A Long Walk to Water - Review

I tend to be wary of children's. books that 

1) are historical fiction 

and

2) attempt to get the reader to care about an important issue.

I've found that several children's books that undertake these goals often fall short.

They tend to be chock full of information or tend to be overtly preoccupied with making sure the reader knows that this is an important! issue and the reader absolutely needs to care about it in order to be a moral individual. Meanwhile, the characters, the setting, even the plot seem to be second thoughts or reading it becomes dull and dreary (anyone ever read the Elsie Dinsmore series as a child?). 

Or the opposite occurs. The characters, setting and plot are engrossing, but when you go to look up information about the book, you find there's a lot of bending of the truth, if not complete falsehoods. (See The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas for example.) 

Once in a while, however, there is a book that surprises my expectations. It's engaging, it's accurate, and it really does make you care about the issue presented in the book. 

A Long Walk to Water is one such story. It's hard not to care about Nya's daily, lengthy walk or Salva's constant trials and tribulations. I found myself invested in their stories and couldn't wait to find out what happened. This book is also pretty accurate for a children's historical fiction novel. Salva is real. His story is real. The war was real. Having to walk eight hours every day to get water is real. And this. book does a fantastic job of pointing out the seriousness of this issue. By the end, I really did care about the lack of drinkable, accessible water in Sudan. Not that didn't I care before, but this book highlighted how crucial this issue really is. When people get ill because they don't have enough water, how they feel (physically and emotionally) when they don't have enough to drink, how worrisome it is when a loved one is close to death and there is no water nearby, water that might very well save their life. Ms. Park does a fantastic job of making her readers feel like this so, so important with stooping to moral posturing or having uninspiring characters or a bland plot. 

In short, this is an all around wonderful book that manages to be both enlightening and engrossing. 

2024 Reading Goals (and some of 2025)

Welp. I've already failed my To-Be-Read list of 2024 and it's only January 1. 

Let me explain.

Every year I try to read a certain number of books and every year I fail. Of course, that meant that when I went to make my TBR list for 2024, I just added more books. I think I have the most books, I've ever had. 76. Although, to be honest, this is my over-optimistic goal. In truth, I will be pleased if I read 20 books in 2024. 

I was so excited for January to begin and I could started on my list. I was going to read all these books, many I haven't read before, and I couldn't wait. 

But then I got some news. I have to have two surgeries this month, and one of them is eye surgery. So I wouldn't be able to start in January. I was disappointed (albeit thankful that I'll feel better after the surgeries are healed). However, I can start my TBR list in February and just finish in January in 2025 instead. So it's not how I imagined, but still pretty good. I'm able to read through my list. 

If you would like to read the list, I've put it at the bottom of this post as it's pretty long or you can click here.

If you're curious how I organized my list, the first 52 books are my weekly reads. I plan to read one a week. Then I have two sets of monthly of reads. The first is non-fiction books I want to get through, while the second is classics. Some eagle-eyed readers might notice there are some classics in my weekly list as well as non-fiction. Those are books that I still wanted to read but didn't have space for in my monthly reads. So, I put those in my weekly reads as I figured I could finish that particular book in a week. Most of these books I chose myself, but nine of the classics are from an Excellence in Literature book, British Literature, by Janice Campbell. (I'll let you figure out which nine they are 😉). 

I chose these books for a myriad of reasons. Some of them are books that I read in childhood and want to read again. Others are books that I've been wanting to read for awhile, but never got around to it. Some are books that I found out about as I was making my list. Many of these new-found books came from Sonlight, a homeschool curriculum that has really good literature as part of their program. One thing in common with all these books, however, is that I want to read them; they are or sound interesting. And I can't wait to start. 

Have any of you read any of these books? I'd love to hear if you especially recommend any of them or if you found any of them downright awful. 

