Little Red Riding Hood and Other Classic French Tales by Jack Zipes

"But, Mother," Lirette pursued, "why does this beautiful flower that pleases me so much have so many thorns?"
"To show you that we must distrust the greater part of those things that please our eyes, and that most pleasant objects hide snares that may be most deadly to us."

I picked up this lovely little book at Half Price Books a few weeks ago when I spotted it in the fairytale section. I'm a huge sucker for fairytales and even more so for books with covers as lovely as this one. I set it on my "to be read" shelf and waited a bit, since some others took priority, but figured it was necessary that I read it while I'm in Paris visiting my family, seeing as it's a collection of French fairytales.

Packed with lovely little stories filled with fairies, magic, forbidden loves, and little lessons to be gleaned from each tale, I was quite happy with this book upon finishing it. It not only told different versions of classic fairytales I had heard as a child, but bore plenty more that I thoroughly enjoyed as well.

Overall, this book was a lovely read and I'm glad to have acquired it. I know I'll be reading it to my children one day, filling their heads with visions of magical creatures and exciting adventures in the same way they filled my mind upon reading this.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Alas for those girls who've refused the truth:
The sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

Ever since Barry's funeral, Gavin had dwelled, with a sense of deep inadequacy, on the comparatively small gap that he was sure he would leave behind in his community, should he die. Looking at Mary, he wondered whether it would not be better to leave a huge hole in one person's heart.

The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first book since her best-selling children's books, the Harry Potter series, and has been highly anticipated since the day she first announced she was putting out another book. This is her first foray into adult fiction and had many fans eager anticipating the release date in hopes of snagging it the moment it went on sale.

The question everyone's asking now: Did it live up to the hype?

Unfortunately, no. At least, not in my opinion.

The Casual Vacancy begins with a death. When Barry Fairbrother dies of an aneurysm, the small town of Pagford is thrown into chaos. The town mourns a man who had been thoroughly involved in so many parts of its society and, most importantly, fought for those many of the town's "elite" would rather push away and forget about.

In this book, we are given the opportunity to see through the eyes of many of the town's residents: watching them as they flounder in their own misery and search for what it is they want and who they really are; all the while fighting to fill the vacant council seat Barry left in his absence, each doing their best to further their own agenda, political or otherwise.

I wasn't a big fan of this book. I wanted, desperately, to enjoy it. I definitely look up to Rowling as an author and was disappointed to find that I just couldn't get myself to like this book. Her writing style and wording is fabulous. Even in a book I didn't like, I had to admit that the richness of her writing wasn't diminished in the slightest. Rowling has one hell of a talent there and even a tedious story can't manage to hide that.

On the other hand, like I mentioned, the story is incredibly tedious. The story itself was just hard to connect with, maybe because she came at it from so many perspectives. I mean, the varied points of view gave the full story, so it wasn't very avoidable, but it definitely made it take longer for me to connect with the characters at all.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible. I've read worse. The last fourth of the book was pretty interesting. The conclusion was very cohesive and by then, I had come to know the characters well enough to want to read more about them. But there wasn't much of a resolution and the story over all came out dull in the end.

I would advise most to skip this one, unless they just really want to read Rowling again, which I would totally understand. Her voice, though more mature in the content of this story, is unmistakeable even in a story so drastically different from what took place at Hogwarts.

All in all, I'll be glad when she gets back to writing children's fiction (and YA!), which she has confirmed she will be writing next! I absolutely cannot wait. Nothing will stop me from reading those.

Rating: ♥ ♥ 

But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky, could anybody stand to know that they all were?

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

"The magic is only in what the books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."


I'm not sure where I first heard about Fahrenheit 451. It's most likely that I have heard it mentioned among the ranks of banned books (which is quite ironic for a book centered on the evils of censorship).

I decided to pick it up after reading an article about Ray Bradbury upon his death two weeks ago. The more I read about Mr. Bradbury, the more I am convinced that we think similarly and the more disappointed I become that I'll never have the chance to meet him now. Thankfully, I can still explore his lovely mind through articles written about him and through his own works.

Now, let's get back to the book itself. Fahrenheit 451 is the story of Guy Montag, a fireman in a future where houses are fireproof and firemen start fires rather than put them out. In particular, the set fire to books.

Books have been banned for as long as Guy can remember. Why? They went out of fashion on their own. People chose to stop reading and, by extension, stop thinking. Before long, books were made illegal because truly thinking made people unhappy. And even if it made you happy to learn, it made the people around you feel stupid and therefore unhappy. When you could simply drown in your superficial world bombarded by what is meant to be full-time pleasure, why ruin that with conscious thought?

