for abuse survivors, but it is comforting to anyone who has faced trauma and helpful for anyone supporting trauma survivors. 

Amy talked with Rose City Reader about her memoir, resources for sexual assault victims, and how others can support survivors of sexual assault: 

How did you come to write your new memoir Prayed Upon?

After I was taken advantage of by a “Christian” therapist/psychiatrist in 2014, I decided to write out my story. Really, I just wanted to understand what happened so that I could begin to forgive myself. As the story unfolded on the pages, I began to see the sneaky and insidious manipulation process. In time, I knew that I needed to share my story with the world so that other adult victims would know they weren’t alone and that what happened to them was not their fault.

Your memoir is intensely personal – did you have any qualms about sharing so much?

Yes! It was a terrifying prospect to put my personal life story into print, but it was an important step in my healing and in reducing the stigma adult victims experience. I respect authors of memoir so much. We take a huge risk when we tell our stories.

Who is your intended audience and what do you hope your readers will gain from your book?

Women, ages 25-65+; adult victims of sexual and/or emotional abuse; survivors of childhood sexual abuse; mental health professionals; Christians, especially those who are struggling to find God in their suffering; and church leaders.

Prayed Upon addresses the following felt needs:

• The inner workings of the abuse process of adult victims;

• How past childhood abuse can make an adult vulnerable to predators;

• The defective beliefs that cause victims to doubt their own realities and become ensnared by abusers;

• An up-close look at the insidious grooming process a predator uses to trap his victims;

• The power a therapist has over a client;

• That the abuse of an adult by a person in a position of power is not a mutual affair;

• A path towards healing for victims—that with Christ there is hope;

• How the spouses of adult victims are secondary victims;

• How loved ones can best support the victims in their lives;

• Possible routes to justice;

• The trials victims will likely face once they come forward;

• God's hand at work amidst the tribulations of victims;

• That no situation is too dire that God cannot use it for good;

• How victims can replace their faulty beliefs with God’s truth; and

• That Christ is the ultimate healer.

Do you think there is benefit to victims of abuse in telling their stories?

I do. Anything that gets it out of the victim has benefit whether that means talking to one person, sharing with a therapist, writing out the story. Holding shame and trauma inside is mentally and physically detrimental. We are not meant to do life alone. Secrets are heavy!

What did you learn from writing your book – either about the experiences you describe or the writing process – that most surprised you?

I was surprised to uncover the lies I was believing about myself, lies that stemmed from early childhood. These negative self-tapes placed a target on my back and made me vulnerable to predators.

Can you recommend any other memoirs that deal with surviving abuse with the honesty and self-forgiveness you put into yours?

• Seduced into Darkness: Transcending My Psychiatrist’s Sexual Abuse by Carrie T. Ishee (Terra Nova Books, 2020)

• Mending the Shattered Mirror: A Journey of Recovery from Abuse in Therapy by Analie Shepherd (2016)

• This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang by Christa Brown (Foremost Press, 2009)

• She’s Still in There: Healing the Wounded Child Within by Lisa Baldwin (Life Stories Publishing, 2021)

• Let Me Prey Upon You: Breaking Free from a Minister’s Sexual Abuse by Sandy Kirkham (Absam LLC, 2021)

What resources would you recommend for survivors of adult sexual abuse? What about their loved ones and supporters?

I have a long list of organizations and other resources to help survivors on my website at this page.

What can friends and family of abuse victims do to support them?

Listen and empathize. Don’t try to understand it unless you have experience with sexual abuse especially abuse as an adult. Don’t ask questions so that you can better understand it yourself. Your words can be extremely hurtful so be slow to speak. What you can do is relate to their pain, betrayal, confusion, hurt. Guide the victim towards support of those who understand, whether that be a ministry or a therapist. Research online and try to find resources for them. Help them find books on the subject. Although you can be a listening ear, friends and family are not equipped to handle this level of trauma. Do not rush victims through their pain! Healing takes as long as it takes!

Please tell us about your work with abuse survivors and advocates.

Besides writing my memoir, Preyed Upon, I also have an Amy Nordhues website full of resources, helpful articles, suggested reading, and interviews I’ve done on the subject. I hope to begin traveling and speaking on the issue of adult abuse. I am considering joining with other ministries as there is strength in numbers. I will respond to anyone who reaches out to me through my website or through social media. I would love to work towards legislation in my state regarding therapist abuse. Currently, it is criminally illegal in only 32 states.

What is the most valuable advice you’ve been given as someone working to help abuse survivors?

Victims of crimes do not owe explanations to anyone regarding the nature of the crime committed against them!

Do you have any events or speaking engagements coming up?

Most of the speaking events and interviews I have done thus far are on the press page of my website. More recently, I spoke last month at two sexual abuse conferences, the Beautifully Broken Conference and the Restoring Hope: Celebrating Resilience Conference. Both those talks will be posted on my website shortly. 

