Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Review

I'm writing my reviews for my buddy reads all completely out of order so this one is actually from this year and we finished it not very long ago (7th of April to be exact)! It was my turn to choose and I thought we hadn't done a long read in a while so why not get a "biggie" read now and so I chose Moby Dick by Herman Melville. It was not quite as long as I expected and I am eternally grateful that it wasn't. I did also get us The Turn Of The Screw to read in between as a break when we needed it (which I'll review soon) and it was a good job I did.

Moby Dick 

'Call me Ishmael.' 

So begins Herman Melville's masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. As Ishmael is drawn into Captain Ahab's obsessive quest to slay the white whale Moby-Dick, he finds himself engaged in a metaphysical struggle between good and evil. More than just a novel of adventure, more than an paean to whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting social commentary, populated by some of the most enduring characters in literature; the crew of the Pequod, from stern, Quaker First Mate Starbuck, to the tattooed Polynesian harpooner Queequeg, are a vision of the world in microcosm, the pinnacle of Melville's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is a profound, poetic inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

My Review

When I started Moby Dick, I was wondering why people said they struggled so much with it, I was really enjoying it and the pages were flying by...how wrong was I! This book tricks you into thinking that it will be good. The first 100 pages are really good, Ishmael is witty and engaging and his relationship with Quequeg was wonderfully endearing.

There was a lot more religion than I expected, but it was of a time where religion was pretty much the most important thing around.Though it isn't always dealt with as reverently as you'd expect, Ishmael mentions orchard thieves which took me a minute to realise he meant Adam and Eve and then I full on laughed out loud.

From the minute Ishmael and Quequeg step on the Pequod the whole book starts going down hill. I was thoroughly looking forward to meeting the infamous Captain Ahab and I expected him to be such a badass...but no sadly I was wrong. He was basically non present for most of the journey and when he was present he was not a particularly strong or stand out character.

I wanted a fast paced revenge story of one man and a whale, but what I got was an encyclopedic look into whaling in the 19th century. Don't get me wrong, the details were fascinating, but if I'd wanted to learn that kind of information I wouldn't have  read a novel, I would have done some research. When the story was being told, the writing was wonderful, but I just didn't like the dry facts throughout.

The ending to me really disappointed too, it felt rushed and half a$$ed. I won't spoil it in case there are people who haven't read it who still want to. It wasn't spoiled for me so I won't spoil it for other people. I will say however is was very unsatisfying.

It was a hard slog but I'm glad we did it, it's another one off our wish lists.

I gave this book 2 stars.

About The Author 

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously only a few years later. By the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick — largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for Melville's fall from favour with the reading public — was rediscovered in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.

The Essential Kafka by Franz Kafka - Review

Slowly but surely I am getting back into the routine of blogging and I am making a dent on the reviews that I need to catch up on. Another buddy read that we finished all the way back in October 2016 was The Essential Kafka by Franz Kafka. 

The Essential Kafka

A collection of Franz Kafka's classic works. Includes: The Castle; The Trial; Metamorphosis and Other Stories

My Review

I'll start by saying the particular cover we got on this books (The Wordsworth Classics version) was absolutely terrifying and as I had no idea what any of Kafka's stories were about, I didn't know what it was in reference to and I had all sorts of horrendous thoughts about what it could be. 

I'm going to be honest and say I was particularly disappointed in this book overall as I'd heard such wonderful things about Kafka's work but I really didn't think most of the stories were very good at all. The two that stood out to me were Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony. 

I found both The Trial and The Castle felt unbearably long and rambling. I understood the concept but I thought it was poorly executed. Josef K from The Trial bumbles around trying to figure things out but to me gets tied up and obsessing over the most random things that should have no bearing on what is happening, but turn out to be pivotal in the story. The same happens in The Castle in which K bumbles around trying to figure out how to get to the castle and for some reason marries a bar wench whom he falls in and out of love with at the drop of a hat. What makes The Castle worse than The Trial though is that is is unfinished, it literally stops mid sentence. There is no conclusion so everything you had slogged through reading to that point was, well pointless. 

