Posts filed under 'Over 375 pages'
“Graceling”
As a fantasy book for teens, especially for girls, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, is nearly perfect. The heroine, Katsa, has just the kind of power in life that girls often dream about. (The first time a man tries to grope her, she kills him effortlessly.) Though she is spirited, strong, good and able to make her own decisions, men still find her very attractive and one very beautiful man is more than willing to sacrifice himself for her—a reversal of the roles we commonly experience in real life.
In Katsa’s world there are people called Gracelings who have special powers. They can be identified by the fact that they have two different colored eyes (Kasta’s are blue and green). Sometimes it takes awhile before they find out what their special grace is. Often they are employed by the kings in their seven kingdoms. Katsa has the misfortune of being the niece of the ruthless King Randa. When he finds out that her grace gives her the ability to kill or hurt anyone without being harmed herself, he uses her as a sort of henchman. She does his bidding, but as she comes of age, she also comes into her own power. She creates a secret council which works against Randa’s evil influence and later she turns away him altogether.
Enter Po, a graceling prince with one eye silver and one eye gold. He, too, is an excellent fighter. The two work together to save a young princess. They have constant battles of wills, yet Po (sigh deeply here) understands all of Katsa’s moods and is willing to do just about anything to be her true love. Unlike many such fantasy stories, in Graceling, Katsa doesn’t want to be under the command of a man, and that means she refuses to marry, taking Po as a lover.
My real criticism of the book is that it could have been much shorter, as the writing is redundant. Characters will have conversations—You don’t love me—yes I do—followed by a summary of the conversation—she felt that he didn’t love her, but he said that he did. Not only does this happen again and again, but it happens again and again on the same topic—you don’t love me ‘round five’ and the fifth round summary. However, the up side of this is that it adds to the total number of pages in the book, so you can impress your teacher by reading 475 pages—and you can do it quickly without having to pay too much attention because if you miss one train, it’ll be coming around again very soon.
This is a super-popular book, one of YALSA’s top ten of 2009. COHS students who’ve read it love it, and I’m guessing you will, too.
Add comment April 1, 2010
“Skulduggery Pleasant”
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
Stephanie Edgley is brokenhearted over the death of her Uncle Gordon, who, in a surprise move, has left Stephanie his estate. He was a bestselling author of fantasy and magic, and hung out with what his family considered a weird, low-life crowd. One of this crowd comes to the reading of Gordon’s will. He is hidden by his dark glasses, muffler and overcoat. When Stephanie is later staying the night in the house she inherited from Gordon, this strange man saves her life. It quickly becomes apparent that Gordon was murdered and Stephanie, bored with life on the east coast of Ireland, wants to help find the killer.
But the strange Skulduggery Pleasant isn’t a man—at least not a live one—he’s a skeleton, and a powerful one at that, a detective who takes on cases in the world of magic, vampires, sorcerers, ‘cleavers,’ Elders and Hollow Men. Apparently, Gordon’s best selling novels were based on reality. And thus begins Stephanie’s adventures in the world of the supernatural.
Skulduggery and Stephanie (aka Valkyrie Cain) are a smart-mouthed, wise cracking pair as they fight the evil Nefarian Serpine, who hopes to resurrected the Faceless Ones and destroy mankind. They dodge bullets (or are shot), outrun vampires, escape cleavers and more. They survive broken bones, burning and torture. The action never stops—violence, danger nor magic—but through all they are cool. (Skulduggery even drives a 1954 Bentley.)
Skulduggery Pleasant has many great twists and turns that keep you involved in detective books. Though Stephanie is twelve, she acts much older. The violence in the book, while not gratuitous, is also more suited to teens than to kids. So don’t pass this one up if you find a copy shelved with the kids’ books. Oh—and it has that always sought after ‘more than 375 page’ benefit—even though the pages are short and the action so fast that you’ll finish in no time at all. And if you really like it, sequels are here.
