Review: The Last Battle

This week I finished reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis aloud to my daughter. And thus we finished reading the complete Chronicles of Narnia together.

I've read these books many times, but there's just something about a good story read aloud. Even if I'm reading it more to myself than my daughter. It also set a good tone for reading together each day. She used to ignore me and play while I read. But in the last few months, she took that time to bring me books to read to her while I was reading. So our reading of the Chronicles of Narnia was interspersed with readings of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Bob and Larry's ABCs (a Veggie Tales ABC book that is her favorite--she calls it Bob).

Next I'm going to read aloud her Beatrix Potter collection that my mom gave her. After that, I have no idea. But it's a habit that I want to keep up.

And now for The Last Battle. It is the only Narnia book that I didn't read and reread as a child. I read it once and never picked it up again. When I read it this time, I remembered what I didn't like about it.

Spoiler Alert: Susan is taken out of it. She is "no longer a friend of Narnia" and has become preoccupied with nylons and lipstick. She was always the most skeptical of the Pevensie kids, and C.S. Lewis might have been trying to make a last days of Narnia thing realistic by not having every person we know end up in "Aslan's country." But I didn't like it. Susan is by no means my favorite character, but it still made me wonder what C.S. Lewis had against her to turn her into a snob and leave her out. If I ignored that fact, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I did the first time.

Book and Movie: A Room with a View

In college my roommates and I watched the 1985 film version of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View over and over again. The appeal was not the personality, but the passion and boldness of George Emerson (played by Julian Sands). He contrasted sharply with Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis) and we all had to wait for Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) to realize what we had known all along--always choose passion over propriety. (If you love Daniel Day-Lewis in movies like Last of the Mohicans, you will barely recognize him here, but you'll admire his talent.) The movie cast also includes Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and other recognizable faces.

Though I had watched the movie countless times (and the kissing scenes even more times) with my roommates, I had never read the book. Well, I have now read the book and my summation is that is pretty much just like the movie--or the movie is like the book. There is very little variation. The only thing you'll gain from reading the book as well is a better sense of the author's purpose in writing it and the narrator's opinion on different characters.

Sorry E.M. Forster, but for me, a movie does the same job that your book does. So if you've seen the movie, there's no real need to read the book (unless you love the movie, in which case there's no harm in it). And if you've read the book, you know what happens in the movie, but it's still entertaining. If you haven't read or seen it, the movie is obviously the shorter, more entertaining version. Unless you want to avoid having to see grown men run around a pond naked, then you might want to try the book instead.

Review: Word Catcher

If you are a word nerd, you will love this book. If you are not a word nerd, tread carefully because it might turn you into a word nerd. And if you suffer from hippomonstrosesqipedaliophobia (the fear of long words) then you had better just avoid this book altogether.

It contains the fascinating history of words from the everyday (calm, love) to entertaining (canoodle, kerfuffle, whipplesnizzit), as well as words that make you grateful this book comes with definitions so you don't have to run to the dictionary every time you turn the page. Although the author is a proponent of keeping your dictionary handy in your daily life.

I don't know how I've lived so many years without words like these:

Petrichor: the smell of rain rising from the earth
Borborygmus: the rumble in the jungle of your tummy
Fribble: to kill time
Noctambulation: guiding one's way through the night
Drachenfutter: an olive branch to your lover or spouse
Seeksorrow: one who looks for trouble, sees sorrow everywhere
Aphilophrenia: the haunting feeling, however fleeting, that one is unloved
Clouderpuffs: scarcely visible summer clouds
Flizzen: to laugh with every muscle in your face
Verbicide: word killing; language torture
Tomecide: book killing
Mondegreen: a mishearing of a song lyric that leads to a fresh new meaning, often humorous (when I was a child, I always wondered what a marezeedote and a dozeedote were--"Mares eat oats, and does eat oats")

But there was a word or two, though fascinating, that I'm pretty sure I can live without, if only because I don't want to take the time to learn to pronounce them (floccinaucinihilipilification).

Review: The Lightning Thief

What if the Greek gods were real and were still around today? Well, they'd be doing what they've always done, which includes hanky panky with mortals that results in half-god, half-mortal children, i.e. heroes.

That's the premise of The Lightning Thief and the other Percy Jackson and the Olympians books. I read the first book quickly. It's an easy, entertaining read. I found a couple of bits a little predictable, but there were plenty of unexpected plot twists as well.

I'm not rushing out to read the next one, but I probably will read them all eventually. They'll be good for when I've been doing too much heavy reading and need some lighter fare. Plus these books include just enough allusions to popular Greek myths so that someone (like a young adult, the target audience) who doesn't know the myths can follow the book but also might be interested enough to learn more. Which can only be a good thing.

Review: Heart of a Samurai

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus was another recipient of a 2011 Newbery Honor. I'm really liking this being caught up on all the Newbery Award Medalists so that at the beginning of each year I have time to check out the Honor books as well, because they're all amazing. I really don't know how you would decide between them.

Heart of a Samurai is too incredible of a story to be fiction. It is based on the true story of a young Japanese boy in the mid 19th century who is lost at sea on a fishing boat, deserted on an island with nothing but rocks and birds, rescued by blue-eyed barbarians (aka Americans), works on a whaling ship, and is likely the first Japanese person to step on American soil.

Can you imagine the kind of prejudice you would have to face from people who had never seen anyone who looked like you? Can you imagine the fear you would experience being rescued by blue-eyed barbarians whom you had been told also eat people?

Manjiro's story is fascinating and strange. This book covers many years, as it has to in order to give you a sense of how remarkable his life was. It also includes beautiful black and white drawings by Manjiro himself of many of the things he saw and did.

If you have any interest in history, in true stories, in adventures on the high seas, or in different cultures, you will enjoy this book.