A Summer Reading Challenge for Power Supply

Summer is here! School is out and today actually officially begins summer. However, the hot weather has already arrived and it has been here for a month or so. Now begin those so-called “lazy days of summer.”

One of the big deals when I was growing up was always getting involved in the summer reading program at our local library. I read through the “Black Stallion” series, through the “old” Hardy Boys series (not the Case-files), and I read numerous biographies and sports stories. Reading stretched my mind and allowed me to go to far places with simply the turn of the page. It is sad to see that this generation is becoming so very increasingly separated from books.

Another major event for the summer was going over to my Granny and Papa’s house in Andalusia, Alabama. They lived quite a ways out in the country and without any sort of central cooling or air conditioner. I can remember at night trying to sleep with the windows up and hearing hundreds of bugs making all sorts of strange noises. As the day would cool down, we would slowly drift off into a sleep that would be interrupted the next morning to the sounds of a full country breakfast being engineered in the kitchen. We had hot biscuits, grits and eggs, sausage, and a host of choices of canned fig preserves, blue-berry and black-berry jellies, and apple tarts.

We would work in the garden (which was quite large), feed the chickens, and gather eggs among a host of other things. As the day would wind down, I would always manage to find a book to read at my Granny’s. She had a lot of old textbooks that were always interesting to me (probably because I was not taking the class) and a host of old Reader’s Digests and Grit Papers. I would read through these and then read some of the other books that she had in a small bookcase that sat behind the door.

I can remember one book that I found one summer and subsequently from then on I read it every summer when I came back. It was a fictional book about World War ll and the story the French Resistance who were fighting against Hitler’s armies. Although as the years have passed I have forgotten much of the details of the book, I still remember it as being an exciting book that told the story of a young teenage boy who was carrying messages as a spy for the French Resistance and his near escapes from German patrols that were prowling throughout his hometown.

Summers were never wasted when Mark and I were reading books. Books have really shaped my mind and by opening up thoughts, ideas, and even worlds that would have never been available to me without the printed page.

My point in this blog is primarily aimed at our youth group, Power Supply, here in Dothan. I have listed below a number of very good books and almost every one of them I have personally read or at least read works by the author. I am encouraging you to take a look at this list and then go to the library and read one or maybe even a dozen of these books before school starts back in August. I also am encouraging you to post comments (that the whole world will see) at the end of this post about what you read in one or a dozen of these books. You may not find a title that interests you here but I encourage you to familiarize yourself with some of these authors and read after their works.

In the end, the person who reads the most books, will have a mug shot posted on the Barnabas Blog after we have gone to eat at Larry’s (just kidding, I will leave the choice up to you).

• All Creatures Great and Small -- James Herriott
• Arrowsmith -- Sinclair Lewis
• Bob, Son of Battle -- Alfred Ollivant
• Call of the Canyon -- Zane Grey
• The Call of the Wild -- Jack London
• Christy -- Catherine Marshall
• The Citadel -- A. J. Cronin
• Comstock Lode -- Louis L’Amour
• The Cross and the Switchblade -- David Wilkerson
• Endurance -- Alfred Lansing
• Every Living Thing -- James Herriott
• The Hiding Place -- Corrie Ten Boom
• In His Steps -- Charles Sheldon
• In the Heart of the Sea -- Nathaniel Philbrick
• Into Thin Air -- John Krakauer
• Isaac’s Storm -- Eric Larsen
• Johnny Tremaine -- Esther Forbes
• Kidnapped -- Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Last of the Breed -- Louis L’Amour
• Les Miserables -- Victor Hugo
• Life on the Mississippi -- Mark Twain
• Night -- Elie Weisel
• Oliver Twist -- Charles Dickens
• Poems -- Robert Frost
• Profiles In Courage -- John F. Kennedy
• Red Badge of Courage -- Stephen Crane
• Ten Fingers for God -- Dorothy Clark Wilson
• The Robe -- Lloyd Douglas
• The Shepherd of the Hills -- Harold Bell Wright
• Sherlock Holmes Stories -- Arthur Conan Doyle
• Silas Marner -- George Elliott
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde -- Robert Louis Stevenson
• Summer of the Monkeys -- Wilson Rawls
• To Kill A Mockingbird -- Harper Lee
• Treasure Island -- Robert Louis Stevenson
• Up From Slavery -- Booker T. Washington
• Where the Red Fern Grows -- Wilson Rawls
• White Fang -- Jack London
• The Yearling -- Marjorie Rawlings

Don’t forget that there are hundreds of biographies that you also might find interesting.