Category Archives: reading

best books of 2024

Posted on by January 13, 2025

We take a school break every Christmas: no assignments, no schedule, no charts.

So this year, in lieu of all that, we completed six or seven puzzles, painted, and listened to The Story of the World in audio during car rides. The kids played hours of old-school GeoSafari, thinking it was the coolest thing ever. (It kind of is.) One kid fell in love with the audio version of Our Island Story, and another made new calendars for 2025. I roped another into helping me redo our planner for this year, making it her first foray into graphic design. We played Ticket to Ride, Monopoly, and several other games, and even learned a little about the Himeji Castle in Japan, thanks to a ginormous Lego project.

But no, we didn’t do school at all. Feel free to snicker with us.

best books of 2024 | Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

So learning is more than reading books…but also, it is definitely reading books. And here are my favorites from 2024. (Here are my previous lists from 2023, 2022, and 2021.)

This year they’re all novels on the classic side. So, sorry if you prefer non-fiction – I did read non-fiction last year, but apparently none of them stood out enough to be added to this list – but hopefully you’ll find something here worth trying. I think they all are; I’ve read most of them more than once.

Lilith by George MacDonald

Have I talked your ear off about this one yet? This was our first book of the year in Gaining Ground and I quoted it heavily in one of my favorite posts here, but also in this one here, and wrote posts about it for Gaining Ground here and here, AND used the above quote as the epigraph in Risk the Ocean because it basically summarizes that part of our life. So suffice it to say that Lilith is profound, thought provoking, and disturbing in the best of ways. Not disturbing-and-repulsive-but-important like 1984, but disturbing in the sense that it stirs stagnant waters and brings things to the surface that need to be looked at and considered. It’s fantasy, strange and beautiful.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Long. You need to either read this one steadily, or take notes, or lean heavily on internet resources to map out characters and relationships like I did because there are intertwinings and disguises and previous liasons and all sorts of drama to keep track of. This is a story of betrayal, selfishness, justice, and revenge…um, there’s a bit of mercy, but no, it’s mostly revenge…and even though it’s so long, it’s worth it. Not everything works out perfectly and that’s sort of what I loved about it, because even amid all the larger-than-life aspects of the story, there’s a realness that reminds us we’re meant to overcome even when life is messy and regrettable things happen.

The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

I read these to the kids for school this year, and as soon as we were done, Finn loved them so much he wanted Vin to re-read them to him at bedtime. And I was so encouraged by that because these are rich stories with complex language, but they’re so fun and fascinating that it kept them interested. They are fairy tale-ish fantasy, and the second book, The Princess and Curdie, starts a little slower (for kids) with some narrative description but the imagery is so symbolic and eloquent that it speaks volumes to adults; that message might go right over the kids but I’ve read it three or four times and love it every time, and it picks up fast after that. The chapters are really short so that helps the pace, too.

Curdie and his father were of these: their business was to bring to light hidden things; they sought silver in the rock and found it, and carried it out.

– George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emma Orczy

A hurting marriage, a messy past, and an unidentified brilliant hero helping people escape during the French revolution. We read this in Gaining Ground and it was a perfect follow up to A Tale of Two Cities – it’s lighter, funnier, and covers the same era from a different perspective. This was the second time I’ve read it and one or two of the plot twists still surprised me.

Emma by Jane Austen

I didn’t really like this book the first time I read it because I don’t like books whose main character is annoying, obnoxious, or presumptuous. And Emma is…well, she’s a gentle version of those things: pampered, wealthy, revered more than she deserves. But this time around I noticed that Emma wasn’t really selfish, she was just immature. And in her immaturity she didn’t realize how arrogant, overbearing, and manipulative she was – but upon maturing (and it’s not an instant process) she grieves and repents. We could use more of this.

Malcolm by George MacDonald

Some years you just plow through a bunch of books by the same author, and this was the year of George MacDonald for me – not on purpose though, it just worked out that way with homeschool and Gaining Ground schedules colliding. But I chose this book myself, and it was hard to get into because of all the Scottish – and by Scottish, I mean dialect and vocabulary. But the spiritual principles in it were so good, the story so pure (not perfect, but pure), that it was worth it. Plus, now I know what words like gien, lugs, een, and lippen mean (if, ears, eyes, and trust, respectively).

