Return to Gone-Away

Title and author of book: Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? fiction, children's

What led you to pick up this book? I loved the first book and found the second book on frugalreader.com

Plot summary: Portia returns for a second summer at Gone-Away

What did you like most about the book? Portia's new house

What did you like least? nothing

What did you think of the writing style? very entertaining

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books? the Melendy series, and the first Gone-Away book

Share a favorite scene from the book: when Portia and friends explore their new house and their findings.

What did you think of the ending? It was what I hoped for.

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? yes, 4/5

The Wednesday Wizard

Title and author of book: The Wednesday Wizard by Sherryl Jordan

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? fiction, children's

What led you to pick up this book? I like stories about magic.

Setting: 1291 and 1991

Plot summary: Denzil is a wizard in training and accidentally sends himself 700 years into the future.

What did you like most about the book? I liked when Denzil was learning about life in the 20th century.

What did you like least? Denzil's attitude at times, although understandable

What did you think of the writing style? Easy and fun to read

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books? no

What did you think of the ending? as expected

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? yes, 3/5

Tuck Everlasting

Title and author of book: Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? fiction, children's/young adult

What led you to pick up this book? It looked interesting and I have heard a lot about it.

Setting: 1880s

Plot summary: 10 year old Winnie meets the unusual Tuck family

What did you like most about the book? It was a quick easy, interesting read.

What did you like least? I can't think of anything.

What did you think of the writing style? Easy to read, enjoyable

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books? This is my first book by Natalie Babbitt.

If this book has been made into a movie, and if you’ve seen the movie, compare the book to the movie.: I haven't seen the movie but another one for my Netflix list.

What did you think of the ending? I liked it and glad we found out Winnie's decision at the end.

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? yes, 4/5

Dandelion Wine

Title and author of book: Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? fiction

What led you to pick up this book? The story sounded interesting.

Setting: Greentown, Illinois, summer of 1928

Plot summary: A summer in the life of a small town and a 12 year old boy

What did you like most about the book? I love books set in the past and about small towns

What did you like least? I was a little bored in the beginning of the book and wasn't sure if I was going to continue on. It seemed choppy and I wasn't sure what was happening. It got better and I liked the small town life stories. Later in the book, it seemed more about the town than the boy.

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books? I've read The Martian Chronicles, which was an ok book.

What did you think of the ending? It was what I expected and wrapped everything up.

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? yes, 3/5

Gone-Away Lake

Title and author of book: Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? fiction, children's

What led you to pick up this book? The story sounded interesting.

Setting: upstate New York, late 1950s

Plot summary: Portia and her cousin Julian explore by his house and find a abandoned community of summer houses but there they find a surprise.

What did you like most about the book? Who they meet at the old houses

What did you think of the writing style? Very descriptive of nature in parts and enjoyable

Which of your readers are most likely to enjoy this book? Why? Those who like children's books and books written in the 1950's and 60's.

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books? I finished the quartet of the Melendy family and enjoyed those. I think I liked this one better, though.

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? yes, 3.5/5

Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

Title and author of book: Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? fiction, suspense

What led you to pick up this book? I had no idea until recently that the Roger Rabbit movie was based on a book. Sounded interesting and I was lucky to find this at a used book sale.

Setting: present day Hollywood

Plot summary: The book is very different from the movie. The only characters from the book in the movie are Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, Eddie Valiant and Baby Herman. I don't want to spoil to much but it revolves around Roger, the cartoon industry and a murder mystery.

What did you like most about the book? I just liked it in general. Although it was different than the movie, it was still good.

What did you think of the writing style? I liked it. The book moved fast and kept me engaged the whole time. No dull spots.

What did you think of the ending? I kept wondering the whole book if a certain thing would happen at the end. The ending wasn't exactly what I expected but I was satisfied with it.

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? Yes, 4/5

Sons of the Profit

Title and author of book: Sons of the Profit by William Speidel

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? historical non fiction

What led you to pick up this book? We vacationed in Seattle in 2002 and took the Underground Tour, which I found fascinating. The tour is based in part on this book.

Plot summary: The book is about the founding of Seattle and its early history.

What did you like most about the book? I loved the writing style. It was funny and interesting.

What did you like least? Although the writing style was great, for the most part, the book also had its dry spots. I also thought it would cover more about Seattle's underground but didn't.

Booking through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday

What was the last book you bought?

I bought a few at a library book sale a few weeks ago-Freakanomics, The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook and a few books for my kids.

Name a book you have read MORE than once

Many! To name one, Anne of Green Gables.

Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?

No, I can't think of any.

How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews

All of the above.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?

Fiction

What’s more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?

Gripping plot is more important to me but I love beautiful writing too.

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)

Anne Shirley

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?

Sons of the Profit, Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, and various pregnancy books.

What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it?

Cradle and All by James Patterson; I finished it sometime at the end of September.

Have you ever given up on a book half way in?

I rarely give up books because I always think it might get better. I have given up book but probably not half way though, at the most 100 pages or so through the book.

Banned books week meme

Here's a slightly different list that I posted yesterday. Found this at The Book Nest

Look through this list of most banned books. If you have read the whole book, bold it. If you have read part of the book, italicize it. If you own it but haven't gotten around to reading it yet, *** it.

1. The Bible
2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4. The Koran
5. Arabian Nights
6. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20. Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24. Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
25. Ulysses by James Joyce
26. Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell
28. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell***
29. Candide by Voltaire
30. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31. Analects by Confucius
32. Dubliners by James Joyce
33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35. Red and the Black by Stendhal
36. Das Capital by Karl Marx
37. Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle***
39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
40. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
44. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
45. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
46. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47. Diary by Samuel Pepys
48. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
51. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
54. Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
55. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56. Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
58. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
59. Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
60. Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
61. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
63. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
64. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
66. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
67. Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
68. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
69. The Talmud
70. Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
71. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
72. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
73. American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
74. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
75. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
76. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77. Red Pony by John Steinbeck
78. Popol Vuh
79. Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
80. Satyricon by Petronius
81. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
82. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
83. Black Boy by Richard Wright
84. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
85. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
86. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
87. Metaphysics by Aristotle
88. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
89. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
90. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
91. Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
92. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
93. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
94. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
95. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
96. Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
97. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
98. Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
99. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
100. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess***
101. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
102. Émile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
103. Nana by Émile Zola
104. Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
105. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
106. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
107. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
108. Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
109. Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
110. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
111. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
112. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
113. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
114. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
115. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatly Snyder