The books keep getting better and better and we keep running into cooler and cooler creatures. In the The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 3: Lucinda’s Secret the Grace children try to learn some history concerning the field guide. They go to see their Aunt Lucinda (the one who’s house they’re living in) and the daughter of Arthur Spiderwick (the author of the field guide). They learn that their Aunt Lucinda isn’t crazy and that she knows about the fantastical creatures. She shares her story with the children, we meet some sprites and that’s about the extent of this book.
I’m anxious to see what happens in the next book, I’d like to meet some more fantastical creatures. Lucinda’s Secret didn’t quite hold my interest as well as The Seeing Stone.
The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 2: The Seeing Stone was more enjoyable than Book 1: The Field Guide simply because we got to see more fantastical creatures.
In book 1, we met the Brownie and we saw the troubles that he could cause. When book Book 2: The Seeing Stone begins there is a calm before the storm. All is going relatively well for the Grace children until Simon gets kidnapped. The kidnapping of Simon (by seemingly no one as the Grace Children can’t see the creatures unless the creatures want to be seen) sends Mallory and Jared on a quest to get him back. It is during this quest that we meet a troll, goblins and a hob goblin. We’re also given the ability to see these creatures at all times. The brave Grace children take on foes most humans will never see, make unusual alliances and have an adventure that will at times have you horrified and worried and in the end thankful that everything’s okay.
I said the first book was hard to put down but this one was even harder to put down, I didn’t put it down once after picking it up, I read it straight through, and I’m excited to get to the next book. Even though everything appears to be okay as we exit this book, it’s a good bet that something’s brewing in the background and we’ll get to go on another hair raising adventure in the next book.
It was back in October when “The Spiderwick Chronicles” got added to my Christmas list. It was Nov when they got taken off because I wasn’t not going to be able to buy something for months and then not end up getting it. It was this past weekend when I finally went out and bought the 5 book set. On one level I’m glad that I waited until now to buy the books because when the movie comes out they’ll be fresh in my memory. On the other hand, I’m bummed that I waited until now to buy the books because they’re such a good read.
In The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1: The Field Guide the Grace Children by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, Mallory, Simon, and Jared have moved into a new house with their mother. It is an old decrepted house that is falling apart and yet holds many secrets. Secrets that the Grace children begin to encounter, strange fantastical things that have long laid hidden. They meet a Boggart is, or is that Boggart a Brownie, it’s difficult to tell, you’ll have to read to find out what I’m talking about.
If you like books that are fantastical you’ll have a hard time putting down this book once you’ve picked it up, and you’ll have an even harder time not reaching for the next book. This book introduces and gives history to a story that will send your imagination soaring and it has many pictures to help you along.
I never posted about Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1: The Lightning Thief and that is a shame, because it was a good book. I was in Borders one day because I decided that I needed a book and I had no clue what to get. I saw The Lightning Thief and thought to myself that it looked good (the cover that is) and I bought it. It was months before I picked it up and read it and that was because a friend said a friend of theirs couldn’t get into it. I got into it, way deep into it, and when I finished it I had to run out and get the next one Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 2: The Sea of Monsters.
What drew me into these books was my love for Greek Mythology. It was one of my favorite subjects in school, although it wasn’t something the teachers in middle or high school dwelled on for long. Although in college I did have the chance to spend a semester listening to lectures from someone who was very well versed in Greek Mythology. In the semesters following the after I took her class, it was near impossible to get into one of her classes. Of all the Greek Mythology I know I learned the majority of it from Monica Cyrino at the University of New Mexico. Reading these two books took me back to the stories I learned in Monica’s course.
The Sea of Monsters put me within killing range of Polyphemus the cyclops, within hearing range of the Sirens, close enough to charybdis that I was going to get sucked in along with all the water around me and spit back out again, too close to Scylla, within fighting range of the Hydra. I was reminded of what Odysseus and Jason and Hercules had to do when they were battling these same monsters that Percy and his friends had to battle.