Add comment February 23, 2010
“Dracula”
Dracula by Bram Stoker
As vampire tales are so popular lately, I decided this summer that I would read one of the original vampire novels—Dracula. The author, Bram Stoker, created the character of Dracula by pulling together lots of myths and legends. Though Vlad the Impaler, a real man who lived in the 1400’s in Romania, was one of the inspirations for Dracula’s personality, there were others. In turn, Dracula as a vampire set the criteria for many years of vampire lore—can’t behold daylight, sleeps in a coffin, turns into a bat, has no reflection in a mirror, and preys on beautiful young women. Of course, he also has lots of sex appeal—and, very recently, this is the only vampire quality that survived in teen vampire literature. So—would you like to read a book about a vampire like Dracula? About potential victims who would prefer to die than be transformed into vampires? (So unlike that whining Bella of Twilight, who finally gets her wish. Think of it—now she can whine and throw temper-tantrums through eternity!)
My sense is that you might enjoy this read although there are things about the writing and the sometimes sentimental view of perfect Victorian angel girls that won’t appeal to you—you’ll probably speed through parts.
The greater measure of the book is written as journal and diary entries as well as letters. It begins with Jonathan Harker, an up and coming attorney, making a trip from London to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula and discuss Dracula’s purchase of some real estate in London. Several days into the trip, Harker knows that something is very wrong in the castle (seeing Dracula climbing the outer walls is a big hint), and that he is a prisoner. There are female vampires in the castle who attack Harker. This is pretty horrific stuff—the details aren’t as gory as those in current novels, but Dracula does give the women a baby to eat, and then when the mother of the child stands outside the castle demanding the return of the child, Dracula has a pack of wolves eat her. Harker manages to escape.
Once home, Harker will enlist others to help him rid the world of Dracula (who moves to London—remember the real estate deal?). The plot will involve Harker’s fiance Mina and her friend Lucy who is engaged and has had two other suitors. All three are good men and risk their lives for the women, as does Harker. Poor Lucy has a pretty rough time with Dracula and needs several blood transfusions, direct form the bodies of her friends (never mind the science of blood type. . .). Professor Van Helsing, a vampire hunter, is there to conduct all this business. He knows medicine and he know vampire lore. Should all their efforts fail, the men take an oath that they will not allow Lucy to suffer the fate of being a vampire—they vow to do anything—cut off her head, drive a stake through her heart—to ensure her the peace of death. They take these vows out of love for Lucy. (How different from Twilight!) Mina, being female, is also under threat.
There is a lot of exciting action throughout the book. However, the roles of the women are a bit off-putting—as I said, they are Victorian angels, and can’t get a whole lot done by themselves, although Mina is very, very smart. Being bitten by Dracula has the same sense of sleeping around—not fair. Another thing that bothered me over the long run (and this is a long book) was Van Helsing’s too frequent and very long speeches. You wouldn’t find this kind of pontificating in a modern novel. Still for vampires that are true to legend, and for suspense, this is a good book to read. I know that Bram Stoker is on the ‘author list’ for the senior project here at COHS. He’d be a good choice.
By the way—if you need to read a biography and are looking for someone whose insanity and cruelty is riveting, you could try Vlad the Impaler, one of the models for Count Dracula.
2 comments December 11, 2009
“Lies My Teacher Told Me”
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
This book was originally published in 1994 and was revised in 2007. I’d been thinking about reading it for a long time, but finally put it on the top of my list when I realized I should be reading more non-fiction because I had little to recommend to you.
And I do recommend this one! It challenged just about everything I learned in my history course (dinosaur days, yeah), and shows that not much has changed in the courses you are taking now—unless your own U. S. History teacher is challenging the textbook by sharing information with alternate points-of-view.
I’ve tried to have a clearer picture of American history by reading selections from Columbus’s journal (now, that was eye-opening—his own words prove him to be a vicious brute) and paying attention to alternate versions of wars and presidential policies. But Loewen tackles treatment of Native American (from Columbus forward) in detail; he dishes the dirt about American policies from the time of the Pilgrims forward. Did you know:
- Christopher Columbus did not discover that the world is round (lots of people already knew this)? He, with the Spanish explorers he brought to the New World, hunted and murdered Indians for sport and dog food? That he had the hands of Indians cut off as punishment for disobeying the Spaniards?