What’s next? What are you working on now?

I would like to record Preyed Upon for audio book.

I am considering a second book to address what happens after the survivor escapes the abuser and all the risks they face in coming forward as well as the challenges they face in healing.

I am also looking for speaking engagements. I can be found on Christian Speaker and Christian Women Speakers.

THANK YOU, AMY!

PREYED UPON IS AVAILABLE ONLINE.

A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris (2021, Pegasus Books)

When Rebecca Buckfast takes over as head of St. Oswald’s school, you want to root for her success. It’s time this 500-year-old school for boys had a good shaking up. Admitting girls as students and putting a strong female leader in charge is just what this stodgy institution needs. Or is it? Is Bex Buckfast the right woman for the job? Or are the holes in her memory and the blood on her hands enough to disqualify her from the position?

Joanne Harris’s latest novel, A Narrow Door, is a cunning psychological thriller with atmosphere to spare and a tricky puzzle of a plot that comes together quite cleverly in the end. The point of view goes back and forth between Buckfast and a venerable St. Oswald’s classics teacher, Roy Straitley.  Straitley’s narrative appears as diary entries recording the increasingly disturbing story “La Buckfast” discloses to him over tea and biscuits as the novel unfolds. There is a braided timeline, with the story moving back and forth between 1989 when Buckfast is starting her teaching career and her family and the “present” of 2006. However, the mystery at the heart of the story dates back to Buckfast’s childhood and the disappearance of her brother Conrad.

There were a few moments when Buckfast’s repressed memories strain credulity and her emotions (or maybe Harris’s writing) are overwrought. Get on with it! But for the most part, Harris keeps the pacing steady and the pressure mounting right to the satisfying end.

NOTES

Only when I wrote this review did I realize that A Narrow Door is the fourth book by Joanne Harris set in the fictional town of Malbry and the third set at St. Oswald's. The first books in this series are Gentlemen and Players (2006), Blueeyedboy  (2011; Malbry but not St. Oswald’s), and Different Class (2017). Other reviewers are consistent in the opinion that A Narrow Door can stand alone, but several suggest that reading the first two St. Oswald's books offer an introduction to the characters and grounding in the St. Oswald's setting that could make for a richer reading experience. I don't doubt. 

Family Business: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery by J. R. Rozan -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Sorry for the late post this week. No excuse. I just walked out of the office yesterday and forgot! Spring fever I guess. 

What are you reading this week? Please share the first sentence (or so) here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. You can also share a book you want to highlight even if you are not reading it right now. 

Which is what I'm doing because I realize that I never posted about Family Business when I read it in March. I loved the book. I am getting ready to write a review and only now remember that I forgot to post my Book Beginning for this lively mystery.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The news swept back and forth through Chinatown all afternoon: Big Brother Choi was dead.

-- Family Business: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery by J. R. Rozan. Family Business is the latest mystery novel in Rozan's long-running series featuring New York private eye Lydia Chin and her fellow P.I. boyfriend Bill Smith. Here, Lydia and Bill get pulled in to solve the mystery of a murdered Tong leader found dead in a Chinatown building at the center of a real estate development battle.

Family Business was really good. I've dipped into the series before with Winter and Night, which won the Edgar Award in 2003. Bill Smith was the narrator and focus of that one, in contrast to Family Business that Lydia Chin narrates. I look forward to reading more of the series.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. Use the #book beginnings hashtag if you share on social media. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Family Business:

Paying respects at the funeral of an elder, a powerful community leader, crook or not, adversary or not, showed an appreciation of protocol and correctness that might soften some hearts.

The next hour was filled with chanting and gongs, prayers and eulogies, bowing and incense.

Enjoy your weekend! I hope your plans include a good book or two!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

How is your week going? If you celebrated Easter, I hope you had a good one. I hosted at my house with my family and a few friends and we had a lovely time. The next day was my husband's birthday, so I took the day off work to celebrate with him, which made for a wonderful long weekend. 

Now that work is finally slowing down, I hope to have more time for blogging, including hopping around to visit more of your Book Beginning posts! I look forward to seeing the opening sentences (or so) of the books you are reading this week. As always, feel free to share a book that caught your fancy instead of a book you are reading right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier’s greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

-- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. AAOK&C has been on my TBR shelf for many years. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 and everyone I know who read it liked it. But I've never gotten around to reading it.  

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Amazing Adventures:

Two weeks after Josef’s disaster, with Thomas recovered, Kornblum called at the flat off the Graben to escort the Kavalier brothers to dinner at the Hofzinser Club. It proved to be a quite ordinary place, with a cramped, dimly lit dining room that smelled of liver and onions.

