Musings of a Loquacious Mind

Two Books Recently Finished

I have recently finished reading (actually, rereading in both cases) two books for the 50 Books in 2007 challenge.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Here's how I started reading Harry Potter – when home from college one weekend we went to the mountains to look at scenery. Well, everyone in my family takes a book, because otherwise you think you are going right over the edge as my father is undaunted by the precipitous edges of mountain roads and undeterred from driving at what I would classify as dangerous speeds (let's not talk about how nerve-wracking it is when he is too busy looking at the scenery to drive properly!).

At any rate, I was out of book! And feeling queasy! And the only book available was my little brothers 'weird wizard book' – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (yes, I started with book 2). As I was green to the gills, I chose the weird wizard book. And was hooked.

By the time JK Rowling was adding in messages against slave labor and her political statements, I was too invested to not read future books. I lump Rowling into the same sort of existence as George Lucas – I do thank you wholeheartedly for your contribution to pop culture, but I think you are a big, fat liar when you say you had a grand plan from the beginning, and think you are really too full of your own self importance. Injunctions to keep people from reading books they bought when the store just happened to sell a few erroneously? I mean, really.

I feel like Harry Potter has become later seasons of a good television show – the characters are all still there, and there is a shadow of the same show, but it is not the same.

By this point, I do not feel the need to "spoiler" the below, as I feel that anyone that really wanted to read the book would have, and everything else is pure speculation on my part, not based in any inside knowledge (ha).

I always buy the UK version, to keep my collection the same throughout, but I do read the US version when it first comes out because it takes a while for my book to ship from over seas. After reading the book the first time, I felt certain that Dumbledore was as dead as Gandalf the Grey. I didn't realize until it was pointed out to me how explicit they made it for American readers. Below is a short passage, first from the UK version, then from the US version.

[…] He told me to do it or he'll kill me. I've got no choice." "Come over to the right side Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban […]

[…] He told me to do it or he'll kill me. I've got no choice." "He cannot kill you if you are already dead. Come over to the right side Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Nobody would be surprised that you had died in your attempt to kill me — forgive me, but Lord Voldemort probably expects it. Nor would the Death Eaters be surprised that we had captured and killed your mother — it is what they would do themselves, after all. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban […]

And that's all I have to say about that.

Bad Heir Day

Seriously, why do I have this book? When I was in middle school I used to buy Harlequin Romance novels, because I read all the time and these were abundantly available - 6/$1 at the local library. Most were stupid, quite a few I didn't finish, but they were, by in large, not even close to raunchy or randy. They were truly romances. I can actually remember a few that I actually liked. Well, about as much as I liked Baby-Sitters Club Super Summer editions in elementary school – they were fluff.

Anyway, this book was another UK import, and I believe that there must be British Chick Lit out there that does not involve women who are constantly on the wrong end of things with double entendres and who don't comment at least once a book on the state of their underarm hair, but I haven't found it. This book was fluff, but not really good fluff, and I think is a perfect candidate for some form of removal (I am loathe to rid myself of any book, really, but I don't want to accidentally reread this one again).

Labels: 50 Book Challenge 2007, books

50 Book Challenge

1. Timeline, by Michael Crichton (blog post)
   
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by JK Rowling (blog post)
   
3. Bad Heir Day, by Wendy Holden (blog post)
4. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, by Chuck Barris
5. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
6. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
8. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
9. The Painted House by John Grisham
   
10. Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale, Jr.
11. College Weekend by RL Stine
12. The Last Battle by CS Lewis
13. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
14. Holes by Louis Sachar
    
15. The Refiner's Fire by Lee Kingman
16. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
17. Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy
18. Timeline, by Michael Crichton (does it count that I reread it?)
19. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
    
