Sacketts

Well as you can see from how little I've been blogging (as in not at all) you can tell that my summer has been busy. Well now that school is back up I am on track and back to reading.


my mom got me a book that she saw in Goodwill. She gave it to me and told me that I would enjoy it. She was right. I am now in the middle of it after making it the book of the week.
It is Ride the River, by Louis L'amour. It is amazing!

Not Far But Enjoying

Since I lost it this week I'm still at the beginning of The Count Of Monte Cristo, But I am really liking it. It's very well written and well paced.

Next week I'll be continuing it and maybe I'll also read something short...

Might Take Several Weeks

So, The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Yes, I know, I can not expect to read this book in one week and actually have understood the story. So I'm going to take up several weeks on it. I might also read one or two short little books along with it so I won't fall behind in my reading list.

Am I looking forward to this book? Maybe. I have heard it is great from many sources but I want to make my own decisions. Here goes!

Happy Reading. :)

My Thoughts On Frankenstein

So I started Frankenstein by Mary Shelley yesterday afternoon, and finished it that night. I literally could not put it down. My thoughts on it are below.

Was it captivating? Very. Victor Frankenstein was such a interesting man, you did not dislike him but yet you did not love him, mostly I felt sorry for him. His monster was so different than how it is usually portrayed now. It was very smart, but kept making the wrong choices. While reading the book, all I could do was feel sorry for it, even when it made horrible choices I understood them and felt sorry that it did not go another direction.

All in all, I liked it, but I do not think I will ever read it again. It was a book that helped you to understand human nature. If you have not read this book please do, I consider it educational even if you don't enjoy it.

I hope next weeks book will be something light and funny. I just want something opposite than what this weeks book was. 

You can find my complete book list under the "about me" section. The list is not in order so if you see something that you think would be good for next week please comment below. Also If you want me to add something to my list, again please comment the name and author below. :)

Baskervilles

I have now started my first ever Sherlock Holmes book! I am exited because I really like mystery stories.

I have seen the Holmes movies and I love them all. I know they are not accurate to the books but I am hoping that does not mean I wont like the books. Anyway I am hoping for a good reading week! :)

I still have not finished A Tale of Two Cities, but I will this week.

Happy Monday! :)

Thumbs Up!

Well I really enjoyed Tom Sawyer! It was well written, funny, it had likable characters, and a good story. If you have never read this book, I highly suggest that you read it now.

Next week will be my first ever experience with Mr. Sherlock Holmes! The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I'm looking forward to it.

Finished My First of Chaucer

I read six of Chaucer's tales last week, and I really enjoyed them! I read, The Knights Tale, The Nun's Priest's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale, and The Wife of Bath's Tale, along with the prologue of the book. I think my favorite was The Pardoner's Tale. I just liked the overall idea of how you can never trust men with evil plans, especially if you're one of them.

This week will be a book that I am sure that you all have heard of, Pinocchio. I mean who has never heard of that story? I have of course seen the movie, and now I shall read the book. I am not sure whether I will like it or not, but we will see.

Along with Pinocchio this week, I am also going to be reading A Voice In The Wind, by Francine Rivers. Me and my friend (who also loves to read) traded books this week. That just means that I have a book that I really want her to read and she has one for me so we switched books. I have never read a book by Francine Rivers but I think it will go well.

King Arthur

So I finished the Age of Chivalry, It was better than some other early England books I've read but I still don't really like King Arthur stories. I'm not really sure why but I don't, the only way I can enjoy them is if they have very little parts about King Arthur and no parts about Sir Launcelot or Queen Guinevere, those last two I just can't stand.

Anyway, this week's book is goung to be The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I will only be reading a few of the poems that were picked by mom. I hope I'm going to enjoy this book, I have already read the prologue and it was interesting so I feel good about this one.

I other news, I finished Macbeth, and I loved it! My favorite character was Macduff, and my favorite line was, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air." That was said by three witches in the first Act and it was really cool.

Happy Reading!

Sadly I'm All Done With That Series

I finished The Return of the King! It was so good, it is on my favorite book's list! It was so much better than the movie, more detail, more characters, and a way better ending.

Next week I am going to be starting The Age of Chivalry by Bullfinch. I don't know much about this book,  I think it's a King Arthur story. I never much liked reading about him, his stories always have tragic endings which I hardly ever like. I will give this book a try though and see where it leads.

On the side, I have started a book that I bought around Christmas. Apparently it's not worthy enough to be put on my official list because its a Christian/mystery/romance novel by one of my favorite authors, Gilbert Morris. His books are all called fluff by my more classic loving sister (who once started one and  never finished it because it was so silly to her) but I have really been wanting to start it, so the poor Age of Chivalry will not be the only book in my life right now.

Happy Reading! :)

Head Start

Last week since I finished Undine so quickly, I started the Return of the King. It is such a long book that half a week later I am not even half way through it. So I am glad I got such a good head start! :)

I am really enjoying The Lord of the Rings series. They are different from the movies (which I saw first) but I still like them. The final book has to be the one that Hollywood changed the most. The book and the movie are technically not even the same story. I like both versions, but reading the book is nice because I truly have no idea what is going to happen next.

Though I have to say that the actor's and actresses that were picked for the movies fit perfectly.

