Books

Book 366: The Adventures of Captain Underpants – Dav Pilkey

What a charmingly cute chapter book! I read this book for Episode 7 of Come Read with Me and it was delightful! I’ve obviously heard of the story before, but have never had any impetus to read it as the book came out after I was past this reading age/level.

I read this in one quick sitting while commuting home from work one day. It was definitely one of my more interesting choices for a commute read but hey no shame in my game right? I’m sure I could read the entire series, 12 “novels” and various spin offs, all in one day, and honestly they would probably be worth the read. It was engaging and there was enough humor, potty and otherwise, that I found myself smiling for most of the read.

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Books, Coursera, Personal Project

Book 310: Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll

I honestly didn’t think I would get back to Alice and her adventures. The Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was so ho-hum that I had no desire to read this one, but this was the second book I read as part of my first short-lived Coursera course. Unfortunately due to entirely way to many commitments and needing to read FOUR books for my 30 x 30 list over the next two months, I just couldn’t give up 10 weeks of reading time. I will most definitely take the course at a later date though!

I definitely found this book less whimsical than the first, which is funny as I’m convinced there are so many more made-up words in this novella. Honestly, I have no idea what it is that made me appreciate this one more. Was it that Alice actually started feeling the pressures of adulthood in this book? Or was it that the doom and gloom of the “chess match” of the looking-glass world spoke to me.

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Books, Coursera, Personal Project

Book 308: Household Stories – Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm

I haven’t written about it yet, but I will in the near future, but I signed up for my first Coursera course! It is called Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World and so far I’m enjoying it. Household Stories was our first reading and looking at Goodreads, EVERYONE who reads the Lucy Crane/Wlater Crane version seems to have taken that same Coursera course! I’m seriously looking forward to the other books and stories we’ll read for the course and this was a great start.

What I found most interesting about the collection was the obsession with food and with fallen females. Every story was somehow related to food (needing food, wanting food, having too much food, etc.) or dealt with a female character (human or anthropomorphic) who caused troubles for other characters (the adulteress Mrs. Fox and the numerous wicked step-mothers among others).

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Book Group, Books

Book 282: Tuck Everlasting – Natalie Babbitt

I first read Tuck Everlasting back in high school before the 2002 film came out as I didn’t want the story ruined by a movie (I was just as stubborn back then). Other than a general sense of wonderment and enjoyment I didn’t remember much about the book outside of the basic storyline. I was very glad this was the chosen book this month as it was super short, read it in one day on my T commute, and watched the 2002 film just before book group.

It’s hard to say what part of the story was the best part as there was something so incredibly simple and yet fantastical/magical in both the story and Babbitt’s writing. I definitely didn’t realize when I first read it that the book was almost 30 years old! Originally published in 1975, it clearly stands the test of time and I thoroughly enjoyed this reread. Babbitt did an amazing job of simplifying and writing about a concept as complex and all-encompassing as immortality

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2013 Challenges, Books, The Classics Club

Book 175: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

Overall I found this book dull and lacking. I’m not sure if it has to do with it being built up so much throughout my lifetime (the two big films: the animated Disney which I grew up with and the 2010 Johnny Depp/Tim Burton version) or perhaps because it’s only half the story I know (I didn’t read Through the Looking Glass with it), but I was completely and utterly underwhelmed with this book. On the plus side it counted for the Back to Classics, Mount TBR and The Classics Club Challenges.

I will say that the book is incredibly short and that worked in its favor. If I had to read more than 89 pages of what came across to me as rambling nonsense, I would not have finished the book. It did make me wonder about whether it was a novel or a novella and a quick internet search says novel. (Novels feature more conflicts than novellas and novellas feature more than short stories according to the ever accurate Wikipedia.)

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