I like this book a lot so far. I'm about a quarter of the way through. It's a sprawling story about two cousins in New York during WWII who team up to create a comic book series. I've only gotten through the part of how the one cousin, Josef Kavalier, escapes Nazi-occupied Prague to get to America where he is now living with his younger cousin, Sam Clayman. 

My sister, me, and my mom on Easter. Because what better way to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord than with matching bunny sweaters? 

Easton Press List of the list of The 100 Greatest Books Ever -- BOOK LIST

THE EASTON PRESS LIST OF 100 GREATEST BOOKS EVER

A while back, Easton Pres put together its list of the 100 Greatest Books Ever and described the collection as the "most renowned works of literature by history’s greatest authors." It was an interesting mix that includes books going back to ancient times, from around the world, and includes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. 

Easton Press used to sell the whole set in its fancy, leather-bound editions. The list is no longer on the Easton Press website and it no longer sells the books as a set, although they are available individually. They are also all available elsewhere in other formats and editions.

Here is the list, with notes about whether I've read a book, it is on my TBR shelf, or it is available as an audiobook from my library. So far, I've read of the 71 of the 100, but don't know if I will ever read them all. How about you?

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne ON OVERDRIVE

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne FINISHED

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED

Walden by Henry David Thoreau FINISHED

Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift FINISHED

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (reviewed here)* FINISHED

A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane FINISHED

The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling* TBR SHELF

The Odyssey by Homer FINISHED

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan FINISHED

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (reviewed here) FINISHED

Paradise Lost by John Milton FINISHED

Tales From The Arabian Nights by Richard Burton ON OVERDRIVE

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (reviewed here) FINISHED

Candide by Voltaire FINISHED

Oedipus the King by Sophocles FINISHED

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo ON OVERDRIVE

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper* TBR SHELF

The Sea Wolf by Jack London TBR SHELF

Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmund Rostand

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer FINISHED

Collected Poems by Robert Browning

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson TBR SHELF

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James FINISHED

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (reviewed here) FINISHED

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle FINISHED

Collected Poems by John Keats TBR SHELF

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin ON OVERDRIVE

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra TBR SHELF

Collected Poems by Robert Frost TBR SHELF

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving FINISHED

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë FINISHED

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith FINISHED

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck FINISHED

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky FINISHED

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo ON OVERDRIVE

The Iliad by Homer FINISHED

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence FINISHED

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas* FINISHED

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley FINISHED

Aesop's Fables by Aesop FINISHED

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad FINISHED

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin ON OVERDRIVE

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas* FINISHED

Politics and Poetics by Aristotle TBR SHELF

The Aeneid by Virgil FINISHED

Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert FINISHED

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli FINISHED

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë FINISHED

Hamlet by William Shakespeare FINISHED

Pygmalion and Candida by George Bernard Shaw TBR SHELF and FINISHED

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe* FINISHED

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare FINISHED

The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov TBR SHELF

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri FINISHED

The Analects of Confucius by Confucius

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare FINISHED

Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats (reading now)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde FINISHED

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray TBR SHELF

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio FINISHED

Beowulf FINISHED

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy TBR SHELF

The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant TBR SHELF

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells FINISHED

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev FINISHED

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad FINISHED

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED

The History of Early Rome by Livy TBR SHELF

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott FINISHED

The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott TBR SHELF

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll FINISHED

Dracula by Bram Stoker (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Omar Khayyám  FINISHED

The Red and the Black by Stendhal FINISHED

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens FINISHED

The Republic by Plato TBR SHELF

Collected Poems by Emily Dickinson TBR SHELF

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe FINISHED

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding* FINISHED

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay FINISHED

Silas Marner by George Eliot FINISHED

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine ON OVERDRIVE

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman TBR SHELF (reading now)

Billy Budd by Herman Melville TBR SHELF

The Confessions by St. Augustine FINISHED

Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe FINISHED

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott FINISHED

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler* FINISHED

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here)* FINISHED

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky FINISHED

Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm FINISHED

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain* FINISHED

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley FINISHED

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens FINISHED

NOTES

This is a repost of the list I first posted in 2009. The links needed refreshing. 

The original list is no longer available on the Easton Press website, so I don't know why the books are listed in this order. The aren't listed in alphabetical order by title or author, nor are they listed by publication date. They must be listed by Easton Press catalog number or publication date, but I don't remember. 

* Marks those that I have in the fancy Easton Press edition, thanks to a lovely Christmas gift from Hubby.

Little Big Man by Thomas Berger -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I feel like I have my life back! After five weeks of zoom trial in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy case, I finally gave my closing argument on Tuesday and the judge heard the last of all the closing arguments yesterday. It's done! Now we all wait for the judge to mull over all the evidence and arguments and issue her ruling, which might take a few more weeks. Whew!

