That's exactly how I taught Shakespeare! I found it extremely effective. I put hold on The Winter's Tale and The Gap of Time. I don't know if I'll get to them. Actually, probably won't, but wanted to try. Especially the Shakespeare because I meant to read more of him this year and didn't.

Way behind but wanted to catch these up! You must be doing the same book challenge as my IRL book club! I think I have 13 left to go...and I'm not sure I'll finish. There's just not enough time. Our book club has been choosing a category a month to read, and our category for November is the "read a book published the year you were born." Is Red Badge of Courage your "book you should have read in high school?" It was mine. It was horrible! One star. Blah! Yeah, I was kind of done with The Maze Runner series and dd had told me that the prequel really had nothing to do with the same people. I'm glad I didn't bother! My older dd had the Uncle Wiggily board game. It took FOREVER to finish :laugh: For a long time I had no idea that it was made from a book. Added it to my ridiculous list! :iagree: :lol: I managed to finish a book last week but haven't had time to do my review. Life is just rushing by too fast :glare: I've got to get upstairs. Dh and Aly are watching the Tombs episode of X-Files. :eek: Totally creeps me out!!

:grouphug: Heather! And you've one upped me. I didn't read the prequel. I was pretty much done ;)

From last week... :lol: Quoting Pride & Prejudice (the movie) "You think that Jane if it gives you comfort." :lol: Let's consider what I was comparing Slaughterhouse-Five to lol! Profound and razor sharp satire would not be the first adjectives to come to mind for Vonnegut. :laugh: Our dd's may have the same taste in books!! I don't know if I liked The Death Cure best, though the last quarter of the book was really good, maybe because I finally knew who was on whose side and what the whole thing was about in the first place :laugh: I was disappointed in the death scene as well, and by the fact that the author killed that character at all. That character being the only one through the books that I could truly say I liked. Eliana, so glad the baby is doing so well!! That's wonderful news! I'm rereading The Magician's Nephew along with Aly for her Worldview class at co-op, and I'm reading the newest Michael Vey book now that Aly and dh are finished with it.

I'm still waiting for the answer to that question :lol: Along with Brave New World and Red Badge of Courage :ack2: Slaughterhouse Five is better than both of those, however. Maybe it's kind of like the Oscar's. They rarely pick movies that are liked and enjoyed by the masses, instead opting to choose weird and perplexing movies to give the award to. There are many movies/actors that have deserved Oscar nods for their roles but would not receive them because it was in a "popular" movie. So maybe the elusive people who have hailed and picked these "classic" books that "every teenager whether appropriate or capable of comprehending it all or not" should read have picked the truly weird and perplexing (and downright horrid) books because they couldn't pick the most popular books of the time. :001_tt2: :rofl: :leaving:

Today I finished Glimmerglass by Marly Youmans, a book recommended here. It was not at all what I had expected. Instead of going back to read what made me think I’d like this book though, I continued on with the story. It had a very unearthly feel to it making me never quite sure if I was supposed to be in the real world or if I was supposed to imagine myself in some sort of fairy land. Maybe some would call it magical realism, but it was not the magical realism of Sarah Addison Allen or Menna Van Praag. To me it was more confusing. I enjoyed the journey of Cynthia as she “finds herself†again, as well as setting of Sea House and Glimmerglass itself. I also enjoyed the mystery of the hill and Moss. That said, the time in the hill is just too ambiguous and dreamy and insubstantial. I enjoy magic in my stories, but I would like it to make sense. The ending was satisfying though.

The bolded only gets worse. I have wondered during my rereads why Jordan kept adding so many extra characters. There are a few that I thought should not have been developed into another story line.

I never heard how you enjoyed #4 The bat stories are AWESOME! I have none to share myself but my cousin has a similar story to Pam's Bat Story #1 only instead of being pregnant she had a newborn. I am reading Glimmerglass (Thanks, Ali, I forgot to tell you I got it in the mail :o ). I gave up on The Supernatural Elements. It wasn't bad. I just wasn't in the mood!

I am currently stuffing my face with Brach's candy corn. I allow myself one bag each year (I used to eat 3 or 4 bags each year). Since I have been eating poorly while sick (who the heck wants to eat salad when you have no taste buds. I want comfort food) now was a good time :laugh:

Eliana, :grouphug: and prayers for your dd and her family. Life is so amazingly precious! What a sweet little thing she is! Kathy, I loved the phrase that your grandson "barged into the world!" :lol: Is that he present personality as well? Skye, my aspie, had to be pulled out forcibly after 4 hours of pushing (she was stuck under my pelvic bone), we like to joke that even in the womb she was resistant to change and meeting new people and was refusing to come out

I needed more at the end of The Giver. It was just a little too ambiguous for me. I loved the rest of it. If the ending had been more concrete it would have been a five star book for me. My dh and dd's agree with Heather's dd. I haven't went on to read the others but the rest of the family was glad they did.

