Heading back to The Wanderers for this week’s Imaginary Illustration…inspired by most people’s favorite character, talking cat Tom.
Author: cherylmahoney
I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).
2014 Reading Challenges, Three-Quarters Update
It’s the beginning of October, and that means time for another update on Reading Challenges! I have to admit that I have not been paying a lot of attention to this over the summer…but I’ve managed to make at least some progress anyway. I’ve grayed-out books read in the first half of the year, to make it easier to see recent updates.
My goal here was 7-9 books for the official challenge (which only counts YA and Middle Grade), and 12-15 as a personal challenge, to leave some open slots for grown-up retellings.
- Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde (MG)
- Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley (YA)
- Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (YA)
- Hero by Alethea Kontis (YA)
- Half Upon a Time by James Riley (MG)
- Cress by Marissa Meyer (YA)
- Jack the Giant-Killer by Charles de Lint
- Princess of the Wild Swans by Diane Zahler (MG)
- The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell (YA)
Not much going on with this one…something to focus on for the fall, clearly! Anyone with a good recommendation on a retold fairy tale I should explore?
Continue reading “2014 Reading Challenges, Three-Quarters Update”
Movie Review: Jane Eyre (BBC Miniseries)
One of my favorite classic books is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and there’s a British miniseries version I’ve been meaning to watch for ages. Readers-Imbibing-Peril seemed like the perfect time to finally get on that!
The miniseries is 11 half-hour episodes, so about five and a half hours. With all that time, it was the most accurate to the book I’ve seen yet (and this makes the fourth movie version I’ve seen). The story begins with Jane as a young orphan, disliked by her aunt and cousins, and eventually sent off to Lowood School, a harsh and strict learning institution. When she becomes an adult, Jane advertises as a governess, and finds work at mysterious Thornfield Hall—and finds herself drawn to Thornfield’s mysterious master, Mr. Rochester.
Jane Eyre is a somewhat odd book in that there are parts I love and parts that are…not exactly a slog, but not all that exciting either. And the two can be pretty easily distinguished by whether or not Jane is at Thornfield Hall. The nice thing about a long miniseries is that there’s more time for the good parts at Thornfield—but the downside is that there’s more time spent on the duller bits too! The miniseries takes a full two episodes to get Jane to Thornfield, and while they’re not bad, it does require some patience to get through them.
But it’s worth the wait—it all gets better when we get to the adult Jane. Continue reading “Movie Review: Jane Eyre (BBC Miniseries)”
Quotable George R. R. Martin
“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin
Book Review: Marianne Dreams
Sometimes I stumble on books in the strangest of ways. Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr was referenced in a blog article on feminism, and was not cited favorably. All the same, I was so intrigued by the premise—and hopeful that the complaint might be exaggerated—that I read the book anyway.
Marianne lives in England somewhere during the first half of the twentieth century and, as children did then, falls ill with a fever and must spend weeks in bed recovering. She draws a house with a pencil she finds in her mother’s sewing box—and when she falls asleep, she dreams of the house she drew. She soon realizes that whatever she draws with the pencil will come to life in her dreams, including Mark, a boy more seriously ill than Marianne, and also sinister watching stones Marianne draws in a fit of temper. Marianne and Mark have to work together to regain their health and to escape the dangers in their shared dream.
Tales of the Marvelous 