Found Not Lost

I’ve been a reading fool lately. For one, we’ve rediscovered the library and its wonders so I’ve had a steady supply of reading material. Two, I don’t really get much time on the computers at home since the girls take up most of the internet time during my awake time at home. There isn’t much to look at on TV, so I hadn’t really been watching much either. Ever since we cut our cable service off, our pop up tv viewing time has been drastically reduced.

I’ll try to get around to reviewing some of these books soon, but so far since my last reading list, here’s what I’ve read:
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton

Now reading: Blood Canticle (Vampire Chronicles) by Anne Rice

Emma is the third book by Jane Austen that I have read so far. I joined the online Jane Austen Club, so I should have the rest of the books read within the year. Usually, when I like a book I zip right through it (slightly slower with Jane Austen books) devouring and savoring every twist and turn of every word. That’s how it was when I read Pride and Prejudice and again with Persuasion.

Emma, on the other hand, dragged on. It’s a smaller book than Pride and Prejudice, probably the same length as Persuation; but while it only took a weekend to finish the other books, Emma took a painstaking whole week to read. Maybe it was even longer than that. I had lost time.

Why did it take so long? I just did not like Emma (the character) from the beginning. I thought her shallow and just plain infuriatingly dull. I don’t get why other readers liked her. To make matters worse, it seemed like Jane Austen’s writing had taken on a bit of Miss Bates’ tendency for verbosity. Some paragraphs just went on and on about seemingly nothing. It got a bit annoying at times.

Maybe I was just in a mood. I don’t know. I really wanted to like this book, but even the story line did not resonate with me. I never did fall in love with Mr. Knightly like I did with Mr. Darcy. I never grew to admire Emma like I did Anne and Elizabeth. At the end I didn’t sigh for the love of Emma and Mr. Knightly, I just sighed because it was over.

Sorry I couldn’t be more positive about this book. Maybe I’ll re-read it again one day to see if I still feel the same about it.

Anyway, after the disappointment of Emma, I jumped on The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. I was not disappointed.

It’s been a while since I read this book which is the first in the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray. This was another recommended reading from my daughter and her friends and again, their taste is right in line with mine. I’ve only read up to the second book of this trilogy so I can’t really tell yet whether I like it as a whole.

This first book was interesting enough. The story starts in India where Gemma Doyle grew up with her parents. After her mother’s death under mysterious circumstances, Gemma returns to England, to a boarding school for girls. The boarding school for girls is, as it often is, rife with intrigues, cliques and conflict between the students. Not long after arriving at the school, Gemma finds out about a forbidden wing in the school where the students aren’t supposed to go. But of course, as soon as you tell someone not to go somewhere, what do they do? Of course they go in!

All through the adjustment to her new environment, Gemma soon realizes that she has a guardian of sorts and a hidden talent that is just slowly starting to materialize. She finds out that an Indian young man, Kartik, followed her all the way from India and is keeping an eye on her. She soon finds out though that right where she is, in England, is where an ancient order existed and her mother was somehow part of it. The bottom line is, Gemma has a talent or power, whatever you’d like to call it, which sets her apart from everyone else.

This was a nice read and I’d really like to finish off the series.

This book was one of my summer read; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I have heard good things about this book, it’s even been made into a movie, and I just finally got around to reading it.

I still don’t know a whole lot about Afghanistan as a country and as a culture but this book provided me a peek into the people, the culture and the country; and I found that some things in life really are universal no matter where we are from and how we got there. Kite Runner is the story of Amir, a privileged boy growing up in Afghanistan and his relationship with Hassan, the son of their family servant. Even with their difference in status, they grow up together, nursing from the same amah’s breast, sharing toys, stories and their favorite game, kite running. To me, this book further illustrates how the things we do, the decisions we make, even during childhood, can deeply affect us for the rest of our lives.

