read every book by Madeleine L'Engle

I’ve started reading An Acceptable Time. I love the tone and conversation in Madeleine L’Engle books, the scientific talk, the normal intellectual conversations… the walks to the star-watching rock. I read some of her non-fiction work: A Circle of Quiet and all of the landscape described at the Murray home is from her home in Connecticut…. sweet – a very endearing moment for me as I learned that. Also Mr. Murray and Mrs. Murray have first names in this book Alex and Kate (and they fit!). I wasn’t sure until now that they hadn’t been mentioned before. There so must nostalgia involved here, I’m sure I will be unable to make people understand why that is a nice surprise for me.

I’ve written so much about her already in other posts. I had a “Swiftly Tilting Planet” since the 5th grade – I couldn’t get through it at that time. Many years later, I still have the very same book and I am reading it now hoping the cover wont completly come off. It’s a Yearling book with a teen Charles Wallace on the back of a Unicorn and its poetically written.

Would you believe that Madeleine L’Engle had a hard time getting A Wrinkle in Time published (a predecessor to A Swiftly Tilting Planet)? – I believe it sat around for over two years before finally getting picked up for publishing…

She provided so much for the imagination in her books, I couldn’t imagine what gems we would have missed out on had these wonderful stories not been published.

I read the “Wrinkle In Time” series when I was a youngster, and they absolutely captivated me. Those books were my equivalent to my kids’ “Series of Unfortunate Events” and “Harry Potter” series.

We don’t have libraries in this country like I had in the United States, so this goal is not as easy to accomplish as I’d like.

After looking at her entire body of work, I’m thinking that perhaps I ought to divide this goal into several smaller ones.

Here are the books in my goal:

Kairos
* First-generation (Murry) (Time Quartet)
o A Wrinkle in Time (1962) (Newbery Award Winner) ISBN 0-374-38613-7
o A Wind in the Door (1973) ISBN 0-374-38443-6
o A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978) ISBN 0-374-37362-0
o Many Waters (1986) ISBN 0-374-34796-4

• Second-generation (O’Keefe)
  o The Arm of the Starfish (1965) ISBN 0-374-30396-7
  o Dragons in the Waters (1976) ISBN 0-374-31868-9
  o A House Like a Lotus (1984) ISBN 0-374-33385-8
  o An Acceptable Time (1989) ISBN 0-374-30027-5

A Swiftly Tilting Planet was published before Many Waters but takes place a few years later. The Time Quartet plus An Acceptable Time are marketed as “The Time Quintet”.

Chronos
* Meet the Austins (1960) ISBN 0-374-34929-0
* The Moon by Night (1963) ISBN 0-374-35049-3
* The Young Unicorns (1968) ISBN 0-374-38778-8
* A Ring of Endless Light (1980) ISBN 0-374-36299-8 (Newbery Honor Book)
* Troubling a Star (1994) ISBN 0-374-37783-9

A Wrinkle In Time.
A Swiftly Tilting Planet.
The Wind in the Door.
Many Waters.

A House Like a Lotus.
An Acceptable Time.
Dragons in the Water.
The Arm of the Starfish.

The Moon By Night.
A Ring of Endless Light.
Troubling A Star.

Camilla.
And Both Were Young.

I don’t remember a lot of these. I read most of them before I was old enough to follow the plot, let alone understand the themes (especially The Arm of the Starfish). So I want to re-read most of these.