Summer Reading (in retrospect)

As usual (and as predicted), I spent a considerable amount of my summer reading. Some of the books were books I planned on reading, and others were not. Here's what I did read and my brief opinion of each.

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
  I can only stand the even numbered books in this series. This was not an even numbered book, therefore I couldn't stand it. It was very melodramatic. Harry should have died. She could have just skipped the epilogue. It was pointless.
  
  
• the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn)
  The first book was okay, I developed an intense dislike for the heroine in the second and third books, and the last one was horrible, but at least the heroine made a much better vampire than she did a human.
  
  
• Heart of Darnkess by Joseph Conrad
  I was prepared for this to be a dull and depressing book. It was somewhat depressing, but I wouldn't describe it as dull. It was thick at times, but I enjoyed it. There was so much there to be drawn out. I loved the style in which it was written. I do think he could have ended the story sooner and skipped the part with Kurtz's wife. It seemed so out of place.



• The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingslover
  I didn't know what to expect of this book, but it turned out to be a delightful book. I loved the narrator and all the other characters as well. Kingslover does an excellent job crafting characters that come to life.



• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  It's hard to see how this book made it onto Oprah's book list. I've never read a book with as much carnage and cannibalism as this one. Not to mention the pervading sense of despair. It was a good book though. It managed to communicate a lot more than was directly stated. I didn't exactly agree with all of it, however.



• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  This book was definitely not what I expected. In a bad way. Worked out the chronology of the whole thing quite excellently considering the fact that one of the main characters is a time traveler.



• The Legend of Drizzt: Books I-VIII by R.A. Salvatore
  I love this series. Out of all the books I've read, Drizzt Do'Urden ranks among my favorite characters. I started to try to summarize it, but I realized that that would take a lot of writing and probably wouldn't make complete sense without a good deal of further explanation, so I'll just skip my summary. Cattie-Brie, one of his companions, is another one of my favorite characters. She and I have a lot in common, and more often than not I find myself mentally integrated into the story from her point of view.



• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
  I read this book for the second time through this summer with three people from the college group at church. Unfortunately, we only got together to discuss our reading thrice. I'm really not sure why I'm writing even this much about our attempts to organize discussion, considering the fact that I think I'm down to one reader. And you, o reader, were also a reader of Mere Christianity. And you were always prepared to discuss it.



• Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce
  I love the first book, but not so much the second one. More specifically, I loved Nawat Crow in the first book, but not in the second. He was so adorable and innocent, and then he wasn't either anymore. I did like the heroine all the way through both books, for the most part. She made an excellent spymaster for the revolution on the Copper Isles.
  
  
• Mr. Bliss by J.R.R. Tolkein
  Technically, this is a children's book, but it's nearly fifty pages long and it provides fun for all ages. There is a man named Mr. Bliss who loves to wear tall hats. He has a blind girabbit (giraffe/rabbit) living in his yard from whom he gets his weather forecasts. It's absolutely delightful, and comes with watercolor illustrations drawn by Tolkein himself.
  
  
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  I began looking for this book when I was in a Hemingway mood. It was not in the library until three weeks later, by which time I was no longer in a Hemingway mood. I checked the book out anyway. I couldn't really get into it, and I was in the middle of a book from a fantastic series (The Legend of Drizzt, to be exact), so I returned it a few weeks later without having finished it. The portion I did read was decent, but I had more interesting books to read and more pressing tasks to complete.

I'm not letting myself read anything else until school starts. I would never finish my summer artwork or keep on track with my other duties. Once school starts, I'll be reading The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Legend of Drizzt Book IX: Siege of Darkness.