- Plagues had killed off so much of the Native American population before the Pilgrims arrived that those Pilgrims arrived to lands that were already cleared and ready to be populated (i.e., a lot of the hard work of ‘settling’ was already done)? That Squanto, famous for helping the Pilgrims, was not just an Indian traveler who happened to speak English, but had been enslaved twice by Europeans? That when he finally got home again, his tribe had been wiped out by a plague—probably a good reason for him to align himself with the Europeans?
- That John Brown was not mentally ill and/or deranged?
- That Abraham Lincoln, who was idolized when I was younger, and then demonized as a racist later (at least in some books I’ve read), was actually deeply thoughtful about race and country—and probably deserves much of the respect he receives (although for reasons more complex than textbooks allow)?
- President Woodrow Wilson (whom I’ve always thought of as a decent man because of his championing of the League of Nations) was an open racist who removed African Americans from all levels of government?
- Helen Keller was a ‘left-wing socialist’ who wrote extensively championing the common person?
- That several U. S. history textbooks say the same thing, almost word-for-word, as if they’ve all been written by one person with one point-of-view? (Unless they are plagiarizing from one another and no one has noticed!)
Lies My Teacher Told Me discusses lots of the stuff history book publishers are afraid to let you know about our history because they are afraid you won’t be able to take it—you’ll be unoptimistic about your future. (Hum. . .) The thing is—as bad as some these facts are—they are incredibly interesting. Loewen argues that if the facts were in your history books, you’d like the subject a lot more—and people of all ethnic backgrounds as well as both genders would have role model from the past.
There are people who won’t like Lies My Teacher Told Me. I read a review on it that stated, “To account for the deplorable situation, [Loewen] offers this quasi-Marxist explanation: ‘Perhaps we are all dupes, manipulated by elite white male capitalists who orchestrate how history is written as part of their scheme to perpetuate their own power and privilege at the expense of the rest of us.’” (Gilbert Taylor) These words are taken out of context as Loewen is asking a rhetorical question, and then answers that, no, it’s really unlikely that this is the case. Ironically, this is just the kind of ‘tweaking’ that Loewen is decrying.
Read it. You may be disgusted by the facts, but you’ll be fascinated as well.
Add comment December 8, 2009
“The Best American Short Stories 2008″
The Best American Short Stories 2008 edited by Salman Rushdie
More great short stories! I had to buy this book for a class I was taking—then I lost the book and bought another one—then I found the first one—so, I donated one of my two copies to the COHS library. I’ve read many of the stories and they really are the best!
Some stories such as “Man and Wife” will shock you by taking as very ordinary situations that are taboo. Others speak to the difficulties of growing up, such as “Virgins.” Still others deal with the supernatural as a part of ordinary life as in “Vampires in the Lemon Grove.” (By the way, the author of “Vampires in the Lemon Grove”—Karen Russell—also has a great short story in the 2007 Best book—about girls raised by werewolves. You’ll love both of these stories!)
If your teacher assigns short story reading—or if you just like to read them—you can’t go wrong with this volume. In addition, if you are an emerging author yourself, you may like the contributors’ notes at the end, in which the authors discuss the inspiration for writing the story.
Add comment December 1, 2009
“The Count of Monte Cristo” Student Reviews 2009
The following reviews by COHS students are on “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexander Dumas.
Genre: Historical
Pages: 1312
Reviewer: Ron W.
