Tag: Fantasy

2013 Challenges, Books, The Classics Club

Book 242: Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Geoff W

[Check out my updated January 2022 response.]

I planned to talk about how I wish I could say it is the romance that draws me obsessively to this novel, and in a way it is, but ultimately I know it is something much darker than that. For me this novel’s draw is its darkness, it’s the depth and light absorbing pit of Heathcliff’s devotion to his plans, no matter who they harm or what they require, throughout the years to achieve his ends. I can only imagine what this reveals about my personality and my own decisions in life.

As much as I am drawn to Pride and Prejudice (and Jane Austen in general) for its whimsy and lightness, I can’t help but appreciate and truly resonate with the depths of despair and the tortuousness all three Brontë sisters write about. And I don’t know why, it’s not like I’ve had a tragic love story. I mean sure I’ve had my fair share of unrequited love stories (more often than not), but I know that I’ll get over them and eventually find someone who loves me for me and I love them for them and we just click, but for some reason these darker novels resound with me on a deeper level. It’s as if they touch a part of me that I know is there but am too afraid to even consider bringing to the surface out of fear or terror of what I might actually feel if I let myself.

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Books

Book 239: All My Friends Are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman

Geoff W

What a great book! I’m not sure where or why I decided I needed to read it but I’m glad I did. I think it was on one of the blogs I follow or one of the podcasts I listen to (I think it might’ve been Pop Culture Happy Hour, but I’m not positive), but either way I’m glad I read it.

One reason I thoroughly enjoyed this book is that it reminded me a lot of Perry Moore’s Hero. The heroes in both of these novels are not your standard superheroes, they have unique talents and abilities. What this novel did differently than Hero was to explain why the most mundane tasks are actually superhero worthy. Kaufman talks about choosing a superhero name and speaks to the mundane portion of superheroes regardless of their talents and reminds us that they are (mostly) all human.

“The final stage of finding your superhero name is accepting how little difference it really makes. Okay, there’s this one thing you can do, a thing you can do like no other person on the planet. That makes you special, but being special really doesn’t mean anything. You still have to get dressed in the morning. Your shoelaces still break. Your lover will still leave you if you don’t treat her right.” (77-78)

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Books

Book 238: The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4) – Rick Riordan

Geoff W

In this, the penultimate novel of The Heroes of Olympus, Rick Riordan sets the scene for a HUGE finale in the last and final book. I’ve had my name on the wait list for this book since I finished The Mark of Athena back in February or whenever the library first let me add my name to the list and I will do the same thing with the final installment, The Blood of Olympus.

This book picks up right where The Mark of Athena left off and keeps filling up details and providing more and more tension before everything snaps between Gaea and the demigods and gods. To be fair the series could end with this book and I wouldn’t be mad as there was a pretty succinct ending to this novel versus many of the other cliff hangers I’ve read before like that at the end of the last novel. This one although much sadder, the characters and readers of the series are growing up, was much more encapsulated.

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Books

Book 235: The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus) – Rick Riordan

Geoff W

This is the second collection of short stories Riordan released in his Greco-Roman young adult series. I actually preferred this collection to the first, The Demigod Files, but I think that comes from the length of the stories and the inclusion of the final story in this selection by Riordan’s son, Haley. In addition this was the 18th library book I’ve read this year, which is pretty impressive for me and I’m excited to be supporting the library more and more these days.

The four short stories in this collection are The Diary of Luke Castellan, Percy Jackson and the Staff of Hermes, Leo Valdez and the Quest for Buford and Son of Magic. Each one of these stories stands out and included different characters which I think is why I enjoyed this collection better than the first, but as mentioned above Son of Magic is what made this collection.

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Books

Book 233: The Demigod Files (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) – Rick Riordan

Geoff W

This was a super short collection of short stories and various addons to the Percy Jackson universe and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m picking up the other short story collection for The Heroes of Olympus series Riordan wrote and can’t wait to read it.

There were three short stories in this book: Percy Jackson and the Stolen Chariot, Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon, and Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades. Each one had characters from the Percy Jackson universe that you love, or love to hate and the writing was just as creative and humorous as that in the full length novels. In addition to this, the book is set up as a how-to/introduction guide to Camp Half-Blood and included add-ons about some of the campers, a map of camp, a packing list (diagram) and brief bios of many of the campers and key gods of Olympus.

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