Amir, because he is young, a little spoiled and selfish, and generally just as most children are, makes a fateful decision that betrays his loyalty to his best friend, Hassan. This decision and Amir’s ensuing shame causes him to create a rift between them that he will regret for the rest of his life.

And just when you see an easy window to redemption, the story takes another twist and unexpected turn that keeps you holding your breath. It continues with the adult Amir, now living in America; his status drastically different from his life in Afghanistan. When an opportunity to make up for his past mistake arises, he pays the steep price and pushes forward towards redemption. He goes back to war torn Afghanistan to rescue Hassan’s son, who, it turns out is really his nephew. Even at the end when you can finally exhale, you can’t help but hold your breath just a little and wish for a happy ending.

This is a must read for anyone who loves a good story. I would let my 15 and 16 year old daughters read it just because I think they are mature enough to handle some of the graphic scenes in the novel and would benefit from the cultural and historical references.

The Twilight series of books started with this memorable line:

“When Life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end”

That has always been the underlying theme of the books for me, that somehow this relationship between human and vampire is tenuous at best. Something so far beyond real that you always feel it can never be nor can it be attainable. That, sometimes is the beauty or appeal of most things in life isn’t it? To dream the impossible to dare it to come true.

I finally got around to reading Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) by Stephanie Meyers, the fourth book in the Twilight Series. While falling in line with most sequels where subsequent installments don’t quite live up to the excitement of the first, I think this final book in the series nicely wraps up all the unanswered questions in the first three books. The much anticipated wedding of Bella and Edward starts off this volume and finally, the crux of the previous three books comes to fruition. Bella becomes a vampire.

I’m not going to re-tell the story here, you have to experience the series to get the whole impact, but let me just say that the fourth book is almost anticlimactic. I’m torn whether some things should have been better left to the imagination. Regardless, I still enjoyed reading this fourth book. There are more comedic episodes in this book than the others, Jacob, the werewolf best friend of Bella, provided some of the funniest, laugh-out-loud moments. The final conflict, as in the other books, had a happy ending; and going back to the quote above, I can’t help but wonder if the series wouldn’t have been better served if it had a not so happily-ever-after ending. What if there had been a blood bath battle to the end with the Volturi totally annihilated at the expense of Bella and Edward. It would sort of be a payment for their unlikely union. Something that perfect can’t be possible could it? What if, the only survivors were Jacob and Renesmee? A sequel of their subsequent adventures would have been interesting. Without the Volturi, they could go on a new odyssey to find Alice and Jasper, discover other vampire covens, develop more some of the new vampire characters introduced in Breaking Dawn, like the Amazonians.

But, as Stephanie Meyers said, this is Bella’s story and in the end Bella has to triumph over all the adversities she went through in the earlier books in the series. In the final book, Bella’s character completes her evolution from the helpless human to the most unusual and powerful vampire of them all.

My other reviews of the series:
Eclipse (Book 3)
New Moon (Book 2)
Twilight (Book 1)

I ran across this site that lists 25 banned books that you should read today. Sometimes I wonder why people even bother to have a banned books list if they don’t want those books read. That’s like a sure fire way to advertise and arouse curiosity about those books. I’m glad to see I’ve read most of the books on the list:

#1 A Day No Pigs Would Die
#2 American Psycho
#3 And Tango Makes Three
#4 Annie on My Mind
#5 Bridge to Terabithia
#6 Candide
#7 Fallen Angels
#8 Fanny Hill
#9 Forever
#10 Frankenstein
#11 Harry Potter (The Entire Series)
#12 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
#13 Lady Chatterley’s Lover
#14 Lord of the Flies
#15 Of Mice and Men
#16 Silas Marner
#17 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
#18 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#19 The Arabian Nights
#20 The Catcher in the Rye
#21 The Chocolate War
#22 The Color Purple
#23 The Giver
#24 The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
#25 Ulysses

Many of these classical works are available to read online for free. Visit the list for links to previews and free books.