Top Ten Hidden Gems

Top Ten Tuesday: Hidden Gems

More specifically, these are chosen only out of the books I have read in 2018. These are the ones I don't hear very many people talking about that I really enjoyed reading.

1. Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia 
I REALLY loved this one! This is probably my favorite new discovery this year.

2. A Wind in the Door (Time Quintet #2) by Madeleine L'Engle
3. A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Time Quintet #3) by Madeleine L'Engle
I know many people have read (and now perhaps also watched) A Wrinkle in Time, but I don't know that very many people go on to read the sequels. And books two and three are definitely my favorite sequels.

4. The Delphi Effect (The Delphi Trilogy #1) by Rysa Walker - free on Kindle Unlimited
5. The Delphi Resistance (The Delphi Trilogy #2) by Rysa Walker - free on Kindle Unlimited
I first discovered Rysa Walker in 2016 through her Chronos Files series on Kindle Unlimited, which I might also consider Hidden Gems. But this year I read the first two books in her Delphi Trilogy.

6. Legion by Brandon Sanderson
7. Skin Deep (Legion #2) by Brandon Sanderson
I know that Brandon Sanderson is well known among fantasy and science fiction aficionados, but I think this series of novellas might count as hidden gems. (By the way, if these sound interesting to you, you might want to just grab this edition which will contain the first two along with the brand new third installment/ending to the series: Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds which is going to be out on 9/18/18.)


8. Out of Spite, Out of Mind (Magic 2.0 #5) by Scott Meyer
This is another series I discovered through Kindle Unlimited. (It begins with Off to Be the Wizard.) They are just plain fun.

9. When I Fly with Papa by Claudia May
This is a children's book with a beautiful message that I think articulates so well a vision for the kind of relationship God wants with all of his children (both the young and not so young of us!)

10. The Paper Girls graphic novels by Brian K. Vaughan:

Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
Paper Girls, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan
Paper Girls, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan
Paper Girls, Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan

These are telling a fun science fiction/time travel story and I am loving them! I can't wait for the next volume!

***

So tell me about the hidden gems you've found!

 

Top Ten Best Books I've Read in 2018 (so far)

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books I've Read in 2018 (so far)

These are my favorite books I've read so far this year. But there are a lot so I split it into the top 10 non-fiction books that I read for the first time this year, and then a top 10 fiction list, where the first 6 were first time reads and the other 4 were re-reads.

Non-fiction, first time reads:

1. Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans
2. A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1) by Madeleine L'Engle - Read my review.
3. Rescuing Jesus by Deborah Jian Lee (February's Theology Book Club selection.)
4. Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd (January's Theology Book Club selection.)
5. The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever by Jamie Wright - Read my review
6. Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
7. Why I Left, Why I Stayed: Conversations on Christianity Between an Evangelical Father and His Humanist Son by Tony Campolo and Bart Campolo (May's Theology Book Club selection)
8. Becoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by Her Granddaughters by Charlotte Jones Voiklis,  Léna Roy
9. This Is Me: Loving the Person You Are Today by Chrissy Metz
10. In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It by Lauren Graham

Fiction:

Fiction, first time reads:
1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. The Delphi Resistance (The Delphi Trilogy #2) by Rysa Walker - free on Kindle Unlimited
3. Legion by Brandon Sanderson
4. Paper Girls, Volumes 1-4 (graphic novels) by Brian K Vaughan
5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, volumes 1-3 (graphic novels) by Joss Whedon
6. Out of Spite, Out of Mind (Magic 2.0 #5) by Scott Meyer

Fiction, re-reads
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
8. A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
9. A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
10. The Delphi Effect (The Delphi Trilogy #1)  by Rysa Walker free on Kindle Unlimited

  Top Ten Tuesday is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Top Ten Series I’d Like to (maybe?) Finish Someday

Top Ten Tuesday: Series I'd Like to (maybe?) Finish Someday

The prompt for this week was either "Series I’ve Given Up On/Don’t Plan to Finish" or Series I’d Like to Finish Someday. But I'm drawing a blank after 8 that I want to finish so I will do a hybrid list. But the first list is 8 and the second list has 5, so I'm just breaking all the rules!

Here are 8 Series I’d like to (maybe?) finish someday:

1. Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard by Rick Riordan (3 books, I've read the first one)

2. The Giver Series by Lois Lowry (I've only read The Giver)

3. Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke (I've only read the first one)

4. The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson (4 books, I've read the first two)

5. Graceling Realm Trilogy by Kristin Cashore (I've read the first 2)

6. 100 Cupboards series by N.D. Wilson - Once again, I've only read the first one...

7. The Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde - I've only read the first one, The Eyre Affair.

8. Discworld by Terry Pratchett (There's an insane number of these books, 41? I think? and I've only read the first two!)

5 Series I have stopped reading:

1. The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan - this one just didn't interest me as much as Riordan's other series. I might try again at some point, but I might not.

2. How to Train Your Dragon Series by Cressida Cowell - I might be willing to give this one another try, but it's not a priority

3. The Maze Runner series by James Dashner - I've read the first book and seen the first and second movie. When I realized they were doing a weird zombie thing I was done. I hate zombie stuff.