Guy thinks nothing of the way things are until he meets a seventeen year old girl whose observations and questions make him stop and consider the way things are. Why is it so weird that she likes to be outside? Why is it okay for children to murder each other? What is so threatening about books that they have become illegal? What's so intoxicating about them that people sob over their burnt collections or even choose to go up in flames with them?

The tale told in Fahrenheit 451 is one that anyone who even remotely enjoys reading will appreciate. The story paints a stunning portrait of the evils of censorship and just how easy it is to cross the line into a territory where we don't want to find ourselves. This book makes you sit back and think. I will definitely be shelling out the cash needed to add this to my personal library. I would definitely put this among the ranks of my all-time favorite books. Add it to your "to be read" list ASAP.

Rating: ~♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥~


We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real.

Patterning Works

I'm currently in the midst of reading Book by Book by Michael Dirda, basically a book written about the importance of reading and how books and learning change our lives. Look forward to the review of it soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share a particularly interesting passage at the beginning of Dirda's book. It is essentially a list of books one ought to read in order to have a good grasp of world literature and a firm foundation in one's reading.

I have already read some of these, but there are plenty here that I haven't arrived at just yet. Rest assured, they are now being taken into consideration when it comes to books I need to read in the near future.

Anyway, here's the passage. You may do with it what you will:

What should a person know of the world's literature? It has always seemed obvious to me that the great patterning works ought to lie at the heart of any structured reading program. By "patterning works" I mean those that later authors regularly build on, allude to, work against. There aren't that many of these key books, and they aren't all obvious classics. Here's a roughly chronological short list of those that the diligent might read through in a year or two. For such famous works you can hardly go wrong with any good modern editions, though for the Bible the Authorized, or King James, Version is the one that has most influenced the diction and imagery of English Prose.

The Bible (Old and New Testament)

Bulfinch's Mythology (or any other accounts of the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths)

 Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey

Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Dante, Inferno

The Arabian Nights

Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur (tales of King Arthur and his knights)

Shakespeare's major plays, especially Hamlet, Henry IV, Part One, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen

Any substantial collection of the world's major folktales

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You lie! You're an impostor!"
"Nice way to welcome a newborn child," he complained in a weak voice. "Tell him he's wrong, why don't you?"
"You're wrong, Mr. Button," said the nurse severely. "This is your child, and you'll have to make the best of it."

This is very likely the shortest adult book I have ever read. Seeing as it was made into a movie, I had expected it to at least reach the hundred page mark, but it ends at a mere fifty-two. It's so short that the note on the cover informs you that it was the "inspiration" for the movie, rather than what the movie was adapted from.

Seeing as it was such a short read, I had expected that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would be quite an easy read. In the literal sense, I was correct, but I disliked it so much that it made it a bit difficult.

Despite the fact that I truly enjoyed The Great Gatsby, I was surprised at how incredibly dull and hard to believe this story was. By its end, I was extremely glad that Fitzgerald had chosen to keep the tale short. Dragging it out even further would have been much harder to trudge through.

I wouldn't recommend this book. It has no redeeming value at all within its pages. I won't bother reading this ever again and you can bet that all chances of my seeing the motion picture have gone out the window.

Rating: ♥

The process was continuing. There was no doubt of it -- he now looked like a man of thirty. Instead of being delighted, he was uneasy -- he was growing younger. 

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

"Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool."

If you pay even the slightest attention to the media, you very likely are aware that the movie adaptation of The Hobbit will be in theaters this December. Because of that, I decided it was about time I stuck my nose into a J.R.R. Tolkien book and, let me tell you, I'm quite happy I did.

Going into this, I had rather expected Mr. Tolkien's writing to be a bit, well, stuffy. This was generally because I had heard that his writing was hard to get into and was all too descriptive to follow well. Perhaps they were speaking of a different book, because this certainly was not the case when it came to The Hobbit.

An adventure tale for the ages, this book was incredibly well-written and I was invested in the story from the outset. Being a big fan of C.S. Lewis, a personal friend of Tolkien, I was still surprised to see the similarities in their narratives. They have a similar writing style that really draws you in -- as if you're sitting by the fire listening to that wise old uncle of yours tell you a grand adventure you only dare to believe because he is the one telling you of it.

