Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Book Reviews

At the last regular-season Storm game, my section won classic books in a giveaway contest. I ended up with Brom Stoker's Dracula, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and Homer's The Odyssey.

So.

The Jungle
An excellent book about the bleak life in the early 1900's of a Lithuanian immigrant and his family and the Chicago stockyards. Seriously--it was almost enough to make me stop eating meat. I am quite sure that some forms of this yuckiness with meat still goes on, and that is AWFUL!! Also, the story is just heartwrenching and sad and horrible. Up until the end, where the author goes on a 30 page rant about how wonderful socialism is, and completely leaves the story and his main character behind. Don't quite get that, but the rest of the book was a good read.

Dracula.
Started it. Stopped it. Will have to come back. It is written as a series of letters and journal entries, and is not so much an easy read.

The Odyssey
Hard at first to read, but I have figured out a cadence for this epic poem, and am doing well now. I am only about 1/5 of the way through, but thoroughly enjoying it.

And other books. I recently (re)read some books by Tamora Pierce called the Protector of the Small quartet. Excellent books for little girls to read, or maybe little teenagers, as it does get a bit into talking about romance and such. Wonderful, strong heroine who shows little girls that they can do anything they put their minds to--even become a knight! She has other books set in the same world (sorta medieval fictional world), and they are great, too.
The Alanna quartet is also great--it involves a girl who pretends to be a boy so that she can train as a page, become a squire and eventually be a lady knight. Great stories about girl power!

Also, the Bartimeous Trilogy is awesome. I just re-read the last book and it is so nice. I love these books because many pages have postscripts on them, which tell you the sarcastic thoughts of one of the characters. I have never seen that before, and they totally crack me up.

Oh, the Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials Trilogy--The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and....can't remember the last name....but they are good. Lots of political and religious undertones, and interesting look at the society of today as shown in some past time in this book. Very interesting, a nice look at corruption of varius institutions.

What else.......I read everything, so I am sure there is more....mostly fantasy football magazines lately....

No comments: