June Reads

I've been reading LOTS lately, but I fortunately didn't have to do much frantic reading to finish up my 14 books for June. I can't believe that it's already July!
So here are this months' reads, and a short 'review' for each of them:

1. Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent
This book was good. I don't have a whole lot to say about it. It was a biography...and the writing was pretty good, and it was easy to read. I guess I read it in two days (I was trying to finish up fast..maybe I did more frantic reading than I thought). Technically it was three, because there was one day I didn't read at all, but I read half of it on Saturday, the other half on a Monday, so it's kind of like two days.

2. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
This was very easy to read after the biography, even though I actually took longer to read it. I have read it once before, and liked it. It's not as good as everyone thinks it is. I've also read part of the third book, but never finished it. I'm planning to read that in a few months, after I read the second one, which I borrowed from Mikaela. My take: The movie is good, the book is good, the soundtracks to the movie are good. It's original, very different, and the characters are written well. I just can't work up enthusiam for this like I can for Harry Potter...Edward gets on my nerves too easily. After seeing the movie, I was on Team Edward for awhile (Twilight fans will know what I'm talking about) but after reading the book again, I prefer Jacob. So, I'm on Team Jacob again.

3. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
This was very good. I read it one day, 2-3 sittings, and I thought it was interesting. Still, not my favorite Lewis book...

4. Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace
I started this book over a year ago and finally finished it Sunday. It felt so good to be done! It was a good book. Not one I would want to read straight through, like some other books (it's not an easy read) but the prose was rich and there were several scenes concerning Christ that were very vivid. Those were my favorites. It's very different from the movie...but bookworms that are fans of it will enjoy the book. The only quote I have copied out so far is very long (I usually bookmark really good passages with long books like this to copy down later) so I won't try to put one it, but it feels so good to have read it!

5. The Iliad by Homer
Jason and I started this....sometime. I don't remember when. I read about half of it a few years ago, a different translation, and liked it pretty well, but got bored. I enjoyed it a lot this time, and again, it feels great to be finished with it. I'm pretty excited about the Odyssey, I think it'll be better, and probably more interesting to read. (The Iliad includes endless lists of names.....that are difficult to pronounce, and many of them are impossible to remember, as they are only mentioned a few times.)

6. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
I ordered this book several months ago, and have been meaning to read it ever since. I didn't enjoy it as well as I thought I would. I think some of the later books in the series will be better. I liked all the characters pretty well...except for Taran. Too bad he's the main character. It's reminiscent of Narnia, but nowhere near as good. The Book of Three was published fourteen years after The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I know Lloyd Alexander was a Narnia fan. My favorite characters were probably Gurgi, Eilonwy, and Fflewddur Fflam, Taran's companions for most of the book. Lloyd Alexander may have been influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien, as well...Gurgi and Gollum have lots of similiarities. Overall, a good book, but it's not a new favorite.

7. Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Ah. This was good. Great. Excellent. I've read it once before, but I enjoyed it this time more than I remembered enjoying it the first time, and it was so much fun to read it again...here, Lewis is at his best in his Space Trilogy. The philosophy and psycological occurances within Ransom's brain are so mind-boggering....what I especially liked about this one was that Lewis subtly pointed out some of the reasons for human behavior, which seems incredibly obvious after he's done it. The landscaping is genius, the inhabitants of Malacandra vivid. I'm looking forward to reading Perelandra now!

8. Holes by Louis Sachar
Overall good, but fans of the movie won't be getting anything that they didn't see in the movie, except for a few minor differences. I pretty much knew everything that was going on, what was gonna happen next, and how the book ended. Read the book before you watch the movie if you haven't seen the movie. I don't know if I've ever seen the movie all the way through all at once, but I ordered it from Netflix so I could get the full experience after reading the book, which won a Newberry Medal. On the other hand, the world of the book and the movie is vivid, stifling, and original. You can almost taste the muddy water, the onions, the spicy peaches, when they're fresh or when they're sploosh. Or feel the heat, the grimy dirt. I'm glad I took yesterday evening to read it. (50 chapters, but so easy I had no trouble finishing it in about 2 very long sittings, although I was occiasionally interrupted by phone calls. :D )

It seemed to Ransom that he had never looked out on such a frosty night. Pulsing with brightness as with some unbearable pain or pleasure, clustered in pathless and countless multitudes, dreamlike in clarity, blazing in perfect blackness, the stars seized all his attention, troubled him, excited him, and drew him up to a sitting position.
-C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

