I read a lot of books; mostly at my cabin where there is no TV and no internet. Sometimes I go up there simply to get away from TV and internet and enjoy some good reading.
I'm not trying to list here the "Latest and Greatest" books; keeping up with that would cost you an arm and leg; I'm just listing books which I ENJOYED a lot. A Good Book stays good forever; usually.
Here, I'd like to share with you which are the BEST books I've read and where you can get them too.
At the cabin I have hundreds of books and at this point I've read most of them; only a very few are what I would consider as "Really Good" books. A few were so bad that I tossed them into the fire. Here is one of my bookshelves:
Not only do these books make MOST ENJOYABLE and sometimes exciting and educational reading, any of them would be the perfect gift for anyone else.
Oh, the links below should show the images from Amazon; if you don't see them, your browser settings may need adjusting. On one of my computers the little Amazon ads with the links did not show; here is how I fixed that in Firefox: Tools | Adblock Plus | Options | and removed the check-mark from "Enable Adblock Plus."
I'm listing the books in 3 categories:
- A Good Read *and* educational or informative
- Just plain ENJOYABLE reading (little or no educational value)
AND......... - Collectors' Items (hard to find books; probably "out of print." Click HERE for those.
The widgets or ads should appear like this:
Below each pic/ad I've added the link in text form in case you don't want to turn off your ad blocker.
This is a novel based on historical facts. Most interesting and it teaches you about the history of Ireland at the same time. A great read.
Similar to Trinity, a novel based on history. I found this one particularly interesting, having been to the Caribbean. It helps you to understand how the Caribbean developed. Sometimes, while thoroughly enjoying this book, I would Google an item such as the name of a ship used by an early naval ship. This way I could SEE a picture of the ship I was reading about. A big book. DAYS of enjoyment here. The only bad part is the terrible inhumanity of the human race towards others. It is incredible what we did.
An amazing story of a pioneer family. Makes you wonder how they managed to cope with life.
A fantastic pioneer true story; when I got done with this one I loaned it to friends and tried to find the author or his son on the internet; no luck there. I wanted to express my appreciation for writing this incredible story of how they survived the wild frontier.
I could not find this one at Amazon; so, just for YOU, I scanned the ENTIRE BOOK and put it onto my website; you can find it there: http://www.sticksite.com/. It tells about the Spanish invasion of Mexico in novel form.
If you are into investing at all, THIS might open your eyes to what REALLY HAPPENS in those hallowed boardrooms. You'll be as shocked as I was. Disgusted even. Terrible.
You may have seen the movie; a terrible, true story of World War 2.
Another great, true, pioneer story. If you like the outdoors, you'll love this one too.
Good reading to brush up on investment ideas and philosophy.
This one makes you wonder how safe we really are. A very good read.
I read this a very long time ago and enjoyed it VERY much; I'm sure most people will also.
When I first read this one, I contacted our Minister of Education to urge him to make this book REQUIRED READING for all High School Students. The information in this book should be studied by EVERYONE!! I wrote my own version on it and you can find that on my website at http://www.sticksite.com/.
Blush....... yes, this one is available at my page here: http://www.sticksite.com/gold.htm.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "Very Good."
Deer, Bear, Smaller Mammals, Fish, Birds, Snakes and more.
The former director of the U.N. Inspection Commission gives his account of the search for weapons of mass destruction and the events leading up to America's invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Here is the camping and woodcraft handbook that takes up where Horace Kephart left off 40 years ago. No wonder critics hail it as The Modern Kephart. (324 pages)
A comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to modern sporting rifles and how to use them, cartridges for small, medium and big game, barrels, stocks, sights, scopes, shooting techniques etc etc. (477 pages)
A very enjoyable story about ancient Rome. (439 pages)
403 pages of plain, simple enjoyment.
Story of an Austrian doctor of Jewish descent who escapes to England where he is professionally and otherwise concerned in the lives of three women and with their varied experiences in Plymouth during the terrible days of the German raids upon England. The heroic qualities of the doctor help all three women to bear the blows which come to them, to their families and friends and to the entire countryside.
One hundred and eighty pages of uncomplicated, enjoyable reading; I marked it "A Good Read."
Red China's lone missile base at Ling Nor had been abandoned, according to overflight photographs, and the once-busy installation resembled nothing more than a desolate ghost town. Because an intelligence gap of this magnitude posed so many questions and because no one at the Agency could provide any of the answers, Peter Ward's mission was assigned top priority: penetrate Red China. Found out first-hand what had happened in Mongolia, and why.