20. Firestarter, by Stephen King
21. The Stand, by Stephen King
22. The Summons, by John Grisham
    
23. Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
24. Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
25. Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
26. On the Banks of the Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
27. By the Shores of the Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
28. The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
29. The First Four Years, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
30. Needful Things, by Stephen King
31. The Client, by John Grisham
32. The Magician and His Nephew, by C S Lewis
33. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C S Lewis
34. Prince Caspian, by C S Lewis
35. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C S Lewis
36. The Silver Chair, by C S Lewis
37. A Horse and His Boy, by C S Lewis
38. The Last Battle, by C S Lewis
39. Where the Heart Is, by Billie Letts
40. A Walk to Remember, by Nicholas Sparks
41. Dwelling: Living Fully from the Space You Call Home by Mary Beth Lagerborg
42. Little Altars Everywhere, by Rebecca Wells
43. Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume
44. A Bend in the Road, by Nicholas Sparks
45. The Brethren, by John Grisham
46. Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom
    
47. The Wedding, by Nicholas Sparks
48. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling
49. 24 Hours, by Greg Iles
50. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
    
51. Murder on the Chesapeake, by David Osborn
52. Just Give Me a Little Piece of Quiet, by Lorilee Craker
53. Scarlet Feather, by Maeve Binchey
54. Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown
55. 1984, by George Orwell
56. Bleachers, by John Grisham
    

Labels: 50 Book Challenge 2007, books

A Challenge, A Book, and A Spoiler

My no-longer-Secret Pal, Lori, has challenged everyone to join her in the 50 Book Challenge 2007 (if that link doesn't work for you, it's because you might have to be a registered member of that forum to read it. I can't remember.) Basically, the name says it all - read 50 books in 2007.

I don't think it will be very hard to do this, but I think it will be interesting at the end of the year to look back on what books I read this year.

The first book I am counting (I have read some others recently, but I'm only counting books I've finished since I decided to do the challenge) is Timeline by Michael Chrichton, that I wrote about two days ago.

Since I last read a Michael Chrichton book, I have read several Dan Brown books, and I think all of them are what I refer to as Grishoms (can you guess why?). This means, they have a niche, and they stick to it. Their works are fine, their works are popular, but their works are all, to an extent, indistinguishable and ultimately disposable. This book was very different from Jurrasic Park on the surface, but when it comes down to it, they just substituted medieval folk for dinosaurs. Really, there are more similarities than differences. Luckily, I liked Jurassic Park just fine, so I liked this book just fine, too... but I'm not going to really remember it too much.

The reason I mentioned Dan Brown is that I find I like his brand of "thriller" more - they are actually more "thrilling". And Dan Brown works better for Mommy Books. Mommy Books are books that I can read while keeping one eye on the baby playing in the den or at the playground. Mommy Books can be read in 1-3 minute bursts, without losing a lot. And Mommy Books are mostly what I have time for as of late.

So, if you like Michael Crichton books and haven't read Timeline, I say go for it. For the spoiler, even telling how I was spoiled provides a spoiler, so I am going to "black box" the whole thing. If you have already read the book or seen the movie, or if you just don't care if it spoils you because you probably never will, go ahead and highlight it - but don't say I didn't warn you!

Labels: books, movies

What I'm Reading...

So I'm reading the Michael Chrichton book, Timeline. (By the way, all of the images are from and links to Amazon.com) My mom had bought a big bag of books for my dad, and he already had this one, so I thought "Why not? I wasn't much for Congo, but Jurassic Park was ok, before they made the movie, and even then, Jeff Goldblum did a pretty good job in his role."

(Even to myself I am a rambler. I actually shortened this "quick" thought by a good paragraph.)

Basically, a group of people go back to the High Middle Ages (1367). Or at least in theory, since I'm almost 200 pages and no Middle Ages action going on. And I say back, but I'm simplifying the whole process they claim. I will say this - my mind was much more willing to understand the cloning of dinosaurs from DNA found in petrified mosquitoes (and even the subsequent spontaneous gender-changes) of Jurassic Park than it is taking to the whole ideas of quantum physics at this level and level of fictionalization.