Metamorphosis was enjoyable though it had it's own problems. The main problem being that if I woke up one morning as a giant cockroach, then I think I would have more of a reaction that wondering how I'm going to get myself out of bed! Also I hope if I ever did wake up as a cockroach one day, that my family would treat me much better than Gregor's did. 

In The Penal Colony was definitely my favourite out of all the short stories in this book. The detail that is gone into by the officer and the passion that he describes the execution device is incredible and the thought that has gone into it is kind of terrifying. 

Overall sadly very disappointed with Kafka, but I can now at least say I've read him.

About The Author

Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia (presently the Czech Republic), Austria–Hungary. His unique body of writing—much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously—is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature.

His stories include The Metamorphosis (1912) and In the Penal Colony (1914), while his novels are The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).

Kafka's first language was German, but he was also fluent in Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Flaubert.

Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, but switched after two weeks to law. This offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, who would become a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.

Kafka's writing attracted little attention until after his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels, unless "The Metamorphosis" is considered a (short) novel. Prior to his death, Kafka wrote to his friend and literary executor Max Brod: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod overrode Kafka's wishes, believing that Kafka had given these directions to him specifically because Kafka knew he would not honor them—Brod had told him as much. Brod, in fact, would oversee the publication of most of Kafka's work in his possession, which soon began to attract attention and high critical regard.

Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling Kafka's notebooks into any chronological order as Kafka was known to start writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, etc.

All of Kafka's published works, except several letters he wrote in Czech to Milena Jesenská, were written in German.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne - Review

I cannot emphasise how much I am enjoying having a buddy reader and working our way through classics that I may never have made the time to get around to reading! We read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne all the way back at the very beginning of November! 

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

An American frigate, tracking down a ship-sinking monster, faces not a living creature but an incredible invention -- a fantastic submarine commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo. Suddenly a devastating explosion leaves just three survivors who find themselves prisoners in Nemo's death ship on an underwater odyssey around the world, as Captain Nemo -- one of the most horrible villains ever created -- takes his revenge out on society. This novel, written in 1870, foretells with uncanny accuracy the inventions and advanced technology of the 20th century, and has become a literary stepping-stone for generations of science-fiction writers.

My Review

I completely and utterly fell in love with this book. To me this is exactly what an adventure book should be like. There are pirates and mystery and hidden caves. 

I have to disagree with the synopsis stating that Captain Nemo is one of the most horrible villains as I have to say I really related to him and I'm certainly not a villain! Yes he has killed people, usually only when they are attacking him and his ship. To be able to go so completely off the grid and survive off the land, or in this case the sea and to find hidden wonders that no one else has ever seen sounds absolutely wonderful! To be so intelligent and continue your learning indefinitely within your own personal library, I'd imagine that quite a few people would enjoy this. 

Professor Aronnax and his personal servant Conseil have an extremely strong bond and have a mutual respect that is good to see. Ned Land though to me is another far more interesting character as he is a rugged adventurer from Canada who has seen the world and needs to be out there to really live. He struggles with captivity and suffers from cabin fever which you can feel through the excellent writing. 

There is a lot of scientific, nautical and geographical language used throughout the book and a lot of classification of sea life is done, but this did not take away any enjoyment for me as I enjoyed searching online what things meant when I didn't understand and learning, I enjoyed the learning. 

Hopefully I will have time in the future to come back and re read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea so I can revisit Captain Nemo and enter his exciting underwater world. 

About The Author

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the genre of science-fiction. He is best known for his novels Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). 

Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. He is the third most translated author of all time, behind Disney Productions and Agatha Christie. His prominent novels have been made into films. Verne, along with H. G. Wells, is often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction".

Twelve Days And Twelve Books Of Christmas - Day 9

Something a little different today, my stand out book from September was a classic and it really took my breath away! 