4. The Paper Magician Series by Charlie N. Holmberg - just boring, not interested

5. Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown - way too violent for me, and from the reviews I've read about the later books, it only gets worse.

  Top Ten Tuesday is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Top Ten Authors I Have Read the Most Books From

For future Top Ten Tuesday topics and info on how to participate, click here!

1. C. S. Lewis: I've read most all of the actual books he wrote. I can't say that I have read every single essay and every single letter he wrote, at least not yet.

• Non-Fiction: Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, The Abolition of Man, The Weight of Glory, The Four Loves, Miracles, Surprised by Joy, An Experiment in Criticism, Studies in Words
• Fiction: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, Til We Have Faces, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Pilgrim's Regress

2. N. T. Wright (7):

• What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?
• Paul for Everyone Galatians and Thessalonians
• Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
• The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential
• Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues
• How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
• Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good

3. Robert E Webber (6): The Ancient-Future Faith Series, The Divine Embrace, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches

4. Scot McKnight (6) A Community Called Atonement, Galatians, The King Jesus Gospel, Junia is Not Alone, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, A Long Faithfulness

5. J. K. Rowling (7): The Harry Potter Series

6. Rick Riordan (10): The Percy Jackson series and The Heroes of Olympus series

7. William Shakespeare (9+): All the classics I had to read between high school, college, and my MA in English program.

8. Laura Ingalls Wilder (9): The Little House on the Prairie books

9. Ann M. Martin: The Baby-Sitters Club books

10. Gertrude Chandler Warner: The Boxcar Children series

Join the link-up here.

Top Ten Series Left to Finish (or even Start)

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week's topic discusses series that you have not finished for one reason or another.

1. Redwall Series by Brian Jacques

I don't even remember where I left off. I read these books through middle school and highschool and I want to re-read them from the beginning... but there's 22 books now!

2. The Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde - I've only read the first one, The Eyre Affair.

3. Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke - I'm halfway through the first book, Inkheart

4. Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy - I can't remember if I finished this particular Trilogy, but I read tons of the Star Wars books in Middle and High school and again, I woul love to re-read the ones I read back then and read the ones I haven't read! But there's sooooo many! (I'm pretty sure I read Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy)

5. The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley - I've only read the first one: The Fairy-Tale Detectives.

6. 100 Cupboards series by N.D. Wilson - Once again, I've only read the first one...

7. Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan - I've read the first one and I'm halfway through the second one... (UPDATE: I've read what has been released as of 9/27/2013)

And to make it an even ten...

Series I haven't even started yet but want to read badly:

8. Eragon (Inheritance, #1) by Christopher Paolini

9. The Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire

10. The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson (On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, North! or Be Eaten, The Monster in the Hollows)

10 Bookish People I’d Love to Meet

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10 Bookish People I’d Love to Meet 

(I chose all authors, most of them no longer living...)

No Surprise here - I've said many times how I would have so loved to sit in on meetins of the Inklings! To hear Lewis and Tolkien go back and forth... to hear lectures from Lewis... More things to look forward to in heaven!

1. C. S. Lewis
2. Madeleine L’Engle
3. J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Dorathy Sayers
5. G. K. Chesterton
6. George MacDonald
7. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8. J. K. ROWLING
9. George Orwell
10. William Shakespeare


What literary people do you most want to meet?

Top Ten (Fiction) Books That Made Me Think

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Top Ten (Fiction) Books That Made Me Think

I decided to put favorite quotes under each title and tried to pick quotes that exemplified themes that left me pondering.

1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

2. Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis
“It was when I was happiest that I longed most..."
"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

3. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
The demon instructing a lower ranking demon (refers to God as "our Enemy"):
“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

4. The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
"Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”

"Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?”

5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

6. 1984 by George Orwell
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

7. The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis (Especially Perelandra and That Hideous Strength)
“Long since on Mars and more strongly since he came to Perelandra, Ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and both from fact was purely terrestrial-was part and parcel of that unhappy distinction between soul and body which resulted from the fall. Even on earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance. In Perelandra it would have no meaning at all.” - Perelandra

8. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (Especially The Last Battle)
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!” - The Last Battle

9. The Giver by Lois Lowry
“Always in the dream, it seemed as if there were a destination: a something--he could not grasp what-that lay beyond the place where the thickness of snow brought the sled to a stop. He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant. But he did not know how to get there.”

