Books!

I can remember reading and being read to about as long as I can remember. My Dad made a HUGE point to read to me A LOT. We read every night at bedtime, and not like 1 book, like at least 10. When we exhausted our collection of books my Mom started taking me to the library. Does anyone remember the old Palm Desert Library? It was on Portola and it was tiny, and it was awesome. We would check out the max amount of books each time. When I got a little older I got way into the Nancy Drew books. My Mom still had hers from when she was growing up, and the ones she didn’t have I searched for at the library. Then I moved on to Young Adult Thrillers: R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike. We couldn’t find those at the library because they were too new, and like I said the library was tiny, so my Dad would buy them for me constantly even though they only took a couple days to read. He just wanted me to read. From there I graduated to adult mystery/suspense books. I liked Dean Koontz, some Stephen King, John Grisham, etc. I always liked the classics as well, you know the books they made you read in middle school and high school. My love of reading, a long with a couple of fantastic English teachers is what encouraged me to become an English major in college.

Of course I had to do A LOT of reading for college, but somewhere along the way I lost my love for reading. For years, with the exception of the Harry Potter and Twilight series, I did little reading. I had a lot of excuses: I had kids, I didn’t have time, I couldn’t find anything I liked to read, etc. I read to my kids of course, and I would read parenting books, or devotional books, but it just wasn’t the same. However, I am happy to say that my love for reading is coming back! I decided to just get over the fact that I didn’t know what to read and just start trying some different things. I looked into the genre of Christian fiction and was amazed at the variety of options. So I took my friend Rhonda’s advice and went on the Library’s online catalog and reserved a bunch of books from authors I had researched on Amazon.com. I would have killed for this kind of technology when I was a young reader! My Mom and I visited every library in the valley looking for those Nancy Drew books I didn’t have. For those of you who haven’t done this before, this is the way it works: You go onto Riverside County Library’s website and you can search the entire catalogue of every library in the county. Then when you find what you want you can reserve it and they will send it to ANY library you want and it will be there to pick up when you get there. Most of the books I reserved were there waiting for me within 4-5 days. Like my friend Rhonda says: “I can’t believe this is FREE!”.

So I have totally turned into a little bookworm again. I have been very happy with the Christian fiction genre even though I have read a few that aren’t my style. Here is what I have been reading:

The Hidden by Kathryn Mackel: This one was interesting. Angels and Demons in a modern day setting. Also about family, forgiveness, and redemption.

One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingbury: This was just okay for me. I read another book by her as well, but they are a little too chicky for me. They reminded me of a Christian Lifetime movie.

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers: Oh my goodness this book was amazing. It is a 19th century telling of the story of Hosea from the Bible. Powerful story of forgiveness, love, redemption, and salvation. I highly recommend it!

Intended for Pleasure by Ed and Gaye Wheat: Ok I am a little embarrassed to put this one on here but I decided to get over it because it was really good and I highly recommend it. :-)

And right now I went back to my old ways and am reading: The short second life of bree tanner by Stephanie Meyer. I am not done with it, but I can already tell it’s nowhere near the rest of the series, but I felt like I should read it because I am such a fan.

 

So that’s where I am with my reading. What are YOU reading??