Book #8: The Mysteries of St. Louis

The next book I've decided to read is The Mysteries of St. Louis by Henry Boernstein. One of my reenacting friends recommended this to me while I was reading book #4 (German Settlements in Missouri) and I thought I would give it a go. The St. Louis Public Library had a few copies available, so I put in my request (yay, library!) and picked it up the other day. I think this book is going to be a big challenge for me. To begin with, the book was written in 1851. In German. An English version of the novel was then published in 1852. I hope that the vernacular is not too difficult to understand. The particular version I'm reading was published in 1990, not sure if that has made a difference (like how all of the different versions of the Bible are so very different). Second, this edition is only 303 pages, but the publisher uses as much of each page as they can. The words are very small and they completely fill each page. All that said, I still plan to soldier on...I'm hoping it will be so fascinating that none of that makes a difference!

Today I finished Book #7, Friendship Bread by Darien Gee. This is the book I won on the Goodreads website. I loved it! It was a super easy, feel-good read. I highly recommend it! The title could use a little work (it doesn't exactly scream READ ME, does it?) but the book itself is great. It follows the story of one little anonymous bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter left on a grieving mother's doorstep and goes on to tell how it effects the whole town and brings the community together. I'd be happy to lend it to anyone that's interested!