10. A Wrinkle in Time (Series) by Madeleine L'Engle
“I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming - making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate. That's why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished.”
― A Wind in the Door

“A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never seperated from eachother, no matter how great the distance. We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.” ― A Wind in the Door

Top Ten Tuesday: Fall TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Top Ten Books On My Fall To Be Read List

It is certainly difficult to narrow it down, and this may or may not change. But at this moment, these are the top ten books on my Fall "to-read" list:

1. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
2. Safely Home by Randy Alcorn
3. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
4. Looking for the King by David Downing
5. The Most Reluctant Convert by David Downing
6. The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs
7. North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson
8. The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers
9. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
10. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Confessions

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish
Today is: Top Ten Bookish Confessions

1. Sometimes I dog-ear a page, but I try not to very often!
2. I don't allow enough time inbetween books to think and reflect on the one I just read.
3. Sometimes I read way too fast and can't really absorb what I'm reading. It happens with books I just want to get through as well as books I'm really enjoying and just can't read fast enough!
4. I buy more books, even though I have shelves of unread ones.
5. I have been known to stay up way too late to finish reading a book, which can make it difficult to remember the ending.
6. I am always in the middle of at least 3 or 4 books at a time, sometimes as many as 8-10... (I keep books with me at most times: in my car, in my purse, at work...)
7. I feel guilty when I spend time watching movies/tv instead of reading.
8. I much prefer to own a book than to simply borrow it. This will be explained below.
9. I love underlining and marking up the books I read. (This is why I don't like borrowing books as much as owning them). I love writing notes in the margins and interacting with the text in this way. (This is a big reason why I don't do e-readers.)
10. I must take the dust jacket off to read it. It gets in my way and gets messed up otherwise.

Tuesday Top Ten Books

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Today is: Top Ten Favorite Books You've Read During The Lifespan Of Your Blog 

That's a hard category for me since technically I've had this blog since 2006...

But since I've only been blogging more about books since the beginning of this year, so I'm going to choose the Top Ten Favorite Books I've Read in 2012 (thus far...)

1. The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis (re-read)

This was probably the fourth or fifth time to read this book and I loved it even more than the previous times. I also got to dig deeper since I was leading a discussion on it in a Literary Club type setting with friends.

2. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I really loved this book! I can't believe I hadn't read it prior to this year. It is a must read for lovers of fantasy literature/fairy tale genre. I think I finally got around to reading it because I had heard Charlie W. Starr's book, King Lesserlight's Crown: A Children's Story for Grownups, Too, compared to it, leading to a rather postmodern experience of reading the later material prior to reading that to which it may be compared...

3. Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (re-read)
Obviously this book is not in the same genre as most on this list, but it's by C. S. Lewis and it remains an incredible apologetic and summary of what Lewis considered the essentials of Christianity. I love the part on transposition. If you like to think about levels of reality than you will too. Lewis was influenced in this by Flatland by Edwin Abbot Abbot. Here are some fun posts/articles I just discovered that talk about this connection:

a. Flatland… (Geometry of Faith) 

b. Mere Christianity to Flatland
c. C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Mathematics by David L. Neuhouser, Taylor University

4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

British humor and wit at its finest!

5. Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
Another fun fantasy read.

6. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
I love fiction/fantasy that plays with the boundaries of fiction/fantasy (like Inkheart!), so it is no wonder I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the others in the series.

7. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
I don't think I really have to explain myself here, do I?

8. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken
This is a story of the author's marriage, the search for faith, a friendship that developed with C. S. Lewis, and dealing with the loss of his wife.

9. One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
Have you ever thought much about the secret to joy or the sin of ingratitude? This book is poetic story, full of conviction and challenges.

10. Be Still my Soul edited by Nancie Guthrie
This collection of essays on "the problem of pain" - has helped me in not only developing a more helpful theology of suffering, but more importantly, it has been helping me hold onto Truth through the deaths of friends and loved ones... I guess you could say it's been helping me grasp these Truths at a deeper level - meeting me where I am.

Top Ten Characters I would switch places with for 24 hours

 

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Top Ten Characters I would switch places with for 24 hours

1. Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis) - do I get to pick which 24 hours? Because some parts would be incredible and some would be devastating... much as real life I suppose... if I got to choose I would have to choose the end of The Last Battle, of course then I wouldn't want to come back to this world! I want to go further up and further in!

2. Thursday Next from the Thursday Next series (Jasper Fforde) - because she gets to enter the worlds of books on a regular basis!

3. Polly in The Magician's Nephew (C. S. Lewis) because she gets to visit lots of worlds!

4. Ransom in Perelandra (C. S. Lewis)- to see a planet that had not experienced The Fall... even to experience this:

“Great globes (gourds) of yellow fruit hung from the trees—clustered as toy-balloons … He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger… But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed more pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men… For one draught of this on earth wars would have been fought and nations betrayed.”

5. Hermione Granger in Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling) - she's smart and she gets to do magic and help save the day with Harry and Ron!

6. Peter Pan from Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie) - I want to visit Neverland of course! And fight Captain Hook!

7. Frodo - The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) - Now again, do I get to pick which part? I want to spend some time in the Shire and time with the elves and Gadalf... and of course experience the camaraderie of the fellowship and the friendship with best friend Sam...

8. Meggie from Inkheart (Cornelia Funke)- books coming to life again... just sounds like fun. Dangerous adventure, but still fun.

9. Harry Potter himself because I want to play Quidditch and fight Mer people at the bottom of the lake.

10. Meg Murray from A Winkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle – I want to travel by tesseract! Sounds awesome!