Back to the Classics Challenge- My Picks for 2011

One of my challenges for next year is the Back to the Classics Challege hosted by Sarah Reads Too Much.

Check out the link for details. Essentially you have 6 months to read 8 books. The categories are in bold. My choices are in italics.

I've begun my challenge reading! Books that I've finished and reviewed have a star and link below.

A Banned Book - Uncle Tom's Cabin
A Book with a Wartime Setting - All Quiet on the Western Front
*Pulitzer Prize (fiction) - To Kill a Mockingbird
Children's/YA - The Once and Future King
A 19th Century Classic - The Picture of Dorian Gray
A 20th Century Classic - O Pioneers!
A (book you think might be considered) a 21st Century Classic - The Sense of an Ending
Reread a book from High School/College Classes - Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English)


That's it. I'll post as many reviews as I can. (I hope I get these all read!)

YA BOOK REVIEW: The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds

When I saw that there was a new graphic novel version of Homer’s epic story of Odysseus wandering his way back to Ithaca from Troy, I thought I’d have a look. I’ve never read a graphic novel before, but I’ve been curious about the genre since it seems to be exploding in popularity. Moreover, I've read several adaptations of The Odyssey over the years and almost always enjoy seeing how different authors present the material.

The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds is a fine rendition of the tale. (I’m not going to summarize the familiar plot.) This version is a very quick read. (Almost too quick-which may mean I didn’t ponder the pictures as much as I should have?) It builds tension nicely at the end. And it is a beautiful book. The artwork is impressive.

If you like graphic novels and want a taste of this classic work, I recommend the book. If you want a quick overview of what happens in the Odyssey and enjoy illustrations, I also recommend this. I think what keeps me from being more glowingly enthusiastic is that I’m just more of a words-on-a-page person than a visual person. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but somehow I prefer the thousand words. I’m not very good at scrutinizing panels of pictures and figuring out what’s going on. I need the labels or the dialogue bubbles. Is that impatience on my part or is it just a difference in the way my brain works?

REVIEW: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Having had a stressful Christmas week for a variety of reasons, I was fortunate in my Christmas weekend book choice, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. This is a gentle, cozy, romantic story about two people who are middle-aged (their children consider them quite elderly) and yet who are not at all ready to be put out to pasture.

Major Pettigrew, a widower, is the picture of an old English gentleman. As eldest son, he inherited the family’s rather crumbling modest estate along with an enormous pride in his British heritage and one of a pair of "Churchills." His Churchill is a valuable old hunting gun that would be worth even more if it had been kept with its mate. His brother inherited the other, with the understanding that the guns were to be reunited on the death of one or the other, and handed down as a pair to the next generation. As the book opens, Pettigrew has just learned of the death of his brother. His reaction is a mixture of shock, grief—and concern for the guns.

At this moment, Mrs. Ali enters the scene. The widowed owner of a local convenience store, she is intelligent, cultured, educated, and comes from a Pakistani family (although she herself was born and raised in England.) She brews him some tea; they chat; and Pettigrew realizes how much they have in common.
The story then takes us through the aftermath of the death of Pettigrew’s brother. We explore the people of the small English village and their prejudices. We suffer through the quarrels and bad behavior of both families. We smile at the idiosyncracies of the villagers and Pettigrew’s wry commentary. We watch Pettigrew scheme and agonize over his Churchills while silently criticizing everyone else with an interest in the guns for the way they scheme and agonize. And we watch the unlikely friendship between the "old English gentleman" and the "Pakistani shopwoman" grow into something more. Pettigrew does not behave well at all times himself, but he is always polite—which is, he was taught, the most important thing. It is fascinating to watch him struggle with his own notions of what is right, so deeply ingrained for so many years.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a lovely and entirely satisfactory tale of newfound love at its most surprising.

ESCAPE TO THE PAST WITH: THE HISTORICAL FICTION CHALLENGE 2011

I've begun the Challenge! My initial post and rules are below. I'm hoping to complete 10 books for the challenge.
Here is a list of completed books with links to reviews (if reviewed).

1. Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
2. The Stolen Crown by Susan Higginbotham
3. Burr by Gore Vidal
4. Finding Emilie by Laurel Corona
5. The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare by Arliss Ryan
6. Mary, Queen of France by Jean Plaidy
7. Like Mayflies in a Stream by Shauna Roberts
8. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
9. Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
10. The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger

I know I said I wasn't going to do any more challenges, but these are books I'm going to be reading anyway! The Historical Fiction Challenge is being hosted by the team at Historical Tapestry.

Each month, a new post dedicated to the HF Challenge will be created. To participate, you only have to follow the rules:

• everyone can participate, even those who don't have a blog (you can add your book title and thoughts in the comment section at Historical Tapestry if you wish)

•  add the link(s) of your review(s) including your name and book title to the Mister Linky they will be adding to their monthly post (please, do not add your blog link, but the correct address that will guide everyone directly to your review)

• any kind of historical fiction is accepted (HF fantasy, HF young adult,...)

