Pastor and People

Every summer I pick a few good books to enjoy. During the school semester I am reading weighty and technical books. These books are extremely enjoyable but during the summer months I enjoy reading something that otherwise I might not read. Below is a small list of some wonderful reads I recommend for the summer. Whether on the beach or just sitting by the pool, these books will no doubt fill your summer with many adventures.

The Hobbit
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
ISBN: 0618260307
Binding: Paperback

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

When Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, “looking for someone to share in an adventure,” Bilbo Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit’s doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.

The Hobbit is a classic that all should read. If you have read The Hobbit before, perhaps many times, it is time to pull it off the shelf once again this summer for another great adventure in Middle Earth.

John Adams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Author: David McCullough
ISBN: 0743223136
Binding: Paperback

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second president of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as “out of his senses”; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

This is history on a grand scale — a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship, and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Publisher: Vintage
Author: Ron Chernow
ISBN: 1400077303
Binding: Paperback

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded “the Octopus” by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America. This is an amazing book, Chernow has outdone himself.

March
Publisher: Penguin
Author: Geraldine Brooks
ISBN: 0143036661
Binding: Paperback

March imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or “contraband.” His narrative begins with cheerful letters home, but March gradually reveals to the reader what he does not to his family: the cruelty and racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, the violence and suffering he is powerless to prevent and his reunion with Grace, a beautiful, educated slave whom he met years earlier as a Connecticut peddler to the plantations. Geraldine Brooks is one of the most amazing writers I have ever read.

If you have read any of these books please drop me a line.