Gone Away Lake and Return to Gone Away by Elizabeth Enright

Two kids wander the woods during summer vacation and stumble upon an empty, abandoned town…or is it? We had so much fun reading these last summer that we named one of our new chicks Minnehaha. (That will make more sense when you read the book, I promise.) I first read these to our older kids about 12-15 years ago, so this was the first time our younger crew encountered them, and just like with The Princess and the Goblin books, as soon as we finished, Finn immediately dove back into them as bedtime reading. Return to Gone Away is actually my favorite – if you’ve ever dreamed of finding an old, old house and restoring it, you’ll love it too.

Heavy Weather by P.G. Wodehouse

I raved about Wodehouse in this post and it’s this book’s fault. Sir Galahad is publishing his scandalous memoirs – but then he isn’t – but someone else wants them published – but several others don’t – and mayhem ensues with multiple plots afoot. Wheels within wheels, you know…SO FUNNY. No one does dialogue like Wodehouse.

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

Another one I read to the kids. If you’re not familiar with Elizabeth Goudge, her writing is beautiful, cozy, atmospheric – the kind you curl up into, like a virtual blanket and tea. In spite of the title, the book is not about horses – or even a particular horse, really – but about a girl who goes to live in her uncle’s castle, which is her family’s ancestral home. The characters, human and animal, are fun and intriguing and not all what they seem to be.

So there’s the list. But hey, lastly, want to join us at Gaining Ground for more great books? We’re currently in the middle of Gone With the Wind (I really want this tshirt) but we’ll be starting Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott in March and we’d love for you to join us either on Substack or Telegram for it…since it will probably achieve a spot on next year’s Best Books list.

taste and see, or run and hide

Posted on by December 9, 2024

While the boys tangled the tree in ribbon and bedecked it with shiny balls that would hopefully not shatter overnight from the cats’ meddling, I tucked my coffee behind the nativity set and rearranged Wodehouse books in the library.

“Do you know how many Wodehouse books we have?” I asked Vince, and he shook his head. Except for the passages I have read aloud to him while laughing so hard I gasped for air, he has never read Wodehouse.

taste and see, or run and hide: it's all about what we know | Shannon Guerra

“This stack here…” I pointed to a wobbly column over two feet high, and he began to laugh but stopped short when I continued, “and this stack here,” pointing to another stack behind the first one, which wasn’t as tall but probably kept the first column from collapsing, like a literary version of a flying buttress.

“How many books did Wodehouse write?” he asked – envy, inspiration, and disbelief, all in one question.

“Seventy or eighty, I think…not counting his plays and stuff. We only have about half of them.”

(Only, she said, and then wasted thirty minutes searching the internet for the exact number – it’s 71, if you’re only counting novels – and then another ten minutes adding his three autobiographies to her wishlist.)

I’ve spent money on bad books before but I’m more careful now; I didn’t start collecting Wodehouse books until I knew they were worth it. Now, though, I have tasted and seen – or, laughed and choked on my coffee – and I know they are good.

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?'”

“The mood will pass, sir.”

– P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

A few days later, the other part of our book order arrived. I cut the shipping bag open with kitchen scissors and pulled out the used paperbacks.

“More Wodehouse!” I grinned.

“More Wodehouse,” Vin repeated, with far less enthusiasm. “Like, more cowbell.“

“Hey. If you read Wodehouse, you’d be excited too,” I told him.

She laughed — a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

But he hasn’t tasted and seen yet. He’s only heard and marveled, off and on, as I’ve barely muffled hysterical laughter way too late at night, trying not to wake up the kids.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!

– Psalm 34:8-9

Vin is, however, grateful he married a thrifty woman who hates shopping, whose main addictions are classic lit and wool yarn, both of which can be found in practically new condition at secondhand stores. And they both give a good return, if stewarded well and not just hoarded.

“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

– Matthew 25:14-15

So we segue to the parable of the talents, a story of a king who entrusts his servants with varying amounts of wealth to steward for him. And you know what happens: The master returns, and the ones who had five and two doubled their talents and were rewarded, but the one who had only one talent…well, let’s see what it says:

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

– Matthew 25:24-25

Huh. He knew, so he was afraid, so he hid. Where have we heard that before?

Oh, right. Here, in the very beginning:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

– Genesis 2:15-17

In the beginning there was a certain amount of knowing that we weren’t supposed to have, because it would usurp our trust of God and make us focus on the wrong things. We began with a holy fear of God, which is trust and surrender. But in knowing the wrong things, we moved into an unholy fear that chose to walk in anxiety and control, which is just us saying, I know better than You do.

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So the woman takes and eats the fruit, and she also gives some to her husband who was with her (side note: We can stop blaming the fall entirely on women, thanks), and he eats it, too.

