I put Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth on reserve at the library today.
And I'm still reading The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha. And rereading The Last Unicorn.

Right now, I am re-reading The Magician's Nephew. Hadn't read that one in years and wanted to get reacquainted. I am also reading The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir. I love historical fiction! I have recently re-read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle. I am a sucker for re-reading things-like sitting down for a chat with an old friend

I love rereading things, too.
Right now, in addition to what I was reading before, I have begun The Eagle of the Ninth. I really like it so far.
I'm also rereading Lewis' Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories again.
And I have two books of essays on Tolkien waiting. Mmmmm.......

I finally got my hands on Mike Lupica's new book "Hero"! I can't wait to read it! it's Mike Lupica's first ever action/adventure novel!

I just finished Behemoth tonight. I think I liked Leviathan a teeny bit more

Still, I liked the new characters, especially Bovril. I want one. Part of me would love to see movies made of the franchise, just to have the sheer spectacle of all the different fabricated animals and Clanker tech on the big screen, but I'm sure they would just butcher it. Probably cast Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber in the leads.

Booky,

I kind of liked the first one better as well, this one felt like it had so much stuffed into the Alex storyline that the resolution suffered a bit.

It has been brought to my attention that the famed author of the Redwall series, Brian Jacques has died. His books were awesome as I was growing up and I hold them 3rd on my fantasy book list behind only Lord of the Rings and Narnia. Prayers go to his family.

I've been really sad about that ever since I heard about it yesterday. I loved those books when I was growing up. I even dressed up as Cornflower for Halloween one year. There was just something about them, some air of, well I guess the best thing I could call it is 'old-fashioned adventure'. I really loved the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman books too. He was a very good author.

Wow, FFJ! That's so sad! He certainly wrote great books!
Mostly reading books for school right now. I plan to start War and Peace sometime soon.

I also heard about Brian Jacques. How sad!

I recently finished reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. I really enjoyed it, but I think a re-read is in order to get a better grasp of it.

And right now I'm reading Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle. A friend suggested it, and I was able to find a lovely copy to purchase shortly after. I'm only a couple chapters in, and I already love it. It's so excellent!

All these are for pleasure. The last book I read for school was The Scarlet Letter and I didn't particularly enjoy it.

The last book in Jeffrey Overstreet's Auralia Thread series is going to be released next month, I believe. It's called The Ale Boy's Feast. I still need to pre-order a copy. I'm really excited about this book, but I hate to see the series end. The first book, Auralia's Colors, is one of my favorite books of all time.

Per usual (excepting breaks) I have been reading exclusively for school, but I have been enjoying it nonetheless.

I read La Casa en Mango Street, a Spanish translation of Chicana author Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. It was odd being an English speaker reading a Spanish translation of an English novel, but I enjoyed the book anyway. Short little vignettes of feminist literature that painted beautiful, but sad pictures of life in a poor neighborhood. At times I thought the imagery was a bit much, but in general, a very good book at a young adult level.

I also read Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of short stories about the Indian experience in America. The stories on their own are excellent, but all together they are illuminating. They are written in very plain prose but Lahiri is a master of nuance and her stories are still very rich despite their lack of ornamentation.

Finally, I just finished George Eliot's novella "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," one of the stories from Scenes of Clerical Life. It was not really my favorite. It's an odd frame narrative in which Eliot tries to mix up ideas of hero and heroine and introduce realism into romance, but Romanticism was all over the book and the characters were pretty unlikeable. So it definitely wouldn't be my first recommendation of an Eliot work.

What I would recommend, however, is her essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." It is hilarious. If you've ever read Eliot or Jane Austen I think you'd enjoy it very much. She is very sarcastic and snarky toward the ladies who wrote her day's version of pop fiction or romance novels. She's not really criticizing Austen, but novels like hers with very witty female heroines in search of a rich husband. Anyone with an appreciation for fiction in the early to mid 19th century will find it very funny. One of my favorite quotes is this:

She criticizes her contemporaries for being

inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains.

Queen Susan, if you're looking for a new book to read, check out my link in my siggy. I just released a fiction spiritual warfare novel and so far sales and reports are looking good. If you want an adventure type of novel, mine is the way to go. If you're looking for a romantic or Jane Austin type deal, keep away from mine because I don't have that.

I'm reading a non-fiction book about women in the New Testament. Its pretty interesting, but I keep getting interupted while reading.
I'm also going back and finishing Wuthering Heights. I started it about 2 years ago and stopped half way because I had a lot of other work to do at the time. It wasn't that it was not interesting (it was!) I just forgot about it. I still have a book mark in it, so that's good news.

Brian Jacques? Really? I'm so sorry. He was a great author and I have spent many happy hours reading Redwall books. I still enjoy them a lot - as Lady Haleth said, they carry an atmosphere almost of high adventure and almost of knights and ladies!

I still have a book mark in it, so that's good news.

LoL! I know how you feel.

Kate, what is your sig quoting?

Do you know what?

I received in the mail today a book I ordered in December! It took so long because it was ordered from England because they don't print it in the U.S. It's The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen and illustrated by P.J. Lynch. It's for the illustrations that I bought it, but it's my favorite fairy tale by Andersen. So beautiful!