:grouphug: :grouphug:

I also finished today A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch. I picked this book up, at the dollar store of all places, because I liked the look of the cover. Set in Victorian England the book is a cozy mystery. The main character, Mr. Lenox, was a likeable amateur detective, and the supporting cast was just as enjoyable. At times I thought the author gave a little much detail to non-essential parts of the story, but I’ll admit that that may be just my lack of attention being sick. The author led me on a merry chase, though, with the who-done-it. I was all turned around. It was A SATIFSYING MYSTERY.

I was not well enough to head out to church today, though Aly ventured out, so I finished my Warren Wiersbe study on Ruth and Esther. Be Committed was an excellent study of these two books of the Bible as well as an intimate look into the lives of these extraordinary women of faith. I ended up writing all over this book (something I rarely do) because there was so many wonderful quotes. There was a wealth of real life application here. I didn’t always agree with Wiersbe, especially about Ahasureus and Vashti, but that’s to be expected. One of the reasons I do so very little reading of Bible study books is because they are written by fallible, sinful man, and I have seen so many people base their truths on a book written by man than on the Bible itself. One of the thoughts that Wiersbe had that profoundly moved me was about Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. His thought was that in her bitterness Naomi missed an opportunity to provide not only Ruth with the opportunity to know her God, but Orpah as well. She told both women to go back to their people and their gods when she should have heeded Orpah’s entreaty to come with her to her people and her God. It’s a thought that has stayed with me for the many months I’ve been doing this study. I found much to edify and inspire in this study. And that puts me at #40. I have about 100 pages left in A Beautiful Blue Death, which I may finish today. I've been resting a lot so I'm not sure.

Wow! That is an amazing description of resentment and bitterness! And so true. Thanks for sharing. We were late comers to the Harry Potter world as well. And we are still obsessed. ;)

:lol: Exactly my thoughts! Though I admit to wondering what it was all about, and wanting to know the end. I found myself worried that Aly thought this was such a great series. :eek: The next book is better. The Scorch Trials movie was horrendous. Like someone else said...a zombie movie only loosely based on the actual book. Bleh!

:iagree: I am still puzzling over why he wasn't allowed to go to the island :confused: I have no idea what the whole ending was about. In fact, I can't even come up with a guess. Silly me thought that they might go somewhere with the Lenina/John storyline. I truly felt the ending didn't fit in with the rest of the book. He could have stopped at least two other places and been better off.

:lol: I read your other too posts but am too fuzzy to form a coherent reply, though... :iagree: with Robin here. However... Thank you! I should have listened sooner when Butter said go to the doctor if you are not getting better. oops, now the however, I, like Rose, also looked up capitalism. This is the definition I found. I proceeded to look up communism and socialism, and am sure we don't want either of those.

:lol: Slaughterhouse Five was, like you said, at least a human story. I could connect on some level with Billy Pilgrim. The characters in BNW were sterile, for lack of a better word. I want to connect with my characters in some fashion, not be a bystander on the outside. Sorry about the multiple posts. The laptop I work on has a chunky line down the middle of the screen, and it's really hard to multi-quote on it. And that's too much work right now.

After Brave New World I needed a trip to Flufferton Abbey. I picked up a Regency book that had been in a pile from the library book sale from who knows when. I thought it was a romance, but it was heavier on the mystery. Funny enough, The Riddle of Alabaster Royal by Patricia Veryan would fit into a “spooky†category with a creepy, decrepit old house that is haunted by the ghost of a very large cat. It was a good enough book up until the last few pages. She left at least two large plot items unresolved! After looking it up on Goodreads, I see there are two more books. I wonder if she resolves those issues. Anyway, A PLEASANT DIVERSION to read while one is sick and can’t sleep. That makes #39. I'm currently working on A Beautiful Blue Death for my 2015 Reading Challenge (book with a color in the title). I bought this at the dollar store earlier in the year because I liked the cover. I think Shukrriya read it this year. It's good so far only with a little bit too much description, which may only be that my mind can't focus and I want easy reading. I also checked out Supernatural Enhancements. Aly and I will be reading Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but I think they are going to fall into November instead of October :glare:

:lol: and thanks for the links! Dd is all over British telly.

Back from the doctor's. Bronchitis/sinus infection/upper respiratory infection. Basically I'm a hot mess. Got antibiotics and cough syrup with codeine. So I may make little sense for a couple days :blush: Like I said, I keep comparing the different societies that I've read over the past two years. I liked how Lois Lowry handled it in The Giver the best, probably.

