Welcome to the barnyard! At my “real” job I am preparing to teach the Middle School book club about blogging. Obviously we will start with a blog about favorite books. Then it occurred to me - Maybe I could share some of my favorite reads here with you!
There is really nothing quite like a good book! I love reading!
I will read anything that is well written. I want a good story line, a great voice to the book and and a plot that will suck me right in! So here goes… in random order.
PS. the book summaries come straight from Amazon.
Young Julie Harmon works “hard as a man,” they say, so hard that at times she’s not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better. But Julie and Hank’s new life in the valley, in the last years of the nineteenth century, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what to fear most—the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new life. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay. Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with the disappointments and triumphs of their union make Gap Creek a timeless story of a marriage.
Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, didn't expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.
As Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she's never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.
Featuring one of the most unusual love triangles in literature, THE HOST is a riveting and unforgettable novel about the persistence of love and the essence of what it means to be human.
Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century, and a lover in another...
In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an "outlander"—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord...1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire's destiny in soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidden Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life ...and shatter her heart. For here, James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
A novel to love and recommend...'A faultlessly engineered escape machine that can transport willing passengers to an enchanting world...All you have to do is believe in an eleven-year-old grafter and her presumptive father, who rattle around the Southland in the year 1935, bilking widows, Alabama peanut farmers and even used-car dealers out of hard Depression currency. It isn't hard to believe in Addie Pray, because Joe David Brown cons the reader almost immediately with his slick story-telling and easy charm. When Addie and Long Boy, her dad, tire of playing variations on the bait-and-switch game and other routines, they launch a gigantic caper that may net millions and is full of ironic whammies.
Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell.
Jacob was there because his luck had run out—orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide mean streak. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus; the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act—in fact, she couldn't even follow instructions. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
Surprising, poignant, and funny, Water for Elephants is that rare novel with a story so engrossing, one is reluctant to put it down; with characters so engaging, they continue to live long after the last page has been turned; with a world built of wonder, a world so real, one starts to breathe its air.
Just about anything by Larry McMurtry!
And you know I love Baxter Black.
Add John R. Erickson and Hank the Cowdog to the list!
And what would a barnyard blog booklist be without James Harriot?
I am currently reading the Divergent series and I am really enjoying it.
And yes, I must confess, I have read every book in Game of Thrones and am ANXIOUSLY waiting to see what happens to my favorite characters when the new book comes out.
Thanks for joining me here at the barnyard. What have you been reading? What are your favorite books? I always love to learn about a great read!
