Books

Book 374: The Blight of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood #2) – Jeff Wheeler

This is just one of those series I’m going to BLAZE through. It’s good because it gets my 2015 Goodreads “challenge goal” count up, but it’s even better because it’s so enthralling that I can’t put it down!

I’ll start with what’s great about this novel. Wheeler wrote at the end of the novel that he loves middle novels in trilogies and that he thinks they are often times the strongest. For me, I generally do NOT like the middle novel and dread reading them as I feel they’re often the weakest. I’m still trying to figure this out, but Wheeler was able to keep the crescendo building from The Wretched of Muirwood and I cannot wait to see where he takes it in the last book of the Legends of Muirwood trilogy, The Scourge of Muirwood.

Click here to continue reading.

Books

Book 373: The Wretched of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood #1) – Jeff Wheeler

I don’t know why I bought this book in December of 2013, but I am SO glad that Books on the Nightstand Bingo encouraged me to read it! (It’s the square with an author who shares my name – I’ve already re-read Chaucer and most everyone spells my name Jeff anyway.)

I’d been making my way through Not Gay on my iPad and didn’t want to take it to the beach, so I pulled this up on my Kindle and was absorbed within minutes. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly that pulled me into the book so quickly. Wheeler writes incredibly smoothly (and apparently this is a young adult novel), but he also write characters that pull you into the story. Where I think he really excels is in the world building.

Click here to continue reading.

Books

Book 182: The Mysteries of Udolpho – Anne Radcliffe

WordPress decided to move this post to the trash bin and I, assuming it was duplicate draft, permanently deleted it. The first three paragraphs are verbatim as I was able to recover them via caching, however after that is a poor substitute of what I spoke about previously.

I had to add this to my Classics Club list because of its reference in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. I wish I would’ve spaced things to read Northanger Abbey immediately before or after, but I didn’t and I’m sure I will enjoy it just as much when I next read it.

The Mysteries of Udolpho counts for every challenge I’m currently participating in. It is first and foremost the 20th book in my Classics Club list and signifies my 1/5th completion (right at the year mark, so keep an eye out for a longer post later this week)! In addition it counts for my Mount TBR Reading Challenge, Back to the Classics Challenge and through a bit of questionable math as a bonus book for my Tea and Books Reading Challenge (the physical copies average out to 666 pages).

Click here to continue reading.

2012 Challenges, Books, Quotes, The Classics Club

Book 134: Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

I want to like Dickens—I really do. The only problem is that I’m convinced if he had a better editor these books would have been BEYOND amazing. The same thing happened while reading Great Expectations to me while reading A Tale of Two Cities. There were probably 200(+) pages in the middle of the book that just felt waffly and I could’ve done without. The openings were both great, once I got used to the language, and the endings were PHENOMENAL!

Great Expectaions counts for both my Mount TBR Challenge (20/25) and The Classics Club (11/100)!

I don’t want to boil this down to a love story, because it is so much more, but we all know my responses generally focus on one theme that really strikes me and the love of Pip for Estella definitely overwhelmed everything else (with the exception of his learning to love Magwitch). But seriously, how can you not be bowled over by the following quote? Click here to continue reading

Books

Book 67: The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

I had no intentions of reading this novel, it’s not on any of my lists and it’s not like I don’t have 20 additional books that I’ve purchased over the past month. This is one of the drawbacks (or amazing qualities) of the Kindle. I’ve come to realize that the ability to make the text larger and not have to hold the book is awesome at the gym and on public transportation. The only drawback of the free ones are the none-to-exciting covers as seen to the left.

Throughout the novel I couldn’t help but comparing it to the 1993 film version (imdb.com link) which I loved and now desperately want to see again having read the work that inspired it. And I love the novel even more having spent two years in West Yorkshire.

Click here to continue reading.