Does anyone not know what this book is about? Well, if not, it’s about a bunch of school boys who get stranded on a deserted island when their plane crashes. All of the adults on the plane (mainly pilot, crew, etc.) get killed, and it’s up to the kids to fend for themselves and to attempt to get rescued. Ralph is elected as chief, but things soon start to go wrong when the hunters start thinking that hunting is more important than keeping a fire for a smoke signal going. This leads to a great division between the group of boys, a clash of society vs barbarianism if you will. Things keep going downhill, and the hunters have formed their own (terrifying) tribe, which will leads to some terrifying events on the island.

I first read this book back in grade nine. I remember loving it – it had such a huge impact on me, for a number of reasons. I was a lot more impressionable at that age. I had no idea what the story was about, so it completely surprised me. And I was a lot closer in age to the kids in the book, so I think I could empathize with them a little bit better. So this time around, I found it a little bit disappointing. I knew what to expect, so it didn’t hold that shock value to the same extent (a little bit, but I’ll get back to that point later). I’m not nearly as impressionable now (or at least I would like to believe), and I really can’t empathize with any of the characters. It just reminds me of how much books can affect you differently at different times in your life. It’s making me wonder if I would hate the same books now that I did when I first read them in high school. Hmm.

Anyway, shock value! I still found a little bit of it there – I think perhaps parts of it had faded in my memory, so those instances still shocked me. Like the killing of Simon. Heck, like the scene of Simon with the pig’s head. Creepy! Or the hunting of Ralph. But it wasn’t as intense this time around because there were other things that totally stuck out in my mind – like the death of Piggy and the breaking of the conch. It wasn’t such an intense one-shock-after-another experience.

Because it wasn’t such an intense experience this time around, I found it a teensy bit disappointing this time. But because of my experience the first time around, I would still consider this to be a favourite of mine.

What I really did like this time around was seeing the character development, seeing how being stranded on a deserted island had an effect on certain characters. I didn’t remember Ralph’s lapsing ability to be a leader, and that was fascinating. I loved seeing what was happening to Simon. And the boys who turned savage… well, I wouldn’t say that I loved it, but I couldn’t turn away from it. It was like a train wreck…

The Bottom Line: I think this is something everyone should read at least once. It’s scary, but it gives a glimpse of (terribly horrifying) possibilities, and it’s a great piece in the debate as to whether humans are inherently good or evil.

To Kill a Mockingbird is my first book for the What’s In A Name Challenge, and is my selection for the “book with an animal in its title” category.

This book spans a couple of years of Scout’s childhood. Taking place in a small Southern town during the Depression, this is both one of the most heartwarming and one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve read. I love this book. I did when I read it for the first (and only until now) time about ten years ago, and I’m so happy that my love for it didn’t die down when I read it again now. I’m also somewhat surprised that so much of the book stuck with me. Even before I saw the play this summer, I could remember a good portion of the book, and it was surprising to realize how little of it I didn’t remember. When a book sticks with you that clearly then you know it’s a wonderful book. Especially when it still brings you tears, still makes you smile and still makes you really think.

The characters in it are so real, and Atticus Finch… what can I say that does justice to Atticus? There should be more people in the world like him, and we should all totally strive to live up to the examples he shows us. Even if he is only a fictional character. Almost every thing that comes out of his mouth is something we could all apply to our own lives.

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.

So happy I reread this, and so happy that it still moved me as much as the first time around.

I think the majority of people have at least an idea of what The Phantom of the Opera is about. It’s been made into countless movies, a musical, etc etc etc. The Paris Opera House in the 19th century is “haunted” by what everyone believes is a ghost, but is really just a disfigured man who has taken to living in the Opera House. The Opera Ghost falls in love with Christine, a soprano who sings at the Opera House, and kidnaps her, resulting in her lover, Raoul, hunting down the Phantom.

I’ve seen the musical, and I saw the movie that was an adaptation of the musical, so I went into this book knowing what to expect in the story. I found that a lot was similar to the main story for the musical. Some of the characters roles, however, had been changed fairly significantly – Madame Giry, for example, in the novel is a concierge who looks after those sitting in the boxes, whereas in the musical she’s a choreographer of the ballet (and in the movie she also saved the Phantom from a circus, and brought him to live at the Opera House). In the movie and musical, Giry is the one to bring Raoul to the Phantom’s house below the Opera House, whereas in the book there’s a completely different character – the Persian – who knew the Phantom from before he established himself at the Opera House.

The Persian was definitely my favourite character in the book. Not only because I hadn’t expected him at all in the book, but partly because his story is the closest we get to learning about the Phantom’s past.

This is my first book for the RIP II Challenge. After reading this book and watching a television special on Ambrose Small (the ghost who haunts the Grand Theatre in London, ON), I’m thinking I may add a book about Small to my RIP list. It would certainly be good follow up to The Phantom – both relating to ghostly stuff in theatres… it might be fun. :)

After my recent readings of gothic novels, I was seriously craving more, so decided to go back to one of the pioneers of the genre, and give Ann Radcliffe a try. This author had not only an influence on the genre in general, but also on some of my favourite authorsd and books. (According to Wikipedia, the list includes Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.)