At any rate, it keeps making me think of other books I should really reread. A Wrinkle in Time, for one. Heck, the whole series. I've read A Wrinkle in Time dozens of times, but I know I have only read A Swiftly Tilting Planet, A Wind in the Door, An Acceptable Time and a few others once or a few times each. There are others I haven't read at all, and I really would like to. I never really completely wrapped my mind around a tesseract - oh, I could fold up my skirt hem and let an ant walk across it, whoopdiedo, but it just felt too fake (not like Back to the Future - that's clearly how time travel works. Deloreon optional.)

Then I started thinking about another YA novel of the same feel, Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes. Have you read this one? It's set at an indetermined time in the future, and these kids think they're being invited to play a VR game to get their minds off of being jobless, but really they're preparing to be dropped of on an alien planet. It's actually less weird than that sounds. It would be a quick little read - good for the beach. I should try to rummage up a copy.

Then there's John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy. I read this one in sixth grade. I assume it tied in to the Middle Ages, because everything in sixth grade tied into the Middle Ages. We even had this big end of year banquet in period dress (kind of) for our parents. Although I have a vague recollection that they found an old subway (transit form, not sandwich shop) and tins of food and that it, too, was set in the future, but made to look like the past. And at a certain age they got brain control caps put on. Wow. I have read some really weird books! Actually, I looked it up. As a class we just read The White Mountains, but I really think I read more than that, but I can't remember any of what happened. We also had to learn the Shelley poem "Ozymandius", which I have always thought had something to do with the book, but I honestly can't tell you why I think that. Was it in it? I remember liking it enough to look up the other books, but I don't think this is high on my reread list, unless a copy falls into my lap.

Another book this novel has reminded me of - one that I do want to pull back out and reread - is A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur's Court. You know, the book by Mark Twain? OK, maybe you saw any one of the movies based on it; besides the obvious ones of the same title there were A Kid in King Arthur's Court and Martin Lawrence's Black Knight (I saw the former, I passed on the latter). I think this one was still the funniest (and meant to be funniest) of all of them.

At any rate, this started out as a quick post, and now I have even more on my list! And now I'm thinking of time-travel-esq movies (Bill & Ted's, anyone?), so I really had better go just fix dinner!

Edited to add: After starting dinner, I checked out the whole Wikipedia page on "Ozymandius", and found this:

The trilogy of novels The Tripods, set in a post-apocalyptic world where people live a 17th-century existence among the ruins of the 20th century, an insane character claims his name is Ozymandias, and asserts, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." The protagonist, Will, remembers reading the name in a poem.

So I'm not crazy! It did tie together!

Edited AGAIN to add, this book ("Timeline") is also, apparently, a movie. My sister-in-law was telling me she saw it and it had Paul Walker in it. I don't know who he is. Her examples to me did not help. Seriously, Kris, The Fast and the Furious? But I checked it out on IMDb and Ethan Embrey is in it. You should have gone with him! OK, he's ninth in the listings, and even on page 184 I know he's not a major character, but he's the name I recognize from the list. Did this really come to theaters? And that would have been when I was actually going to movies - quite a bit! - so I would have thought I would remember it. Ah, well.

Labels: books

Little Women

The internet is grand, isn't it?

Or at least it can be.

I am currently rereading (or am I just reading? did I ever finish reading it when I was young? I quite believe I did, but it was not a book I poured over) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott at Project Gutenberg.

Now, there are some drawbacks to reading a book online. I won't even go into them; they are too obvious. But there are benefits. I can flip between the book and whatever else I'm doing online as pages load and whatnot. I can read from different locations. I don't have to find my book (and seeing as how I'm pretty sure I don't have a copy that's not a "library edition" sort of fake-leather-and-gilded-page version, I couldn't well stick that in my purse and go, anyway).

