Book Review

While in the woods I read The Great Gatsby. I don't remember reading this book in school, but I had aquired a copy at a used book sale and deciede to read it.

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime.

I really enjoyed this book, it gave you a vivid picture of the glitz and glamore in the 1920's. It had a pretty depressing ending, but still a great read!

Book Review

 

 

TIME Summary : A slender novel but far from flimsy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie enrolls the reader at Edinburgh's fictional Marcia Blaine School for Girls under the tutelage of one Jean Brodie, a magnetic, unconventional instructor whose favorite pupils—"the Brodie set"—are set apart from the rest of the student body by their superior attitudes and their intellectual awareness. The archly, tartly narrated adventures of these young girls and their eccentric, autocratic leader form a delightful group portrait, and something more: an immortal parable of the temptations of charisma and the dangers of power.

Tonight I finished The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. Although it was small, it was a little slow. It was different from most books I've read in that it clearly told you how the book was going to end long before the book was over. The author spent the rest of the book developing the characters and then the book abruptly ends. It was an interesting little book, I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone though.

Book Review!

Tonight I finished reading Never Let Me Go by Kazui Ishiguro. This is on the TIME Magazine 100 Best Novels List. I mainly chose this book because I know that this book was recently made into a movie, and those are some of my favorite books to read. I love reading a book, and then seeing the movie, how someone brought someone else words to life!

Anyway, this was one of the most interesting books I've ever read. I would consider it a Science Fiction book, but not in a usual way. There weren't aliens or monsters or anything, but more in a science gone too far in reality. In that this would never happen in real life, but could. I won't give away the ending but it was a very sad book, where it doesn't tell you the ending but you know what happens.

Here is the book summary from TIME:

Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are students at Hailsham, a very exclusive, very strange English private school. They are treated well in every respect, but as they grow older they come to realize that there is a secret that haunts their lives: Their teachers regard them with fear and pity, and they don't know why. Once they learn the secret it is already far, far too late for them to save themselves. Set in a darkling alternate-universe version of England, and told with dry-eyed, white-knuckled restraint, Never Let Me Go is an improbable masterpiece, a science fiction horror story written as high tragedy by a master literary stylist. It's postmodern in its conception, but Ishiguro isn't playing games or chasing trends: The human drama of Never Let Me Go, its themes of atrocity and acceptance, are timeless and, sadly, permanent.

Book Summary!

Tonight I finished reading C.S. Lewis's book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. This book is on the TIME 100 Novels . When I was little we watched an animated version of this book at church when I was in elementary school and now more recently, this book, along with the next two books in the series, have made it to the big screen. But I had never read the book until now.

I thought the book was very good. It was neat to finally read the book, after hearing about it for so long. Not sure if I have any desire to read the other 6 books in the series thought.

Book Summary: When the Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are sent out of London during World War II, they have no idea of the magical journey they are beginning. In the darkness of the old country house where they are sent, the children stumble through an old wardrobe to the land of Narnia, where animals talk and magic exists. This is the first story of Narnia written by C.S. Lewis and it tells the story of how these four children with the help of Aslan, the Great Lion, help defeat the White Witch who holds Narnia. The first of the children to make their way into Narnia is Lucy, the youngest. There she meets Mr. Tumnus the faun who confesses to her that he is an agent of the White Witch and he is supposed to capture any humans he meets. He explains that the Witch has held Narnia under an enchantment which makes it always winter and never Christmas. The only way the Witch can be defeated is to have four humans sit on the throne at the castle of Cair Paravel. When Lucy returns home, her brothers and sister think she is either lying or crazy, but soon Edmund follows Lucy into the world and meets the White Witch who plies him with Turkish Delight extracting a promise from him that he will bring his siblings to her. Finally, all of the children go through the wardrobe into Narnia. There they go on a journey to rescue Tumnus who has been arrested, find Aslan the Great Lion and defeat the White Witch forever. While a wonderful adventure, the story is also allegorical in nature telling symbolically the story of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Aslan the Great Lion is a Christ figure who sacrifices his life to save Edmund's. During the journey to find Aslan, Edmund betrays his siblings and goes to join the White Witch becoming her prisoner. After his rescue, the witch approaches Aslan claiming the right to Edmund's life because of his traitorous act. Aslan later goes willingly to the Witch in Edmund's place, letting her kill him. As the girls, Lucy and Susan secretly watch he is shorn of his mane, tied up and killed. As they dispair, he suddenly appears to them alive again and leads them to the aid of Peter's army defeating the Witch forever. The children spend years in Narnia where they grow up to be Kings and Queens having many adventures until one day they are hunting in the woods and find their way back to their own world through the Wardrobe. There they are children again and find that no time at all has passed.

Book Review!

Today I read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. It it on the All TIME 100 Novels List, one of the list I've chosen to read 15 book from.

Description from TIME:

You could almost hear the collective generational sigh of relief in 1970 when Blume published this groundbreaking, taboo-trampling young adult novel: finally, a book that talks frankly about sex without being prim or prurient, and about religion without scolding or condescending. A few months shy of her 12th birthday, Margaret Simon is starting school in a new town and asking God some serious questions. Like, when is she going to get her period? What bra should she buy? And if her mom is Jewish and her dad is Christian, is she supposed to join the Y or the Jewish Community Center? Blume turned millions of pre-teens into readers. She did it by asking the right questions—and avoiding pat, easy answers.

This was my first Judy Blume book to read and I have to safe I thoroughly enjoyed it! This was a cute little pre-teen book, I finished it just an afternoon. But it really put you back in the mind set of a little girl in a middle school girl. Now that I've finally ready one of Judy Blume's book, I defiantly want to read one of her adult books now. Any suggestions??

Book Review

Today I finally finished reading Atonement by Ian McEwan.  It it on the All TIME 100 Novels List, one of the list I've chosen to read 15 book from.

Description from TIME:

"A magnificent deception. Briony Tallis, the intricate English girl at the center of Atonement, is a budding writer. At the age of 13 she believes that through her powers of invention and language, "an unruly world could be made just so." In a complicated way, she turns out to be right, but only after she turns out to be catastrophically wrong. In the first half of the book, she passionately misunderstands a series of events she witnesses on a summer day in 1935, which leads her to formulate a lie that ruins the lives of her older sister Cecilia and Cecilia's lover Robbie. So much for the virtues of the imagination. But McEwan is crafty. Even as he shows us the deadly force of storytelling, he demonstrates its beguilements on every page. Then he leads us to a surprise ending in which the power of fiction, which has been used to undo lives, is used again to make heartbroken amends."

One of my favorite things to do is read book that are being made into movie. Reading the book first and then heading to the theater to see how it comes to life on the big screen. With Atonement, I actually saw the movie several years ago and am just now getting around to reading the book. I had a copy from a book sale a while back and was excited about finally getting to read it.

I have to admit, I was bored with majority of the book. It felt like I was swimming in unnecessary works and descriptions. But towards the end it pick up and got better. It was very sad and depressing, but the ending made it worth reading, it was still a hard book to get though.