I haven’t posted a wish-list of books in a while, and when I explored the books I’ve added to read, and to group together to read back to back, I knew this would make a marvelous Wish-list 5 post.
All Creatures Great and Small is a classic and I feel I know it well but haven’t read it-I believe. At least, not that I can remember, but who would forget a story like this one? Anyhow, I can’t wait to pick up a copy and get started on the “unforgettable world of James Herriot.”
I love reading stories that take place in Ireland and certainly “Foster” by Claire Keegan is the perfect story to read during the summer months.
The artist and creative side of me finds “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi an intriguing premise and Theo who visits a coffeehouse and purchases the portraits on the wall to give them back to their “rightful owners” sounds fascinating!
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather sounds like an intriguing read, particularly because I love stories about vicars or vicars that are included in stories. This story centers around Father Jean Marie Latour 1851 comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico…
When I came across Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry and read the first few lines of the description, “This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell,” I knew I had to read this story to find out more about this statement the author wrote.
Be sure to read the book descriptions below! Have you read any of these stories before? Or are they any that grabs your attention? Do share!
Stephanie
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
First published January 1, 1972 / Then Published April 15, 1998 by St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world’s most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.
For over forty years, generations of readers have thrilled to Herriot’s marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.
In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot’s periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot’s recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.Foster
Foster by Claire Keegan
Published August 18, 2022 by Faber & Faber
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household – where everything is so well tended to – and the summer must come to an end.
Adapted into the Oscar-nominated film adaptation, An Cailín Ciúin / The Quiet Girl
From the author of the Booker-shortlisted Small Things Like These, a heartbreaking, haunting story of childhood, loss and love by one of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
Published October 3, 2025 by Simon & Schuster
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
His name is Theo. And he asks a lot more questions than he answers.
Theo visits the local coffeehouse, where ninety-two pencil portraits hang on the walls, portraits of the people of Golden done by a local artist. He begins purchasing them, one at a time, and putting them back in the hands of their “rightful owners.” With each exchange, a story is told, a friendship born, and a life altered.
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Published June 16, 1990 by Vintage
Willa Cather’s best-known novel is an epic–almost mythic–story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows–gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Published August 30, 2001 by Counterpoint
“This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell.” It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town’s barber. Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow’s acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty. He began his search as a “pre-ministerial student” at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with “Old Grit,” his profound professor of New Testament Greek.
“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out―perhaps a little at a time.”
“And how long is that going to take?”
“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”
“That could be a long time.”
“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.” Wendell Berry’s clear-sighted depiction of humanity’s gifts―love and loss, joy and despair―is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.
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