Labels: books

The Magician's Nephew

Yesterday I reread The Magician's Nephew, by CS Lewis, the penultimate book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

For starters, let me reiterate that this is really the penultimate book in the series. It's not the first book. Yes, the action takes place decades (or millennia, depending on whether you're talking Earth time or Narnia time) before even The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but it's not meant to be first. Why do I think this? For starters, it was written seventh. TLTWATW was written first, then Prince Caspian, then The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, then The Silver Chair, then The Horse and His Boy, then The Magician's Nephew, then The Last Battle.

Also, it references TLTWATW. Things are written specifically to recall bits of that book.

Up until less than 10 years ago, when you bought the books they were ordered in the manner I have written. Then, at some point, someone decided to put them in order of when the action occurred. Of course, THAHB takes place entirely within a period that occupies about one paragraph in TLTWATW, but that's neither here nor there.

Think of it like this. You remember how in The Godfather (the movie, not the book, although the book does give the ancillary information interspersed after it gets started) they show current activities of Vito Corleone and his family. Sure, there are some historical segues, but by in large it is "present". They don't get into the history of Vito Corleone until the second or third (I've never actually seen them, I've just read the book, so bear with me) movie. Why? Because how can you care about the history of Vito Corleone if you haven't heard of him, if you haven't seen what he does?

It's the same with the Bible. I realize Genesis comes first in the Bible. That's not my point. If you had never read the Bible, would you start with the Old Testament? Maybe you would. But I wouldn't recommend it. Start with John! Start with the Gospels! Before you can care about the prophecies of Jesus in Isaiah, you have to know who Jesus was and why you should care about him at all. Not only does the other way around seem kind of boring, when you don't know what you are reading for, but you miss so much; reading after the Gospels is so much more satisfying, more rich, more nuanced, more interesting, more inspiring.

So is The Magician's Nephew.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system....

CS Lewis is well known for his more "adult" works. Mere Christianity. The Screwtape Letters. A Grief Observed. The Problem of Pain. The Great Divorce. The Chronicles of Narnia isn't a direct analogy to Biblical stories and principles. But some parts are. And the parts that aren't, are rooted in these themes that Lewis wrote about so often. So it is not a huge stretch to get insight while reading. I wouldn't say it is a substitute for reading the Bible by any means. Without the Bible to give it context, though, you're not getting the whole story. Every time I read the books - especially TLTWATW, TMN, and TLB - I start really thinking about my faith.

The thing that stuck with me the most while reading The Magician's Nephew this time was in the dawning of Narnia. How amazing must that have been? I tried to imagine being there at the dawn of time. CS Lewis describes pre-existence like a void of blackness, and in the blackness came a song, for lack of better description, and then a chorus of voices joined the song, suddenly and in harmony, as the sky filled with stars and the depths of the universe. Wow. Let there be light.

When Aslan created the trees they grew up at astounding rates, in very nearly the blink of an eye. It made me think of a teacher that was unable to share anything non-curriculum, unless specifically and privately asked. Rather than leaving the high school kids with nothing other than evolution, the teacher took a shoebox, and some plastic dinosaurs, and put the dinosaurs in the bottom. "How did they get in the box?" she asked the class. "You put them there" they responded. "Exactly. Any questions must be after class; let's open our books..." The trees that sprung up in Narnia were in an instant an old, ancient forest. If you cut anyone of them and counted the rings, clearly it would appear to be much older than seconds old. Who knew the true age? Only the creator.

The books themes spoke of the first evil, introduced to the world by man, and how the evil would win some battles, but the war was already won.

I'm so glad I'm on the winning side, no matter how many battles we may seem to lose in the world. The war is so much bigger, and our victory is assured.

As an aside, I used the word ancillary in this entry. In my mind, I thought this word was anticillary (like "Anti-Celery", those against bloody marys, perhaps). I am chagrined to find out I was so far off the mark, although the word means precisely what I meant and I couldn't make do with another. So we have yet another case where my vocabulary has atrophied. Yikes.

Labels: books

Nights of Rain and Stars

Labels: books