A Little Review - ETHAN FROME

Wow, this week has been excrutiatingly busy! This is the 2nd book I've completed this week - and both of them have been for school. Ugh. I know, I can't believe I have to READ for SCHOOL! but while I'm "reading" for "school," my poor little blog and fun books are getting neglected. Oh well, I do what I can. Here's my review for Ethan Frome:

Okay, so once I got over my temper tatrum at my professor's effrontery to make me read for class, I actually liked this book! Now, that's saying something, because usually I grade classics just like I would any other book - none of this: "Ohhh, gee, Author Person! You're book is all kinds of wonderful just because IT'S OLD and lots of people have to write term papers over it!" Nope. The funny thing that I can't get over is that I absolutely HATE books like this one: not a whole lot of action, really indecisive characters, circumstances that are not overcome, etc. And yet Ethan Frome really got to me. I read the whole thing kicking and screaming, saying "No! I WILL NOT like this book! You can't make me!" but it was no use. Here's the scoop (and it's a pretty easy scoop): A poor farmer with an ultra-whiny hypochondriac wife (or at least that's my professor's interpretation) live with the ultra-whiny wife's pretty and vivacious cousin, and the poor downtrodden farmer falls in love with the enchanting cousin (Mattie) but can't seem to escape his circumstances. That's it. And yet, there's so much more. I don't like Ethan, I certainly don't like Zeena...Mattie's really the only character I truly liked...and yet I cared about them all and was rooting for Ethan even though he's such a dadgum loser! Maybe my parents were a little too into the whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kids!!!" growing up but I really felt like circumstances weren't near as bleak as Ethan made them out to be. We talked about that a lot in class today: psychological realism novels are really big into the whole "appearances vs. reality" scenario, and I just found that so intriguing. I hate to admit it, but I found myself wishing Ethan and Mattie would just elope and get it over with, and a pox on that scurvy Zeena! Maybe that's why this book is a classic: it's so incredibly simple, and yet by the time you're finished, you feel emotionally exhausted. This book doesn't make you feel better about yourself or life (unless you thank God you're not operating a sawmill in Starkfield, MA in the winter!) and I'm still not entirely sure what message (if any) Edith Wharton was trying to send, but the story just captivated me. Now granted, this is NOT the type of thing I look for in outside fun-reading, but I'm glad I had the experience. It's like when you're in a bookstore or a library and you pass a classic, you can beam with pride and point and declare, "I READ THAT!" So thank you, Dr. Bruce, and thank you to my mom who is an English teacher/principal who let me use her teaching copy - the one with all the notes and unlined passages. :D - Definitely recommended to Classics Lovers. And if you're a student and you find Ethan Frome on your "Required Reading" syllabus, don't fret, for this is an easy read. It could be a heck of a lot worse.

*thinks of T.S. Eliot and shivers*

(Belated) Teaser Tuesday

Okay, I'm nearly done with Mere Christianity (AWESOME book by the way - I would recommend it to everyone!!) so here is my belated Teaser Tuesday:


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading.Here's how it works:- Grab the current book you're reading- Open up to a random page- share 2 "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page - just don't include spoilers!!!

**Note: I personally will probably fudge on the numbers and do more than just 2 sentences...!



Here is my teaser, from Book #3 of the Wardstone Chronicles - The Spook's Secret

"I remembered the smell in Dad's room, that stench of flowers, and how Mam had said it was a sign of the approach of death. I had her gift and I could smell it now because it was coming from the Spook and it was getting stronger and stronger by the minute..."
- The Spook's Secret, pg 172

By the way, this is an awesome series!! They're fairly well-known here in America (under the Last Apprentice series titles) but the Wardstone Chronicles are apparently very popular in Britain... If anyone really likes Harry Potter-esque fantasy books, definitely check these out!

My First Award!!

Thank you so much to Lucy @ Delightful Reviews for honoring my little infant blog with this award!!

What the award says:

Accept the award, and post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his/her blog link. Pass the award to 5 other blogs that you've newly discovered.

Since I can count every blog I follow as “new,” I’m passing the love on to…

- Jess @ Tangled Up in Blue

- Natalie @ Mindful Musings

- Melissa @ I Swim for Oceans

- Stephanie @ StephtheBookworm

- Lilly @ Reading Extravaganza

Once again, thank you so much to Lucy! Now go check out these awesome sites! :))

Reading Recap!

