Books I'm reading, books I love...

I'm a voracious reader...always have been. I love nothing better than to find a great book or series of books, and just let myself get lost in them. I have definite ideas about what I like and don't, though, so there have been many times that I've started a book and not gotten very far in, put it down, and never gone back.

Canceled due to lack of interest.

But, once I'm hooked, then I'm in, and it's full steam ahead to the end. I just finished a great little series that I enjoyed, called the Sister Circle Series by Vonette Bright and Nancy Moser. It was four books, and they were gentle, sweet stories that provided a nice, light, diversion to life's stresses.

I like Christian fiction, but also Nora Roberts (but only her suspense/drama books like Blue Smoke or Northern Lights -- not her sci fi and not her romance ones) and J.K. Rowling (I own every single Harry Potter book -- loved them). I also love Jan Karon and own every single book she's written (I tell hubby I want to live in Mitford).

I guess my favorite book of all time is Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. It's a period novel set in the early 1900s out west. Which incidentally, is not my usual reading fare. So go figure. But this book is so awesomely written, IMHO. It's a 20th century take on the biblical story of Hosea.

Do you remember Hosea? He's the Old Testament prophet that God told to go marry a prostitute (her name was Gomer, which if that was my name, maybe I'd run into the arms of strange men, too...) But I digress. So anyway, Hosea took Gomer as his wife. Then, to add insult to injury, after he'd married her -- she'd had children by him, they'd built a life together -- she left him again and went back to her life of prostitution. So God tells Hosea, "Go get her."

Hosea's like, "Are you kidding me?! Don't you see what she's done to me? Everyone around here knows she's the preacher's wife and she gone back to her whoring ways! I can't go crawling back to her." But God was showing an example of how the people of Israel had treated Him through the years, and His faithfulness to them in spite of their wandering ways.

So anyway, Hosea did go after Gomer, bought and paid for her freedom from the guy who had her, and they went back to their life.

Okay, so that's our Bible story for the week. But, back to Redeeming Love, the story is about a (you guessed it) prostitute working in a brothel in the Wild West, and a Christian young man who meets her, is at first intrigued by her, and falls in love with her and -- yep -- eventually redeems her. This is a love story, which I am not overly fond of in general, because they are usually w-a-y too predictable. However, this book is an exceptionally terrific read.

As for what I'm reading now...hmm...I just finished a book called Sudden Sea by R.A. Scotti about the massive hurricane that hit and decimated Rhode Island and that area in 1938. I'm almost finished with The Coconut Oil Miracle by Bruce Fife. I've been anxiously waiting to buy the latest installment of the "Miss Julia" books by Ann B. Ross. I think the new one is called Miss Julia Paints the Town and it went on sale on April 3rd. I've got Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, but haven't started it yet. I've also got a novel by Karen Kingsbury that's calling my name. It's called Like Dandelion Dust. I love her books; her characters are so real.

Okay, well, I guess that's enough rambling about books for now...although I could go on. I'll definitely add more about this big part of my life!