Day 9 - September Book - The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great thrillers of all time. In 1853 William Thackeray wrote to a friend: 'began to read Monte Cristo at six one morning and never stopped till eleven at night.'. Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmund Dantes is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'If. After staging a dramatic escape, he sets out to discover the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo and catch up with his enemies. A novel of enormous tension and excitement, Monte Cristo is also a tale of obsession and revenge. Believing himself to be an 'Angel of Providence', Dantes pursues his vengeance to the bitter end, only then realising that he himself is a victim of fate.

My Thoughts

The Count Of Monte Cristo was one of the most surprising books this year for me as I went into it expecting not to like it. Me and my buddy reader F are working our way through classics and taking turns choosing the next read. For one of my choices, I chose The Count Of Monte Cristo as I thought that it would be long and wordy and just....not very interesting. How wrong was I!

I found The Count Of Monte Cristo extremely fast paced and exciting. The story was full of revenge and intrigue and is incredibly well written. The characters are all incredibly well developed, in particular Edmond Dantes, obviously. It has actually made me excited to pick up more Dumas books in the future. 

I also think that this book is now in the joint top spot for my favourite classic alongside Crime And Punishment. I did think it might top it, but no Crime And Punishment will not be toppled just yet anyway. 

If you're wary about trying classics, I would 100% recommend this as your first go. Yes it is long, but it is so action packed and interesting it is worth every moment. I will definitely be going back to re read at some point in the future. 

So that was my September stand out book. Have you ever read The Count Of Monte Cristo? Is it one of your favourites? Don't forget to join me tomorrow for my October book choice.

About The Author

Alexandre Dumas, père (French for "father", akin to Senior in English), born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were serialized. Dumas also wrote plays and magazine articles, and was a prolific correspondent.

The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - Review

I am horribly behind on my reviews of buddy reads! F and myself finished The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas back in September and we're on our third book since then. So here I am being good and catching up. I'll have reviews for The Essential Kafka and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea in the next few days. 

The Count Of Monte Cristo 

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great thrillers of all time. In 1853 William Thackeray wrote to a friend: 'began to read Monte Cristo at six one morning and never stopped till eleven at night.'. Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmund Dantes is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'If. After staging a dramatic escape, he sets out to discover the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo and catch up with his enemies. A novel of enormous tension and excitement, Monte Cristo is also a tale of obsession and revenge. Believing himself to be an 'Angel of Providence', Dantes pursues his vengeance to the bitter end, only then realizing that he himself is a victim of fate. 

My Review

The Count Of Monte Cristo has to be one of the biggest surprises for me this year. I really had doubts about reading it as I didn't really know much about it and it is quite a chunky book; but I absolutely fell in love with this book! 

Edmund Dantes is easily one of my new all time favourite characters. And I now have two all time favourite classics. I was considering if The Count Of Monte Cristo had knocked Crime And Punishment off its perch, but no I think they are both equal. 

I thought the writing was really wonderful and so easy to read. I loved the characters, both the good and the bad and I thought the story was so well thought out and just so very enjoyable. Apparently I like a good revenge story! If I ever need to get revenge on someone I hope I can do it with as much cunning, class and flair as the Count Of Monte Cristo! 

I can now see how this is a lot of peoples all time favourite classic as it is so much more accessible than a lot of other classics due to the language used and the stories aren't always relatable in modern times. Revenge however is understood through the ages. 

Overall a really excellent book, one I'm so glad that we picked up as buddy readers as I may have missed out on this if not. I really look forward to picking this up again in the future, so I can re read Dantes adventures. 

I gave this book 5 stars. 

Books I Read And Some Exciting News - July 2016

Wow I can't believe it's August already! This year is definitely just flying by. July was quite a light month of reading for me, between being very busy - just yesterday we visited Peveril Castle to enjoy their medieval day and then went over to the St Anne's Kite Festival, feeling a little slumpy and planning something super exciting for my blog I don't seem to have read as much. I have however done a blog review for almost everything I have read this month so that was a bonus (there are a couple more to be completed and I will link once they're up too).

August is another busy one on the blog with some blog tours and plenty of reviews as usual. I have big news though, I will have a new feature that I have been planning and getting ready (I really need an extra 10 hours a day!) and it will be called Getting To Know... and I have some absolutely fabulous authors and book bloggers lined up who have answered questions for me. I'm really excited about this, a lot of work has gone into this and I really hope you all like it!