The story begins when the main character Edmond Dantes and Fernand Mondego land on the island of Elba to get medical help for there captain. Dantes meets Napoleon Bonaparte and is given a letter which is to be given to a friend back at port, but the friend will find him to get the letter. Mondego who is jealous of Dantes and his fiancés Mercedes relationship turns him in to the police. After Dantes explains himself to the head prosecutor Gerard Villefort who decides to send Dantes the life imprisonment in the Château d’If. After befriending the priest the priest teaches Dantes to read and write. They start to dig a tunnel out of the prison but the priest is caught in a cave in and dies Dantes then escapes by pretending to be the priests dead body. After escaping he befriends a group of buccaneers and sails back the his home port. After he and another man by a boat they sail to Monte Cristo a small island and find the hidden treasure. When they return home Dantes starts calling himself the Count of Monte Cristo. While he is doing this he is slowly ruining all of the people who hurt hims lifes. Until all of them are in jail and Mondego is dead.
My opinion of the Count of Monte Cristo is that it was a very adventurous and suspenseful book. The storyline was odd but all together the long read was worth the effort. If I had to recommend a book it would be this one.
1. The author wrote this book I alive so that you can learn that you can’t trust all your friends even the close ones.
2. The theme is you can’t judge a book by its cover even if you have already read it.
3the author supports the thesis by using a lot of good quotes and a really suspenseful storyline.
4. The issue is Dantes going to jail for carrying a letter to a friend of napoleons and it is resolved when dantes pays every one back for their deeds.
1 comment June 3, 2009
“The Man in the Iron Mask” Student Reviews 2009
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 588 of the story, and 626 pages including explanatory notes.
Reviewer: Christian I.
The Man in the iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas is an excellent novel. It is about King Louis, and he is making France fall apart from his poor ruling as king. Three retired musketeers want to get rid of the king, after he put one of the musketeer’s sons on the front line of war. D’Artagnan, the musketeer captain, thinks otherwise, and is trying to defend the king. The other three find another heir to the throne, and that is the man in the iron mask. The man in the iron mask is King Louis’s twin brother, Phillipe. The musketeers then train Phillipe to fight, just in case if he needs to defend himself. King Louis then hosts a party, and the musketeers make the switch. Although, a loyal friend of the King breaks him out of jail, and Louis resumes being king. Parthos and Arimas the escape to Belle-Isle, where the King sends an attack. D’Artagnan resigns from the military, and helps his friends. Parthos dies during the battle of Belle-Isle, and D’Artagnan died a few years later from a war with Holland. At the end, the only original musketeer alive is Aramis.
As I said in the summary, I think The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas is excellent. It has an action filled story with a hint of mystery. This novel is considered a world classic, and is a French novel. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good book to read.
1. The author wrote The Man in the Iron Mask to show how two brothers can be different and what they will do for their country.
2. The theme of the book is right versus wrong. The king is a tyrant, and his twin brother (the man in the iron mask) knows what is right for France.
3. The author supports the thesis in many ways. In the book, three musketeers have to do a wrong action, to save France from the tyrant. They also did what was right by not killing the tyrant. D’Artagnan conflicts whether or not to help his friends or the king. The author uses many other examples to support this thesis.
4. The main issue is that the king, Louis, is a tyrant. Three of the original 4 musketeers had enough of the king’s tyranny. They discover that there is another heir to the throne, and they secretly switch the two, making France have a fair and kind king.
Add comment June 3, 2009
“Emma” Student Reviews 2009
The following COHS student reviews are on “Emma” by Jane Austen.
Genre: Novel/ romance
Pages: 370 (depending on edition)
Reviewer: Andria R.
Emma is an upper class lady that thinks of herself a great matchmaker to the people she knows. She sees nothing wrong in it. Even though she is told it is wrong she still insists that she is being helpful. Later on she learns that she was wrong and decides to stop. In this book there are romances between the characters in which you never learn if there ever going to work out. In the high upper society there are conflicts which Emma is always involved in.
In my opinion I really enjoyed reading Emma because it was different from the books I usually read. It showed me a look at how they used to behave back then. The different conflicts that might of happened.
1. Jane Austen’s purpose was to show the different romances in a high class society and how they can go wrong. It also showed many conflicts within that society.
