Persuasion by Jane Austen

Dear Readers,
Can there be a more appropriate time of the year for me to read a Jane Austen novel? Valentine's day is coming up and this book fits the romantic bill. The book is mostly about love, but it is the better kind of romance novel. It is not all sex and lust. It is about love, about longing for the other half of your heart, about finding the person you are meant to be with. Miss Jane Austen did romance the right way.
Anne Elliot is the main character of this fantastic book. She is one of those characters that do not act like main characters. Miss Anne is the youngest of the three Elliot daughters. The middle sister is married, the oldest takes care of the estate and helps their father, and Anne takes more of a back seat.
At the beginning of the book her father decides to rent out their estate because money is running short. Sir Walter Elliot and Miss Elizabeth Elliot are to move to the exciting city of Bath. Anne has no desire to move with her father and sister. Instead she goes to live with Mary for a few months until a family friend, Mrs. Russell, is back in town to take her in. While visiting Mary she is thrown into the social circle of the Mussgroves. Included in this circle is the man she once loved, Captain Frederick Wentworth.
Eight years previous Captain Wentworth was not a captain, had no money and no land, but had a heart full of love for Anne. Anne was persuaded to break off their engagement because of the lack of money. She has secretly regretted the decision. Seeing him again puts her in quite in a conundrum. Now that he has money and a title Captain Wentworth is looking for a wife to spend his life with. Who Captain Wentworth ends up with is no surprise. It ends the way most romance novels end, but the way it gets there is interesting, exciting, and full of suspense.  
Besides the wonderful love story to book contains excellent commentary on the sexes. One of the main points of the novel is whether men or women remember past love longer. A few suitors for Anne in the book lost wives with in a few months of meeting her. The question of whether they can move on that fast is brought to light. During one conversation between Anne and Captain Harville this is discussed at length. Eventually Anne comes to the conclusion that men love "so long as you have an object. I mean that while the your love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that loving the longest, when existence or when hope is gone." Women will be in love even when there is no hope of being with the man they love. Anne after being persuaded to leave the man she loved was still in love with him. She knew that after rejecting Captain Wentworth he may never take her back but even with little to no hope she still loved.
Love is a silly thing. Sometimes we cannot understand it, but Miss Austen did a very good job of explaining lost love and rekindled flames in Persuasion.
Lindsey

A Most Dangerous Profession by Karen Hawkins

Dear Readers,

Can I start out by saying I am sorry. I have let you and myself down. I read this book. I didn't want to. I didn't mean to, but it was sitting on my shelf and in my moment of weakness I cracked it open. I was fiction starved. I have been reading a very lengthy in-depth biography of Julie Child and my mind needed some mindless, meaningless fiction. It was kind of like a one night stand with a book. I liked it while I was reading it. I couldn't put it down. I was engrossed in the total fictitious setting and characters. After reading it however I felt kind of dirty and used. I didn't want to admit that I liked it and even wanted to read the other books in the series. All I can do is sit here and shake my head at how stupid I feel now. So stupid...
How this book ended up on my shelf and in the reach of my fiction needy hands is kind of a funny story. I gave it to a friend as a gag gift for a play about a year ago. She was the old and lonely music teacher in the play. We joked that she would stay in her room and read these kind of novels for fun at night. She read it and laughed so hard at how bad it was. She read me a passage one day and I said that I just had to read it. With no reluctance she handed over the paperback. I kept saying I would read it. She kept asking me about it. Joking that once I finished we would have a book burning and rid the world of one copy of this book. So day, months, and eventually a year went by without me reading this "novel". I was so fiction hungry that even this worked to get me going. Such a shame. Guess we can have the book burning now.
Time for a little review of the book. I don't want to offend the author to much, but really?  I have one question. Why do people write things like this? Is there really a need? Maybe they write them just for the fiction starved who would devour anything resembling a novel. I just think that if you are going to write and you have some inkling of creative talent you should funnel it into something a little more important. Maybe they write them because really they have no inkling of writing talent. That's probably it because that is the vibe I got from "A Most Dangerous Profession".
Language: meh. Plot line: meh. Sex scenes: meh (come on there were only three. I should have just read 50 Shades for my romance novel slip up). Characters: meh. Really the book over all was meh. It was unrealistic. The characters were both gorgeous, they both had dangerous jobs, and they were married already even though they hated each other.  So the super attractive main female character Moria is a spy/con artist. The attractive main male Robert was suppose to catch her in the act like seven years ago. Instead of taking her in he has sex with her. She gets prego and instead of telling him she arranges a shame wedding and marries him. She leaves, has the kid, and then lives in peace for 7 years. Some dickhead who I can't even remember the name of takes the kid and blackmails Moria to find some box thing for him. In a surprising twist Robert is looking for the same thing. They rekindle there hot passionate love making from the years past. After having some long over due sex (it was like page 50 already and they hadn't gotten it on yet) they decided to work together and get the box and get their kid back. Robert has never met the child, but he feels a fatherly connection already. They get the box and almost get killed/raped by some crazy lord/duke/annoy dude. They have the box try to get the child and Robert gets hurt. The child is fine though. They all reconvene at Robert's house that he coincidentally bought and fixed up near Moria cottage where she raised the child. Robert decides that he wants his wife and kid to stay and they say yes and everyone is happy after all.
It was kind of one of those plot lines that everything falls in place just a little to easily. I guess for the lonely old ladies who these books are meant for they want that. This book emulates what they wanted to happen to them, but clearly didn't. They want a man in shinning armor to come and sweep them off their feet and have amazing sex with them. A Most Dangerous Profession was not for me though. It did satisfy the fiction gap I had, but it wasn't filling. I am still wanting more fiction. It was like a appetizer that you really didn't want but you ordered because you were hungry and didn't think that you could wait for the main course. I would just like to say don't read it dear readers, Just don't even try, unless you want to join in on the book burning with me.
Lindsey

