Saturday, September 27, 2014

Reading Update



A while ago, I said I wanted to see how many books I could read in the year. My goal was 50, I hope to still make it but to be honest, I don't think I will. I just finished number 31 tonight. That gives me about three months to read 19 books. We'll see if it happens with school going on and the unseen activities in the future.


31.
As it says on the cover, it is a Jane Eyre parody. Janie is a chocolate molder and owns a business of selling chocolate with her sister. She's in love with a man who comes in every week. He soon becomes her new neighbor and she soon makes friends with his daughter. She finds out that he is married and tries to suppress her feelings. But when danger turns up, she needs to make a decision about what to do. It is an LDS novel. 3/5 stars. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I'm planning on reading Jane Eyre next so I'll see how close it is to the original story.

32,
This is my third time reading this book, I just love it! It's a "proper romance". It's set in the 18th century, I believe. Marianne lives with her grandmother while her father is away in France. She gets invited to go stay with her mother's old friend at Edenbrooke, by her sister, Cecily. Cecily wants her help in getting the heir of Edenbrooke to fall in love with her. Marianne gets there before Cecily and becomes fast friends with Philip, one of the sons. Some things go wrong that could possibly keep her from finding true love! It's seriously one of my favorite books. I feel like I am Marianne. I think I'd give it a 4 or 4.5/5 stars. I almost cried reading it this time because I forgot how much I loved it.

33. 
This is one of the hardest books I've ever read. I loved the beginning and the end, the middle is the hard part. It's about a man named Ishmael who decides he wants to learn more about whaling and decides to go on a three year voyage to kill whales for money. Little does he know, he gets hired on a boat where the captain is crazy and only wants to kill one whale-Moby Dick. The whale had taken Captain Ahab's leg and Ahab has never forgotten it. But this is no ordinary whale. He's crazy! No one has been able to kill him, they can barely get their harpoon stuck in him. And he attacks people, while other whales usually leave the people alone. The beginning of the story is leading up to this, the middle has some other whale hunting stories, but is mostly lessons on what you use and do when whaling. The last like four chapters are when they actually get to Moby Dick. 3/5 stars. It wasn't horrible, but I probably won't read it again, at least not in the near future. If I did, I'd read the abridged version, but I feel so accomplished at reading the whole thing (okay, I listened to it as well while I got ready in the morning). It's a hard book, but I'm glad I read it, for now I have bragging rights. :)

34.
I read this book for my American Literature class. There are three version and we read the first one. The different versions go more in depth in his escaping slavery, because his first one couldn't. If it had, then it would have given the underground railroad away and people would have been caught for helping slaves. It was a very interesting read. I usually don't like nonfiction, but I really liked this. It wasn't very long, and it really opened my eyes to what slavery was really like. I'm really glad I read it. 4/5 stars. I only docked it because he didn't say how he escaped, even though it was for the best that he didn't. I guess I'll have to go read the later versions.