The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein

As I think everyone knows, The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein continues where The Fellowship of the Ring left off. The Two Towers is split in two halves, with the first part focusing on the remaining members of the broken fellowship and the second half focusing on Frodo and Sam’s journey. While I had found some delightful things in Fellowship, this book was dark, and it just kept getting darker. I am delaying starting the final book of the trilogy. Continue reading »

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Nimura

When I first read about I Kill Giants at Nymeth’s and Amanda’s blogs, I thought it was a fantasy. Actually, fifth-grader Barbara Thorson is the only one living in a fantasy world. Barbara wears animal-ear headbands so she looks like a rabbit or a mouse in the illustrations. Playing Dungeons and Dragons is a escape from life for her, and when she says “I kill giants,” she means it, for in her imagination, her giants are fantastic wild creatures that must be overcome.

Her role as giant killer is quite apropos, given her surname. Thor was the god of thunder, wielding a giant hammer in his fight against giants. Barbara’s giants exist in real life, but they are genuine problems, and ones we can all relate to.

I love this blend of fantasy and realism. Barbara’s story of learning to fight her giants is both entertaining and emotionally draining. We cheer for this sarcastic yet zesty young girl because we can relate to both her imaginary world and her realistic world. Continue reading »

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

After reading both Crime and Punishment and The Three Musketeers this month, I really needed something quick and easy, engaging, and yet unique to catch my attention and give myself a break from the excellent but long masterworks my mind has been wrestling for the past three or four weeks.

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares was a perfect book for such a time. Although I read the novella quickly and enjoyed it simply as a fantasy story, it has depth that I suspect would benefit from more serious reading and study. Continue reading »

Genre Fiction: A Tolkein, A Heyer, and A Verne

During the first two weeks of March, I read three lighter genre classic authors. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring took me to the fantastic Middle Earth, Georgette Heyer’s The Talisman Ring was an amusing foray into romantic historical fiction (albeit an unrealistic one), and Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was an incredibly convincing science fiction novel that visited not space, as modern science fiction does, but the unknown seas of the nineteenth century.
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Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman + Giveaway (Used Book)

Although Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a slim book (124 pages), the issues raised are relevant today. I wouldn’t say Gilman’s writing is stunning or beautiful. The plot is not engaging or page-turning. It is predictable and overly “convenient.” The characters are stereotypes on steroids. But rather than expecting any of those other things, the reader of Herland should expect an issue book, and Gilman manages to address a number of issues in its pages.

Herland is nearly 100 years old, but the fantasy-adventure story of three men discovering a country of women still has some relevance. In some aspects, its age shows, but I’m glad I reread it ten years after my first read so I could get a fresh perspective.

I’m also willing to send you my twice-read, still-in-good-condition, ten-year-old Dover Thrift Edition so you can read it for yourself.

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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I picked up The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman partly because it won the Newbery Medal, and I have a goal to read all the winners of that award. I also chose it for the RIP IV Challenge.

This was my first Gaiman novel. Despite the fact that bloggers seem to have a special fondness for Gaiman, I just never felt inclined to give his books a read. I’m not a huge fan of fantasy (I’m not sure why) and I’m also less inclined to read something just because the crowd is reading it.

That said, I was amazed by this book. I sat and read the first 25 pages or so in the library after I picked it up, while my son played with the puzzles in the children’s area. It was engaging. So at about 9:30 or 10 p.m., I thought I’d read a little more to help me fall asleep.

I stayed up to finish it.

I never do that. My son awakes between 6 or 7 a.m. no matter what time I go to bed, so I’m usually eager to get my sleep. But there was something about The Graveyard Book that kept my attention. There’s something about the world and characters Gaiman creates that is familiar and fun. Although The Graveyard Book takes place (appropriately enough) in a graveyard and the main character is a boy raised by ghosts and the undead, it was familiar to me and yes, it was fun. How did Gaiman do that? I’m not sure. Continue reading »

Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne (Revisited in Poetry)

I wrote a “review” of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne in my pre-book blogging days (reposted on Rebecca Reads here) when I first read A.A. Milne to my son at age 4 months. I reread both books to him again over the last two months, now that he’s almost 2 years old.

I should say that my son loved it. As in: he  specifically requested most days that I read to him about Pooh and pointed to the book on the shelf. As in:  he would come running over to my side to see the pictures and yell “Pooh!” when he found his bear on the page. As in: when I turned the last page of Pooh Corner and closed the book, he looked up and said “More?! Pooh?!”

Since I already have reviewed it, I thought I’d do something different this time. Chance #9 for the Take a Chance Challenge is to review something in poetry. It seems appropriate to write a “review” of Milne in poetry because Pooh likes to put a rhyme (a hum) to everything.

Please forgive my non-poetic offering. I know I’m just building stereotypes of poetry as bad, but hey, I can pretend I’m a poet, right?

It ended up pretty short for the time I spent putting this together. I could write more, but I  think I’ve spent long enough already! Continue reading »

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

In Castle Waiting, Linda Medley delightfully tells some new fairy tales. Some of the tales are reminiscent of traditional fairy tales, but most of them are original in some clever way.

Castle Waiting is a rundown castle that is a refuge for a small community of outcast creatures. It is a place for acceptance, and learning the stories of the remarkable characters in the castle helps us to do so. Continue reading »

The Arabian Nights II, trans. by Husain Haddawy

After I finished reading Husain Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights (reviewed here), I still felt unfulfilled. I turned to The Arabian Nights II to get Haddawy’s translation of some of the traditional stories. In the end, I now have a better appreciation for the first volume of stories: those first stories were by far superior to these. Continue reading »

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

In The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next is an agent for SO-27, working in the Literatec division in alternative 1985. Her job is to stop literary thieves from taking original manuscripts. This is a very important job, for people in Thursday’s world are able step in and out of books: if one were to mess with the original manuscript, every copy of the book would be changed forever.

I loved the “Dragnet” tone of the narration, and the outrageous abilities of people in the book (such as going back and forth in time or accidentally falling in a hole in time) make the solving of a crime hilarious. The characters’ names alone are funny (from Jack Schitt, a bad guy, to Paige Turner and Thursday Next). Besides the humorous and fantastic elements, though, I loved the import of literature to the people in Thursday’s world. If only Shakespeare’s plays were the entertainment of choice in our world! Continue reading »