Julia and Emilia are forced into a hermitage at the Mazzini mansion by their stepmother, so the girls live a very secluded life, while their father, stepmother and brother live in a different residence. The death of an old servant causes the family to move back to the Mazzini mansion. The two girls and their brother are convinced that there’s a ghost in the house, and their father only makes them believe this further.

Of course, now that their stepmother is back, she brings a whole entourage of people with her, and Julia manages to fall in love with a young man from Italy. Just after Julia and said young man confess their love for each other, Julia’s father accepts a proposal for her from a not-so-nice, but oh-so-high-up-on-the-social-scale duke. Julia escapes from the Mazzini mansion the night before her wedding, only to have to keep having to escape capture by her father and the duke, all the while thinking that the man she really loves is dead, and discovering that the ghost that haunts the Mazzini mansion isn’t quite as dead as most ghosts tend to be.

I’m torn about the narration of the book. Parts I loved. I love the language used in older books, and this book was no exception for the most part.

In her way to the church, the gleam of tapers on the walls, and the glimpse which her eye often caught of the friars in their long black habits, descending silently through the narrow winding passages, with the solemn toll of the bell, conspired to kindle imagination, and to impress her heart with sacred awe.

But then when the dialogue would start!

‘O! talk for ever thus!’ sighed Hippolitus. ‘These words are so sweet, so soothing to my soul, that I could listen till I forgot I had a wish beyond them. Yes – Ferdinand, these circumstances are not to be doubted, and conviction opens upon my mind a flow of extacy I never knew till now. O! lead me to her, that I may speak the sentiments which swell my heart.’

It makes me cringe. It’s so over dramatic, and all I can picture in my head is some man in pantaloons waltzing about the room, throwing his hands above his head in a foppish sort of manner.

I’m not sure whether I’ll read more of Radcliffe’s work; this book was predictable, but it was a quick and easy read that I enjoyed when the dialogue wasn’t making me cringe…

This is another one of the books I wanted to read for the From the Stacks challenge. (My second last, hurrah! Am partially through the last one, but won’t get it picked up again until I’m back home in the New Year.)

I don’t know when I bought this book, but it’s been sitting on my shelf for so long that I had forgotten what it was about and why I had bought it in the first place. Nonetheless, I felt guilty that it was sitting there, taunting me because I had never even attemped reading it.

Watership Down is about a group of rabbits. These rabbits leave their home because one of them has a premonition about the destruction that is going to happen to their home, and they go on a journey to find a place to make a new home. While not all of the rabbits get along completely at first, they learn to completely depend on each others strengths in order to get them through the journey and to start a new home.

I will admit to having a very hard time getting through this. I couldn’t relate to any of the rabbits, really felt rather indifferent to most of them, and characters are always what draws me into or repels me from a book. I think if I had read this when I was younger I would have thought it was charming because it was about animals.

As with The Silmarillion, the part that I really enjoyed was the mythology in the book.

I love this story. In all renditions. (Most particularly in the form of Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, but we don’t want to get me started on THAT.) And yet, at the same time, this book has not become one of those books I read every Christmas. Maybe one day it’ll be a tradition, but there are currently already 3 other books that I have to read every year at Christmas (Louisa May Alcott’s The Quiet Little Woman, Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express and James Herriot’s The Christmas Day Kitten), and you can only reread so many books at one point in time without getting behind on all those other books that you want to read.

I usually don’t read the forewords and afterwords of books – I usually just want to get right on with the story, but occasionally, if I’ve already read the book a couple of times and want some more in depth knowledge surrounding the book, I will tackle them. This was one of such times, and I have to say that I had no idea that this was one of five Christmas books that Dickens’ wrote. (The others being The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man.) Even though A Christmas Carol is considered his best Christmas book, I’m now curious to read the others, though probably won’t get around to that until next Christmas, what with all the other books I have planned for the next month or so.

This book totally put me more into the Christmas spirit, which, if you were to ask anyone who has encountered me in the past month, is probably the LAST thing I needed. Ah well. On a side note, this is one of two Dickens’ books I had on the go at the same time. I’m also attempting my first Podiobook (an audio book done as a podcast), and for some reason decided to go with A Tale of Two Cities. I’m not sure about my choice of books for my first in podiobook format, wondering if perhaps I should have chosen something a little lighter, but hey! It’s all good fun.

This was my third book for the From the Stacks challenge; I had been meaning to read it since I finished Wives and Daughters, and just never got around to it. Coincidentally, TVO was airing the miniseries this month, and between the challenge and the miniseries, I was given the much-needed nudge to finally pick this book up.

