The little book I reviewed last week, Christmas Day in the Morning, reminded me how much I love the work of Pearl S. Buck.  Her writing is so beautiful and her stories so compelling, whether written for adults or children.  She’s an absolute favorite, and I’ve decided to give myself the gift of reading more of her work.

She was a prolific writer, publishing over 70 books, and although we associate her primarily with China, she wrote novels about other cultures and nonfiction about important issues, as well.  Apart from her novels, she wrote about children with disabilities (her own daughter suffered from PKU as an infant and was severely disabled); she wrote about adoption issues (she adopted 9 children);  she wrote biographies of both her parents and her own autobiography; and she wrote wonderful books for children and young adults. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for The Good Earth, and the Nobel Prize in 1938 for all her work.  She was a great humanitarian and an activist for human and civil rights. She is one of my heroes!

Many of her books are now out of print and available only through the libraries or used books dealers, but they are treasures worth tracking down. There are also a number of excellent biographies of her. One that I have sitting on my TBR shelf is Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography, by Peter Conn.

I’ve put together a starter list of books I would like to read or reread, and will expand this list and link my reviews to it (although I may not review all of the ones I read).  I’m not putting a time limit on this personal challenge. I’ll just keep reading and enjoying her work as time allows.

blue = I’ve read but not reviewed
red = click to read my review

Children’s Books:

• The Big Wave
• Christmas Day in the Morning
• The Water-Buffalo Children

Fiction:

• The House of Earth Series:
  1. The Good Earth
  2. Sons
  3. A House Divided

• Peony
• Death in the Castle
• Pavilion of Women
• Three Daughters of Madame Liang
• The Living Reed
• Mandala: A Novel of India
• Imperial Woman
• The Mother
• Kinfolk
• The New Year
• East Wind, West Wind
• Dragon Seed
• The Angry Wife
• Letter from Peking
• The Goddess Abides
• The Eternal Wonder

Non-Fiction

• A Bridge for Passing
• The Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul (her biography of her father)
• The Exile (her biography of her mother)
• My Several Worlds
• To My Daughters, With Love
• The Child Who Never Grew
• The Man Who Changed China: The Story of Sun Yat-sen