It was just an excellent adventure and I couldn’t get to the bookstore fast enough to get the third book Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 3: The Titan’s Curse.
People think I’m crazy because I eat peanut butter and bacon sandwiches (they’d think I was even crazier if they knew about the peanut butter and red onion sandwiches) but my peanut butter and bacon or peanut butter and red onion, or grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches are nothing compared to what other people eat with peanut butter.
Growing up my sisters ate peanut butter and mayonaise, talk about ruining a good peanut butter sandwich.
Stephanie Plum from the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evonovich eats peanut butter and olives. *shakes head* talk about ruining some good peanut butter. But it gets worse…
I’m reading The Lightning Theif right now, and there’s this chick, a big bully of a brat. And she’s throwing chunks of her peanut butter and katsup sandwich at this poor guy. Now that is just down right nasty. No one can ever say anything about my peanut butter and bacon sandwiches after I’ve read about peanut butter and katsup. *cringes* what on earth are people thinking when they mix stuff like that…
For the first time ever, this morning I actually read the “This week at Barnes & Noble” email. I usually just look at the pictures and see if there’s any good coupons, if not it gets file 13′d. But this morning, a certain picture actually caused me to take a moment and read the email, well, I read a whole paragraph.
The Gossip Girl Series that I was reading now has a prequel. I don’t know if I’ll get it though because I’m still stuck in book 4 (Because I’m Worth It). Although, the prequel will take me back to before Serena left for boarding school and I heard it tells us why she left (although after reading the first few books I think she got pregnant when she had sex with Nate and therefore had to leave so that all her crowd wouldn’t know what happened…)
I dunno, do I get it or do I not…the stuff I ponder when it comes to books…
About a month to 6 weeks ago, some of the blogs I read had posts about the (then upcoming) show Gossip Girl on The CW.
I did some research and found out that the TV Show is based on books by Cecily von Ziegesar. If there’s a TV Show, the books had to be good, so I went out and bought the first three. I had a rough time with them. They’d be good and then I’d get all bleh about them and then I’d put it down and have to come back to them later and they’d be good for a while and we’d go through this vicious cycle for a while and I’d eventually finish them. I’m in the middle of the 4th book. I’ve been stuck there for about 2 weeks because I put the book down and haven’t gone back to it. Nate Archibald was caught trying to buy pot from a previous dealer that was now working for the cops. Last I read, he was being toted off to the police station.
Everyone in the show Gossip Girl gets all the important news in their lives — from the blog of the all-knowing albeit ultra-secretive Gossip Girl. No one knows Gossip Girl’s identity, but everyone in this exclusive and complicated vicious circle relies on her website and text messages for the latest scoop.
Aside: I don’t know how GG (Gossip Girl) doesn’t get found out, if I read enough books I may eventually find out if anyone ever finds out who GG is, but in high school before blogging was cool and I had to make and upload my pages to Geocities, I had a blog and mainly it just shared some school going ons with a group that I had. Whether or not other people ever found and read it I don’t know, but a teacher of mine got wind of it once and that was the end of it…it wasn’t cool to share people’s personal lives on the internet…
I missed the September 19th Premier but I can catch up this week. Since I’ve read the first 3.5 books I think I know what I missed. But it’s cool how GG can write, and she doesn’t use names, she just uses the first initial of the people’s names, so like everyone knows who she’s talking about because the people that read it are the people she’s writing about…it’ll be interesting to see where the TV show heads, because already, it’s not matching up with parts of the book, which is normal I suppose because stuff gets lost in the transistion from book to TV show/movie, but some of the stuff that got lost (from what I’ve seen in the previews) is crucial to the development of the characters…
Needless to say, I’ve got a date with CW on Wed night. I’ll see y’all there. You know you love me. C.