Margaret is a young woman whose father has just given up his living as the parson in a small town. The family moves to Milton, an industrial town in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. It’s quite a big change for Margaret – the people here are completely different than anything she had ever known before, in thought, in manners, work and the like. There she meets Mr. Thornton, who runs a cotton mill… and, well, it’s Pride and Prejudice of the Industrial Revolution. So we all know the wonderful story, how things start with Thornton and Margaret, how they end and it’s all so delicious.

So delicious. See, now this is the kind of romance that I enjoy, that I can thoroughly lose myself in. A lot of women I know get so involved with that badly-written, churned out chick lit (not that all of it is like that, I know, and thus I apologize if you love the stuff), and I just don’t get it. My brain would go to mush reading it all. I say, give me romance that has substance to it! Something romantic that is more than just fluff and sex; give me something to nourish me! Something where the female characters are strong, none of that ditzy female garbage. Where she can do more than just survive through the toughest stuff the world can throw at her, where she doesn’t go and throw herself into situations where you’re embarrassed to even be reading about them. Ah! Now that is what I call a very good read!

I think it is time to take a little break from the From the Stacks challenge. A Christmas Carol and Narnia are calling me. (I am in dire need of some Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole! And perhaps Puddleglum.) Tamora Pierce’s book is also looking awfully inviting. I think I’m going to spend the weekend as I have not had a chance to spend it in a while – doing very little other than curling up with a good book or two.

After I finished Jane Eyre, I was told that I simply had to read Villette. (Why do I put off reading that which Rachel tells me I need to read?) According to the introduction in the book, it is Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece, so after reading that and being told that I must read the book, I was looking forward to the book a lot.

It’s the story of Lucy Snowe. She’s an Englishwoman who has gone through some sort of family tragedy that leaves her needing to work to make a living. Lucy travels to a small town, Villette, in France, and ends up teaching at an all-girls boarding school.

Even though it is a completely charming and dear story, I found two things to be frustrating with this book. The first is that my French is not good. So what if I studied French for 6 years in school – do I actually remember any of it? No. I found that flipping to the back of the book every couple of minutes for a translation interrupted the flow of the story, and it took me a long time to really get into what was going on.

The other was the fact that there is a character named Dr. John. And every time Dr. John graced the pages, I would end up spending the next couple of hours singing about Cod Liver Oil – of which I am sure no one around me appreciated muchly. (I shake my fist at you, Great Big Sea. You and your positively wonderful music.)

But yes, I did like the book. Not enough that I’ll want to re-read it, and even though this is Bronte’s masterpiece, I still prefer Jane Eyre.

Wives and Daughters was the book Elizabeth Gaskell was in the middle of writing when she passed away. It takes place in Hollingford, a country town in England in the 19th century. Molly Gibson is the county doctor’s daughter. Things get rolling when one of Mr. Gibson’s apprentices falls in love with Molly – she’s sent away for a while to visit the Hamleys, and Mr. Gibson decides that it’s in both his and his daughter’s best interest for him to get married again. Along with a new mother for Molly comes a step-sister, Cynthia, who at times I want to strangle, and at other times absolutely adore.

This is such a sweet and touching book. But, ah I so wish it had been finished! Even though there is a little blurb at the end of the book saying how Gaskell was planning on finishing the book, I don’t feel like I have closure, whereas I get that when I watch the miniseries. I want to read about Roger and Molly after Roger comes back from Africa! Alas! Plus, I’m coming to believe that the best thing about watching a miniseries before reading the book is the fact that I don’t get angry at certain characters when it looks like they’re going to get in the way of the certain happy ending that I want to happen. And that really makes me enjoy the book more. (I definitely get way too emotionally involved with characters in books.)

On a side note, Roger Hamley has entered the same category as Col. Brandon, Mr. Darcy and Kenneth Ford in my mind – he’ll be one of those men that I will love with undying affection, and so on and so forth. So charming is he.

Thank God for Jane Austen coming along and changing my mind. (Or perhaps I ought to be saying “Thank God for Colin Firth playing an absolutely wonderful Mr. Darcy and changing my mind.”)

There are only a few books that, as soon as I have finished, I want to go back and start all over again. There are fewer still where half way through the book, I need to stop, go back, and start again just to read all the good parts that I’ve already read over again. This is one of those few books.

The language used in this book is enchanting. The characters seem real to me, and were just so interesting. Especially Grace Poole and the mystery surrounding her. In all honesty, I think that was one of my favourite parts in the book. (After we found out about that, I must say that the book didn’t excite me as much as it had previously…. but it was still good, don’t get me wrong!)

There is something about Mr Rochester that brings to mind Dean Priest from Montgomery’s Emily series. I think it must be the way he talks of fey and whatnot. Plus the age difference, but still, he seemed very Dean-ish to me, and it makes me think that perhaps, if I wasn’t such a die-hard Tenny fan, I might have enjoyed Dean a little bit more. Perhaps I shall have to revist Emily again to decide on that one.