I love reading books. I listen to most books downloaded to my iPod from audible.com, but if I’m trying to learn I read them on my Kindle app on my phone so I can highlight and take notes. I love history, and anything highly recommended by a friend. Below are some of my favorites from my family’s book list that I highly suggest.
I try to read anything Jackson or Julia is reading for school because it’s fun to talk to them about it. Just finished Where the Red Fern Grows, a book Julia read for school, but by the time I finished it she couldn’t talk to me about it because the ending was too sad. We read Number the Stars before that. Jackson and I recently both read The Giver. Good books. A lot better than The Scarlet Letter, which my English teacher made me rea
The best history books I’ve read have been by, or about Winston Churchill. He was a great leader, and an even better writer. History of the English Speaking Peoples (actually a series of books) is incredibly interesting. The way he wrote is beautiful — many times I would stop and say “Stacey, let me read this sentence to you … isn’t it amazing?” Manchesters’ biography of Churchill (another series), The Last Lion, is incredible. Unfortunately the author died before writing the third of the three books. I couldn’t bring myself to read the last volume by a different author (yet).
Anything by Paul Johnson, Barbara Tuchman, or David Howarth is great & typically included on my book list. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is an very interesting book — the way Hitler came to power is definite proof that truth is stranger than fiction.
Biographies are great for learning about how people think and accomplish great things. Here are several I enjoyed very much:
A couple interested biographies below. Sammy Hagar sat at the pool bar the entire week during our South Beach vacation a few years ago, so I had to read Red. Anthony Bourdain is funny, irreverent, and very interesting.
A selection of other books I thought were very good:
Almost every morning Stacey and I have read the same book together. I read some books out loud, which Stacey likes if I hold the book she can see the words (probably making sure I don’t make things up). We started 10 years ago with The Bible (NIV version) and read all of it, two chapters at a time. It took 2-1/2 years, but we did it! (We read the actual book then, now we use the Tecarta Bible app on my phone). We read it out of order and just kept track of what we finished. We’ve read a lot of books together since then.