When Michel Dumont overhears that the top-heavy North Pole will soon cause the world to tip over, he reveals in the confessional the sectet of the money he and his three young friends came upon months ago and have since kept hidden in their clubhouse. A delightful novel of 277 pages.
This novel is set on the Gulf of Aden coast of Somaliland, where a few survivors from the capsized cargo-vessel Cambria are suddenly projected into a new and alien world: a world of monsoons and primitive violence, of a Somali chief ready to kill to preserve the secret that is essential to the rebirth of his nation. 247 pages.
The Ring-Givers were rulers of the Heroic Age, when the basic social ideas were those of the duty of loyalty and the duty of revenge. This novel tells simply and excitingly the story of one of the most splendid and terrible periods of history, when the remote forbears of the English were still largely in Scandinavia or North West Europe, although the invasion of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had already started. This is the story of a man who may or may not have existed, Beowulf the Great, known as the hero of the greatest of all Old English epics but whose deeds are here combined with those of Rolf Karaki and other figures of the sixth century. 253 pages.
In this book I had marked "Very Good; a *warning* for business." The pirates in this fast-moving, topical story practice the contemporary brand of piracy called the take-over bid. A group of unscrupulous businesmen are trying to get control of Brandston's, a famous provincial department store, and the inside story of the slick way they go about it is full of surprise and excitement. Although all the characters are fictitious, the author had more than his imagination to draw on. He is himself the managing director of a big group of department stores, and has some interesting things to say about take-over bids in real life to round off his absorbing story. 205 pages
There is hardly a more colorful, contradictory, and many-sided figure in American history than Patrick Henry. The son of a genteel Virginia farmer, young Patrick hated farming so much that his father set him up in a general store - where he failed. In desperation, he tried farming again - and failed again. Her married a girl of whom his parents disapproved - and was unhappy with her. Suddenly, he became interested in law and history and after a brief period of study (during which he seemed to digest books overnight) he was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty four. I rated this one as "Very Good; 347 pages."
The background to this most unusual novel is the small Indian Princely State of Begwad as seen through the eyes of Abhay, the heir-apparent to his father the Maharajah, as it passes gradually away from the influence of the British Raj during the last war until, in the crucial post-war period, the power of the Princely Sates begins to crumble and they are finally swallowed up in modern India. As Abhay grows up, he fights against this setting of a feudal, closely-knit community, ruled over with benevolent despotism by an autocrat who distrust yet, against his will, respects the Bristish, and is determined to stamp out any revolutionary tendencies in his domain. The declaration of war appears to him the perfect opportunity to free himself. I rated this one as "Very Good; 367 pages."
This was a super read. I rated this one as "EXCELLENT! Mennonites should read this; 352 pages."
Educated as an engineer, Michael Howell ran the family business Agence Commerciale Maritime Howell. Before its disastrous involvement with Palestinian terrorists and Israeli intelligence, Agence Howell acted as agents and shippers throughout the Middle East, with offices in Beirut, Famagusta, Alexandria and Damascus. It was near Damascus where the trouble started, when Michael and his "secretary" stumbled into the PAF. I enjoyed this one; 215 pages."
This is the story of how their common admiration for an ancestor brought together two young people who were an ocean and several worlds apart. Amelia, though long dead, still represents for them the vivid reality of courage. London was in blackout when Wallis Glendinning, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who had just arrived in England, decided to look up a distant cousin, Alix Leslie whom he had never seen. He found her on a rooftop, doing duty as an air raid warden, and almost immdiately was in love with her. This is a vibrant story of sophisticated young people whose gaiety and courage carried them through uncertainty, separation and danger - a story with immediacy and suspense that holds the reader through the last crucial moment. I wrote in the front: "Good Story!" 256 pages.
Prosperous, solid, unshakably at the top of their own social pyramid, the Miltons were worth envying, especially for a young man with his whole life to make. Mr. Milton owned a small factory and his tough, cautious management of it meant that his family, driving to the golf club in the Milton Rolls, need envy no one in return. Young Phillip Terriss admired the Miltons. He loved them. Not just Debbie, the spoilt attractive daughter, but all of them. In a strange way his whole life came to be built round his love affair with the family and in telling the story of it this novel also tells the story of a whole generation of English life. 380 pages.
Minella Maddox grew up on a great English estate. But as the school-mistress' daughter, her place was not, and never could be, at beautiful Derringham Manor. And that is where the trouble started, for Derringham's young heir thought he saw in Minella just the kind of wife he wanted. But a dark and cruelly handsome French count, who always got what he wanted, thought she was just the kind of mistress he had to have. Not for nothing was he called the Devil on Horseback. 318 pages.