Ok, Stacia, this got long and rambly, probably because my head is so fuzzy, but I wanted to get it out before I forget some of the things I was thinking. I hope it makes some sense ;) Headed to the doctor's now. Thanks for the well wishes Jane and mum2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It is unbelievable that I didn’t remember reading this book. Only the part on the Savage Reservation brought up any sort of memory. Within in pages of beginning it, I was looking to see when it had been written. I was shocked to find it had been written in the 1930’s. The more I read, however, the more I could see some of the progressive influences of those times on his writing. My first thoughts ran to Eugenics and Margaret Sanger and Hitler’s scientists. Though on doing further study, Eugenics didn’t fit the profile exactly, but I can see where it could have led a man with an imagination to run to a dystopian society (though they thought it quite utopian). There were some parallels to F451 with the universal theme of everyone be happy, be doing, don’t think for yourself, let “us†(the government) do the thinking for you. No books! But BNW went such a giant leap father as to get rid of parents and families altogether. The government eliminated them. The people, also, were engineered (sounds like Ian Malcolm and Henry Wu from Jurassic Park), to have no ambition, no drive in life but what their make-up allowed. It’s like some radicals talking about fitting children into a profession at age 7 or 8 and only allowing them to follow that path. We grow and change daily. What you like at 7 will change by 9 and by 14 and by 21 and by 43. In BNW the people deal with this by wanton drug use, so truly the government hasn’t achieved the utopia it has thought it has. All of those natural human tendencies are still there trying to break out and break free, they are just repressing them with drugs and sex. It’s a false sense of happy, not true happiness that comes from living, from hoping. The Giver truly showed this best. What does a “perfect†society or “perfect†peace achieve but sameness. Where is the life in that? There is so much more I could say, especially from my Christian viewpoint, it’s crazy! I think that this is the culmination of all of my dystopian readings from last year and this year. Comparing and contrasting them all. I did not care for any of the characters in BNW, they were shallow (maybe because they were engineered that way). The ending was abrupt and left me wondering why bother writing the story at all. What was Huxley’s point? Some people I know say there is a “worldview†to every story. I don’t really believe that. When I fall into a wonderful Flufferton abbey book, I don’t feel the need to see a statement or “worldview†there. Same with many pieces of fiction. But with a book like BNW with outrageous concepts and progressive ideas, I feel there is a point, but then am left wondering what it might be. Was it just for a shock factor? Was he endorsing a certain movement or political viewpoint? Did he just have a twisted imagination like Lewis Carroll? If I remember correctly, Huxley didn’t start experimenting with drugs until years after BNW was written. I just don’t know. It certainly wasn’t Miranda’s brave, new world from The Tempest. .It was ugly and depressing and hopeless. Quote: “The Controller shrugged his shoulders. ‘Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here.’ ‘Even when they are beautiful?’ ‘Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.’†Dystopian books read in the past two years: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Giver, Agenda 21, Divergent, Fahrenheit 451, The Maze Runner trilogy (loosely falls here), and now Brave New World. I will definitely NOT be reading any more dystopia soon. I've reached my quota for a lifetime maybe :001_tt2:

:lol: Still sick. Going to doctor today. The ped put Aly on a Z-pack last night. I looked up what I wrote about Slaughterhouse Five last year (since Rose just read it). I liked Slaughterhouse Five better than Brave New World. (Sit down Stacia, before you faint). My brain is all fuzzy but at least I cared about Billy Pilgrim and wanted to know more about why he was shifting through time and space. I couldn't care about the characters in BNW. No growth. No connection. I may never have found out why the heck Billy Pilgrim was shifting in time but the end of that book was better than the abrupt ending of BNW. I am now deciding whether to give BNW a one star or bump Slaughterhouse Five up a star. Or at least a half star. More to come when I can think (and type) straight.

I second this! I had the same feeling about the characters. I remember writing that I was disappointed that the sisters' relationship wasn't better. But the character development is subtle and slow, and in the end I was more than pleased. The second book is definitely the worst. However, after that they only get better with each book. Aly is reading the second one now. Huge Doctor Who fans!! I love David Tennant but Matt Smith is my favorite Doctor. I hadn't made the connection. Thanks! I'll put that on my list for Aly. Aly has been sick since Thursday, me since Friday, and Skye since Saturday. Aly is the worst off, poor thing. Though she is doing a little better this evening. Thankfully, I believe we just have colds. I finished Brave New World a few hours ago so hopefully tomorrow I'll have a clear enough head to discuss it, Stacia. I didn't like it. LOL!