I practice detachment from things (because I can’t afford them!) but books are my weakness. And among the weaknesses - OK, I confess - the hardback versions of Michael D. O’Brien’s novels. Any other book, I’m happy with paper, used, tattered and torn, but these I’ve got to have hardbound with the dust jackets. I’ve got Strangers and Sojourners, Plague Journal, Eclipse of the Sun, Father Elijah and Cry of Stone. I waited forever for Cry of Stone and thought it would never come out or it would come out and I’d miss it and have to get it in paper.
I can’t wait for the last in the ‘Children of the Last Days’ series - Sophia House*. *Some references were made to it in Father Elijah, and since I live in Poland, I can’t wait to read Sophia House and go to Warsaw and look up the places that are going to be mentioned in Sophia House. (Does anyone else do this - take trips to visit the places you’ve read about in novels you’ve loved? Or am I just a hopeless English major?)
If you have children and/or care about the character formation children get through reading, by all means get and read O’Brien’s Landscape with Dragons. It’s a fascinating study on how children’s literature has gone immoral/ liberal/ pagan / not to mention bland and boring in the past 40 years or so (with something to say about films, too, including Disney). And then as a bonus, at the back of the book, there’s a long list, sorted by age from ‘read-to-me’ through young adult of good, solid, character-building classic and modern stories for children. Someone on another thread complained that this list doesn’t contain things like Shakespeare, to which I reply, ‘Well, duh. It’s not meant to tell you obvious choices, just to help you find books you may never have heard of!’ If you ever have to decide what any child can read - the list at the back of O’Brien’s book alone is worth the price of the book. I’ve given away several copies, and finally had the sense to photocopy the book list before I gave away the last copy. Now if I have to order a book for a child without reading it first, I have a handy list of safe and good books to choose from.
But as for the novels, every time a new one comes out I go back and re-read all the others in chronological (not published) order, to get the whole thing in my mind again. Can’t wait for the last one, though! Once I have them all, I’ll probably re-read them about every couple of summers.
Great stuff!
Eclipse of the Sun 
