I read The Red Pony by John Steinbeck as part of a summer reading program. It was a great quick read. Always a good story to be had with Steinbeck. And this one has four! I’m looking forward to find out what happens to Jody when he grows up and if he and Black Demon are as good buddies and he thought.
Steinbeck has long been one of my favorite writers. In my opinion you can not go wrong choosing to read one of his books.
I couldn’t resist posting this list of books. The following list appeared in the November Wired magazine. It is a list of books that Obama recommends for future leaders. I love book lists! BTW the book above is Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
The Fall of the House Usher by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story, 36 pages, that even though I have not read the Tell Tale Heart I have to believe is super similar. The story starts when the main character is invited to cheer up a childhood friend. The main character visits the house Usher and a verbose amount of description starts about the house and how spooky and depressing it is. Turns out his friend is all bummed because his sister is wasting away.
The sister dies after a long illness that the doctors can’t figure out. They bury her under the main characters bedroom. Weird right? Of course she isn’t dead and comes after her brother. She falls on him and I guess both are dead the main character who is telling us the story runs from the house scared out of his wits.
This story for me demonstrated how a whole great story can be told in only 36 pages. Writing short stories can be hard, but Poe nails this one!
I was lucky enough to have Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created Progressive Politics sent to me for free from St. Martin’s Press as part of The History Book Club, of which I am a member. The opinions expressed below are my own.
Michael Wolraich moves you ten detailed and fascinating chapters, through the progressive politics of Theodore Roosevelt’s era. In the story you will get to know the players like “Fighting Bob” La Follette and Teddy himself as well as a larger cast of personalities. This well researched history takes you through a time in American politics that has been largely forgotten.
I found the book riveting and the story fun and education as my understanding of this period and the players was limited.
If you are interested in this topic I encourage you to browse through the discussion forms at History Book Club and read all the great information that club moderators put together as well as many comments from the author himself!
I gave The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo to my wife for Mother’s Day. It was meant to be a slight joke. My wife falls into the third category that Kondo points out in her book:
the “can’t-throw-it-away” type, the “can’t-put-it-back” type, and the “first-two-combined” type.
When I gave this to my wife on mother’s day my mother-in-law was also over at our home celebrating. When my wife opened the gift she rolled her eyes, but my mother-in-law shrieked. She said she had had this book on hold at the library for months, waiting to read it.
Since my mother-in-law has such a reaction we made sure she had a copy. As she read it (she reads faster than my wife) we discussed it and the book interested me. It’s a short read. While 224 pages long the text is large. So, I decided to read it as well. So, now we have three copies in the family.
As I read the book though, I found it read surprisingly fast and smooth. I also found lots of tid-bits to use. Kondo states, that you should clean house in a particular order:
The best sequence is this” clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly mementos
I agree with this list as the easiest things to drop are listed first. However, books would come after papers and komono for me.
As this all these self-help type books there are things you will take away from them and others that you will prefer to leave.
Star Wars: The Weapon of a Jedi is placed between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. Jason Fry is a new author to me at least with this new Journey to the Force Awakens series. He is actually best known for the The Jupiter Pirates series.
When comparing this to the other books in the series like Greg Rucka’s Before the Awakening. It doesn’t do to well. The story was extremely slow to start. Don’t get me wrong the book reads very fast. It took me two days and I had a ton of interruptions in reading. I’m glad I read this only because I know its not integral to the story of the Force Awakens.
The story follows Luke on a mission he is doing for the Rebel Alliance. Although, he never gets to the mission in the book (too bad, might have been a better story). He feels himself attracted (via the Force) to a planet he has never been to before. He visits the planet and figures out why the Force was calling him, unfortunately his presence has not gone unnoticed. A new bad guy finds him. The story is little ruined by the fact that we all know Luke makes it.
No surprises and a slow story earns this book 3 stars. One star for being about Star Wars included. If you are following along in the series you can skip this one, but its under 200 pages and written for a much younger audience so the book goes very fast. Just don’t expect it to be your favorite Star Wars novel.
In the interest in full disclosure I received Alive by Scott Sigler book and a copy of Alight, the second book in the series, as part of a giveaway. My opinions are my own. Now that that is out of the way. Go read this book! NOW! You don’t need to read the rest of this review.
