Book: The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

Pages/Format: 298/Hardcover

My Thoughts: The Annotated Alice contains both Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. 

Alice In Wonderland was a great book, and I loved it.  The notes on the side were helpful, and described different traditions and references that Carroll makes.  At the same time, the notes were really distracting, and I sometimes found myself focusing more on the notes than on the actual book.  Overall, the side notes were really helpful.

There were also illustrations scattered throughout Alice In Wonderland and really detailed.  More illustrations would have been nice, but the ones that were in the book were really nice to look at. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie, but I definitely like the book a lot better.  I loved reading the different poems and songs, and the characters were memorable.  The Mad Hatter, The Queen of Harts, The Caterpillar, The Cheshire Cat, and Alice were interesting characters.  While I liked Alice, I found the other characters a lot more interesting, and I became attached to all of them. 

Through The Looking Glass, I didn’t like as much.  It was enjoyable, but I would have been perfectly fine if Carroll never wrote it.  I liked Alice, and I liked Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but didn’t really care for any of the other characters.  I liked the poems scattered throughout the book too.  As for the illustrations and annotations, I felt the same way about them in Through The Looking Glass as I did in Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland.

The Wasp In A Wig, which is a suppressed scene of Through The Looking Glass, was also included.  It was okay, but it felt like an afterthought, like it was tacked on to the book because it should be there. 

Overall, I really liked it, and loved the illustrations. 

Rating: 4 out 5, for a very enjoyable book.

Book: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Pages/Format: 428/Paperback

My Thoughts: Honestly, I didn’t like it at all.  It’s not funny how much I could not stand this book.  I couldn’t get into it, and waited for it to get better.  Sadly, it didn’t get better.  I’m utterly confused as to why it won a Pulitzer Prize. 

I had a hard time relating to the main character, Jody.  His family’s poor, and they live in backwoods Florida.  I found him pretty annoying, actually.  And they way the talked!  The dialogue grated on my nerves, and that’s when I could actually figure out what they were saying.  I didn’t understand most of what they were saying, and spent most of the book wondering what they were saying.  Maybe that’s how the people talked where Jody lived, but reading it was a nightmare.  Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue, which is probably the only reason why I finished the book.

I really don’t get the point of the book.  I kept waiting for something to happen…and it really didn’t.

Rating: 1 out of 5.  This was one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

Book: The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Pages/Format: 408/Hardcover

My Thoughts: I’ve read several of Philippa Gregory’s books about the Tudors.  I saw this one at the library and thought I’d give this one a try.

The book is about Elizabeth Woodville, who married Edward IV, and is the mother of the Princes in the Tower.  I liked the idea of the book a lot better than the actual book. 

I didn’t like the parts about Melusina at all.  It was mentioned a lot, and I got really tired of all the references to the water and witchcraft.  It was interesting the first couple times, but after that, I wish she had been more subtle- or even left it out completely, because it didn’t really add anything to the plot, or helped move it along in any way.  It didn’t bother me, and I would have enjoyed it if it weren’t so darned repetitive. 

It started off interesting, but then went downhill from there.  I was bored reading it, and had to force myself to finish it, which is really rare for me.  Part of it was the writing, which was worse than the writing in her Tudor series.  At times, I couldn’t believe that it was the same author who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl. 

The story didn’t seem coherent, the 1st person narrative didn’t work for the story very well, and the characters weren’t likeable.  If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a library book, I would have thrown it at a wall or something.  And it wasn’t just the Melusina bit that was repetitive.  Overall, several things were mentioned so many times that it was like she used the same few pages and wrote it in as many different ways as humanly possible.  One other example would be Elizabeth’s need for vengeance.  I get that there were several people she didn’t like, but her constant need for vengeance and revenge made her seem like she didn’t care about anything else.  And when you add that to the fact that she constantly tried to further her family above everyone else made her seem selfish and greedy.  I get it to a certain extent, because it seems like that’s what people did back then, but Gregory took it to a completely different level.   

The author’s note at the end is a completely different story.  Since I’m so annoyed with it, it’ll probably end up as a blog post, because I have quite a few criticisms of it.

Rating: 2 out of 5 because I liked the plot and thought it could have been better with a little more editing.

Book: Sula by Toni Morrison

Pages/Format: 174/Paperback

My Thoughts: I decided that I would give Toni Morrison another chance after reading Beloved.  Looking back (and after reading another of Morrison’s books), Beloved probably wasn’t the best introduction to Morrison. 

