I've been getting so much reading done! 
I've finished my re-read of The Chronicles of Narnia!
I Love Narnia!
Re-reading them reminds me why I Love them so much!
Those books mean so much to me and will forever have a special place in my heart.
I also have read the newest book in the Temeraire series! Crucible of Gold!
Great story and characters as always! I love how different each breed of dragons are in the world, and how the story ties into the history of the Napoleon Wars!
And Finally I am nearly half way through The Silmarillion! I'm so happy to finally be reading it!

I won't even try to cover all the reading I've done in the last few months for school and for myself. It's a lot.

However, I am currently reading a book I first heard about through NarniaWeb and so I think I'll post my thoughts so far. The book is Sabriel by Garth Nix. I'm a little shy of halfway through.

I finally was able to read the 4th book in Andrew Klavan's epic 4 book series "The Homelanders". book 4, titled "The Final Hour" is a beautifully and masterfully written conclusion to this amazing series I can't get enough of this series and each book is better than the last I highly recommend this series for all! the way Andrew Klavan writes is like no other writing I've ever read. it's so realistic, so down to earth. he makes the characters come alive and you feel exactly what the main character, Charlie West, feels exactly when he feels it. you feel the emotions the way Charlie feels them in a way I've never seen before. these books deserve more recognition word has it that there may be a movie made soon...

I'm currently reading through Loving by Karen Kingsbury; I started it this morning. I'm only about 20 pages in but thus far I think it's the best installment of the Bailey Flanigan series yet. I'd begun to get tired of how the story was dragging out over the course of three books, so I'm glad that, at the end of this book, I'll have the answers I've been waiting for. The suspense of knowing that this is the conclusion to Bailey's story makes me want to keep reading and find out whether she ends up with Cody or Brandon.

If you've already read this book, no spoilers, please! But I'd be more than willing to discuss my thoughts when I'm done with it.

I needed books to read a couple weeks ago while I was going to be monitoring hallways during TAKS Testing (Texas standardized tests), so I had four books. Three of them are down.

Two are the first two sets of trilogies in The Forbidden Doors series by Bill Meyers (he did Mc Gee and Me and is with Focus on the Family). They focus on two teenagers Becca and Scott Williams who return to California after growing up on the mission field in South American jungle. They end up dealing almost immediately with supernatural forces stemming from the occult. The books are geared towards teens and are very fast reads. It deals with spiritual warfare and each book addresses different ways the enemy can tempt us and distract us. Fits well with the genre of Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness (only geared towards teens) and my book.

The other one I've read is called "The Realms: The Reunder" by Ross Lawhead, son of Steven Lawhead. It takes place in England and is about a young man and woman (Daniel Tulley and Freya Reynolds) who after having an adventure of a lifetime eight years earlier are caught up in a series of events that are heading towards an epic showdown. It is a grand mix of modern-day history with elements of fantasy. This is the first book of a trilogy and the second book is slated to be released in September. It's a slow start but gets harder and harder to put down as it progresses.

The last book I have is called "Deliver us from Evil" by Robin Carol. I have not read this yet, so I can't comment to much yet. I'll be taking it on a trip next week to Colorado (for a large writer's conference, to teach a fencing camp, and to see friends and family).

It has been a while since I've posted a book sale post (mostly since I haven't been to any book sales). However, we went to our local used book store today and I came away with a nice load thanks to some store credit we had saved. My finds include:

~a hefty number of Star Wars Extended Universe books (see my post in the Star Wars SF)
~The Crystal Cave y Mary Stewart
~Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey
~Books two and three from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles (I recently read the first one, Interview with the Vampire, and decided to try a couple more at a friend's suggestion; I wouldn't recommend this series to youngsters, but as far as vampire fiction goes, the first one was fairly tame)
~Legends 3, a collection of novellas by sci-fi and fantasy authors including Tad Williams and Ursula Le Guin
~The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander (now I can finally read this trilogy )
~Before Dishonor, a Star Trek: TNG novel
~I am Number Four (been wanting to read this since we saw the movie)
~the novelizations of the three Mummy films (for the wife)

Quite a nice day, if I do say so.

Hello!

So... I just finished reading Yotsuba&!. Summarize this in a word: Funny! I was laughing so hard at almost every page. Sadly, none of the libraries near me have the other books, just the first, so... yeah.

Also, I just started reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, very mysterious I'm not sure who I suspect yet.

And, I picked up Idylls of a King by Tennyson. I only read the first... sentence, but I'm hoping to start reading it soon.

Not a lot of new reading done during the school year, most of the books I read were for English [those being Silas Marner which I enjoyed, and The Ancient Mariner which was also very nice] and some other subjects.

I hope you enjoy Idylls of the King, CSLewisNarnia. It's one of my favourite books (if you can say that about a collection of poetry... ).

On that Arthurian note, I picked up a 1963 edition of Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset this morning for £1.59. I confess I've never read this one! I can't wait to get started but I'm partway through a re-read of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner at the moment.

About a week ago, i went to Barnes and Noble and picked up a good number of books: Thief of Time, Going Postal, Making Money, The Fifth Elephant, and Thud!, all by Terry Pratchett (they didn't have hardcover copies; sad for my collection, good for my budget), The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis and Illusion by Frank Peretti.