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien (again)

Dear Readers,
I haven't posted a review in a very very long time. The last two posts were kinda useless and now I have a feeling this one will be again. I have not read a new book since the beginning of November. I wrote a book, and it turned out pretty well. Then I re-read the Hobbit in preparation for the movie coming out this week.
I really forgot how much I loved this book. It was just as good the second time. I already reviewed this book a few month ago, so I will re-post the review I wrote because it is actually a good one. So here if you didn't read it the first time around enjoy!
"I finally read it! My friend has been telling me all year that I need to read the Lord of the Rings series, and I have started. I read The Hobbit. It was actually an amazing book. I was expecting something a little dry and a little boring, but it turned out to be an exciting book full of life and wit. The writing style is so conversational. It is like Tolkien is sitting with kindly explaining this story to you. There are little phrases and things he says that just make me smile. Here is my favorite quote.

"He was in a dark tunnel floating in icy water, all alone- for you cannot count friends that are all packed in barrels."
     This quote and others like it are what make me like this book so much. All of the little quirky things Tolkien mentions makes me want to read it again.
     Not only is the writing style amazing the plot is fantastic. This story is just a story, which is one of the things that makes it awesome. Tolkien was writing a story for the sake of entertainment, and that is exactly what he did with this book. From the beginning you are instantly draw in to Bilbo Baggin's story. It starts out with a normal day for him flipped upside down when offered a chance to go on a quest with thirteen dwarfs.

     His quest takes interesting twists and turns as they toil threw the mountains, forest, and rivers on their way to their goal. There is never an uninteresting moment in this story. Bilbo gets the gang out of trouble and then right back into trouble a couple minutes later.

     I would highly recommend this book to anyone. I personally love fantasy, but even someone who does not love the genre as much as I do will love this book. It's more then just a fantasy novel. It is a story that will stick to your heart. It conveys a message of courage and strength.

     Let me leave with a quote from the novel that I found to be extremely true.

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

So my friends enjoy life, good books, good food, and good times.

Lindsey"

Some Info

Dear Readers,
I know I just posted a review of a movie which is unlike me. And not matter what anyone says about the movie I still really really loved it. Going to rotten tomatoes and reading the rotten reviews was a bad idea, always remember that. If you like something you don't need other people to validate you liking it.
But besides saying that I forgot to tell you that November along with beside the month of no shaving is also National Novel Writing Month. So for the month of November I am doing a experiment. I am writing my own novel. I have joined the nanowrimo.com and I was sadly not be read for a month as I am going to attempt on finishing the 50k words goal. So wish me luck.
If you are a lover of the written word and have always wanted to try to write your own book I would highly recommend singing up and joining myself and thousands of other crazy people out there.
Here is a link to the site  http://www.nanowrimo.org/en. It will be fun and I would love it if some of my reads did it with me. Sorry I will not have any new posts about books until after November. I am also sorry that my last two posts were kinda a cop out. One about a movie and one about me writing my own novel. Sorry from the bottom of my heart I am sorry, and keep reading dear readers without me until I meet you on the other side of November with a book of my own.

