Happy New Year!
Yay! A four-day vacation *dancedance* Plently of time to make my book reading goal!
Anywho, had a very lovely Christmas, and was spoiled rotten as always. I'm very lucky to have so many of my family members close by.
Looking forward to a quiet New Years -- movies, chit chat and whatever, and the Rose Bowl parade (I love what they do with the floats every year!)
Book review:
148. The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. A young man is stranded in a lifeboat. With a tiger.
That is the basic, overall plot of this book. The beginning was a bit slow, and while I understand the importance of setup, I can't help wonder if it couldn't have been trimmed a bit to keep the pace going. The actual "meat" of the story was excellent. You wonder day to day how Pi will survive with a huge carnivore on the boat and sharks in the waters. I really, really like how it is resolved: not with violence, but a mutual respect and understanding of the animal psyche. Not to mention a LOT of luck. The ending was a bit anticlimatic, but was relatively brief.
Got through one more CD of Twilight before giving up completely. The story got more annoying as it went along. Part of it might have been the narrator, who had a really whiney quality to her voice.
Currently reading The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. A really neat read so far (more than halfway through). Only one essay got on my nerves; the others were well thought-out, and really made me think. A few factual errors, most just annoying but not detracting (although one essay -- not the annoying one -- had Hermione as "mixed blood," with one wizard and one Muggle parent. ?!?!?!?! Wow. The errors I found could have been caught with a quick check, and were annoying. But this errors on basic Harry Potter 101.
More on this later
Anywho, had a very lovely Christmas, and was spoiled rotten as always. I'm very lucky to have so many of my family members close by.
Looking forward to a quiet New Years -- movies, chit chat and whatever, and the Rose Bowl parade (I love what they do with the floats every year!)
Book review:
148. The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. A young man is stranded in a lifeboat. With a tiger.
That is the basic, overall plot of this book. The beginning was a bit slow, and while I understand the importance of setup, I can't help wonder if it couldn't have been trimmed a bit to keep the pace going. The actual "meat" of the story was excellent. You wonder day to day how Pi will survive with a huge carnivore on the boat and sharks in the waters. I really, really like how it is resolved: not with violence, but a mutual respect and understanding of the animal psyche. Not to mention a LOT of luck. The ending was a bit anticlimatic, but was relatively brief.
Got through one more CD of Twilight before giving up completely. The story got more annoying as it went along. Part of it might have been the narrator, who had a really whiney quality to her voice.
Currently reading The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. A really neat read so far (more than halfway through). Only one essay got on my nerves; the others were well thought-out, and really made me think. A few factual errors, most just annoying but not detracting (although one essay -- not the annoying one -- had Hermione as "mixed blood," with one wizard and one Muggle parent. ?!?!?!?! Wow. The errors I found could have been caught with a quick check, and were annoying. But this errors on basic Harry Potter 101.