So onto the books I did read in July

1. The Iliad by Homer - 2 Stars
2. Everyday Monsters by Lauren Christopher - 5 Stars
3. The Girl From The Sea by Shalini Boland - 5 Stars
4. Harvest Festival by Karl Drinkwater - 5 Stars
5. Iced by Karen Marie Moning - 2 Stars
6. Nomad by James Swallow - 5 Stars
7. Crossbones by Stefan M. Nardi - 5 Stars
8. Batman: Long Shadows by Judd Winick - 4 Stars
9. A Single Drop Of Perfect And Other Stories by Jessikah Hope Stenson - 5 Stars
10. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer - 3 Stars

I'm really hoping to get a lot more read in August as I don't want t get stuck in a slump for too long. My buddy reader and I will be starting our new book this week and I'm hoping that going back to our classics after having a more contemporary break will be inspiration.

What have you read this month? Anything that you'd recommend? Have you read any of the books I have, what did you think of them?

The Iliad - Homer

My most recent buddy read was a bit more intense than the previous few, our choice was The Iliad by Homer, translation done by Alexander Pope. It was also a little different as there was three of us working our way through this one.

When me and my buddy reader where coming near to the end of our previous buddy read (Pillars Of The Earth) when one of our friends from the IGGPPC (International Geek Girl Pan Pal Club) community got in touch to say that if we ever chose to read The Iliad that she'd love to buddy read alongside us. As it was on both our buddy read wish lists we decided to just make it our next read and then we could all get started.

When I started to read following the introduction to the first chapter/book I was really surprised to find that it was written in the form of a rhyming poem. I'm not exactly sure what I expected, it just was not this. At first I really enjoyed this as it was really easy to read and I was flying through my daily pages. After a while though I realised that I was not taking in a single word, I was just following the flow of the words without actually absorbing what was going on. I ended up having to go back a few days worth of reading to re read and slow myself down so I could know what was going on. According to research done by our newest buddy reader, this is actually one of the worst translations to read unless you already know the story inside and out.

Once I'd got into the habit of slowing myself down and the occasional use of Wikipedia, I quite enjoyed the epic tale that was told. I would definitely like to have seen more information into some stories, though I'm not 100% on the timeline so it may have not made sense at the time. I think the battles were the hardest to read as they just seemed to be a list of names rather than anything actually happening, whereas other bits seemed very graphic. As in War and Peace, people each had more than one name and it wasn't always very clear who was who. It did get easier as I went along and checked online if I couldn't figure it out, but it definitely didn't help towards the overall enjoyment.

I'm rating this book 2 stars and I feel that I am actually rating the translation/edition rather than the story itself, so maybe one day when I feel up to it, I'll find a better version and try again. But for now, something was definitely lost in translation.

Thank you to both my lovely buddy readers for getting me through this and actually concentrate on what I'm reading.

We read this from the 20th of May 2016 to the 1st of July 2016.
I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads.

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

Following Love In The Time Of Cholera (my review is here), it was my turn to choose our next buddy read and I decided that as I have somehow never read any Charles Dickens, that I would pick one of his books. I decided to choose one of his more popular works which was Oliver Twist.

Firstly I will just say outright, I really dislike the over of the edition that I got for us.

Secondly I will say that I thought I knew a lot more about the story of Oliver Twist than I actually do, I thought I'd at least seen a film adaptation or something similar, but I barely knew anything about it.

I'm going to start this review a little different and give you a list of things I learnt while reading Oliver Twist.

• Fagin and the Artful Dodger are not the same person. 
• Fagin is not in the book as much as I expected. 
• The "Please Sir, can I have some more" is not the main plot point of the story. 
• There's actually a lot of death, including a murder in the story. 
• The whole story does not revolve around a jolly band of pick pockets. 

There may have been a couple of other things, but these were the main things that stood out to me from what I thought I knew about the story. 