Always, 

Lindsey 

Cloud Atlas

Dear Readers or Watchers,
I normally do not review movies on principle. Who needs to read when there is a movie over the book? That idea is completely false, but the movie is different. This movie nothing like I have ever read or seen before, and at the same time it reminds me of everything I have taken in in these short 18 years. How can that be? I am not really sure either. Some times dear readers you come across a film, book, person, place, etc. that complete changes you. That you connect to, and leaves you crying even after you leave.
What else can be said about this movie besides wow. I don't know how to describe it to you dear readers. It was like some of the best books I have read and better than many of the books I have read. I should have stayed in the theater and watched it all over again. It had great plots, a magnificent theme, and relatable and recurring characters. All of the traits I love in a book some how managed to show up in this movie.
If you read carefully you noticed I said plots. Yes, there are many many plots you have to keep track of in the movie. Six plots to be more exact. They jump from place to place that it almost makes you sick at sometime. The thing is they are all connected. They are all connected to one main plot. They all connect. Which not so coincidentally is also the main theme. It draws lines over time and space connecting the characters in their different eras and worlds. All of the characters end up in the movies sub plots in some way. Again they are all connected. I have seen and read stories with the same thing, but it has never been done quite as well as Cloud Atlas.
I really have nothing more to say then that if left me looking in the mirror after and wondering if someone sometime looked in the mirror and saw the same face and made all of the same mistakes I am making and felling love with all of the same people I love and hated all of the same people I hate. If left me crying even now, an hour after movie was over. It left me wondering what was real. It really left me thinking. Not just about the afterlife, but love and what life is about. What if the world is on a loop and the things happening now have happened before and will happen again? Can anything I do make a difference? Everything I do is essentially a drop in a very large ocean, and that makes all of my actions, accomplishments, and failures seem very small. But we must remember that the ocean is made out of many drops.
Lindsey

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Dear Readers,
I was bad I saw the movie before I read the books. Please forgive me, dear readers. I know that it is not acceptable. It is against every rule I live by. You read the book first then watch the movie and judge the movie because it can never compare with original. Well, I broke my rule. I was lured  by Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, and the amazing music in the preview. And let me tell you the movie was great. I loved it!! It was awesome, and because I loved the movie so much I decided to by the book and read it. And I loved the book too!!
Like many other books I like, Perks of Being a Wallflower is told completely in letters. This creates a really good connection with the main character. He is telling what happened. We only hear his thoughts. Charlie the main character of this novel is an interesting person. He is definitely not the normal teenager by any standards. A year before the book starts Charlie's best friend committed suicide. Already having experiences with loved ones dying, Charlie goes off the deep end. He is forced to talk to doctors and was treated different by everyone.
As he is starting High School he like many others stupidly hopes for a restart. He hopes that this year he will fit in. Well, like most high school stories go Charlie doesn't. He isn't automatically inducted into the popular crowd. He really has no friends until "Nothing" a kid from his shop class befriends him. "Nothing" whose real name is Patrick is a senior. Patrick introduces Charlie to new things and people. Including Sam. The first time Charlie see her sparks fly. Sam is now the best person in his meager high school life.
Charlie's first year of high school is full of up and downs. He does way to much drugs, drinks way to much, has his first girl friend, his first kiss, and many many other firsts. He basically see the world. Sounds like a typical high school story right? A unpopular boy who really knows nothing about being cool finds a group of friends becomes happy and then everyone rides off into the sunset in the back of someones beat up pick up listening to some pop music. Hear it all before right?
Well I would be lying if I said The Perks of Being a Wallflower doesn't follow that loosely. It is a high school story. Charlie does meet new friends. They are all happy eventually. But the different thing about it is Charlie. He is not the typical teenager as I have said before. Charlie is different. Charlie thinks differently. Charlie is a wallflower. He sees and he understands.
The letters let the reader see into Charlie's world. The things he wouldn't say. The things he can't say.
I really can't say much else about this book besides read it. I know I should go into some in depth discussion on the language, writing style, and character development, but lie Mr. Chbosky I am going to keep it simple. You don't need to know what I got from the book, you need to read if for yourself and see.
Lindsey