I actually liked Sula a lot.  I’m pretty impressed with Morrison’s writing- there really is beautiful imagery, and I feel like I’m experiencing what the character’s are going through. 

I’m still not sure of how the character of Shadrack fits in, other than he’s just a really odd man who lives in Medallion.  I also didn’t get the whole thing about the deweys, who were 3 boys that were taken in by Eva, who is Sula’s grandmother.  I honestly don’t get why they were so important, and I kept thinking they were Sula’s uncles, even though they really weren’t.

I liked how Morrison divided up the chapters- each chapter was a different year in the lives of the characters.  I found the gaps interesting, and it made me wonder what had happened as time moved foward.  I also liked seeing the characters develop over a span of about 40 years. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.  While I liked it a lot better than Beloved, it didn’t capture my attention in any way.  It felt like something was missing, and it’s driving me crazy that I don’t know what it is!

Book: Island Of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Pages/Format: 181/Paperbook

My Thoughts: It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but it’s still one of my favorite books.  The first time I read it was in elementary school, and I’ve read it several times since then.  After the frustration of reading Beloved, I wanted to read something lighter.

I remembered why I loved it so much in the first place.  It’s the story of Karana, who is stranded on an island with her brother Ramo.  He’s left behind on the island, and even thoug Karana wants the ship she’s on to wait for him, they can’t because of an approaching storm.  He dies, leaving Karana alone on the island for several years.  She takes on a lot of the tasks that were done by the males in her village, like hunting and making spears.

I loved the plot, and how she managed to survive for what seems like quite a while.  The author’s note at the end intrigued me: O’Dell writes that the novel is based on a real woman who lived on an island off the California coast from 1835 to 1853.  She is apparently known as the Lost Woman of San Nicolas and really jumped off the boat despite all efforts to restrain her.  I’m definitely curious about the historical aspects, since the whole novel seems to be based on history.  I may research it at some point, to see how accurate his claims really are, but her skirt of green cormorant feathers was sent to Rome- it doesn’t say where, unfortunately, because I’d definitely want to check it out.

I found her to be a very sympathetic character- trying to survive on the island while waiting for someone to come back and rescue her.  She gets used to being by herself until the Aleuts come back, and she befriends Tutok, realizing she was lonely after they left.  A couple ships come after that, and in the end, she decides to leave the island with her dog and 2 birds.

Rating: It gets a 4 out of 5.  It’s not the best thing I’ve ever read, but I love the story, and seeing her survive on the island.

Title: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Pages/Format: 324 pages/paperback

My Thoughts: This is yet another book sitting on my bookshelf that I started and never got around to finishing.  Having never read Toni Morrison before, I thought it would be a good idea to read at least one of her books.  I found it hard to get into, and hard to follow.  I felt confused for a good chunk of the book, often wondering if I was missing anything.  A few times, I even had to go back several pages to see if I really did miss anything.

It is different from a lot of the books I’m used to, in terms of how it’s written.  It jumps around and the scenes are disconnected, plus there’s a bit of stream-of-consciousness towards the end.  It doesn’t follow the typical, straightfoward narrative that I’m used to reading, which frustrated me for most of the book.  Towards the end, everything started to make a lot more sense, which eased my frustration. 

I’m really ambivalent towards Beloved.  I loved the imagery, and Morrison’s writing style, as much as it frustrated me.  I felt like I was really there, and had a clear picture of what the characters were experiencing.  On the other hand, you definitely need to be engaged with the book in order to “connect the dots.”

I felt really out of my league when I was reading it- parts of it went right over my head, and like I said before, I flipped back and forth to figure out what was going on.  I don’t know if I’m just completely stupid for not “getting it” (like some of the reviewers on Amazon seem to imply), or if it takes several reads in order to truly understand the book on a deeper level. 

I am willing to give it another chance, since I didn’t read it as carefully as I should have.  It’s definitely not a light read, or something you can read in a few days.  I think when I’m ready to read it again, I’m going to read it more carefully, underlining and writing notes in the margins if I have to.

Rating: Right now, it gets 3 stars out of 5.  It was difficult to read, but I loved the imagery and how Morrrison wrote the book.  Yes, her style was hard to get used to, and frustrated me, but at the same time, I think it worked well for the novel.