The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo Baggins, a comfortable little hobbit with more adventure in his blood than most other hobbits. Even still, it takes a good deal of convincing and coercion before Mr. Baggins finds himself on a quest for treasure, the "burglar" in a company of thirteen dwarves. He was specially chosen for the mission by Gandalf the Grey. At first, neither he nor his companions can understand why Gandalf thought he was worth bringing along, but there is more to Bilbo than meets the eye and, soon enough, he may become their only hope of accomplishing their task at all.

Overall, The Hobbit was a fantastic book. I enjoyed every moment of the journey, both "there and back again" and it has made me even more excited for the movie's release. I would definitely suggest this lovely story to anyone who enjoys Tolkien's other works or enjoys any books with a bit of magic threaded through the pages.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Few of us now have seen the stars as folk saw them then -- our cities and towns cast too much light into the night -- but, from the village of Wall, the stars were laid out like worlds or like ideas, uncountable as the trees in a forest of the leaves on a tree.


I had heard of Neil Gaiman before reading Stardust. I had heard him touted as a great novelist and author, yet I had never read one of his books. So when I went to the library a few days ago, I decided to browse through what they had and I found this gem.

Now, I had seen the movie by the same title in late 2011. A friend of mine had said it was great, so I bought it and watched it with my family. I was the only one who enjoyed it. I love anything with a fairytale/mystical aspect and the creativity it took to create such a world as Faerie appealed to me immensely. It certainly wasn't my favorite movie, but I enjoyed it. Thus, when I was looking through the collection of Neil Gaiman books at my local library, I selected this one. If I enjoyed the movie, I figured, I would probably enjoy the book much more.

It never ceases to amaze me how much better a book can be than the movie adapted from it. I know that it is a basically universal fact that the book is always better than the movie -- with exceptions few and far between -- but for some reason I still underestimate the fact time and time again. (I'll do my best not to draw too much attention to the fact that the movie deviates so far from the original work that it is almost hard to see the similarities.)

Stardust was, quite simply put, a pleasure to read. Not only is Mr. Gaiman quite excellent when it comes to crafting an entirely unforeseen and beautiful new world, but his word-smithing capabilities are profound. There were more than a few times that I had to go back and reread certain passages purely because of the sheer beauty of his words.

That being said, something must be said for the plot. The story itself is about a boy named Tristran Thorn, an inhabitant in the fairly boring town of Wall, which lies on the edge of where our world connects with that of a magical one by the name of Faerie. In an effort to win the heart of the girl he adores, Tristran crosses the boundary that separates our world and theirs in search of a fallen star to bring back. But things in Faerie aren't always as they seem and Tristran never expected the star to be a living, breathing woman. To make matters even more complicated, he is not the only one in search of the fallen star and their intentions may not prove so noble as his own.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Everything I ever thought about myself -- who I am, what I am -- was a lie. Or sort of. You have no idea how astonishingly liberating that feels.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

"Every morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision . . . You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?"

Have you ever read one of those books that you thought, "I'm gonna have my kids read this when they're old enough. They need to know about this."

I have, plenty of times, and this book is one of those.

Okay, to be honest, I'm going to try to make my kids read every single book I halfway enjoyed growing up, because I want them to adore reading as much as I do. Still, this book made me think, "I want my future children to understand that this is the way things were and that it was wrong."

That's the way I felt about The Book Thief and that's the way I feel about The Help.

The Help is Kathryn Stockett's first novel, but one could never tell by looking at the masterful use of her words and the wonderful roundness each of her characters seems to possess. Published in 2009, it has already become a #1 New York Times Bestseller and had its movie adaptation hit the big screen (with some big name actresses, no less).

This book follows the path of three women, two colored and one white, during the early 1960s. Set in Jackson, Mississippi at a time when men and women were liable to get beaten for using the wrong bathroom or fraternizing with someone whose skin color was too different from their own. It's enough to make a person ill thinking about it. (I wrote a post about racial discrimination on my other blog inspired by my reading of this book. You can find it here: Less than Human)

Each of these women has their own lives and their own troubles to fight through. Skeeter is constantly being criticized by her mother and snubbed by the people who were supposed to be her friends. Minny's trying to find work in spite of a crazy white lady doing her best to get her run out of town, not to mention the fact that her husband is getting steadily more abusive as the story progresses. And Aibileen is trying to teach the white girl she nannies that colored people are only different on the outside as well as convincing the girl that just because her mother doesn't care much for her, that doesn't mean she isn't worthwhile.