I really struggled reading this book due to the way it was written, I had a feeling that Dickens would not be for me and I was right. It's not that it's badly written, it's just not written in a way that I like. I also really didn't like any of the characters except possibly Mr Brownlow, so I found it very difficult to care what happened to anyone and yes that includes Oliver. There's nothing exactly wrong with Oliver, but he's just so bland that he doesn't really stand out to me at all. 

Overall the book was just ok and that's why I've given it three stars instead of two. It was just perfectly average throughout. The only thing that has come from this is that I can say that I have finally read some Dickens. 

Our next buddy read has already been chosen and we will be starting to read it tomorrow (17/04/2016) and that is The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett which is certainly more of a chunky read. 

We started this book on the 31st of March 2016 and we finished it on the 16th of April 2016.

I gave the book 3 stars on Goodreads. 

Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was my buddy readers choice for our second read along. (We're now currently reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens) She chose a more modern classic and it was one I have not heard of before. I have heard of One Hundred Years Of Solitude also by Marquez and I do actually own it but I haven't got around to read it as of yet. I will also admit that reading the synopsis it is not a book I would have ever personally picked up, but that's half the fun of doing this buddy read,

The story follows Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza and how they were what I imagine could be called childhood sweethearts who separated and then came back into each others lives at a lot older age. Florentino never gives up on his love for Fermina, but she goes off to marry a successful doctor called Juvenal Urbino who was my favourite character until he died at the end of the first chapter. (This is not a spoiler the information is in the synopsis). You follow both characters as they go through through their lives, in particular Florentino and you learn about them as you read the book.

Fermina was an ok character but I just couldn't get behind her as she just seemed very selfish and childish for the most part. Florentino however I absolutely hated. His character is just awful! He is a mummy's boy and not in a good way, she does anything and everything for him and he gratefully takes advantage of this, His opinion of women was also extremely disrespectful. A direct quote from page 188 of my version "He believed that when a woman says no, she is waiting to be urged before making her final decision"....there is so much wrong with that one sentence. The worst part of him though is his relationships with over 600 women (though he claims to have saved himself for Fermina and is a virgin) and the fact that his final relationship was with a 12 year old girl. Another direct quote from page 272 of my copy "He won her affection, he led her by the hand, with the gentle astuteness of a kind Grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse". I really really struggled with the content of the second half of the book as it concentrated more and more on Florentino and his relationships and what happened because of these relationships ( I won't say as I wouldn't like to give out spoilers, but trust me when I say that things don't always end well).

The book itself was absolutely beautifully written and the descriptions were flowery and expressive, but it certainly worked within the story of the book. I'm glad I read it, but I'm equally glad I had someone to read it with me to keep me going through the content I struggled with.

I'm conflicted as to whether I loved or loathed this book and so I've scored it down the middle giving it three stars. For the writing style and skill I think its wonderful, but for the content, the first half is great, but the second half is just not for me. It's definitely  book that will get people talking if they choose to read it.

We started reading this on the 12th of February 2016 and finished it on the 30th of March 2016.
I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.

Conquering My Everest - War And Peace

Before I get into the review or any of the details of my reading experience etc I would just like thank every single person who got behind me while I have been reading War and Peace. The people who have liked my tweeted updates or my daily updates on Goodreads. The people who have sent me encouraging messages and memes. And especially to my buddy reader who without her I would never ever have gotten through this book! So thank you F, you're amazing!!!

I started reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy on the Readathon Day 2015 which was held on the 24th of January 2015. The readathon was 4 hours long and I was really proud of myself as I managed to read 153 pages and though it was excruciatingly wordy, I was getting through it. As an example of the wordy-ness, this is a sentence from the top of page 6 "As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect, tinged with melancholy, and this happened whenever she mentioned her exalted patroness" - I feel this could have been done in a much more succinct way and in a way that didn't make Anna's face sound like it was performing a drama.

