Category: Books and Reading

Young Man Reading

Books and Reading

Reading Challenges for 2017

With 2017 on the horizon, I’m entering new reading territory by committing to several reading challenges. I’ve never done a reading challenge before, but I’ve enjoyed seeing other bloggers write about their challenges, so I’m jumping into the fray. Here are the challenges I’m signing up for this year: Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge – The challenge here is to read 26 books, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. Back to the Classics – This challenge has readers choose classics in twelve different categories. British Books Challenge – Books...

Book Review / Books and Reading

Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard

Think of the ‘Star Wars’ sagas and ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ mix in the triumph of ‘Rocky I,’ ‘Rocky II,’ and ‘Rocky III,’ and you have captured the exuberance, style and glory of ‘BATTLEFIELD EARTH.’ It was the above blurb from The Evening Sun in 1984 that convinced me to take a chance on a 1,000-page science fiction novel, and I have never regretted it. It’s been over twenty years since I last read Battlefield Earth, and it’s still as much fun as I remembered. It remains one...

Here There Be Dragons

Book Review / Books and Reading

Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen

Geared for young adult readers, Here, There Be Dragons is an excellent read for anyone who is a fan of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. Literary allusions abound, and part of my enjoyment came from the way Owen connected various classic works with his plot. Here, There Be Dragons is for a more literate teen reader, someone who prefers authors like Tolkien, Lewis, Austen, Alcott rather than series like the Twilight saga or The Hunger Games. Not that readers of those books won’t like it, but it moves at...

Rublev Trinity Banner

Book Review / Books and Reading

The Divine Dance by Richard Rohr

The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation by Richard Rohr is one of those books you come back to time and again. Like most of Rohr’s books, it challenges the reader to stretch and grow in faith and maturity. In The Divine Dance, Rohr takes on the topic of the Trinity, drawing on theologians (Augustine, Aquinas, Rahner), mystics (Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart), philosophers (Aristotle, Boethius, Duns Scotus) scientists (Kuhn, Oppenheimer), and poets (Hopkins, Eliot, Roethke) to help make his point that the idea...

Conan Ace Paperback Covers

Book Review / Books and Reading

Classics Club Book #5: Conan – The Definitive Collection by Robert E. Howard

I first read the stories of Conan the Barbarian over thirty years ago, in the Lancer/Ace paperback versions that included stories by his creator Robert E. Howard as well as new tales by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp. The Lancer/Ace editions presented the Conan stories in the order of the fictional barbarian’s life, and traced his progress from thief to king. For my Classics Challenge, I wanted to read only the original stories by Howard, and in the order they were first published, so I chose...

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Book Review / Books and Reading

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

The performer is of course not a sorcerer at all, but an actor who plays the part of a sorcerer and who wishes the audience to believe, if only temporarily, that he is in contact with darker powers. The audience, meantime, knows that what they are seeing is not true sorcery, but they suppress the knowledge and acquiesce to the selfsame wish as the performer’s. The greater the performer’s skill at maintaining the illusion, the better at this deceptive sorcery he is judged to be. — The Prestige,...

The Crown Conspiracy

Book Review / Books and Reading

The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J. Sullivan

I picked up The Crown Conspiracy on the Kindle for ninety-nine cents because I was looking for a fun, light-hearted fantasy novel. I was not disappointed. I would describe it as a lighter Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, more akin to books by David Eddings, Terry Brooks, or Katherine Kurtz. You know the kind I mean, stories where the characters talk like us but wear period costumes and use magic. I know that some fantasy readers turn their noses up at such novels, but sometimes I just want...

Worlds Elsewhere by Andrew Dickson

Books and Reading

Nonfiction November Week 5: New to My To-Be-Read List

Nonfiction November comes to an end this week with a final question hosted by Lory at The Emerald City Book Review: It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR list? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book! Nonfiction November has been very good to me for book recommendations. The following six books were the most interesting books I came across this past month as I tried to keep up with all the...

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Book Review / Books and Reading

Classics Book Club #4: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

“Why did this happen to those five?” If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. I’ve had The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder on my to-read list for probably twenty years. I had vaguely heard of it growing up, but it really...

Tolkien Artist and Illustrator

Books and Reading

Nonfiction November Week 4: Be the Expert – Reading Lord of the Rings

This week’s Nonfiction November discussion prompt is hosted by Julz: Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert). One type of nonfiction that I...

Lord of the World

Book Review / Books and Reading

Classics Club Book #3: Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson

The two Cities of Augustine lay for him to choose. The one was that of a world self-originated, self-organised, and self-sufficient, interpreted by such men as Marx and Hervé, socialists, materialists, and, in the end, hedonists, summed up at last in Felsenburgh. The other lay displayed in the sight he saw before him, telling of a Creator and of a creation, of a Divine purpose, a redemption, and a world transcendent and eternal from which all sprang and to which all moved. Before Fahrenheit 451, before Nineteen Eighty-four,...

S by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams

Books and Reading

Nonfiction November Week 3: Book Pairing

Nonfiction November continues this week with the task of pairing a fiction book and a nonfiction book together. For a summary of last week’s posts about how people choose nonfiction books, check out Rachel’s wrap-up at Hibernator’s Library. And now, on to the question for this third week: This week pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d...