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan

Dear Readers,
This book is the third book in the wonderful Heroes of Olympus series by Mr. Riordan. The series follows the characters of the Percy Jackson series after the defeated Kronos. Let me just say it pretty AWESOME!!! I feel in love with the characters, story, and writing style of the Percy Jackson series and I was extremely excited when Mr. Riordan decided to continue their story. Some character have been added and some of my favorite characters from the previous series do not show up except for mention, but you lose some you win some.
You really can't understand this book with out first reading the other two in the series. It would be best if you read the original Percy Jackson series first, but if you find it to kiddish you would no be completely lost starting with this series. The first two books in the series are The Lost Hero and The Son of Neptune.
To understand my review I will give a very brief synopsis of the series. Two camps. One Roman. One Greek. Many Demi-Gods. Need to Cooperate to Fight Giants. Percy and Jason Switch. Make Sense?
No, not really? Okay I can go a little more in depth. Buckle your seats and be prepared for a mini history lesson. When the Romans took over Greece they adopted many of their major gods. They did however change their names and some aspects of the gods. Many people are more familiar with the Greek gods and goddess. For example Zesus, Hera, Athena, Hercules, Hades, Aphrodite, and Poseidon. Countless retelling of their stories are made into movies and books. Their names are common and so are many of the attributes. Roman gods however are not as commonly known. Roman gods? How are these Roman gods you speak of? I have never heard of them. Well yes you have you just didn't know they were the names of gods. Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, Neptune, Saturn, Juno, Mercury, and Vulcan. Those aren't gods, those are the names of planets, capitals, elements, and something from the geeky show StarTrek, you says. Yup. You are correctly, but all of those things were conveniently named after Roman gods. See Greek and Roman gods are still part of our culture even today.
These gods also come with many legends. They each have their own story, although many of them are connected. It was said the gods would occasionally appear in human form and have relationships with humans. When these relationships happened demi-gods were born. A demi-god is someone who is half god half human. They usually have some sort of special power. If you know anything about mythology you know what I am talking about. Since each god has two aspects, Roman and Greek, there are two separate camps (at least in the books there are, we are know branching into the fiction part of this review). Romans and Greeks don't get along, so the different demi-gods have been separated.The first two books take place in each of the camps. A war is coming and both camps need to work together the keep the mortal world from being destroyed. Hera decides to take matters into her own hands and get these demi-gods to unite. She takes one hero from each camp, erases their memory and drops them in the opposite camp. Percy Jackson, a Greek demi-god in dropped into New Rome. Jason Grace, a Roman demi-god, is dropped in Camp Half-Blood. After their memory slowly comes back Jason and Percy are able to unite the camps, or so they think.
A flying ship from Camp Half-Blood flies to New Rome to discuss and pick up the other members of their crew for the quest. A prophesy of old said seven demi-gods from both camps would be needed to help defeat the earth goddess Geae. While the Greek ship hovers above New Rome the two camps meet and discuss the quest. unexpectedly missiles rain down from the ship. The two camps, which were at peace for a few hours, are now again at war. The three members destined of New Rome make it on to the ship with the Greek demi-gods and get out in enough time. The seven are now assembled. Percy, Jason, Annabeth, Piper, Leo, Hazel, and Frank. This hodge-podge group of demi-gods set out to save the world.
I will not tell you the twists and turns of this book because then it would be no fun for you to read. I will tell you that it is really fun to read. Riordan not only has a wonderful plot, but amazing voice. Each chapter is narrated by a different character. They all have their different voices and quirks, but all of the chapters flow seamlessly. Another part I enjoyed was the use of popular culture. A younger reader may not be able to pick it out, but Riordan includes popular phrases and well known things into the book to make it more modern day.
This series is not only a wonderful piece of fiction, it also works great as a history lesson. You will learn more about Greek and Roman gods then ever wanted to, and have fun doing it! So pick it up and read it!!
Lindsey