They realize they’re…you know, nekkid. Fig leaves, loincloths, strategically placed locks of hair.

We pick up in verse 8:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

– Genesis 3:8-10

Maybe it’s because when they did it their own way, they did it backwards. They didn’t taste and see; they saw and tasted – and then they knew something they were never intended to. They traded intimacy for exposure. They forfeited holy fear and got terror, shame, and separation instead.

We do this when we get things backwards, too. Recently I had a meeting coming up and I realized I was rehearsing information, asking myself possible questions and answers. I wondered if I was being too vulnerable, if I could trust this other person, if they would misunderstand my intentions.

Why am I nervous? I finally asked myself. Because I want this, and I don’t want to blow it.

Also, I felt exposed – like maybe I’d stepped forward where I should’ve held back; should’ve kept that talent under wraps where it would be safe, and do nothing.

Master, you gave me one book and I stuffed it under my mattress and did not read it, did not wrinkle the pages, did not bend the spine or dog-ear the corners, didn’t even take any notes. I did not get anything out of it, but also, look! It’s in pristine condition, so you won’t be mad at me for damaging it. Here you go. Thanks so much for the loan.

It’s the wrong kind of fear. That kind is the fear of man, and it’s all about impressing others, worrying about what someone else will think.

Surrender and honesty disarms it, though. So I asked myself these questions:

Do I want what I want, or do I want what He wants? Can I trust Him to know what I want better than I do, and know how to arrange it better than I could? Can I trust Him with the future, with relationships, with this conversation?

Do I trust Him to direct the situation and the timing? Do I trust Him to go ahead of me, and to give me the right words and wisdom?

Yes, yes, all yes. I have tasted and seen and I know He is good.

So suddenly the pressure is off, and there’s just joy and freedom. Just pleasant conversation and curiosity of what God does through it. The vulnerability doesn’t feel like exposure; it feels like faith that’s spelled risk, and it brings a return.

This is the talent surrendered that grows and multiplies, rather than runs and hides.

I used to know someone who was hurting and fighting and angry most of the time. Now I realize she literally just didn’t know what she was missing. She had not tasted and seen, so she ran and hid. What she knew made her feel exposed, and fear manifested as anger, so she rejected everything associated with God. I knew you to be a hard man…but she missed experiencing Him as the one who laughs and heals and walks in the garden, the one who made mercy triumph over judgment.

We only fight against goodness because we don’t realize how good it is. When we have no concept of real peace or freedom or joy, we think rebellion is better.

It’s changing the way I pray, because she – and everyone – needs to know His goodness. Because if they really knew His goodness, they’d recognize His love for them, and His worthiness of their love.

And their own desire would drive them to Him.

We all need to taste and see. We handle things (and relationships) differently when we know what (and whom) we’re dealing with.

We’re good at following our desires. Where we get it wrong is when our desires are out of alignment, fearful because we know so little, because ignorance breeds fear.

But once we know, there’s freedom and joy and peace, and we bear much fruit, reaping a harvest.

We know what we’re getting into, and we can’t get enough of it.

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‘What ho!’ I said.
‘What ho!’ said Motty.
‘What ho! What ho!’
‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

– P.G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

pages & shelves: what we learn from all those books

Posted on by October 31, 2024

An epiphany this week: I just realized that I’ve been homeschooling for twenty years.

pages and shelves: what we learn from all those books

Twenty yeeeears. It’s a milestone made all the more significant by the fact that I have never owned a denim jumper and just recently had to be reminded what a “scope and sequence” is.

(“Wait wait wait, you mean the stuffy instructor’s material that I always throw in the bin so I can get to the good stuff? Oh…yeah, I knew that…” *nervous laughter*)

So hey, twenty years, eight kids, three down, five to go. Craziness. But it explains why my mind is often in fourteen literary directions and experiencing bookish spasms of attention deficit disorder. It’s just an occupational hazard of being a homeschool mom; we’re always reading great books.

I don’t ask the kids to analyze or dissect them. We don’t dig around for meanings and implications that were never intended by authors and only planted by dry language arts classes. Books are fun and fascinating and stand on their own without any picking apart, so we enjoy them and the stories they tell.

Rather than leaving us cold, education should produce the warmth of interest and pleasure in the knowledge we meet.

– Karen Glass, In Vital Harmony

But still, reading takes time. How do we justify all the hours put into reading pages and volumes and shelves full of great books – especially classic literature?

Here’s how.