Very, very happy

I am very, very happy because I managed to finish my pre-determined quota of fourteen books on the last day of June. :D
Now to get started on next month's fifteen......which includes additional reading of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and possibly a massive theology book. :D

Inkheart: The Movie

I watched the Inkheart movie last night. UGH.
They picked lots of great people for the cast, especially Dustfinger, Mo and Farid. Some of the other cast was really awful, either in character type or acting or both. The setting wasn't quite right, and the story was a mess. It's like it crashed, flew into a million pieces, and was put back together by someone who had never seen it and had a bad instruction manual, with a few substitute pieces of their own. The movie captured the gist of the book, but the complexity of some of the more minor characters was brushed aside and replaced with a shallow, stereotypical character (particularly Basta.)

All in all, I enjoyed seeing it, but by the time it was halfway over, I could see that they had butchered the story beyond hope. If it weren't for some of the excellent actors, the movie would have been truly awful. The magic of the book just wasn't.....there. Maybe a trace of it. But not all of it. It was still fun to see, and worth seeing by Inkheart fans if only to see Dustfinger and Mo. I'm annoyed; it's damaged my Inkheart mood just a little, but there's still hope. I think it'll be mended by the time I get holt of Inkdeath...although I've heard more than once that it was a disappointing end to the series. Oh well.

A Good Blog on Writing Forward:

I thought this was a good article on the blog Writing Forward.

Reads: May-June

Hullo!

Okay, I'm gonna catch up on reads, quotes, thoughts on reads, and recommended books for this month.

1. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
This was the last book I read in May, which was a puny reading month. (Only four out of a required ten. :( ) Anyway, I think this was either the second or third time that I read it through all the way, and each time, I am awed by the poetic, descriptive prose of Funke. While it requires thought and time to read, it's still easy and not tiring. The first time I picked up Inkheart, I was intrigued by the dedication at the front. It said something like, "For Anna, who put even The Lord of the Rings aside to read this..."
So I had to check it out from the library. Even the first time I began reading Inkheart, I recognized a beautifully written book. It may have the been the first book I bothered to write quotes down from. It was several years ago when I discovered it for the first time, but I don't remember when.....

2. Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
I had borrowed this from Mikaela (I actually gave it to her for Christmas one year, and this isn't the first time I've borrowed it...) on my trip to San Antonia with my brother and sister-in-law and their kids. I started it immediately after Inkheart, but didn't plow through it quite as quickly...probably because it is much longer, and I had just read Inkheart, I wasn't as eager to finish it, so far a few days I just piddled and read it whenever I felt like it. Later, though, I started reading it more regular, and then reading it hungrily. The Inkworld is so vivid...the books are just incredible. I can't wait to read Inkdeath. I cried when my favorite character died, even though I had already read the book before...and even though I know this character is safe and comes back, it was still a devastating thing to do. Loved it the second time. I'm in a big Cornelia Funke mood right now, after reading both of those. :)

3. Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein
Also a book I borrowed from Mikaela, I've had this one for quite a long time now, and she said it was good, but I was never in a hurry to read it, even though it looked like a reasonably good book. After watching all this Star Trek lately, I was in a science fiction mood, so I decided to read it. If I remember correctly, I finished it in two days, vigorously, and loved it. Heinlein has lots of other novels, many of them his 'juveniles' and I'm looking forward to reading more. It was written in great, flowing prose that wasn't really poetic, but very vivid. I could see Mars. The characters were well-rounded and the dialogue was great. I know I at least chuckled inwardly when I read the following:

"Quit squirming!" commanded the doctor.
"That stuff stings," protested Francis.
"I meant it to. Shut up."


4. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
I confess I wasn't very impressed by this one. I wanted to be, and I was going to read Dancing Shoes (both of which I borrowed from Mikaela...again) but I just didn't want to read another Shoe book. I've heard lots of good things about them, but Ballet Shoes was enough. It was still cute, and probably engaging, if you like that sort of thing, but it was just very hard to be impressed after reading a string of such good books (J.K. Rowling, Will James, Cornelia Funke and Robert A. Heinlein) that I couldn't wait to finish it so I could get started on something else.

5. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
This one I liked, and I'm pretty sure I read this in two or three days. Not long. It was an easy book to read, written for a younger audience, and actually pretty good. The story was original, written in an engaging voice, and full of references to Greek mythology (that's probably putting it lightly. The whole book centers around the son of Poseidon, and features many well known Greek characters, including Medusa, Zeus, Ares, Hades, Chiron, and a satyr) and I thought it was really pretty good. I kept thinking I had read a book similar; easy to read, and lots of fun, and then I realized it was probably Warriors. So, these are similar to those in literary quality and easeness of reading, if that helps any.