The last one - Illusion - was the only one i hadn't read. It was a pretty solid Peretti work, in my opinion. The science-y stuff was hard to follow (i also have a bad habit of skimming sections my first time reading a book), and the ending was fairly predictable, but it was an enjoyable read. Of his previous works, i'd say it was most similar to The Visitation in its writing style, but not as good quality-wise.

Only other new books i've read recently are Divergent by Veronica Roth and The Serpent's Shadow by Rick Riordan (last book of the Kane Chronicles). I felt the Kane Chronicles never quite reached the level of Riordan's Greek mythology books, but i always find his books an enjoyable read (and there was at least one, possibly two, Doctor Who shout-outs. ).

Divergent was ... interesting. I'll probably need to re-read it to form a real opinion on it. I liked it until

Divergent was ... interesting. I'll probably need to re-read it to form a real opinion on it. I liked it until

Spoiler

the Erudite faction started their revolution or whatever-that-was. It didn't fit with the style of the rest of the book, and .. yeah, i dunno, have to read it again.

I agree. The concept of the different factions, and the execution of how they interacted at the beginning was great, but what you mentioned in the later part of the book wasn't really integrated into the rest very well. I will definitely read Insurgent just to see what else the author does with the factions, though.

I just read Divergent a few weeks ago and I would have to agree about that plot element. To me, it needed more of a building up to than it got. Maybe in the second book it wouldn't have felt so sudden. As far as the worldbuilding and such, I thought it was quite enjoyable. Definitely an interesting twist on the usual dystopia stuff that's taken over YA since THG got so popular. At least it isn't vampires.

Right now I'm slogging my way through a collection of H. P. Lovecraft's short stories. I'm about to take a break from them though, mainly so I won't have to read the word blasphemous every other sentence.

why does dystopian literature seem to be popular right now?

Fantastic question. I actually took an apocalypse/dystopia class in college and I really wish I could remember my professor's theory about it. I think dystopic fiction asks really complicated questions about right and wrong that aren't easily answered because who really knows the best way to run a society? It provides a different context for heroics. It isn't just rebelling against an evil dictator, but a system. I think breaking out of the system appeals to people.

The books also raised great questions about the relationship between the capitol and the districts that parallels the relationship between the first world (especially America) and third world. If we took the messages Collins has for us about lifestyle responsibility, I think the implications could be enormous (as far as things like consuming justly and eating justly).

CSLewis: Was it "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?" I read a graphic novel version of "The Rime of the Modern Mariner." It was quick and strange. What did you think of dear old Silas? I just read it for class and it kind of got buried under all the other Eliot I was reading.

I have been reading exclusively for class: Don Quijote, which I simply do not get at all, and then a lot, a lot of George Eliot: Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Felix Holt: The Radical and now we are reading Middlemarch. I haven't decided what I think about Eliot really. I dislike her penchant for historical fiction and wish she had engaged more readily with her own time and its issues. Middlemarch is so superior to anything else we've read that I have to wonder what happened to suddenly make her dialogue fun to read.

I'm also picking out summer reading books. It will be almost exclusively modern fiction because I'm finishing the Victorian Eliot and then heading to Law School six weeks after graduation and desperately need a little fluff in my reading life.

Kate, that information certainly explains a lot, very convincingly. But I don't think that dystopias in fiction are the only way that fiction is used to sort out problems. I've been more interested this year in how authors sort out historical mysteries. But because of a course I undertook, I haven't had much time to do a lot of reading. Besides, I am trying to learn German and revise French.

Lately, I've been so busy studying Aboriginal history and their struggles I haven't had much time to read anything entertaining at all. Isn't it curious that the subject, now I finished the essay, is far more interesting?

I did grab a copy of Phillippa Gregory's The Constant Princess. Now this author of The other Boleyn Girl, is a Dr of history in her own right, who has written novels about many of the late Plantagenet/Tudor women who played such a dramatic part in history. The Constant Princess is about Katharine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII.

I'd like to believe Phillippa's depiction of Katharine of Aragon's relationship with her first husband, Arthur, Prince of Wales, a momentous marriage the eventual repercussions of which changed the course of British history. But somehow, as nice as her view of this historic relationship was, I tend to think that Katharine told no more than the truth when she said that her marriage to Henry the VIII was the real deal. After all, even if Katharine and Arthur were on good terms during their brief and very regimented marriage, there is also this to consider. You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink on cue to suit everyone else.

Calling all frequenters of this lovely book thread! I need your assistance.

Friends from here will often recommend a book to me and say, "It's one of the favorites among the Book Thread frequenters." So, I was wondering... What are the general favorites among the NarniaWeb bookworms? I'd like to read them. I see tons and tons of books mentioned on here, which are liked well enough. But which ones are considered as the NarniaWebbers' favorites, overall?

~Riella

Lewis and Tolkien are the obvious favorites. After that there are the Attolia books. Nearly everyone who posted in these threads frequently over the years has read and liked them. Jane Austen gets a lot of reads as well as other classic authors like the Brontes and Charles Dickens. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was pretty popular here too. Agatha Christie comes up a lot. Of course there's also bestselling books like the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series.