• you can overlap this challenge with other kinds of challenges

• During these following 12 months you can choose one of the different reading levels:

1. Severe Bookaholism: 20 books
2. Undoubtedly Obsessed: 15 books
3. Struggling the Addiction: 10 books
4. Daring & Curious: 5 books
5. Out of My Comfort Zone: 2 books

The challenge will run from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2011.

I'll be shooting for level 3: 10 books.  I'll keep you posted. Check it out if you'd like to join the challenge!

YA BOOK REVIEW: Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

I don’t read a whole lot of contemporary YA fiction. I think it’s best appreciated by...well...young adults. However, I did find the premise of Antony John’s new book, Five Flavors of Dumb, intriguing, so I decided to give it a try. And the book delivered!

Piper Vaughan is an 18-year-old girl whose life changes when she sees three classmates—the band Dumb—stage an impromptu performance on the high school steps. Piper feels the energy but can’t hear the music. Because she’s deaf, she can’t tell if they are actually any good or not. A semi-hostile encounter with the band members afterward leaves her with an opportunity to be their manager IF she can find them a paying gig within a month.

Piper throws herself into managing the band. Unfortunately, Dumb needs serious help. The members have raw talent and energy but their possibilities are overshadowed by their disorganization and personality conflicts.

While Piper is doing all she can to get the dysfunctional band mates in line, we learn what is going on in her life. Her father was recently laid off. Then her parents raided her college fund to pay for cochlear implants for her baby sister. Now, her family is wrapped up in baby Grace’s recovery. With each of Grace’s achievements, Piper is left feeling increasingly alone and flawed. To prove herself, to find her own identity again, it becomes more and more important that the band succeed, even as it becomes more and more likely that it will self-destruct.

Five Flavors of Dumb is heartfelt, sensitive, and funny. There are surprises along the way as the characters learn things about themselves and each other. Piper is a strong and likeable protagonist and readers will root for her success.

And any reader can appreciate this book—whether you’re a teen or a parent of one!

ESCAPE TO THE PAST WITH: A Play of Piety by Margaret Frazer

I couldn’t sit back and wait for someone to give me A Play of Piety for Christmas. I had to buy this new release from Margaret Frazer for myself. Then I bumped it to the top of my reading list. I couldn’t help it. I’m addicted to the "A Joliffe the Player Mystery" series. I highly recommend that you start with the first book in this series, A Play of Isaac, and read on through to this one.

It’s harvest time in 1436. Joliffe, at one-time a simple actor and now a spy for the powerful Bishop Beaufort, has been allowed to rejoin his company of traveling players until his services are required again. While glad to be back among comfortable old friends, he is not so happy to discover their situation. They’ve landed in a village with a fine charity hospital--badly in need of its services. The troupe’s leader, Thomas Basset, Joliffe’s acting mentor and close friend, suffered a severe attack of "the arthritics." These left him bedridden, thereby immobilizing the players. The healthy members of the troupe were commanded to aid with the harvest. Rose, Basset’s daughter, became a hospital cook. Here they wait, until Basset improves enough to move on. If he improves.

Picking up the job of jack-of-all-trades about the hospital, Joliffe settles in to wait also. He has some mulling over to do, and some healing himself, given the spy training he has been undergoing. He’s suffering nightmares and, if not quite regrets, at least questions about the way his life is heading. Faced with the possibility that the company might not be able to return to its former way of doing things, he sees how much he will miss the life, and wonders why (by attaching himself to Bishop Beaufort) he is risking losing something that suits him so well. "He did not know. Except that had wanted not only the life he had been living but more. Not other, and not instead, but more."

Joliffe’s yearning for that ill-defined more is always palpable in the "Player Mystery" books. It is, no doubt, what provided the wanderlust and the capacity to constantly transform himself that drove him to become a player in the first place. It’s evident in the intellectual curiosity that entangled him in the detective work that brought him to the bishop’s attention. And now it embroils him in figuring out the murders taking place here.

There are visitors at the hospital, the gluttonous Mistress Thorncoffyn and her haughty grandson Geoffrey. As heirs to the hospital’s benefactor, they are entitled to some privileges, but not as many as they demand. As unpleasant as they make themselves, it would not be surprising if someone were to wish them gone. But would someone go so far as to murder Mistress Thorncoffyn? When suspicious deaths begin, Joliffe goes to work gathering clues once again.

A Play of Piety is a fascinating character study rather than an adventure-packed thriller. Joliffe’s insight into human nature is matched by the perceptiveness of many the same people he is studying. It’s always the interactions among the characters I love so much. With this book, Frazer goes back to her roots in some respects, putting the political/historical aspects of Joliffe’s journey on hold while he reacquaints himself with the other players. It’s a fairly standard mystery from a plot standpoint. But the richness in these books is watching the development of this mystery man turned player turned detective turned spy as he tries to hold onto the part of his life that he holds most dear– but that unfortunately was not quite enough.

Now the question is: how long do I have to wait for the next book?

YA Historical Fiction Month at The Book Scout - interview and giveaway

Kelsey at The Book Scout is hosting YA historical fiction reviews, giveaways, and author interviews in December. For her review of The Queen's Daughter look here. To read my interview and enter a giveaway for a chance to win a copy of the book click here. If you're a YA historical fiction fan, head on over to Kelsey's blog!