I finished another book in The Queen's Thief series. The resolve was so abrupt that I can't wait to get to the library to pick up The King of Attolia. In this book, the three countries that are introduced in The Thief are in open war against each other. The thief has to steal both the king's advisor of one country and the queen of the another country to try and bring the countries together before they face an even larger and stronger threat coming across the sea to claim their lands. There are twists and turns, intrigue and surprises. Again, a really good book. Definitely recommend it. I finished the third book in the series as well, and liked it just as much. There wasn't much of a climax, but it was still enjoyable. It is about the King of Attolia, who only married the queen because he was in love with her ... not because he wanted to rule. The entire book is about his fight against his wife to take hold of the reins, and...
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Wow! Let's just say I absolutely loved reading this book. There was enough intrigue, action, romance, suspense, and fantasy to keep me engaged. I read this in a weekend, and now can't wait to read the next book in the series. (Yes, another fantasy series! There are too many out there to ignore them!) In this book, there are wizards, warriors, enchanters, sorcerers, soothslayers, etc. But, the plot of this book is based solely around a Warrior who was supposed to be a Wizard. When Jack was born, he was missing his Wizard crystal, so his Enchanter aunt called a Wizard heart surgeon to come and save his life. Only, the surgeon places a Warrior stone behind his heart instead of a Wizard stone. His aunt is devastated because that basically guarantees his death: he has become Weirlind. In the Weir world, the Wizards are the magical beings with the most magical power. And, they are continually fighting political wars amid themselve...
I didn't quite finish this book. The way my electronic library works doesn't allow me to renew any of the books that I am borrowing. And, I didn't get the book completely finished before I had to "return" the book. (Really, all I had to do was delete it from my computer and iPhone.) At any rate, by the time I had to return the book, I was done reading the book. I'd gotten to the part of Abraham and Sarah's life when she gives birth to Isaac. And, there was so much "fluff" getting to that point that I was filled to the brim with the story. Really. Orson Scott Card can tell a fantastic story. Only, I didn't like how much artistic license he took with this biblical story. He gets all the major parts of the story right, but then embellishes them. I understand what he was doing ... trying to fill in any gaps in our knowledge based on the Bible (and Book of Abraham), and coming up with his own viewpoint on the story, but there were a...
One of the things I love about homeschooling is that I still get to read! When my children take their 20-30 minutes of reading, so do I. And, I really enjoyed reading this last book: The Thief. Again, it is fantasy. Again, it is in a series. It is the first book in a series. What I liked the most was the surprise ending. I had all of these ideas about what would happen in the book and how it would end, but each time something happened I was mildly surprised. Which was so refreshing. The book is about a thief who starts out in the king's dungeon. He is brought out of the dungeon to perform a task for the king. The king tells him that he must go and retrieve something for him, and if he does not return, he will not return. The price on his head will be so great that anyone would have to be crazy to help him escape. His only available choices are to go on the king's quest, or go back to the dungeon. And, he's ...
School starts tomorrow! I'll say that again: SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW!!!!! Where did the summer go? Technically, we are homeschooling so we can start whenever we want. But, the school down the street starts tomorrow, so we are going to start tomorrow (helps with the transition). I have not read as many books as I thought I'd be able to read this summer. However, I have read quite a few. So, here's a list and my rating for the books I have read. (One of my friends gives out Oreo ratings ... I decided to follow suit, but I'm not that fond of Oreos ... however, I love Haagan Daas Dulce de Leche ice cream. So, my ratings are in scoops of Dulce de Leche ice cream.) You'll find that most of these are fantasy, Amish romances, or books in a series (or both!). I think I'm stuck! But, I keep going back to the Amish books because their way of life intrigues me for some reason. Maybe it's nice to escape into their simplistic wor...
Just a quick post to say that I feel like I completely wasted one of my Audible.com credits. I started listening to American Wife last night, and had to turn it off after the first 40 minutes or so. There was just so much sex in it that I was completely disgusted. At first it was teenage girls talking about "doing it," but then there was a scene and I was frantically trying to tap fast forward on my phone while ripping my ear buds out of my ears. Ew. And, I thought about it and realized that I don't want to listen to a book and keep my fingers near the fast forward all the time "just in case." I decided it wasn't worth it to know how the story progressed or ended. So, so disappointed. Also, don't worry, I won't be turning my blog into a "book review only" blog. Tomorrow I have something different to show you all ... and yet, it's still the same.
I recently just finished listening to Delirium by Lauren Oliver. This was quite similar to Matched by Ally Condie. This is a story about a girl who has grown up in a dystopia in which they are taught to fear love. They are taught from their youth that feeling love leads to the disease they call "delirium," and eventually death. When a person turns 18, they are given the "cure" to love. The main character of the story, Lena, turns 18 in just under one hundred days. She has been counting down to the day of her operation since she was little. But along the way, she meets an unlikely friend who teaches her that there cannot be happiness without pain, likewise, it is not living if there is no love. I liked this book well enough. There is some swearing in it, which I think was distracting for me. I liked the characters and their development ... the two main characters seemed rounded out and their back stories definitely accoun...
Last night I finished Graceling by Kristen Cashore. I actually listened to it. I do more listening to books than reading nowadays. After all, I have 12-16 loads of laundry a week, 2 loads of dishes a day, a huge house to clean, homework with four children, piano lessons (which has included waiting outside the school in the car for an hour before school gets out to make sure we get there on time), and well, I think you get the idea. It’s more conducive to my lifestyle right now to listen to books while doing other things. And, in fact, sometimes I want to listen to the book so it actually motivates me to get up and make my “housework” more enjoyable. This audiobook really bugged me. Not the book itself, but the recording. It was a live cast recording. So, there was a narrator, and a cast of characters. It took me a while to used to hearing the different voices, but I never liked the little music clips that came on when the characters we...
I just read a post on one of my favorite crafts/sewing blogs that was a list of recommended reading for the summer. About half of the books I've read, and loved, so I figure that I will probably like the other books listed. Then, I started to read all the recommendations from the comments and compiled a long list of books to read this summer. This list has around 70 or so books in it ... some of them are listed just as a series title, so really the list is probably around 80 books. After typing up the list, I decided to put the list on here and cross them off as I read them ... maybe do a little review of them. I happen to go through books pretty quickly. Usually, I'll read the assigned book for book club within the first week or two of the month and then wait until I get the next one. So, while I wait, I can pull a book off of this list. If you have any other suggestions ... please comment and add to it ... I can never have too many books to re...
Recently, Jon and I spent some time watching the PBS broadcast of the 25th Anniversary performance of Les Miserables, the Musical. And, let me tell you, it was phenomenal (even with Nick Jonas's less than stellar performance ... don't get me started). It was so inspiring that Jon decided to actually read the book the musical was based on. The summer before my senior year in high school I received a letter from my forthcoming AP English teacher explaining that each entering senior enrolled in her class was to read the entire unabridged English translation of Les Miserables before school began in August. Or, perhaps it was that only a specific length of the book was to be finished. I don't remember exactly. However, I do remember seeing my friends during summer break and we were constantly asking each other, "Where are you in the book ?" At one point, one of my guy friends told me to skip pages 830-886 (or some random number like that). He explained...