We learn about bravery, and cowardice, and consequences, and human nature, and relationships, and responsibility, and maturity. We get to know heroes we want to emulate, and we are repulsed by villains who sometimes remind us a little too much of ourselves. In complex characters we see bits of our own tendencies, and we don’t usually even realize it’s happening, but as we read, we’re confronted with questions about if we want to keep those tendencies.

We learn about the world around us, and the world far away from us that we’ll never experience otherwise.

We think we’re reading the story of an epic disaster but we learn about Indian culture and the British Empire. We grab a fun mystery and end up learning about the tradition of bell ringing in churches. We open a novel from the 1800s and think we’re in for, maybe, an old-fashioned romance and dusty glimpse of village life – but no, by the time you’re halfway through you’ve learned to translate a bit of Scottish and you know that “I dinna ken whaur I cam frae” means “I don’t know where I came from” and you don’t even have to think about it.

We learn how to communicate and articulate, and how to attend and listen. We learn the nuance of different phrases and vocabulary so we can express how we really feel and what we really think without resorting to vague generalizations. We use language that demands a response from those who might otherwise blow us off, and we get our point across to a society who needs better content to think on. We lengthen our attention span and expand our understanding, and we’re not tuned out by complex language. And we are saved a multitude of misunderstandings, conflicts, inconveniences, and embarrassments by doing so.

We preserve culture and strengthen our communities by acquainting ourselves with great classics. Why have scholars and writers been persecuted in “cultural cleansings” by tyrants throughout history? Because they know and figure out things.

Those who read classics have a common language filled with short phrases that have complex, full meanings that are shared in just a few words. We say, “There is a tide,” just four words, and those who have ears to hear know the time has come to act before the opportunity is gone. We quote, “War is peace” and the sarcasm is understood by everyone who’s read 1984. We quote, “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done” and to anyone who’s read A Tale of Two Cities, we’ve distilled the 374 pages of repentance, sacrifice, restoration, and victory in just fourteen words, because readers have their own code.

On the writing side, though, I have been the writer-mama who tutors other people’s kids and coaches adults but still, at wit’s end, signed one of my own kids up for an online program with an outside company just to have someone else drill the same concepts into him. And that course was…meh…but still worth it to remove the extra conflict out from between us. So there’s no shame in needing help because of time, expertise, or just needing reinforcements.

So I did a thing to hopefully help lift a little burden from homeschooling parents of high schoolers.

(And yes, “to hopefully help” is a split infinitive, but we don’t really care about those anymore. I’m actually more aggrieved by the tacky alliteration in it.)

I put in some overtime – in our house, this means I stayed up too late after putting the kids to bed, and often let my littlest stay up too late by letting him do atrocious things to my hair – and I made an 18-week long British Lit course for homeschooling parents who don’t have several hours a week to keep up with all of their high schooler’s literature readings and evaluate their papers.

A second Brit lit course is in progress and it will be followed by American Lit, as long as we don’t run out of bobby pins.

The 30-page course booklet is $10 for those who want to do it on their own; it includes the schedule, suggested writing topics and questions, graphics, and memes. Alternatively, for those who need one less conflict between themselves and their high schooler and a few dozen less things to do, for $200 they can send me all of their weekly assignments and papers for constructive feedback and coaching over the duration of the course to save you from having to be on your kid’s case about those things. You’re on your own if you have to nag them about chores though.

You can check out the course here.

Not all of the books are your standard high school choices. Some are…and some are better. And some are considered by many to be children’s books, even though the language in them is far more advanced than the [redacted] [redacted] stuff that passes for modern YA lit sometimes.

Great children’s books are enriching for all ages, and many of us missed them when we were younger anyway. And even if we already read them (or they were read to us), we get new experiences and insights out of them years later – and many of those insights lead to maturity and perspective that we want our kids to have.

Life is too short to learn from only our own mistakes, so we need to learn from Frodo and Scarlett and Jane Eyre and Tom Sawyer and Mr. Darcy and Robinson Crusoe and thousands of others. We see multiple facets of human nature and learn how people respond to their circumstances, and how those responses do and don’t work. As we read about struggles and triumphs and flaws and heroism, we learn compassion and wisdom and bravery and self control.

Or at least, the seeds are planted. What we do with them afterward, when we are tested, is up to us.

P.S. Want to join us for our next book in Gaining Ground? It’s a biggie and will last us a while…we’re starting Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell on October 28 and we’ll be reading about 50 pages a week through the end of March. Join us on Telegram anytime as we wrap up Emma.