So we move onto April and I finally get around to picking the book up to continue reading it and I manage three pages before I fall fully asleep sat on the sofa.  tried on and off until September and I kept managing the same three pages before falling asleep, whether I was tired or not. In October I had some success and I finally read 26 pages all in one go and then on another day another six, but I just couldn't do it any more. It was so painful to force myself to read it and to keep myself awake, especially as there are so many books that I want to read. So I made the decision that I was going to DNF (did not finish) my first ever book! I made my intention known on Goodreads and then from nowhere one of my Iggle (IGGPPC member) friends said that she had wanted to read War and Pace too and that she would get a copy and catch up with me and we would read it together! I jumped at this as I was upset that I was leaving a book unfinished and had let it beat me, so a few days later we started reading 10 pages a day until new year and then we upped it to 20 pages a day.

Having someone else reading this with me gave me the motivation I needed to get through this tome. It didn't seem as much effort to get through the pages and with deciding to read a set amount of pages a day, it really felt like I was making progress. I am eternally grateful to F for helping me out with this and I look forward to all out future buddy reads to get through books we want to read, because we should read.

Onto the review. I am being very, very generous giving this two stars instead of one. The only reason that I am doing this is that during the times of "peace" there were bits of scandal and gossip that kept me almost interested. There is a whole host of characters that come and go so often that you forget who they are as a lot of them have very similar names. Some characters disappear for a long time, only to come back and die in nothing more than a sentence. One character has more lives than a cat and is pronounced dead so many times, you just don't care any more. There was character that I did like and I was pleased that he got his happy ending that he deserved.

The sections which were from Napoleans point of view, to me felt like they were added as an after thought or were written at a different time by a different person as they read so different to the rest of the story, I discovered through F that War and Peace was originally released as a serial so it is actually possible that these parts were added as an after thought. Towards the end of the book, Tolstoy seems to forget he is telling a story and there is more than one chapter which are just his opinions on war and history. It's very jarring getting to these parts when the chapter before and after are jut continuations of the story as if the middle bit never happened.

As I've said at the start, I would not have got through this book without the support of my buddy reader and I really respect people who can do it alone (and enjoy it!) I'm proud we got through it and I'm certainly glad that I can honestly say that yes I have read War and Peace.

Have you ever read War and Peace? What was your reading experience and did you enjoy it?

I started reading this book on the 24th of January 2015 and finished it on the 10th of February 2016.
I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads

May 2015 Book Round Up

I said earlier this year that I would start to do a round up of the books I'd read each month as I was only blogging reviews of books on my reading challenges and I have finally got organised enough to be able to do it! Yay! These are the books I've read during May with the rating I gave them on Goodreads.

Book 1 - Half Bad by Sally Green  - 4 Stars
Book 2 - Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher - 5 Stars
Book 3 - Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth - 5 Stars
Book 4 - Superman: He'l On Earth by Scott Lobdell - 5 Stars
Book 5 - Superman: Godfall by Michael Lane Turner - 3 Stars
Book 6 - Gone by Michael Grant - 4 Stars
Book 7 - The Scorch Trials by James Dashner - 4 Star
Book 8 - Cinder by Marissa Meyer - 5 Stars
Book 9 - Half Wild by Sally Green - 5 Stars

9 Books, not a bad month if I do say so myself. Currently I am 52% the way through my reading goal of 100 books this year and I am 11 books ahead of schedule according to my Goodreads reading challenge counter thingy. I am however really slacking in my 2015 Reading Challenge, my Classics Challenge (though to be fair this is a 5 year target) and my Panels Challenge, I really need to make more of an effort to start ticking books off my lists.

"E I E I O" - My review of Animal Farm

I originally chose this book for the "book you can finish in a day" category for the PopSugar challenge, but I decided it would also be a good choice for The Classics Club challenge too.

I have owned Animal Farm by George Orwell for years and at one point it spent about a year on my bathroom floor as I was planning on reading it while soaking in the bath, but just kept choosing other books instead. 

Before I continue, I should say that there are spoilers in my review, if you've read the book, then please do carry on reading, if not then go away, read the book and then come back and carry on reading,

The book is written exceptionally well and I'd say that the language used stands the test of time and if you read it without knowing how old the book was, you wouldn't realise that it wasn't a modern story. However there is something I hate in this book and that  is the songs! Oh how I hate songs in books, I always skip over them. I skipped them in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I just don't read songs in books unless I absolutely have to and even then its begrudgingly. 