6. Rattlesnakes by J. Frank Dobie
I have wanted to read this book for a very long time. A friend gave the book to us for awhile, and I started it, but never finished, and I think my Mom read quite a bit of it. It was loads of fun! Lots of lore, legends, tall tales, facts, and other things, all about rattlesnakes. :D

7. The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
This is the first theology book I have read in three days. It was great; I finished a while ago, collected lots of quotes from it, and it forced me to think. Not that I wasn't trying to; but you can't read the book and not think seriously about what he's saying. Let me try summing up in one word: Awesome. I don't mean like, "Cool!" I mean like "I just touched a living dolphin" awesome. You know. Actually awesome.

So, my two recommended books for this month are Red Planet and The Reason for God. Of course I loved Inkheart and Inkspell...but I'll probably recommend those in July, when I read Inkdeath, if I decide to recommend Inkdeath as a book of the month. :) So there you have it! Happy reading.
Anna

Recommended TV for the month

I know I'm late at getting to this.

A few weeks ago...no wait, maybe a whole month ago, I found the first season of the Original Series of Star Trek was available to watch for free on Netflix. I've become a Star Trek fan from watching the first four movies, which I gradually enjoyed more and more with each movie. So, I thought it would be fun to watch the Original Series. I was very pleasantly surprised.

I expected them to be good, but not that good! True and granted, some of the special effects aren't great. Some of them are downright awful. Fact: they were good in the 1960's, and they still get the job of entertaining storytelling done. So, I've finished the first season, and I've started watching the second on YouTube, and it's just as addicting as Lost. It isn't for everybody; a lot of people will be turned off by the out-dated special effects, the incorrect futuristic predictions, and probably some of the storylines. Some episodes are definitely better than others. I disliked the one where they come across the Greek god Apollo.

But it does its job; it captures very well the essence of a fantasy world grounded in the question 'What if?'

What if, in the 23rd century, we had incredible starships and had made contact with various alien planets and could go to warp speed? What if one of the crew was an alien? What if this ship was on a mission to seek out alien life forms? What if?

In other words, it's good old fashioned science fiction, and that's the best kind.
Anna

Article about Facebook

I just wrote a long blog post on why I don't really like facebook, but then I decided I should let this lady from Plugged in Online (I don't always endorse their stuff, btw, but they have interesting articles sometimes) explain it so facebook fans don't get irritated at yours truly.
Anna

Hello! and 10 random things.

Hello!


1) Well, today, I went to Barnes and Noble. I was first annoyed that they didn't have any autobiographies of Leanard Nimoy or William Shatner,

2) secondly annoyed by the screaming kids that simply WOULD NOT shut up, and

3) thirdly annoyed by not finding another book I wanted to flip through. That's okay though, because I found another book to read in that looks very promising. I'll have to see if the library has it, if they don't request it, if they can't get it, buy it and read it. :D

4) Oh yeah, and I also drooled over Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke. :) I just reread Inkheart and Inkspell, was blown away a second time, got all psyched for the third book and the movie, even though I can tell from clips and previews that they butchered the story up a lot. I looks like they captured the essence of the story pretty well, and I love all the actors they got.

5) Anyway, I am currently doing really well on my reading, so I'll be posting reading updates soon, and a belated recommended book and movie of the month. I know I'm quite late. :D

6) Who else finds that when watching really long videos on Youtube that it stops to load even when it's all buffered? It's annoying to have to refresh every few minutes, watch an advertisement, find your place, and then watch one more advertisement before you can continue were you left off. For Star Trek, though, it's worth it, but I wish my laptop handled it better. The desktop seems to stream them better.

7) I'm starting to do more writing on my book now, but I'm having trouble deciding exactly what to write of the outline I sketched out awhile ago, since a lot of my ideas and stuff have changed and I'm planning on changing the plot drastically when I rewrite. It's ridiculous how many ideas I'll get and then just now know which one to use. Oh well.

8) I'm starting to think about thinking about what I'm going to write during NaNoWriMo this year. This will be my first time participating, and I'm thinking about doing a lot of pre-writing and outlining to make the writing flow go easier that month.

9) My cousin has informed me that I am a certified nerd. She asked me if I have a license. I consider this a compliment. :D

10) Bye. :D

Anna