"I want to get down right away," the entry ran, "what it was I saw. He was a muckle great ape. Tall: he could have been almost seven feet, I reckon, and covered all over with coarse hair... His face was enough to scairt the devil. The skin a sort of grey-white, the forehead sloping back in ridges like a ploughed field, and the jaw enormous and full o' the most awfu' great teeth." The diary - written in 1902 and found in 1972 - belonged to David Miles, who was a young boy when he ran away from a tidy British home to engage in a bit of seal poaching. The lifeless monster that floated before him in the waters off the coast of Chile remained a mystery to him until the end of his days. Only by chance did David's great - nephew, Peter, find the journal some seventy years later, and only by chance did Peter fully comprehend the implication of this entry. For Peter, a zoology student, knew without hesitation that the creature described in the old man's diary could only be prehistoric man, the Paranthropus. 212 pages.
In the late 1860s the royal families of Europe collaborated with the French in an ingenious plan to take over Mexico. They set up Maximilian von Haspsburg and his wife Carlota as the Emperor and Empress of Mexico. In accepting the crown Maximilian bowed to the ambitions of his wife, a disturbed yet disturbingly beautiful woman. Unfortunately Maximilian was inept as a ruler and the whole adventure ended in disaster as the people of Mexico, led by Juarez, rose to overthrow him. In this one I wrote: "Good, like a history of Mexico (what is true?)." 384 pages.
I called this one "A good read." The world of high finance and its innermost secrets become very exciting in Maling's knowledgeable hands. 244 pages.
I called this one "Very good even though Chapter 5 seems to me a bit boring." This is the story of an extraordinary Presidential campaign, of unwanted fame and public responsibility thrust upon a very private citizen, of love tested and courage found, and a new breed of political expert who believes that voters can be sold a candidate as readily as a housewife is sold a name-brand toothpase. 313 pages.
OH, this one is ...... well....... cute. So cute that my Dad, a teacher of French, read it to us in high shool, in class even though it had nothing to do with French. It's a cute story of a German learning English in night-school. Very light-hearted, fun reading.
This is a cute fantasy where some fellows find a way to shrink themselves to sub-atomic size and then they find a sub-atomic world with people such as in our world. A fun read; makes you wonder........!
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "Very Good."
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "A Good Read." 244 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "A Good Read. Takes place in early days in NW Canada." 317 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "Very Good." This story of mutiny against a cruel captain and romance on the high seas captured the adventure of life aboard a sailing vessel so vividly that it has established a permanent niche for itself in the library of nautical tales. This book includes 16 full-page illustrations. 349 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "Very Good." Change was long overdue in the Carolina tobacco country when the lean, horsefaced Yankee, John Barton, called on Major Singleton to sell him an idea. It was a revolutionary idea and it would have made Singleton a fortune, but Singleton thought that Barton was some kind of Yankee joke and, appreciating a joke as much as the next man, he sent him to Brant Royle. 466 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it as "Very Good; second half is like North American early history." 328 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "good; European history WW1 to WW2." 240 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "A 'Must Read' for those who are (or want to be) artists/ painters." 308 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "GOOD" 256 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "A good read." The Cyrenian Nationalist leaders Hadid Chebir and Colonel Mawzi have been exiled from their strife-ridden country and sentenced to an indefinite stay on the Atlantic island of Mora. With them goes Chebir's Engish wife Marion, whose love for him has taught her to think of herself as a Cyrenian. But to the sympathetic eyes of Major John Richmond, in charge of the island fort on Mora, she seems rebellious and clearly unhappy. 302 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "EXCELLENT". 503 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "A good read; South Africa; the story of/by a colored girl". 309 pages.
I read this a very long time ago and clearly marked it "good". 347 pages.
I read this and marked it "EXCELLENT". One day just after the turn of the century, a blonde, blue-eyed young girl named Maria presented herself at the door of the parsonage in a tiny town in Swedish Lapland. She had come to apply for a housemaid's job and the handsome bachelor parson, Pontus Franzon, hired her on the spot. Maria was only sixteen and Pastor Franzon over twice her age, but Maria was determined to become Mrs. Franzon. And she did. When Mama Franzon made up her mind to do anything, heaven and earth were powerless to stop her. 305 pages.
There are some websites out there where you can download free books; here are the ones I've found so far:
http://www.readeasily.com/
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
http://textbookrevolution.org/
http://www.mslit.com/default.asp?mjr=FRE
http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/intlepisode00jamearch/leaf7
This has nothing to do with books but this is something fantastic; mine is on order....!