About the actual story, I know its based on the Soviet Union at the time but in animal form and that obviously this is a story, but there were just some things that I felt were "off". I feel that after the initial speech that Major gave about having a dream and that animals should rise up and life would be better etc, he mentioned that no matter what, when animals died they were sent to the knackers and yet when he dies a few days later, he was buried nicely under a tree on the farm grounds. To me this should have raised questions immediately as to what he had said about the way they were being treated and should have caused doubts in the minds of the more intelligent animals. 

Another thing that I could not quite get my head around was the fact that Farmer Jones would just abandon his farm whether his animals had attacked or that he was an alcoholic. It was stated that he had a shot gun from the beginning and even if he didn't have it on him when they attacked and he had to run off, any normal human being, let alone a farmer, would have come back with others if necessary and whipped the animals back into shape or had them slaughtered to make money off their meat. I can't see why a human would give up their home and lively hood over one case of crazy animals. Yes the way he was treating the animals and the farm itself was terrible and no he did not deserve to have any of it, but that wouldn't change his own mind about the fact that he owned the property. 

Around two thirds of the way into the book, you cold be mistaken for thinking that you were reading 1984 (a book which I love) due to the "big brother" atmosphere and the regimented way things were being run. By this stage I was just waiting for the end as I felt the story had pretty much run its course and all I wanted to see was which way Orwell would go with the ending. When it did finally finish, the story was just left hanging, which I guess must have been the intention to show that life goes on and that nothing has really changed, but I would have liked something a little more definite or even, as it is a story, a happier ending. 

There were a few characters in the book that I really liked, but none as much as the big strong work horse, Boxer. He was such a solid character, he was loyal and hard working and cared for everyone, putting their needs before his own. I expected his death for most of the book and when it did happen, I was upset (though not to the point of tears). I did feel more could have been done with his death and that more of a rebellion would have arisen from what occurred, but it was all smoothed over within two sentences. 

All in all, this is a good book and one that I would definitely recommend to other people. It only took me just over two hours to read, so it is not a book that will eat up much of your time. 

I started reading this book on the 9th of January 2015 and completed it on the 10th of January 2015

I gave this book a 3.5 star rating (well I would have if they allowed .5 stars) on Goodreads

The Classics Club 5 Year Challenge

Because I really want to push myself, I decided that I would also take part in this awesome challenge. The idea is to choose 50 (or more) classic books to read and blog about to keep discussions going about these books. You then set yourself a time limit of up to 5 years to read them and blog about them.

I've chosen to give myself the full five years (2020), just to ensure that I can complete it and give it my full attention as well as complete all my other goals. If I complete it within that time, I will be doing another list. There are also some books on here that cross over with my 2015 reading challenge which I feel will give me a good jumping off point to get this started.

On my list there are some books that I HAVE read before as I want to review them and share my love of them with other people. I have shown which these are by using *

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams*
2. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte*
4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett*
5. The Essential Kafka by Franz Kafka
6. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
7. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwski
8. The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
9. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
10. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
11. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13. Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
14. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
15. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
16. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
17. Turn of the Screw by Henry James*
18. White Fang by Jack London
19. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
20. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller*
21. Animal Farm by George Orwell
22. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath*
23. Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
25. Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott
26. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley*
27. The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
28. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift
29. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
30. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
31. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
32. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
33. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde*
35. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
36. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott*
37. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
38. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
39. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
40. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
41. The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett
42. A Study In Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
43. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
44. The Three Muskateers by Alexandre Dumas
45. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo*
46. The Story of my Life by Helen Keller
47, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux*
48. Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
49. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
50. The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson*

I'm really excited about this whole thing and I hope that other people are inspired to join in and discuss classics with me. I have made a Goodreads shelf if anyone wants to look at the books in more detail. The books that I have read before, I have marked as "want to read" but added to the shelf "books read before Goodreads" so that I can mark off when I have finished for this challenge.