2. The themes are marriage and social status. The thesis is the events that happen when marriage can be ruined when social status can come into the picture.
3. Jane Austen makes the development of marriage when everything goes wrong within the upper class society.
4. What main issue does the book raise and what stance does it take in addressing and solving the issue?The main issue is when Emma keeps on trying to be matchmaker and keeps her friend from being with the one she has interest in. In solving the issue Emma decides to stop being matchmaker.
2 comments June 3, 2009
“The Brothers Karamazov” Student Reviews 2009
The following reviews by COHS students are on “The ” by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 776
Reviewer: Michael T.
The book begins with Alyosha dedicating his life to religion and the highly respected monk Zosima who he will study under. Alyosha is the youngest of three brothers and a very benevolent character.. The oldest is Dmitri the middle is Ivan. Ivan is a very logical character and he struggles with morality throughout the story, not being able to accept the evil in the world and the idea of a benevolent good at the same time, though he wishes he could and flips back and fourth between the ideas many times. Dimitri is a very sensual and impulsive person, but through the progression of the book he begins to regret his past ways, especially the many love triangles he was involved in: him, Ivan and Katerina and him his father and Grushenka. The ladder of these two affairs leads to the climax of the book when he is wrongly accused of patricide. This is also the tipping point for Ivan, when he is confronted by Smerdyakov he is told that it was actually him who committed the murder, using Ivan’s own logic to justify it. This leaves Ivan in a state of confusion. Dmitri is found guilty, and sentenced to 20 years hard labor in Siberia, something the finally confirms him to the man he was trying to become.
The Brother Karamazov was a truly inspirational and thought provoking book. It posed many questions that I have already been struggling with. Things such as: do good and evil exist, and how do you define them? What is morality? Does god exist and if he does is he malevolent of benevolent? Not only was the content good, but the presentation was nothing less than respectable, the extreme character development and vastly deep and dynamic characters made items of everyday life seem philosophically deep as it offered new insight into them from three completely different perspectives. Though it was a little hard to follow at times the plot never dragged and it most certainly makes my list of top ten books.
1. The author of The Brothers Karamazov wrote the novel in order to show the classic struggles and burdens that man is encumbered by throughout his life; good versus evil.
2. The theme of this novel is the classic struggle between good and evil and the complications that ideas like freewill and religion can impose on this struggle.
3. This central theme is developed by several very dynamic characters, at the center of which are the three brothers. The story is told through the eyes Alexei Fyodrorvich, or Alyosha as he is called, though he is not the narrator. He is a man of very pure and kind hearted ideals, while his brothers, Dimitri and Ivan, are more sensual and logical respectively. And through the trials that these brother go through the theme is presented.
4. The main issue the book raises is that of morality and religious faith, a question of logic versus reason. This is to push the question of what these thing mean to a persons life, is it better to be logical or faithful? The book clearly sides with faith.
1 comment June 2, 2009
“Oliver Twist” Student Reviews 2009
The following reviews by COHS students are on “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens
Genre: Classic drama
Pages:350
Reviewer: Zachary D.
First Oliver gets kicked out of his orphanage then he goes to a coffin making place. After that he runs away because he feels that he is being mistreated. When he gets to his next destination he becomes a pick pocket. By the end of the book Oliver is living with a rich family becomes like a son.
I did not like this book one bit it was horrible. The characters bugged me and I did not like there personality. Overall I just thought the book was cheesy. The thesis was morally good but the way the author made was horrible.
1. The author’s purpose is to tell a child’s fight for freedom and a better life.
2. The theme of the story is identity because of the orphans and the thesis of the story is to try to save the poor and orphans.
3. Oliver develops through out the book by becoming more and more mature and finding new ways to have freedom. The author supports the thesis because in the end of the story Oliver gets a good home.
4. What main issue does the book raise and what stance does it take in addressing and solving the issue? That in America even if you are poor and have no parents you can still have a good life. The author addresses the issue by giving Oliver a better life in the end.
1 comment June 2, 2009
