2017 is almost in the books -- pun intended, I suppose -- and so a quick review of this year’s reading is appropriate. I finish the year a little above my average number of books read. That's good. Several of those were lively, entertaining reads with little ongoing relevance like a couple of Alistair MacLean thrillers, Bill Buckley's Blackford Oakes series, and Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm series that I re-read early in the year (for the umpteenth time) and then gave away to get them out of the house for good. Kinda’ like eating all the cookies before going on a diet!One of my reading resolutions for the year was to stage a substantial return to Shakespeare with an ambitious schedule of one a month. But, alas Poor Yorick, I only got in 8. I read about the same number of G.A. Henry novels as well. He is almost always a delightful read and I like learning the history he packs into his adventure novels. A couple of Jeff Shaara novels came along in the Notting Hill Napoleons selections: The Frozen Hours and The Fateful Lightning.
I re-read a lot of C.S. Lewis this year: Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, The Abolition of Man, The Pilgrim’s Regress, Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce (finished in the shadow of the 14, 265 ft. Mt. Quandary which I climbed earlier in the day), and The Screwtape Letters. Great stuff.
I re-read Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago this year and, surprisingly, found it rather disappointing. Oh well, tastes change; readers change. Much more satisfying in fiction explorations were Ice Palace by Edna Ferber, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen, The Innocence of Fr. Brown by G.K. Chesterton, and the lengthy Japanese epic Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.
Other fiction of superb quality came this year from Charles Dickens: The Chimes, Cricket on the Hearth, A Christmas Carol and an assortment of shorter Christmas-themed stories. And the highlight of the Notting Hill Napoleons’ year (for me, anyhow) was our November reading of Dickens’ wonderful novel, Dombey & Son.
But I’m not quite done with the fiction favorites. I read the first 4 novels in Jan Karon’s Mitford series this year and loved each one: At Home in Mitford, A Light in the Window, These High, Green Hills, and Out to Canaan. I also returned to Middle Earth late in the year with spellbinding reads of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Terrific!
And there were a couple of exceptionally fun Christmastime reads -- The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries edited by Otto Penzler and 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.
The year’s best non-fiction reading involved, as it always does for me, theology, history, and culture. Besides the C.S. Lewis stuff there was Kingdom Man by Tony Evans, A Torch Kept Lit by William F. Buckley, Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs by Michelle Malkin, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates by Brian Kilmeade & Don Yaeger, Holiness in Hidden Places by Joni Eareckson Tada, and Happiness by Randy Alcorn.
And what would be the tops in my recommendations to others? That's too tough to call but these (in alphabetical order) would certainly be the finalists.
* A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
* Dombey & Son by Charles Dickens.
* Happiness by Randy Alcorn.
* Holiness in Hidden Places by Joni Eareckson Tada.
* Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
* Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
* The Middle Earth books by J.R.R. Tolkien.
* The Mitford books by Jan Karon.
* Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.
* The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.