A long, entertaining book is exactly what I need right now and Little Big Man fits the bill perfectly! It's been on my TBR shelf forever. 

Please share the opening sentence or so of the book that caught your fancy this week. Leave the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below.

MY BOOK BEGINNNG

I am a white man and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten.

-- Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. 

Little Big Man was a best seller when it came out in 1964 and has never gone out of print. It is a sprawling Western saga narrated by the 111-year-old Jack Crabb. Crabb lived as a Cheyenne, then turned Indian scout, so he saw first hand much of the history of the American West. There is a 1970 movie version with Dustin Hoffman.

I just started it but it promises to be the kind of shaggy, absorbing story I love. I can understand why it remains popular. It has been on my radar because I'm working my way through the BOMC's Well-Stocked Bookcase list. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnigns. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Little Big Man:

Several snows had fell and melted since I joined the Cheyenne, and I must have been going on thirteen years of age. We boys was playing war one day and Younger Bear, growing taller by the month, shot a blunt-head arrow with such force that when it struck a lad called Red Dog in the forehead he was knocked cold. 

The College Board's List of 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers -- BOOK LIST

THE COLLEGE BOARD'S LIST OF 101 GREAT BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR COLLEGE-BOUND READERS

Back around the turn of the Millennium, when Top 100 book lists were all the rage, thanks in large part to the popularity of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century List, the College Board came up with a list of "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers." 

Leave it to the creator of the PSAT, the SAT, etc. to come up with a list of books guaranteed to make  every reader feel humble. I'm a fan of classics and do not have a problem with the idea of a "canon" to provide a solid grounding in Western literature. But to suggest that students should read all "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers" while they are still in high school is setting some pretty high standards! Maybe that's why the list has completely disappeared from the College Board's website. 

I can now, in my 50s, look at this list and say that I've read most of them, 86 of the 101. But I read 66 of those when I was in college -- as an English Lit major -- or after college. I only read 20 of these when I was in high school, and I was a complete nerd. The idea that I would have read all of them in high school is enough to trigger that nightmare where I am back in school as an adult, trying to take an exam for a class I never attended!

Here is the list, with notes about whether I have read the book and when, if it is still on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

Beowulf  FINISHED (college and adult)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED (adult)

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED (adult)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED (college)

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED (adult)

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett FINISHED (college)

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte FINISHED (high school)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte FINISHED (high school)

The Stranger by Albert Camus FINISHED (adult)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED (adult)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes TBR SHELF

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer FINISHED (college)

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov TBR SHELF

The Awakening by Kate Chopin FINISHED (college)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad FINISHED (high school)

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper ON OVERDRIVE

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane FINISHED (adult)

Inferno by Dante FINISHED (college)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe FINISHED (adult)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens FINISHED (high school and adult)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky FINISHED (adult)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass FINISHED (college)

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED (adult)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas FINISHED (adult)

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot FINISHED (adult)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED (adult)

Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson FINISHED (high school)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner FINISHED (college)

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding FINISHED (adult)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED (high school and adult)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert FINISHED (adult)

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford FINISHED (adult)

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe FINISHED (college)

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED (adult)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED (college)

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne FINISHED (high school)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED (adult)

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED (adult)

The Iliad by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Odyssey by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED (college and adult)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley FINISHED (high school)

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen TBR SHELF

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka FINISHED (high school)

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee FINISHED (adult)

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis FINISHED (adult)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London FINISHED (adult)

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann TBR SHELF

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez FINISHED (adult)

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville FINISHED (high school)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Crucible by Arthur Miller FINISHED (high school)

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED (college)

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED (adult)

Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill TBR SHELF

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED (adult)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED (adult)

Selected Tales by Edgar Allen Poe FINISHED (high school)

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust TBR SHELF

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED (college)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque FINISHED (adult)

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED (high school)

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw TBR SHELF

Hamlet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley FINISHED (college)

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn TBR SHELF

Antigone by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED (high school)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED (adult)

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift FINISHED (college)

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray FINISHED (adult)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau FINISHED (adult)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED (adult)

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev FINISHED (high school)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain FINISHED (high school and adult)

Candide by Voltaire FINISHED (adult)

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED (college)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED (adult)

Collected Stories by Eudora Welty TBR SHELF

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman TBR SHELF (reading now)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde FINISHED (high school)

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams FINISHED (high school)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED (college)

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED (adult)

NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

This is a reposting of a list I first posted in 2009. The links needed refreshing, particularly the link to the College Board because the book list itself is no longer available on the College Board's website. 

The wonderful book blogger and book reviewer, Rebecca Reid at Rebecca Reads, is also working on this list. 

If anyone else adopts this list, please let me know in a comment and I will add your link.