If you remember, Katrina over at Callapidderdays is hosting a fun reading challenge called Fall Into Reading! I thought I'd provide an update as to where I'm at in the list of books I chose to read.

This was an excellent book! It was amazing to see the difference in this journalists treatment, based on the color of his skin, especially towards the end when he was going back and forth between both worlds on a fairly frequent basis. The writing was wonderful. I could feel this author's hopelessness and despair as he conducted his social experiment. And when he was finished, the hatred that he and his family were subjected to was astounding!

This was done in 1959. I can't help but wonder if things such as racism, segregation, and degrading living conditions in the South (and other parts of the United States) have improved dramatically since then. I hope these things have improved, but I honestly don't know.


I've finished this book and it was heartbreaking. These young women were forced to go to maternity homes to have their babies and were given absolutely no choice in placing their babies for adoption. The ones that they should've been able to count on most for support, their parents, were the ones that forced these women to give up their babies. These parents were more worried about their social status than what they were doing to their daughters.

After having and giving up their babies, these young women were told to forget it ever happened and to go on with their lives as if it had never happened. Studies showed that these women had many long term effects (depression, unable to feel emotions, physical ailments, etc.) associated with being forced to give up their babies.

Reading this book generated some good discussions between Oronzo and I. I never want Giselle to have to wonder if Snuggle Bug is alive and well. She deserves to know. I'm more determined than ever to continue to provide her with detailed updates on how Snuggle Bug is doing.

I'm a little over half way through this book. I've never read anything by Francine Rivers before and can I just say that she is a fantastic author?!

This story of the heartbreaking romance between a prostitute and the upright and kind farmer who marries her is very well written. I have a tough time putting the book down when it's time to go to bed. I'll probably have it finished by the end of this week.

I love how the book has snipets of internal conversations between Michael and God and how he listens and obeys, despite his misgivings.

Reading that the main character, Angel, was sold into prostitution at the young age of 8 years old made me sick to my stomach. I know things like this still happen today but my mind and heart has a tough time grasping this reality.

I love the fact that the main message of this story is of God's unconditional, redemptive, all-consuming love.

So, the four books listed below are the ones I have yet to read. I actually found a movie version of the book Guns, Germs, and Steel at the library this past weekend, so I think I'll tackle that one next.

So tell me, if you're doing the "Fall Into Reading" challenge, what's your progress thus far? Feel free to leave me a comment or a link to your blog if you've already posted an update there.

Editorial Review from School Library Journal

Grade 5 Up-When Rudyard Kipling took up residence in the U.S., he found intriguing characters in the sailing men of New England. This dramatization of his classic novel focuses on a good-humored, hard-working Gloucester fisherman who rescues a spoiled rich boy, Harvey Cheynen, when he falls off a passing steamship. Unconvinced by Harvey's story that his father is a millionaire, Captain Disko Troop and the crew of the We're Here teach the boy the value of a job well done. When the ship returns to port several months later, Harvey is reunited with his exultant parents and there are happy surprises for everyone.

Editorial Review from The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Novel by Willa Cather, published in 1927. The novel is based on the lives of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy and his vicar Father Joseph Machebeut and is considered emblematic of the author's moral and spiritual concerns. Death Comes for the Archbishop traces the friendship and adventures of Bishop Jean Latour and vicar Father Joseph Vaillant as they organize the new Roman Catholic diocese of New Mexico. Latour is patrician, intellectual, introverted; Vaillant, practical, outgoing, sanguine. Friends since their childhood in France, the clerics triumph over corrupt Spanish priests, natural adversity, and the indifference of the Hopi and Navajo to establish their church and build a cathedral in the wilderness. The novel, essentially a study of character, explores Latour's inner conflicts and his relationship with the land, which through the author's powerful description becomes an imposing character in its own right.

Editorial Review from Amazon.com

Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.

Editorial Review from Amazon.com

Annie Zook, the preacher’s daughter, struggles to keep her promise to her father—to abandon her art for a full six months. Will she succeed, only to succumb to another "forbidden" desire? And what would her father do if he discovered her friendship with a handsome Englisher? Ben Martin has recently moved to Pennsylvania from Kentucky on a secret search of his own. He is mysteriously drawn to Paradise and especially to the covered bridge depicted in Annie’s painting, a folded copy of which he carries in his pocket...along with a smooth peach stone. Will Ben’s keen interest in Annie derail her intention to join the Amish church come autumn?