Last week I read a grand total of 2 books - The Spook's Curse (part II in the Wardstone Chronicles) and Aurelia - a YA fiction debut novel



Here is for The Spook's Curse:
This book just took me a lot longer to get through. Now granted, it is longer than The Spook's Apprentice, but it wasn't as engaging. I guess second books rarely are as BA-BOOM! as their predecessor, but still, I was at times disappointed with the direction of the story. For one thing, I missed a lot of Delaney's descriptive style that he seemed to write so well in the first book. It's really complicated to explain, because he's still the same great storyteller, but for some reason his writing seems less magical here than in the first book. And the subject matter wasn't near as engaging to me. Maybe it's because I am a religious person, but the whole nature of the story (an evil "godlike" spirit and crazy/weird priests) was very off-putting. I much preferred the scary witch in the first book to overzealous religious fanatics. So I docked off a star for the constant "priests are BAD!" message. I don't have the patience for those kinds of stories. And yeeeeeeeeeet: I still like the series and will definitely progress to the next installment. For one thing, Delaney excels at what I would consider the #1 Storytelling Must: a lovable MC. Thomas Ward is such an awesome character/narrator and I love him to death - he's only slightly "less cool" than my all-time favorite MC: a Mr. Perseus Jackson. Oh and let's not forget Alice: she's easily my favorite character in the series. I found myself getting mad at the Spook for being so harsh (and hypocritical) with her...I easily forget that characters are, ultimately, not real!

Rating: 3.5-3.9... My final rating would be somewhere between 3.5-4 stars...maybe 3.8 or 3.9. It wasn't as engaging as the first book by any means, and sometimes I felt like plugging along through it was more out of duty than enjoyment...but it got better, and I like the characters too much to quit now!


And for Aurelia:
"I'm going to start this book review off with a confession: **I am a very, very hard person to keep entertained/engaged. Kindergarteners can focus better than me - well okay, some can... Usually it takes me a few days at least to get throug...more I'm going to start this book review off with a confession: **I am a very, very hard person to keep entertained/engaged. Kindergarteners can focus better than me - well okay, some can... Usually it takes me a few days at least to get through a 200+ page book, either because I stumble over some pacing potholes or because I just flat can't concentrate... - THIS BOOK is...NOT one of those books! It only took me a few hours to read this - not in the least because it's short or anything, but because it was such an enjoyable reading experience. I wish all authors could pace their stories the way Ms. Osterlund does. Her sequences of events flow very effortlessly and never once does the story lag or excelerate too rapidly. - One thing in particular I really enjoyed about this book was the attention given to the setting. I love it when authors take the time to visualize for us the worlds they create, and I got such vivid descriptions of the places in the story that I felt like I could paint them. So bravo and thank you for that! - And let's not forget the characters: they all were relevant to the story. Now that may sound like the most basic assessment out there, but so many books have characters that are just really random and don't seem to serve much of a function other that background drapery. Here, every person we are introduced to matters and has a very special role to play in the story's development. I especially liked how she wrote Robert: he was strong and smart yet deeply caring. It was so refreshing to have a "love interest" character who was *not* a jerkface :) - The only thing I have with the book (and this is most definitely a "me thing" probably, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the writing) is the MC herself: Aurelia, a spunky, plucky, "princess who kicks butt". She was a little too spunky and plucky for my taste, and she got on my nerves sometimes in what I perceived as her constant need to be right: with her father, with Robert, etc. If I was reading this as a teen, I would probably not even notice it, but I'm 21 years old and so that kind of stood out to me. - Maybe it's because I'm still seething from last semester's teaching observations and all the "I know everything because I'm a TEENAGER!" attitudes I encountered from that experience, but teen characters who are written to be the bastion of knowledge and insight really grind my nerves. And I didn’t really get the feeling that Aurelia wasn’t supposed to be right all the time…it was as if the story was saying, “Because of her really bummer childhood and the fact that she can’t trust anyone, she is totally justified in making all the judgment calls.” In her encounters with Robert especially, her attitude bordered on arrogance (or at least, that was my perception). It always should be a warning sign when somebody presumes to tell you what your thoughts mean… And I never thought I’d be able to use the stuff I learned in Intro to Marriage and Family Therapy! Now I will admit to being biased towards a lot of these YA-age, “girls who do things” characters, because I personally like the “girls-who-don’t-think-guys-helping-them-makes-them-weak” characters better. Am I right, Annabeth Chase?!
- Anyway, this is a credit to the author and her storytelling ability, in that even though Aurelia got on my nerves, I still cared about her and wanted everything in the story to work out for her. And they did! For now, at least… I heard there’s going to be a sequel, and I will eagerly await its release!

Rating: 4/5.

Recapping the Week (1/17-24)

Books Reviewed
Once Upon a Marigold - Twice Upon a Marigold - The Spook's Apprentice

My Posts
Teaser Tuesday
The "Definitely...Maybe" Books - shopping around for new reads
3-4-5 Challenge
Explore Your World: Lancashire, England

Ohhh, those dystopians!!

I'm a sucker for quizzes, so even though I already posted my topic for the day, I've got to do another one :)

You are 55% likely to be caught in a dystopian society!

You are seen as a threat to unity and conformity. Make sure you keep your thoughts inside, otherwise you might die.

What are your chances of survival in a Dystopia?
Take More Quizzes

- I sure hope the Dystopian Society in question isn't The Handmaid's Tale... that would be a major bummer.
Could you survive?!

Quote of the Week!

I really like this image, not only for the personification of talent (which I see in the bass) but also in the man's actions of shielding and protecting his precious instrument. Like the man in the picture, we all have our own special talents and gifts, and I guess the challenge is how to nuture and protect our talents as we go out into "the real world."

Have a great week, everybody!