From the back cover: "Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. 'Book love,' Trollope called it. 'It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.' Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort—God, sex, food, family, friends—reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least … [Read more...] about How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen: B
Books
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome: B+
From the back cover: "There were four of us—George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency." Three men, and a dog, in a boat on one of the prettiest waterways in the world—the Thames—in summer. Idyllic, wouldn't you say? Perhaps, if George hadn't insisted on camping, and if someone had remembered the can-opener, and if... well, maybe not idyllic, but … [Read more...] about Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome: B+
Hornblower During the Crisis by C. S. Forester: B
From the back cover: Although unfinished at the time of C. S. Forester's death, Hornblower During the Crisis delivers a full measure of action at sea—the hallmark of this incomparably exciting series of historical adventures. On the threshold of securing his first post as captain, Hornblower finds himself forced by the exigencies of war to fight alongside a man whom he has … [Read more...] about Hornblower During the Crisis by C. S. Forester: B
Shade’s Children by Garth Nix: B+
From the back cover: In a brutal city of the future, human life is in the hands of the evil Overlords who have decreed that no child live a day past his fourteenth birthday. On that Sad Birthday, the child is the object of an obscene harvest—his brains and muscles are used to construct machine-like creatures whose sole purpose is to kill. The mysterious Shade—once a man, but … [Read more...] about Shade’s Children by Garth Nix: B+
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: A+
From the back cover: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Thus memorably begins Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, one of the world's most popular novels. From the initial friction between the opinionated Elizabeth Bennet and the arrogant, wealthy Mr. Darcy, this witty comedy of manners dips and … [Read more...] about Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: A+