SL's recommendations are all solid as far as Bradbury goes. I confess I haven't read as much as my enthusiasm seems to convey. I have a few other volumes of his that I'll slowly work through, but I enjoy his writing immensely.

Good luck to you on that, sir! That was a mighty long series...I got to about book #7 or 8 and finally threw in the towel because there was this horrible stretch where literally nothing happens. That and the whole 4 way mutual romance aspect the main character is involved in kind of irked me. It's an interesting world Jordan has created and he's populated it with really interesting characters (I liked Mat best of all) but the plot gets serious constipation from time to time.

Yes, it was a long series. I read the first ten all in one go over a summer/fall and then waited for each new volume. Ten was the worst for getting nowhere. The last 4 books were all very good and moved quickly to tie things up. Having read the series makes it a little better and a little worse going back through, because I remember all the high points and end up slogging through points that weren't as boring the first time through, but because I know what happens, I enjoy all the little hints and beginnings of things that take 4 or ten books to complete. Mat's always been one of my favorites as well. If nothing else, you need to read books 11-14 to see all the awesome crescendos of his storylines.

FK, Martian Chronicles is cool because though it's soft sci-fi (Bradbury himself said he wrote all fantasy because he didn't necessarily write about science-y stuff) it's not really about the sci-fi aspects. It's very lyrical and driven by images and themes. Fun stuff. Oh, and I can see the same situation happening with my wife and I as far as books not being read but in the house.

The movie of Fahrenheit 451 is a bit odd, but it has an advantage in being adapted for screen by the author, much like Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I read John Boyne’s children’s fable The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006) on Sunday. I haven’t seen the film yet; no local library carries the DVD. [This is how I watch most films.] I was surprised at how much tension each chapter carried. There was no respite for the reader. The ending was vague too, but the child’s viewpoint was certainly unique for a Holocaust novel.

I have more to say here (thanks for the Bradbury recommendations!), but, briefly 220, that story really moved me. Oh goodness. And the movie was a fantastic adaptation. I think it may be one of the very few films that I would almost put on par with the book. In some ways, it's even superior. See it when you can! And the soundtrack, oooohhh! ♥ Gorgeous and terribly poignant.

/this ^ is, like, a mix of the Books, Past Movies, and Soundtrack topics

johobbit: thanks for letting me know. It sounds wonderful.

I wrote an article on my "Arts & Culture" blog about World War II Poland. The 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion is next Monday, Labor Day. This is my love letter to Poland.

http://artsandculturereviews.wordpress. ... look-back/

I finished another novel on the Holocaust yesterday, also from a child’s viewpoint. But this one is biographical, a first-person narrative. Written by her niece, Yellow Star (2006) tells the story of Syvia (now Sylvia), one of twelve Jewish children who survived the Lodz ghetto in Poland. She was working at the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC when this book was published.

http://jenniferroy.com/yellowstar.html

I've started another Alan Furst novel, The Polish Officer (1995). It's set in 1939-40 Europe (Poland, France, Romania, Ukraine). It's fast-paced and interesting; I just hate the cheap love affairs.

Here's a question for everyone. If you had to pick 5 of your favorite books or novels, those that you hold dear above all others you've ever read, or perhaps those that kept you turning pages well into the night, what would those be? Feel free to mention 3 books that were barely edged out of the top 3. Mine would be:

1. War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy
2. The Bounty Trilogy by Nordhoff & Hall
3. The Stand by Stephen King
4. Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
5. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe

Honorable mention goes to:

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
2. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
3. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

War & Peace has been my very favorite since I first read it in 95', and I've read it three times. I recommend the Constance Garnett translation, coincidentally. The Bounty Trilogy though has been steadfastly closing the gap over the years and is nipping right on Tolstoy's heels. Red Storm Rising turned me into a nervous wreck for the week I worked on it. I almost got written up in part for my reading of The Stand because I was so glued to it.

Oh, that's always a tough question, SL. Here we go.

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
2. Watership Down by Richard Adams
3. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
4. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper

Honorable mentions:

1. The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander
2. The Oath by Frank Peretti
3. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
4. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

Okay, so I added a little extra.

It's funny you mentioned The Stand, SL, because I just listened to the audio book this summer. It was ... okay, I guess. I liked a lot of the stuff King did there, but the middle section dragged as soon as we hit Boulder. I mean

The miniseries was a good condensed version, especially after listening to the extended version. It did get me a bit more interested in reading the Dark Tower books, though, so I'll probably check those out of the library once I have my volunteer hours finished. (Our local library doesn't receive funding from the county, so if you're outside the city limits of our main city, which we are now, you either pay $50 for the card each year or volunteer 20 hours. I chose the hours. )

I finished A Gift of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey last night. It's a good little collection of 4 stories, one of which I'd read before. The only major drawback I found with it was that in 3 of the stories, a character has some anxiety about whether or not he/she will be Impressed by a dragon, but they all do. It's a bit predictable and disheartening that we can't ever get a character in these books that wants to be a dragonrider and doesn't get it who's actually a likable protagonist.

I'm still listening to the Wheel of Time series for my re-read. I'm almost 1/4 of the way through book 2, The Great Hunt, which is where my last attempt at a reread failed (actually, I don't think I made it through the second chapter last time; this book takes a few chapters to get going, like its predecessor). I'm looking forward to all the exciting bits.

Wow, tough question! I rarely read books more than once.

1. Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis)
2. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
3. Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
4. Sherlock Holmes - any book/story (Doyle)
5. Allan Quatermain (Haggard)

Honorable mention
1. The Last Sin Eater (Rivers)
2. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi)
3. Jacob Have I Loved (Paterson)

Top five rereads... Okay, so I thought about this for a really long time and I'm still not convinced this is accurate because anywhere from a quarter to a third of my reading diet is rereads. There aren't any that I feel I have to read on any given schedule...

1. Ladycake Farm by Mabel Leigh Hunt
2. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
3. The Riddlemaster trilogy by Patricia McKillip
4. The Good Master by Kate Seredy
5. Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoffer

Those in close contention

1. The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien
2. The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner
3. Mountain Pony by Henry V. Larom

Stwin's top six would probably feature in a top twenty...

My list: as much as I liked Allan Quartermain, I have read The Phantom Tollbooth twice (subtraction soup!), so I'd make it #5.

So I'm about a third of the way into The Martian Chronicles. I can't say that I'm digging it so far, but it is interesting.

I have made it through the first four rockets. I'm at the part where everybody starts to show up on Mars. We'll see if it picks up for me or not.

Phantom Tollbooth is so much fun. (Thirty-eight bowls of famine, groaned the Humbug. )

Okay, so I finished Andrew Peterson's The Warden and the Wolf King last night. I've been looking forward to it ever since it released, seeing it gather praise all summer... and it didn't disappoint. There was blindplopping, and VOOMing and Oood and troll poetry...

But the ending! The ending-ending.
[spoiler="The Warden and the Wolf King"]My little brother and I have been discussing off and on about when and why you kill off characters: Podo's death had only been set up from book one and he died with his boot on, as Nia said. Rudrig's death felt a bit like a lazy answer to the Rudrig/Nia relationship but it was a war and he was a warrior and I'll accept that he died.

All through the books, we get dead-is-dead (except for Esben, but we'd never seen a body... and then he died anyway so it's still true. (I'm not happy that Esben died, mind you, so much more could have been done with that plot thread. ))

And then when all is renewed, of course Janner is the one who takes the stone and sacrifices himself. I was not a happy camper when that happened, especially after all the Janner/Sara shipping going on by the narrator, whom one sort of relies on at this point in the story. I kept hoping through the last few pages that SOMETHING would happen and change the sorrow to joy but no, the book closes and I'm ready to accept that it was the NECESSARY ending--good endings aren't always unshadowed and all that... and then there's the epilogue. Which is what I wanted, right? (I should be careful what I wish for... I just might get it. )

Something about it rubs me the wrong way, though. I don't know if it's the almost jaunty return to the bouncy narration of the beginning of the story or the fact that it's an afterthought, or what. I'm prepared to accept that the First Well COULD act in that fashion, but why Janner? Why not the dragons when Oood was running around with the water? Why not go with the ending you wanted instead of 'fixing' things?[/spoiler]

Thoughts from those who've read the book?

Top 5 Books:

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3. Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
4. Guardians of Ga'Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
5. Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

I have a few books I'm reading right now. I own most of them, so I'm reading them at a leisurely pace whenever I feel inclined. I'm reading Pride and Prejudice, because I've been in an 18th-19th century mood lately. I'm about eight chapters in. I think the book is decent so far, but if I'm being honest, I have to say that it reads like a glorified romance novel so far. I'm also re-reading Guardians of Ga'Hoole - I'm about halfway through Book 4 now. I also started re-reading Till We Have Faces a while back. I'm about 2/3rds through. Finally I'm reading Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away by Rebecca Goldstein. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in philosophy.

5. Allan Quatermain (Haggard)

Is it safe to assume this is the same character involved in King Solomon's Mines? Adventure books are my cup o' tea, so if it is I'll probably have Wifester bring it home from the library.

So I'm about a third of the way into The Martian Chronicles. I can't say that I'm digging it so far, but it is interesting.

One of the things that scares me is putting forth a book suggestion and the person it is suggested to doesn't like it . I loved TMC but a big part of that is no doubt because I watched the miniseries of the same name that they aired back in 79-80' and it stayed with me. I would not call TMC an uplifting book, more of one that you ponder afterwards.

It's funny you mentioned The Stand, SL, because I just listened to the audio book this summer. It was ... okay, I guess. I liked a lot of the stuff King did there, but the middle section dragged as soon as we hit Boulder.

I've listened to approximately two audiobooks in my life and there's no denying it's cool to listen to a book while you do other things and thus save oneself a bit of time. One of the audiobooks I listened to was for Clancy's Red Storm Rising, a mammoth tome about a conventional WW3 battle-royale between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The book is loaded to the gills with detailed, adrenaline-filled battles, the aftermaths of which greatly affect the main characters as they struggle to contribute their efforts to the prospective victor. The audiobook had none of the battles in it, and not a whole lot of the stuff even that the book is known for (submarine warfare especially). Just lots of intrigue between the main characters. It was a serious let down, and it was after that that I began to wonder if any audiobook would be able to really bring the majesty of the source material the degree of attention it needed. I suspect I might have just gotten a bad version of the AB, but with a book like The Stand, one that's just as enormous as RSR it's a possibility that this is what happened for you as well. The written version is a wonderfully addictive read, so if you happen to see it give it a shot. I promise you'll likely dig it. Or you may be underwhelmed with it, given my track record of book recommendations

Happy International Literacy Day!

Top five books:

1. Till We Have Faces by C.S.Lewis
2. The Attolia series by Megan Whalen Turner
3. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
5. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis

Thoughts from those who've read the book?

Well, since you asked.