November Reads

A posting I made on Learyfam.com.

Posted on October 29, 2007

TWILIGHT, NEW MOON, ECLIPSE

Okay, so my Primary program is over and we were gone for a couple of days last week and I wanted something easy to read. So I decided to see what all the hype was about Twilight, a book about vampires. I put off reading it for so long merely because of the subject matter. And everyone I talked to said the same thing: "I didn't want to read it. It's about vampires." BUT I read it in three days (500 pages)! The book is definitely a page turner, but also somewhat cheesy (written for teenage girls and lacks a lot of substance) and not really your typical vampire book. It was a fun escape novel although I now have books 2 and 3 to read, equal in length to the first.

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Twilight was actually finished by the end of October. I really thought I would have the next two books in the series read within the week. A month later I finally finished Eclipse, the 3rd book (New Moon is the 2nd in the series). So many things came up that kept me from reading (Christmas shopping and wrapping, Thanksgiving, family newsletters, neighbor gifts delivered, Primary). Book two was slower, but still readable. Book three had more conflict. Overall, all three were very readable books, but I can't say I'm so drawn to them that I would read them again. For our book club we read a book titled These Is My Words by Nancy Turner, a book I had read in February and took liberty to add it to our book list. Comparing the Twilight series with These Is My Words, These is much more believable with depth that Twilight doesn't even come close to. Both were page turners for me, however These is a book I'd reread more than once.

Posted on October 29, 2007

LIFE OF PI

I'm also nearing the end of Life of Pi, a book with a lot more substance than Twilight. So far I have thoroughly enjoyed it, but am having a hard time deciding if it is a true story (maybe the end of the book will shed further light; it does say he was shipwrecked on July 2, 1977 and found on February 14, 1978.). A 16-year-old boy from India is shipwrecked on his way to Canada and finds himself in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger for company. He describes his survival at sea without getting eaten by the tiger. My favorite quote from the book (so far): "Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it."

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Life of Pi -- a very memorable book that still has me scratching my head. I think it's a book that should be read more than once just to catch everything you might have missed the first time around. Book club is at my house in January. I'm contemplating reading this to give myself the chance to read it again.