Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Poem: November Song

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The earth is full of His glory,
Glory in shorn fields and gray sky,
Glory in burnt flame of russet oak
Bare graceful branch and rustling stalk;
Beauty in chill air and garland of bittersweet,
Brown woods, and the last leaves’ gold fire.

The earth is swept and garnished,
Rain-beaten, leaf-blanketed warm;
Dried vines turned under nourish next year’s growth,
Thinned treelines draw neighboring pastures close;
The harvest is safely gathered in,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.

Copyright © 2021 Elisabeth Grace Foley

Summer Reading 2015

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I actually started putting together my summer reading list back in March. I almost always do it a little in advance—the delights of anticipation and the fun of list-making, you know; almost as fun as actually reading the books.

In summer, I find, I tend to start with a list about this size, and then add in occasional spur-of-the-moment books as I go along.  This year I seem to have managed to get a little of every genre possible on here. So here we go:

My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart
Five Passengers From Lisbon by Mignon G. Eberhart
Pied Piper by Nevil Shute
Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Railroad West by Cornelia Meigs
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
New Hope by Ernest Haycox
Summer Half by Angela Thirkell
Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons by Walter Lord
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

(Review links added later)

I’ve already got most of these queued up on my Kindle or in my library list—the only one I foresee as needing a little effort to acquire is the out-of-print Railroad West. (Tell me again, why are all of Meigs’ books except her Newberry winners out of print?)

So what does your summer reading list look like?

Summer Reading 2014

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Spring has not been a very good reading season for me—at least in numbers of books read, and time to read them. I have read some excellent books this year, but mainly before the Great House Painting Adventure began. All through the reading drought that that has caused, I’ve been looking forward to the summer months when I can simply relax and sit out on the pool deck with a good book—or even better, a pile of good books. I’ve consoled myself in the meantime by putting together a good summer reading list. This is almost certainly not all I’ll read this summer; I always end up flying through these lists faster than expected. But these are the books I especially want to read:

This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Pastoral by Nevil Shute
The Shadow Things by Jennifer Freitag
Until That Distant Day by Jill Stengl
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Miss Elizabeth Bennet: A Play From Pride and Prejudice by A.A. Milne
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris
The Third Man by Grahame Green
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
National Avenue by Booth Tarkington
Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay
Aunt Huldah: Proprietor of the Wagon-Tire House and Genial Philosopher of the Cattle Country by Grace McGowan Cooke and Alice McGowan
High, Wide and Lonesome: Growing Up on the Colorado Frontier by Hal Borland
[Edited later to add links to my reviews]

Wonder of wonders, there are actually five books on this list that were published in my own lifetime—three of them brand new releases. I must be broadening my horizons a bit. I may actually be able to vote in the Goodreads Choice Awards this year!