Monday, December 20, 2010

"Igraine the Brave"

I've had this book on my to-read list for some time, and I finally listened to it last week. I'm glad I did.

Igraine is just turning twelve years old, and she's tired of the same old stuff. She wants adventure. It seems that living in a castle and having brilliant magician parents and brother isn't enough for her. Neither is a talking cat. Or magical singing books.

You know the saying "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it"?

Well, Igraine gets her wish for something exciting when Greedy Osmund shows up to demand that her family hands over their magical singing books, and isn't willing to accept no for an answer.

This really shouldn't be a problem, however, because Igraine's parents are great magicians and can easily turn Osmund the Greedy into a cockroach. Or anyways, they would be able to turn him into a cockroach, if they hadn't accidentally turned themselves into pigs!

With only her half-trained magician brother to defend the singing books and their parents from Osmund the Greedy, Igraine sets out to find the magic ingredient needed to turn her parents back into themselves. Will she be able to retrieve it quickly enough? Will she return home to find the castle destroyed?

I've read some of Cornelia Funke's books before, and knew that I could safely expect something fantastic when I picked up Igraine the Brave. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to find it even better than I had anticipated. Funke has created a world of delightful characters who are lovable, and a villain who you'll enjoy seeing taken down.

Also, I found that it was often difficult to predict what was going to happen. In fact, I think I was only able to make one prediction with any certainty when I was listening to this book.

I highly recommend this book. You won't regret reading it. :)

Friday, December 17, 2010

Book givaway

Another blogger is giving away two books this solstice. They are:

by Llewellyn

...and...

prepared by David C. Cook
illustrated by Sergio Cariello
edited by Doug Mauss

If you're interested in possibly winning one of these books you can click here, or copy and paste the following link into you browser: http://pagan-culture.blogspot.com/2010/12/witches-datebook-and-action-bible.html

They look like a couple of pretty neat books. :)

Thursday, December 16, 2010

What I'm reading

It's been ages since I've done a What I'm Reading post!

Igraine the Brave
by Cornelia Funke
Fantasy

Really really fun. It's been on my to-read list for a while. I haven't even finished it, but I can already tell you that I'd recommend it. :)

I've been listening to it while making my mom's Christmas present.



Shogun
by James Clavell
Historical fiction

I'm still not ready to put this on the list of books I haven't finished! Currently I'm waiting for my turn to get it from Library2Go so that I can finish listening to it. I hope to finish it, or at least come close, this winter break.



Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
Fiction

I'm only on page 37 or so, but I can already tell that this is going to be an interesting book.

Giveaway for fun stuff


I am holding a Yule Giveaway for my online shop, Dragonfly's Laughter. You can enter any time from now until 12:01 am on December 22nd, PST.

The winner will win the item of their choice from my shop, and I will ship it to them free of charge.

You can get multiple entries.

Here are things you can do get entries:

1) Go to my shop (www.DragonflysLaughter.etsy.com) then come back and tell me what your favorite item is. Worth 2 entries. Note: If you win, you may choose to receive a different item.

2) Heart my shop on Etsy, then come back here and let me know that you've done so and what your username is on Etsy. Worth 1 entry.

3) Blog about this giveaway, then come back and share the link to your post. Worth 4 entries.

4) Put the following button on your blog, and keep it up for the duration of the contest. Let me know that it's there. Worth 2 entries.




<a href="http://www.dragonflyslaughter.etsy.com"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJ6ZkWLCzPPvhCZHg2xNWcqlQVRW525S0-P5U2kTbEqwMYevpQtDffNr6bskwH8A01YdTeHvmPX-lvfIfEAiFWOt6jSbMviWlNvDeyysM1h8mTlmXUEyxQ-4mPnw1NytEbopGhEKziRE/"/></a>

5) Tweet about this and leave me a link. Worth 4 entries.

6) Follow my shop on Twitter. (http://twitter.com/DragonflysLaugh) Come back here and tell me that you're following, and also what your username is on twitter so that I know who you are. Worth 1 entry.

7) Tell me what you plan to do this solstice. Worth 1 entry. Note: You can do this even if you don't plan to do anything special. For example: "Work, fix dinner, watch a movie, go to bed."

Saturday, December 11, 2010

"The The Impotence of Proofreading"

I just wanted to share this poem.



It's funny enough reading it, but I think it's even more wonderful when performed. :)

Saturday, December 4, 2010

How many have you read?

TOO MANY BOOKS TOO LITTLE TIME!!! AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, now that I've got that out of my system...

The list below is something that's been circulating on facebook.

BBC thinks that most people will have only read six books on this list of 100 books. I've put the ones that I've finished in bold, and the those that I started but didn't finish or only read excerpts of in italics.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (I think...it would have been years ago...)

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (I THINK I read it...)

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

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