From the Rosamund du Jardin website:
"Most people wonder why I like these books so much when I am a child of the '80's and the '90's and these books are about what it was like to be young during the '50's and the '60's. To tell you the truth, I don't know myself! Perhaps it's because they are about a time when it was safe to walk a girl home at night or when people drank malteds in the soda shop while wearing their charm bracelets and sweater sets. In some ways, their world of wearing class rings and hoping for orchid corsages is the opposite of my world of MTV, gangs and violence, and teenage pregnancy, but it's still the same when it comes to joys and heartaches, growing up and learning."
Most people remember Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) for his poem, The Road Not Taken.
However, my favorite Frost poem is Reluctance. It ends like this:
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Mary Stolz, et al
I've liked that poem ever since my early teen years, when I read a book whose title was taken from it: A Love, or a Season, by Mary Stolz. To be honest, I don't remember what the book was even about. I do remember that Mary Stolz was one of my favorite writers at the time, along with the likes of Betty Cavanna, Rosamund du Jardin and Janet Lambert.
(By the way, if you were ever a Rosamund du Jardin fan, this website dedicate to her is really enjoyable.)
While some of these books were already ten to 20 years old when I was reading them, they still resonated with me as a starry-eyed bookworm.
Francena H. Arnold
Christian fiction was in its early stages, but there was some good stuff out there even then. I loved Not My Will, Light in My Window and Then Am I Strong, by Francena H. Arnold. (I even listed Not My Will as one of my Top 25 Books of All Time.)
I've since lost track of most of my copies of these books, but I see now that many of them are available online. Moody Publishers has even re-released Not My Will. I will probably eventually purchase some of my favorites online. Reading them again will be a delight.
Any favorites that you'd like to let me know about?
(Originally posted on my main blog, Notes in the Key of Life, 3/26/07.)