From Rings to Mermaids

Alright, I sadly finished the Two Towers two days late but I absolutely loved everything about it! It was just so good, J.R.R Tolkien is a fantastic writer.

I said before in an earlier post that I saw the movies first. Well I never knew how much the movies changed the story, It's crazy what they changed. I was surprised in different parts of the story because things were not happening the way I thought they were going to happen. I sort of understand why they changed some things but others I do not.

Both versions of the story are great but I can't decide which I like better.

Now I'm starting Undine by Fouque. It is about a mermaid or water sprite, and is a European classic. That is all I know but I have heard that it is really good so, happy reading! :)

I Loved the Movies Now I Love the Book's

This week I have started the Two Towers which is the second book in the Lord of the Rings series. I absolutely love it. I have always been a Lord of the Rings fan but until this week I had only seen the movies and read the Hobbit, and the Fellowship of the Ring.

To tell the truth I have actually started the The Two Towers before but I had never finished it. This happened a few years ago when I could not read as well and couldn't really understand what I was reading most of the time anyway. I had gotten to one of the most boring parts of the book when I accidentally lost it. A few months later I found it again, the problem was that I couldn't remember where my place was in the book. (this was before I had discovered the usefulness of bookmarks) and I did not want to start back at the beginning again, so I just left it and went on to easier stuff.

Let's hope that does not happen again. :)

Hard Poetry

Well I finished the Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves by Edmund Spencer a little bit late because it was the hardest book I have had to read yet.

Even though it was a difficult to get into and sometimes confusing, it is well written. Once you start to understand it is a good tale with lots of strange scenes. I enjoyed how the verses flowed and I thought that the way the writer chose to say some things really was genius. I liked the editor because he was funny and informative. Anyone who wants to read something that is very deep with Christian themes read Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves.

At the beginning of every chapter or Canto, there is a preamble verse that tell a little about what will be in the chapter. These preambles are written in iambic verse and you can sing them to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Here is an example;

To sinfull house of Pride, Duessa
      guides the faithful knight,
Where brothers death to wreak Sansioy
      doth challenge him to fight.

So on Monday I will be starting The Two Towers. :)

First of Poetry

Well I finished The Three Theban Plays. I liked them all. They were very depressing and about everyone dies at the end, but they were so well written, the characters were well formed, and everything made sense at the end.

The three plays are the story of a man whose fate was told to his parents at birth, the fate was so horrible that they sent him away and once he was old enough to understand his fate he went out of his way to avoid it. The horrible thing about it is that if no one had known of his fate, it would never have happened. His fate came true because of everyone's reactions to it. I really liked the idea of the story.

My next book is a book of Poetry, called Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves. I know absolutely nothing about is except that it is the first book of a series. I am not going to be reading all the other books, just this one. I do not know why, but that is what mom is telling me to read. :)

Thoughts On Book Two

Today I started The Three Theban Plays. The book includes three plays (hence the name) and the plays are, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus. If you have read these plays before and notice that they are in the wrong order, than congratulations because my mom pointed that out to me only after I was half-way through the first play. Instead of completely starting over I decided to just keep on reading.

To me plays have always been harder to read and to understand mostly because of the long flowing speeches, the format, and because I find plays harder to picture in my mind than with books. Although what I have gone through so far in Antigone has been really good and interesting.

The play started very abruptly because the story was already in motion. The characters are all very interesting people, the uncle is the evil, unfeeling bad guy that uncles always are in story's. And the two sisters are two very different people, but they make sense as sisters.

So far I like this book and I am curious as to what happens next which is always a good sign that the book is a good one.

First Book, Check!

Well I just finished the Odyssey, all twenty-four chapters. It took me exactly four days to finish and to tell the truth I would not have believed that I could have finished it that fast when I started it.

It was a very interesting book. I would not say that it was my absolute favorite book ever, but I did not dislike it. The book's story did not interest me as much as the culture of the time. Things that the people said and did that were perfectly normal then are strange and not fully understood now. For example the custom of grabbing peoples knees, I have no idea why this happens so much in the Odyssey, I think it might be some way of begging for peace or something. Several of the characters do this several times and it is never explained. But I guess we can't talk because our culture today also has some very strange customs, like when meeting someone we grab hands and yank up and down, and we hit doors to get the attention of those inside.

Odyssey Thoughts

Well I am already to chapter 5 of the "Odyssey" and so far it is not like anything I have ever read. It is more poetic than any of the modern books today, and it flows differently than books that I have read before. I especially like how whenever Homer writes that morning had come he writes, "When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared" Even though that sentence gets very repetitive, it does not make the book boring it just makes me want to laugh at the strangeness of the sentence.

So far I like it. Though while reading the "Odyssey" it comes in handy to have a list of the names of all the characters in the book because while reading it I mix up Amphimedon, and Amphinomus.

One of the best things about reading the "Odyssey" is that we have an older, hard-backed, yellow-ish paged, and awesome looking copy. This makes it all the more fun to read. There is something different about reading a new addition, clean, and unwrinkled copy of a book, than reading the older copy that looks like it has been picked up many times to be read again.

Reading a book that looks fresh off the store's shelf makes me scared to open it too wide, so when I read a wrinkled copy I feel more relaxed.