An ongoing list of beloved books.
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L’Engle : There’s something deeply nostalgic about ominously stormy nights, dinners cooked over a bunsen burner, a new dog immediately loved, a wise unicorn willing to make great sacrifices, and a small boy who bravely sets out to fix a might-have-been and tip the scales of the universe in the battle between good and evil. I love the complex tapestry of genealogy, geomorphology, fantasy, history, and the potential for nuclear war… which still seemed a very realistic threat in the days of the Cold War, when I first read this book.
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley : Angaharad (who adamantly prefers Harry, or Hari as the Damarian Hillfolk call her) is one of my favorite heroines of all time. Horses and swords and a large hunting cat; a new language that awakens with her hunger to learn more of the desert that is her new home; wonderful mentors who understand the restlessness within her even better than she does herself; and a fierce enemy who threatens to conquer all that she is learning to love.
Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson : A narrative telling of the reconstructed events of September 8, 1900, when a hurricane decimated Galvastan, Texas. I loved everything, from the descriptions of the clouds and winds and waves, to the internal politics of the nascent weather bureau. I felt transported back in time and found that there was much to learn from history.
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