Finished up two books over the last few days. The first was The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan's newest book. I would have to reluctantly rate it a little lower than the Percy Jackson books.

Also finished off The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman, which promised to be a sort of book version of the Librarian movies and the Warehouse 13 series. I thought it fell very short. An all-too-easily disposed of set of villains, a too frothy and fluffy tone, and cheesy romances tacked on all over the place. No wonder Stephanie Meyer praised the author's previous work.

Betsie wrote
For those of you who love Charles Dickens, and have read many of his books, which are your favorites, and why?

Ooh, what a difficult question!! I love love Dombey and Son (have you read that one yet? You must!!). I may have read it most of all his books, excepting David Copperfield.
There are parts, as in all his books, which bother bore, and annoy me in it (D&S) and that I wish weren't included. Parts that I hurry past to get to parts I love.
I also love Our Mutual Friend. Though indeed, like all of his, its rather sad, its still delightful and make's everything all right in the end.

Oh, and Little Dorrit, which I need to read again before I talk about it in any length.

I am not fond of Charles Dickens with much fondness, but at this point I have given Bleak House my allegiance. I liked Esther

Spoiler

who was self-deprecating, but seen with love by almost all the other characters who came in contact with her. And she gets a happy ending!

(Admittedly, all the other Dickens I had read to that point I was already too-familiar with the storyline, having devoured Great Illustrated Classic versions. Alas, alas. Else I would have loved David Copperfield as well, I think.)

I finally got around to reading Ice by Sarah Beth Durst. It was a decent, imaginative, and fun addition to the fairy-tail retelling genre, but not one to gush over.

I'm sure y'all are quite familiar with the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." Well, I had The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton recommended to me by its cover. It's an autumnal Daniel Craig painting that perfectly illustrates the prose. Layered with rich narrative colour and a high content of describing words I'd never read before, there is sparse dialogue and just when you think you know what will happen next the story takes a new direction.

has anyone ever read "Double Identity" by Margaret Peterson Haddix? I am re-reading it for the 3rd time and it's amazing!

I can't believe I haven't noticed this thread before!

I recently finished The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

I picked up The Lost Years because I'm a sucker for nearly every re-telling of the Merlin legend. Plus, the back cover had recommendations from Robert Redford, Madeleine L'Engle, and Lloyd Alexander! Overall it didn't disappoint. It started off a little slowly but the latter half of the book was full of fun and creative characters.

I quite enjoyed The Old Man and the Sea as well, though the ending was somewhat bittersweet. I love the simple way in which Hemingway writes. Anyone want to recommend another of his books?

Yesterday I started G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. I'm about halfway through and enjoying it immensely so far. Syme is a brilliant character.

I'm planning on rereading Phantastes by George MacDonald in the next few days. I loved it the first time I read it, but I feel like it's one of those books in which you notice new things with each read.

My favorite Dickens is definitely A Tale of Two Cities (one of my favorite books ever). The action just drew me in, and the ending came closer to making me cry than almost anything else I've ever read.
And Phantastes is good, too. It feels sort of like a dream.

'Action' and A Tale of Two Cities don't belong in the same sentence. I tried reading it and was bored stiff by the copius details. It's easy to see that Charles Dickens really did get paid by the word. I've never understood why Dickens gets so much attention. He writes characters well but his stories move at a glacial pace. Still, it's good that there are people who enjoy his works.

I was finally able to buy Dante’s Inferno!
It took me forever to find the edition that was translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, So now I finally have all three with her Translation!
I’m going to put a hold on reading the Aeneid and start Dante’s Inferno first since I have been wanting to read it for so long.

Dante's Comedy? Cool. I've yet to read it. I've heard Sayers version is one of the better translations.

@Warrior 4 Jesus: That’s good to know! I wanted to get her translation because she was a friend of C.S. Lewis.

I'd say there was action in A Tale of Two Cities and those were the places where I was drawn in and couldn't put it down. Otherwise, the main attraction was the writing and characters. It actually moves along better than many other Dickens I've read, like David Copperfield (826 pages!), or Great Expectations (interesting when it finally unravels all its plot threads, but it takes too long to do so), or The Pickwick Papers (which was very funny, but very long). But I don't want to get into an argument, because I know that Dickens is not everyone's cup of tea.
Anyway, I started The Cat Who Wished to be a Man last night. I like it so far.

I've enjoyed every Dickens that I read, with one exception, and that was A Tale of Two Cities. I just couldn't get into it or like it as much as the other ones of his work that I've read.

HelloHurricane wrote
Yesterday I started G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. I'm about halfway through and enjoying it immensely so far. Syme is a brilliant character.

Isn't it a magnificent book? I love Syme . . it's one of my very favorite Chesterton books. Have you read Manalive?

I think The Tale of Two Cities had quite a bit of action, and was thrilling. Once I get in a Dickens book, I can never put it down!

For those of you who love Charles Dickens, and have read many of his books, which are your favorites, and why? I fell in love with him last year, and have read maybe half of his books. His style of writing, is, in my opinion, brilliant. I love it, and have to keep coming back to it. But I was noticing, last month, as I read Great Expectations, that there aren't many of the usual reasons to love his books, such as characters and plot. You love his characters, but few of them are really nice, few you would like to live with. His plots are nearly always sad, in some fashion. And so, I haven't been able to decide which ones I like best, in any way, because no character seems to stand exceptionally closer to me than others, no plot pleases me more. I am not elucidating like I would wish, but what do you all think? Which do you like best, and why?

My favorite book of his is A Tale of Two Cities, and mostly because of the ending. It could be a very sad and depressing ending, but it's not somehow. I was saddened by what happens, but at the same time I found it uplifting. Then again, I may have just been thoroughly stunned/amazed by a certain character in the final chapters. *coughSydneyCartoncough*

When I read the Father Brown stories, flam, I got really excited about Flambeau. My favorite stories were the ones he was in, and the one where the man goes to the restaurant, and says, "I want, please, one half penny bun and a small cup of black coffee. Also, I want you to marry me."
I nearly squeal just thinking about it.

Hurray!! The stories with him are my favorites as well, and I especially liked the one you quoted! I found it very clever how Chesterton so easily points out how we only remember what we deem as significant, and that is how the killer almost gets away with his crime.
I think the dialog in that scene is so cute!

Yesterday I started G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. I'm about halfway through and enjoying it immensely so far. Syme is a brilliant character.

*cheers* I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the book! Let us know what you think when you're done! Have you read much of Chesterton's work?

Not doing much reading at the moment, as I am still waiting for Ivanhoe to arrive. *twiddles thumbs*

--- flambeau

I just read Never Let Me Go, and it was AMAZING. Just a really brilliant book, the sort that you want to go on and on and on.

I enjoyed the first half the best, talking about growing up in Hailsham. Kathy's descriptions about the Sales and Exchanges, Madame and the Gallery really "struck a chord" with me. It reminded me of when I was younger, my cousin and I would make things to sell to eachother for nickels and dimes. I have a feeling I would have enjoyed living at Hailsham...

As for the characters, I haven't read a book in a while where I found every character as interesting as the others. The three main characters, Kathy (narrator), Ruth, and Tommy held their own against eachother. I found Ruth most interesting, as I could see her being someone in Real Life, not just fictional. She seemed very needy and a bit of a control freak--the sort of person who has very specfic ideas of how she wants the world to be, and will do anything to make it the way she wants it. So yeah...just a wonderful book

I also read The Know it All, by A. J. Jacobs (the author of The Year of Living Biblically). It's about him reading thru the entire Encyclopedia. Maybe I'm weird, but it was a really fun read. The author is the sort that after reading him for a while I start to think in his voice.