Still here? What! Why? Go read the damn book! Ok fine, so you don’t believe me huh? I read quiet a bit and there are very, very few books that I think everyone should be screaming READ THIS NOW! This is one of those books. It makes me angry that no one told me to read this. What is wrong with you people? This book is that good!
This book losses a lot of what it is if I or anyone else tells you pretty much anything. I loved the constant surprises in this book. Everyone throws around the page-turner word a lot, I probably use it too much as well. This book really is a page turner. It usually takes me much longer to read a 345 page book. This week I also went back to work, so I’ve hard hardly any time to read. Every single free moment I was reading this book. I HAD to find out what happened next.
I totally bought into the very likable characters right away. The environment the story takes place is unique. I can’t say much more but you feel yourself paying very close attention to the descriptions of things as you try to figure out what is going on.
Very basic introduction to the book. Female young lady wakes up in total darkness trapped in some kind of box. That is in the description of on goodreads and amazon, so I don’t feel I’ve given away anything. Just go read this. It is amazing. Scott Sigler hit a home run! I can’t wait to read Alight! But I’m going to take a break from this story line, so that I don’t have to wait so long for the third book Alone coming out on October 25, 2016.
I liked the writing in this book very much. I originally picked up Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons because it is on my BBC list. I am very glad it was. The characters of Gibbons novel are particular and quirky. I had a little trouble getting to know the family at first, but after I had everyone placed things went really well. I occasionally had to re-read a line or two here and there since the acent some of the characters has was written in a bit difficult language for me.
Women are all alike– aye fussin’ over their fal-lals and bedazin’ a man’s eyes…
I really enjoyed Flora and I loved how the Starkadders addressed her as “Robert Poste’s Child” all the time. I’m totally going to do that to my nephew next time I see him. I loved reading a Penguin Classic. There is something about these little back books that is so enjoyable! Stella Gibbons first novel was this in 1932 and I have to say she did a stellar job on her very first book! Simply amazing for a first effort. The introduction talks about how this plagued her for the rest of her life. She hardly ever talked about the book and when she did, she never mentioned it by name. Only saying that thing or something similar.
Spoilers below:
This picture book or coffee table book if you like has a very long title. The full title: Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And as you would assume a book with a title this long requires more than one author, four actually: Adam Bray, Cole Horton, Michael Kogge, and Kerrie Dougherty.
If you get the feeling that this books title and abundance of authors is trying to compensate for something, you would be right. First and foremost, this is a book written for juniors, DK says 8-12. It would probably be perfect for a 8 year-old boy. But I wanted more. I wanted the mysteries that the movie brought to use at least hinted at. Seeing as the target demographic is 8-12 year-old boys it makes sense that the bulk of the book deals with descriptions of characters, buildings, and droids/robots.
I did learn things I didn’t know before leafing through the pages, so it is a worth while checkout from your library, but unless you have some Star Wars fans that fall in the target age group I wouldn’t purchase this one. Keep to the books for the most part. If you have watched the Clone Wars and are watching Rebels you will already know more that what is in this book. There are only four pages or so in the back of the book that pertain to The Force Awakens, so don’t get this if you think it will reveal more about the movie.
Having said that the pictures are great quality like every DK book and there is a lot of information there.
Star Wars: Before the Awakening is really three stories one for each of the characters on its cover: Finn, Rey and Poe. This is a junior novel. Really written for 12 year-old crowd, but it is a Star Wars book the tells the story of these characters before the movie and my local library had a copy, so my decision was made for me. I grabbed this as soon as it came in. And it already has another person waiting for it. They will get their chance now as I have finished it. I loved this book and gave it four stars. It loses one star for being a little easy, written for children as it is. Maybe I shouldn’t mark it off for that since it is a junior novel, but thats just the way I am. 5 stars is perfection after all.
In this novel we find go along with Finn through some of this training and on his first real mission. I had thought the one we saw in the movie was his first, but not so. Rey’s story I don’t want to tell you about. It concerns her scavenger life before the movie. Her story is so excellent, its actually the reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5. I loved her story so much, I thought there was more the author could have done with it. Poe’s story is also good. The second best story in the book after Rey’s of course. In it Poe meets general Leia Organa Solo for the first time and goes on a very thrilling mission. If you are a Star Wars fan, young or old, you will enjoy this book!