Het Kwintet van Ruth Axtell

Foto: Tabitha Griffin

I read many of the classics in high school and college and many moved me, but it’s so long ago, that I can’t really remember what their individual effect was. Five books that have impacted me in my adult years are:

1) Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. A pastor gave this Christian allegory in 1983, when I was twenty-three and had just had a spiritual encounter with Jesus Christ. This allegory, published in 1955, illustrates the Christian journey from a person who starts out fearful and learns to trust in the “good shepherd,” going from the valley of all our hang-ups and fears, to the “high places,” where one is victorious in life.

2) Persuasion by Jane Austen. I have read all of Jane Austen’s novels more than once and loved them all. My favorites are Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. I first read them in high school and have read them again over the years. They are probably what started me on my own journey of writing regency romances—though I didn’t realize it at the time.

3) The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. This is a non-fiction work by a Chinese pastor and evangelist who wrote and preached in the 1920’s and 30’s in China. This book is a study of the first eight chapter of the book of Romans in the New Testament. An in-depth and profound analysis of what it means to be a Christian, summed up by the verse in Galatians “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” This book, read in my late thirties, was very revelatory to me.

4) The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I first read this in high school and then to my children, when they were younger. A rich story with meanings on many different levels.

5) Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac. I reread this a few years ago and would love to read Balzac’s entire La Comédie Humaine, just to revisit some of the characters that reappear in the other novels in this serial. I love Balzac’s study of human nature, its greed and pettiness against acts of sacrificial love.

Haar Goede Naam (Her Good Name) van uitgeverij De Banier is nu verkijgbaar.