Book Girl - Annotated by Sarah Clarkson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Includes 20+ recommended reading lists!"--Book jacket.

Book Synopsis

When you hear a riveting story, does it thrill your heart and stir your soul? Do you hunger for truth and goodness? Do you secretly relate to Belle's delight in the library in Beauty and the Beast?

If so, you may be on your way to being a book girl.

Books were always Sarah Clarkson's delight. Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green Gables, the brave Pevensie children of Narnia, and the wise Austen heroines, she discovered reading early on as a daily gift, a way of encountering the world in all its wonder. But what she came to realize as an adult was just how powerfully books had shaped her as a woman to live a story within that world, to be a lifelong learner, to grasp hope in struggle, and to create and act with courage.

She's convinced that books can do the same for you.

Join Sarah in exploring the reading life as a gift and an adventure, one meant to enrich, broaden, and delight you in each season of your life as a woman. In Book Girl, you'll discover:

• how reading can strengthen your spiritual life and deepen your faith,
• why a journey through classic literature might be just what you need (and where to begin),
• how stories form your sense of identity,
• how Sarah's parents raised her to be a reader--and what you can do to cultivate a love of reading in the growing readers around you, and
• 20+ annotated book lists, including some old favorites and many new discoveries.

Whether you've long considered yourself a reader or have dreams of becoming one, Book Girl will draw you into the life-giving journey of becoming a woman who reads and lives well.

Review Quotes

Starred review. Blogger and author Clarkson (Read for the Heart) shares her deep affection for books in this enlightening mix of memoir, spiritual affirmations, and reading lists. "A woman who reads is a woman who ponders, who knows the holy secret of time spent in quiet," she writes, and reading her book feels akin to walking into a library or bookstore and spending a few hours browsing. Her suggestions are wide-ranging--Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, A.A. Milne, Lucy Maud Montgomery, among many others--and are introduced by Clarkson asking, "What makes a book acceptable to me as a Christian reader?" Great books, Clarkson contends, wrestle with life's great questions and influence readers' worldviews and theologies. Not all suggestions are overtly Christian, but they do speak to spiritual truths: Anna Karenina is about adultery, for instance, but also about "the consequences of putting self-fulfillment above other people." Whether highlighting fables, novels, or works on church doctrine, Clarkson's fun lists will prompt bibliophiles to rediscover books they have loved and help readers looking for books to deepen their spirituality--Publishers Weekly