50 in 2012

I mentioned with my last book that I love The Chronicles of Narnia. This is one of my favourite books in the series, although with the movie that came out, I’m a bit distracted while reading it. I can’t help but think “This part should have been in the movie. They could have taken this other scene out.” and so on. The movie based on this book is my least favourite movie made of Narnia so far.

If your only experience with Narnia has only been The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I urge you to read the other books. I’ll be starting Voyage of the Dawntreader in a few minutes.

I don’t think words are needed to describe this book. I’ve read the series as a whole maybe seven or eight times (my breaks between reading the books gets longer each time) and it is still in my all-time favourites.

This time through, though, I have decided to do something a bit different. Instead of reading them in chronological order according to the plot, I’m reading them in publishing order.

I would like to note that this reading of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first time I have identified with Edmund. It had never happened to me before and I must say that I like him more as a character now.

I tried to read Quindlen’s One True Thing a couple of years ago and I couldn’t get through it before I had to return it to the library. This time, I found Black and Blue for sale from the library collection and I figured that I would at least have time to read it.

I found the book hard to follow at first, simply because of Quindlen’s writing style. She tends to start out on one line of action for the plot, then the main character gets lost in her own thoughts and about five pages later, she comes back to the present. Once I figured that out, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It’s a look inside the mind of a mother who flees her abusive husband with their son. It nearly brought me to tears. A beautiful piece of art. Highly recommended.

I don’t think that I need to explain this book a lot. I saw the movie, and I found the graphic novel at the library. I didn’t know it was the graphic novel until after I’d gotten excited about reading it. I decided to count it anyway, and I’d love to get my hands on the novel. Neil Gaiman is amazing.

Ok, so I haven’t been reading a whole lot lately, and I would like to blame the work placement I’m finishing next week or the end of the school semester, but the truth is that I simply spend too much time on the internet, and not enough time updating my blog.

I listened to this book on overdrive, my favourite method of playing audiobooks, through my local library. It’s about a young boy who finds a german shepherd dog in Russia right after the second world war. It’s based on the true story of the Russians’ mission to reintroduce dogs to Russian society, after most of them had been killed in the war.

It’s a beautiful story. The parts about the dogs and the war are the only true stories in the novel and pretty much everything else is fiction. There’s a bit written at the back of the book about the true story.

The final book of the Paradise Novels, connected to the Circle Series. I was so connected to the story at this point and I knew something amazing would happen, so I flew through it (staying up much later than I should have, since classes start at 8:30 am), and I was not disappointed. Dekker delivers the message of Salvation in his unique way and had me completely wrapped up in the characters’ emotions at the end. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, and now I want more.

I smell a trip to the library…

Surprisingly well done. I was just expecting another young adult novel, not anything really good. I listened to it in audiobook format, once again, from my local library. The story is centred around the deceit of several characters. Some lies come into the light earlier than others, and there are twists all the way to the end. I would highly recommend this book, which had (at least the one I listened to) a bonus scene at the end of a particular fight that was alluded to throughout the story, and a message from the author, answering popular questions.

This is a new book, only published at the beginning of April, so I’m glad to be able to be among the first wave of readers. I now wait anxiously for the rest of the trilogy to be published.