When Skeeter, the aspiring journalist, realizes the treatment of the help in most white home is both disturbing and demeaning, she gets the idea to write a book. If she can get interviews from the women who have to deal with raising other women's children and cleaning their homes, while being treated like they're stupid and basically nothing more than well-trained animals; maybe people will see the errors of their ways. Skeeter realizes that maybe this book could make a difference in the lives of the colored women who are mistreated on a daily basis. But this venture is more dangerous than she ever could have realized and each of these women have to put themselves out on a very unsteady limb to do this. But maybe change is worth it and maybe they just might get the help that they need.

This book was a joy to read and, honestly, a must-read -- especially for those that think that racism isn't that big of a deal, a thing of the past, or something that happened a long time ago. This was a mere fifty years ago and, while we've come a long way in that time, we still have quite a ways to go.


Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 


"Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."

2012 Book List

In follow-up to my last post, I've decided to post which books I'll be reading in 2012. I am eagerly awaiting the stories each has to tell or the knowledge each is ready to impart. I can hardly decide what order they should go in.
These are books currently on my shelves, just waiting to be read and reviewed.

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
• Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Dear Bully (70+ author compilation)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• Hawkes Harbor by S.E. Hinton

These are just the beginning. I frequent my local bookstore with a consistency that ought to have the salespeople asking about my family each week. I also hope to be able to reread some of my favorites of last year, such as Paper Towns and possibly the Hunger Games trilogy.
In addition, I'll be borrowing books from my brother soon enough as well. He is currently the owner of my home's only copies of the Harry Potter series (I still have to read books four through seven) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (let's not forget the Hobbit, as well).
I can't wait to find the adventures awaiting me!

One Year: Fifty-Five Books

I told y'all in this post that my goal for the year 2011 was to read fifty books. I reached fifty-five. *insert happy dance here*

Anyway, I decided I would fill you in on which books those were, in case you wanted to read them as well. Most of these I would recommend for a good read, unless I note otherwise.

1) The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks.
2) Elyon by Ted Dekker & Kaci Hil.
3) Pearl in the Sand by Tessa Afshar.
4) DragonKnight by Donita K. Paul.
5) The Slave Across the Street by Theresa L. Flores.
6) What He Must Be by Voddie Baucham.
7) DragonFire by Donita K. Paul.
8) DragonLight by Donita K. Paul.
9) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.
10) Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke.
11) And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.
12) Love's Enduring Promise by Janette Oke.
13) Comma Sense by Richard Lederer & John Shore.
14) Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie.
15) The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham. (This is one of those Doctor Who spin-offs, so if you don't watch the show, it's probably not worth reading.)
16) Love's Long Journey by Janette Oke.
17) The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil.
18) Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis.
19) Kiss by Ted Dekker.
20) Starlighter by Bryan Davis.
21) Forgotten by Cat Patrick.
22) Eragon by Christopher Paolini.
23) Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
24) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
25) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.
26) Looking for Alaska by John Green.
27) Brisingr by Christopher Paolini.
28) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.
29) Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. (This one wasn't very good at all. It wasn't bad either, but it was incredibly boring.)
30) The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.
31) Paper Towns by John Green. (This is easily one of my new favorite books. John Green really outdid himself with this one.)
32) After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away by Joyce Carol Oates.
33) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.
34) Brother/Sister by Sean Olin. (This book was really good, but creepy. . . and it may have ruined the Wonder Twins for me. Haha.)
35) Soft Spots by Clint Van Winkle.
36) Purge by Sofi Oksanen. (I didn't really enjoy this one. It was interesting, to say the least, but not my type of good reading.)
37) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.
38) The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
39) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.
40) Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton.
41) That Was Then, This Is Now by S.E. Hinton.
42) Tex by S.E. Hinton.
43) Stop Pretending by Sonya Sones.
44) Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.
45) Brutal by Michael Harmon.
46) He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo. (Only decided to read this book because it was $2 at Helping Hands. It ended up being surprisingly good.)
47) Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.
48) Dark Water by Laura McNeal. (Not that great.)
49) Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan.
50) An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. (Almost as good as Paper Towns. Definitely worth reading more than once.)
51) The Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon.
52) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
53) Hero by Mike Lupica.
54) Taming the Star Runner by S.E. Hinton.
55) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.


I'll try to write reviews on a couple of the more recent ones when I get the chance. In the meantime, here's a good list where you can find some books for the New Year. Hopefully, you're resolutions have something to do with reading more, because it's definitely worth it.

I'm going to read 75 books this year. Hopefully, you'll come along for the ride in at least reading the reviews of each.