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Read any good books lately???

The End of North and South (Spoiler Alert!)

!Spoiler Alert!

"Do you know these roses?" He said, drawing out his pocket-book, in which were treasured up some dead flowers.

"No!" she replied, with innocent curiosity. "Did I give them to you?"

"No ! Vanity, you did not. You may have worn sister roses very probably."

She looked at them, wondering for a minute, then she smiled a little as she said -

"They are from Helstone, are they not? I know the deep indentations round the leaves. Oh, have you been there? When were you there?"

"I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I hod no hope of ever calling her mine. I went there on my return from Havre."

"You must give them to me, " she said, trying to take them out of his hand with gentle violence.

"Very well. Only you must pay me for them!"

"How shall I ever tell Aunt Shaw?" she whispered, after some time of delicious silence.

"Let me speak to her."

"Oh, no!" I owe it to her - but what will she say?"

"I can guess. Her first exclamation will be, 'That man? ' "

"Hush! " said Margaret, "or I shall try and show you your mother's indignant tones as she says, 'That woman!' "

!End of Spoiler! : )

So I finished North and South. I had to post the ending for a certain person who is very vocal in her dislike of the ending in the movie. : ) She hates the ending of the movie so much, because it's too romantic for her, but just imagine this ending on a screen! If "delicious silence " doesn't equal kissing I don't know what else it could mean. : ) There is actually very little of that sort of dialogue in the book. Alot of time is spent and the relationship between Margaret and her parents, which is frustrating sometimes. The book also spends alot of time trying to show both sides of the beginning of unions. My favorite part of the book is the gradually built relationship between Mr. Thornton and Nicholas, from hated enemies to reluctant mutual respect and eventually frendship. I think I like seeing how these two characters grow through the story because of how well the movie showed this. And of course I love Margaret! : ) How could you not?

So, if there is anyone out there still reading my one-member-only book club, what is your favorite part of the book, and if you haven't read it yet you should get a copy it's great.

North and South

The world is a beautiful warm place once again. I'm sitting on my balcony watching the trees and listening to the wind and loving this place. When it's summer here you forget what winter is. There is a vague memory of dark and cold, but 30 below is unimaginable and dark is something not understood. I think that's the trick that keeps people here, every summer this land weaves a spell and you become addicted. Addicted to green forests, blue and white mountains, the sound of the wind in the aspens, and never ending day. Jane's happy to have summer back too, water is no longer in a solid form. : ) I have been reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Already seen the BBC miniseries (several times : ) and I love the way they stayed so close to the book. The actors and personalities in the movie seem like they walked right out of the book. And the plot is almost identical. There are a few variations so far, though. Margaret does not go to the mill in the book but she could have and it would not have been out of character. : ) Other then that I haven't found any differences yet. I do know that the end is not the same. : ) How? Well I read the end first, of course. : ) I am enjoying the book but I think I like the movie better. Bessy's character is a little different in the book, She is always talking about her death and going to heaven, she quotes alot of Revelations which is a little disturbing since it out of context, meaning she isn't quite sure if it's for her and there is no mention of scriptural salvation. Margaret's mother is also a little different, very whiny at the beginning, at Helstone. Helps you understand the father a little better. Also Margaret is outspoken enough to find fault with a complete stranger's way of thinking but not outspoken enough to ask her father why he left the church. That frustrates me. But that is in the movie also. I just like the movie, I think they did a wonderful job with casting, plot, and location. It's a beautiful movie.

A very late review of Small Miracles

I have to be completely honest, I've been putting off writing about this book not only because I'm a horrible procrastinator but because I intensely disliked reading it. Small Miracles is a collection of story from the Holocaust. They are all about Jews in Europe that miraculously survived. They are told by the survivors themselves or by family members that have heard them over and over again. (Something I thought was very interesting about this book was the way they talked about God in almost every chapter but never spelled His name out, it was always written G-d. If done out of true honor and respect for Him it would be commendable.) The week before I started reading this book we had a message at church about God's plan for Israel and how He still watching over them. This book was a great illustration of that. Some of these stories are amazing and completely unexplainable. A few of them seem a little unbelievable. People seeing angels and things like that, but most of them are undeniable the hand of God. And that's the whole point of the book, they are stories of modern day miracles. So why didn't I like it??? Well, even though every story was about the survivors, and every story had a "happy ending", for the one or two survivors in each story there were thousands and thousands of friends and family that went to a unimaginably horrible death. I couldn't help thinking and drawing a comparison with the building hatred for anything truly Christian in America today. It's not like the Jews of Europe were loved one day and burned the next. It happened gradually. I am convinced they will be killing Christians in America one day. I have been thinking about it almost daily lately, especially since the elections. It scares me, no it terrifies me! So reading this book was miserable. I keep thinking about being tortured for my faith the way the New Testament Christians were and what it was about that thought that was so very horrible to me, and I realized it's not the actual pain of torture that bothered me to such a great extent. I've been told that child birth is extremely painful too but I never think of it with horror. And many women joyfully choose it. So it's not the pain. It is that fact that one human being could do that to another human being, not only could but have. The fact that "normal" German men shoved Jewish men, women, and children into gas chambers along with all the other atrocities committed then is where the horror really comes from. How could a person inflict that much pain on another person??? And I realized it's so horrible because it is a little picture into the real heart of man. It's sin, raw and not dressed up by western politeness. It's a world without the grace of God. It's what is hidden in every heart, my heart, and it is very scary. And Jesus died for that creature, chose to die! Even if the price for our sin had been a finger prick why would He have chose to submit to it???? He deserves our loyalty even through torture. I know that I do not have it in me to go through what the members of the first church went through, I just could not do it. I have finally admitted it to myself because I realized that they couldn't either. Mr. Coulter was up here a few years ago and he sung some of his song for our church, one of them was about those first Christian martyrs. In the song he asks the question "How did they do it, how did they watch their families being torn up around them and go willingly to the arena for their God?". In the chorus of the song he answers the question. It was grace! It was only God's grace that upheld them through it. They were just like us, they would not have had the ability within them either except for the grace of God.