Last night I finished Ironside by Holly Black. It’s a third book in her a set of books that she’s got going with the subtitle “A Modern Faery’s Tale”. It came out a few months ago in hardback and I didn’t buy it because my other two books, Valiant and Tithe are in soft cover and I’m particular that if I start a set in one cover or the other all of that set has to been in that same cover. This week while I was at Barnes and Noble looking for a new book (as if there weren’t enough on my shelves to begin with) I decided that I had to have Ironside. And thus, I bought it.
I was really excited that it combined the characters from Valiant and Tithe because when I started Tithe I remember being bummed that it didn’t pick up where Valiant left off. I was excited to see the characters and story from Valiant pick up in Ironside and I was thrilled to see characters from Tithe reappear.
Ironside was definitely a good book and one that I would recommend to those that enjoy books based on fantasy and faeries.
In the 7th grade I read the book Bunnicula. A few months ago I was thinking about it, and then last week I was reminded of it when I heard that one of my mom’s friend’s son was acting in the play “Bunnicula”. I quickly had to go out and get the book because I remembered liking it as a child. The other night I started reading it again, and since it’s a book for kids ages 9-12 it didn’t take me long to read it.
On many an occassion I found myself with stomach cramps because I was laughing so hard at the predicaments that Harold the dog or Chester the Cat had gotten themselves into. My particular favorite incident was when Chester the cat tried to use the steak that the humans were going to eat for dinner to kill Bunnicula.
“Start at the top of the page,” Chester said, as he picked up the steak.
“Why don’t you read, and I’ll hold the steak?”
“Mmphph,” Chester replied. I took it to mean that I was to start reading.
“‘To destroy the vampire and end his reign of terror, it is necessary to pound a sharp stake…’”
Chester interrupted. “A sharp steak?” he asked. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll taste it and tell you if it’s sharp,” I offered.
“Oh, never mind. This will do. It’s sirloin. Keep reading.”
“‘…to pound a sharp stake into the vampire’s heart. This must be done during the daylight hours, when the vampire has no powers.’”
“Okay,” he said, “this is it. I’m sorry I had to go this far, but if they’d listened, this wouldn’t have been necessary.” He dragged the steak across the floor and laid it across the inert bunny. Then with his paws, he began to hit the steak.
“Are you sure this is what they mean, Chester?”
“Am I anywhere near his heart?”
“It’s hard to tell,” I said. “All I can really see are his nose and his ears. You know, he’s really sort of cute.”
Chester was getting that glint in his eyes again. He was pounding away at the steak, harder and harder.
Chester was pounding a steak into Bunnicula’s heart all right, and it was funny.
On Monday I was on my morning walk around the block at work and my co-workers were talking about a recent Bob Dylan concert or something and one of the was like “and I felt so sorry for him because this two huge barn owls swooped down…” and she held her arms out like they were wings and curled them and it triggered me…”THAT’S WHO DIED!!!”
“Who?”
“THE OWL!!!”
“Hedwig?!?”
“YEAH!!!”
Of course all of this was brought on by the recent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
One of the other chicks…”NO! I’ve not read it yet!!!” As she speeds up and puts her hood over her head and covers her ears…shortly after she goes on “I stayed away from the internet and the newspapers because I haven’t read it yet and didn’t want to spoil it. I didn’t know I’d have to hear about it on our morning walk…” blah blah blah
I blame it on the coworker that said “owl” because that’s what triggered it in my head because we had been talking about the deaths earlier that morning. And all she wanted to know was the deaths so guess what, she said owl and I thought death.
Meanwhile, today, out of me being a royal pain in the butt, I IM’d one of my friends who was ahead of me in the book and said “Gregorovich” he panicked, it was quite funny. He’s like “I’m not done with it yet” and I had to remind him that he was also like 10 chapters ahead of me at which point he was willing to discuss certain things that I won’t reveal because who knows who’s reading this post. And I wouldn’t want to spoil more than the fact that Hedwig died. But let this be your warning, and some point, I’m gonna post my opinion of the book and it may contain spoilers and I’m not going to care, because guess what, this IS MY website and I can write whatever I please…
