Insert a good title here...

Right now I am reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett. It is so charming! I'm loving it!!

Before that I read Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth and somebody else who's name I don't remember. I would highly recommend it. It's about a family with twelve kids which is totally opposite of my life; so that was fun and interesting. I really liked it.
There's also a sequel by the same authors: Belles on their Toes. I might read that one next.

I also read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein and it was VERY good. I just love fantasy books! I can't wait to read The Lord of the Rings now, I'm excited.

A couple weeks ago I also watched the First Work and the Glory movie. I've read the first two books and own the third one, so I was curious about the movie. It was done really well. It covered only about half the first book, but it followed it SO well. It wasn't perfect, (meaning it didn't quote the book or anything crazy like that) but everything was in order and nothing was changed, and the whole feeling of the book was kept just right. I loved it, and now I'm all excited to read the other books and watch the other movies! It was also fun because I had just gotten home from Nauvoo, so I was sort of in a pioneer mood.

I'm hoping to see the Ramona and Beezus movie sometime, because I've read those books about a hundred times. I've got to see the movie, even thought it might not follow the books at all and might just make me angry. But any person who has read the books a hundred times and relates them to her everyday life has got to see the movie, right?

Happy Reading!

A fun summer of reading

Hi! It's me, Allison -- finally. I have been wanting to jot down my thoughts about the books I've been reading lately, but it's been so busy here at the Goose Girls house that I've not managed it yet. But now here I am.

Well, just as an introduction, I love to read! I've always loved to read as long as I can remember. I love lots of different kinds of books... I read a lot of the same books as my daughter Abby does (Shannon Hale, The Penderwicks, anything by Deborah Wiles or Kate DiCamillo, Tuck Everlasting, The Secret Garden, Harry Potter, etc.) and I love classics (Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, all the Brontes, Austen, Anna Karenina -- one of my favorites! etc.) and history (mainly David McCullough, but I've dabbled in Nathaniel Philbrick, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin). And there are many wonderful contemporary books that I've loved -- Peace Like a River, Cry, the Beloved Country, I Capture the Castle, and lots of others.

I think my favorite book that I have read lately is Brave Companions by McCullough. It's really a series of essays about many different people and topics and I found it to be fascinating. He is such an insightful historian and has a wonderful way of painting beautiful pictures with words about people. He discusses very interesting people such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Conrad Richter, men involved with the Panama Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge, and several others in all different occupations and times. There is also a wonderful chapter on the city of Washington D.C. I highly recommend it, even if you usually don't like to read history. He uses stories that are more compelling than fiction because they are true!

While I was on vacation I re-read My Antonia and O Pioneers by Willa Cather. This was inspired by Brave Companions, because he talks about the woman who inspired the character of Antonia. We were travelling across Nebraska and it was so poetic to be reading these rich stories about the strong women who first settled there.

I just finished Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White and truly enjoyed it. It was the first novel reported to be a suspense and it is certainly suspenseful! Collins was friends with Dickens (whose writing I adore!!) and his style is somewhat similar.

Well, that's it for today. I'm currently reading a book a friend gave me called My Life in France by Julia Child. It is charming! Bon Appetit!