Warmly,

Hildeburh

Book List 2024

Weekly Reads

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

All Sails Set: A Romance of the Flying Cloud by Armstrong Perry

 

Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett 

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery

Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Artifice by Sharon Cameron

Betsy and the Emperor by Staton Robin

Black Gold by Marguerite Henry

Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

Brighty of Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry

Crazy Lady! by Jane Leslie Conly

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Escape Across the Wide Sea by Katherine Kirkpatrick

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

God Spoke Tibetan by Allan Maberly

Kildee House by Rutherford G. Montgomery

Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Mountain Born by Elizabeth Yates

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O'Brien

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich 

No-No Boy by John Okada

Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang

Refugee by Alan Gratz

Sounder by William H. Armstrong

The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth

The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli

The Good Master by Kate Seredy

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson

The Road from Home by David Kherdian

The Sherwood Ring by Marie Elizabeth Pope

The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy

The Wave by Todd Strasser 

The Wheel on the School the Meindert DeJong

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

They Loved to Laugh by Kathryn Worth

Time Well Spent: A Practical Guide to Daily Devotions by Colin Webster

Turn Homeward, Hannalee by Patricia Beatty 

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher 

White Stallion of Lipizza by Marguerite Henry

Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi

NonFiction

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen 

A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart & Michael Allen 

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot 

Confessions by Augustine

Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith

Endgame: Bobby Fisher's Remarkable Rise and Fall by Frank Brady

Hiroshima by John Hersey 

In Defense of Sanity by G.K. Chesterton 

John Adams by David McCullough 

The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel 

The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia by Tim Tzouliadis 

The Primal Prescription by Doug McGuff

Classics

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Beowulf by Unknown 

Canterbury Tales by Geoffry Chaucer 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Faerie Queene Bk 1 by Gawain Poet; Edmund Spenser 

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank 

The Brother's Karmazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

A Little About Me

For those of you who are curious about the writer of this blog, I thought I'd share a little about me. 

If you've read my first post, you already know I like to read and that I've created this blog to help myself get better at writing and hopefully meet some other bibliophiles along the way. 

Outside of reading, I also enjoy running, crocheting, cooking and spending time with my dear husband. Fun fact, we got married after only knowing each other for 10 months. 

Although I'm not an adventurous person, I did once zipline across a waterfall in Honduras. 

I love cold weather, but I live in the central valley of California, so I don't get to experience any unless I travel somewhere cold. 

Speaking of traveling and cold weather, my favorite vacation ever was when my brother and I spent a week in Alaska.We were able to see the Northern Lights, which was a spectacular sight. It was a wonderful trip and I hope to return someday. (If we had enough money, I would convince my husband we need to move there immediately.)

If I could only watch one movie for the rest of my life, it would be Fiddler on the Roof. What a touching story about a father who loves his daughters very much and worries about them as they grow up and start making their own lives. 

My favorite author is Chaim Potok. His books The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev are my favorite works of his. One day, I'll finish reading everything he's ever written. 

And that's a little about me. 

Warmly,

Hildeburh 

My Plan for this Blog/Welcome

Hello dear readers! Welcome to the inaugural post of my new blog, One Bookworm's Life. As you can tell by the title, I love to read. Reading has been one of my favorite activities since I first learned how to do it when I was around five. Even before I learned how to read, I loved stories and I still do. As C.S. Lewis said, "We read to know we are not alone." I think that's why I love stories so much, because good stories resonate with so many people across time and generations and cultures and languages. They offer a glimpse into humanity and how there's really nothing new under the sun.

However as much as I enjoy reading, I'm not the biggest fan of writing. But I would love to improve in that craft. So I decided to combine one of my favorite activities with something I'm not particularly fond of. I made myself a book list to read in 2024 and I'm going to write and post reviews about them. (I'll share what books I'm going to read in another post.) And maybe post some other literary thoughts as well. 

Another goal I hope to achieve with this blog is to connect with others who also enjoy reading. It's always lovely to chat about books with someone and I wish I had more people in my life who like to read. 

So, to summarize, I've got my TBR list ready and I'm excited to not only read but also write about something I greatly enjoy and hopefully make some friends along the way.

Warmly, 

Hildeburh