Jackie's bookshelf: 2014-reading-challenge
A beautiful and simply told tale of love and fate. It reads like an old folk tale, and has the most beautiful and evocative illustrations.
A small, but perfectly formed, joy.
I have mixed feelings about this book. I loved every minute of it: fast paced, fantastic, and the audacity of Locke and his gang made me gasp and shake my head in disbelief and admiration at times. The problem is, I always felt like an o...
Engaging, action-packed & cleverly negotiated from the first book to the last. I loved this series.
I think my enjoyment of the first two books in this series was affected by my love of the films. The books are different in many ways. More true to the Greek myths for one thing, but I found it jarring when the narratives diverged. Altho...
I have read this book, and it's sequel, many times over the last 23 years. Each time I see something different in it. sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not.
This time around I really lost my patience with the female protagonist....
I couldn't put this down. Not because it's especially action packed, but because I loved the characters of Laureth (I love the story behind her name) and Benjamin, and because this is a book with a visually impaired main character who f...
It was difficult to decide on a rating for this book. There were moments of sweetness, sly humour and genius, but it wasn't consistent.
The illustrations, however, are utterly beautiful. Don't get this on Kindle. Buy the physical book....
Does a good job of explaining the basics of Aspergers in language a younger child would understand but the characters are two-dimensional & in need of rounding out.
Otherwise this is a quick, easy read which could help start a child's u...
I had a love/ambivalence relationship with this book. The poetic language was at the heart of both of these feelings. When it worked, I became totally lost in the tale. When it didn't, I became exasperated and impatient.
The only charac...
I fell a little bit in love with 15 year old Al. He is real in the way a lot of fictional teenagers aren't, and has this whole "endearingly incompetent" thing going on. He's a really nice kid, who messes up a lot (like most 15 year olds)...
I really wanted to love this book, but mostly I struggled with it. The words seemed empty and the style oppressive. If it was written by anyone else I would probably have given up less than half-way through rather than persevering to the...
I read this in one go, on a long train journey. It was an engaging and emotional read (I got both teary and white-hot angry at times) but there was something about it that didn't sit quite right with me.
Maybe it was that everything see...
Great characters I cared about, beautifully described relationships. The first half of this book was a joy.
Unfortunately the supernatural element didn't work for me so I became less enamoured over the second half.
Still an entertainin...
I love this book. I loved it 30 years ago when I read it for the first time and I love it now.
Bella is taken to spend the summer with her grandfather after her father's death. When he discovers that she is not only blind, but talks inc...
Utterly charming book, with illustrations that reminded me of childhood favourite "Brother Alonzo"
A young girl finds a box of wool that never runs out and knits clothing for all the people, animals and objects in her town. Then the bo...
"There was no end to the Old Nurse's stories: her memory went back such a long way that she never need tell the same tale twice, only sometimes they asked her to, if they remembered a special favourite."
This was the first book that I c...
The artwork is dizzyingly intricate and beautiful, but I only really enjoyed the first third of this book. After that it became so full of doubt and pain and desperation that it was painful to read.
I loved this book. And I feel robbed because I never read it before, never got to see the story through younger eyes. I just want to read it again and again.
"Growing up and growing old. Playing. Exploring. Like Pooh and Piglet. And then like the Famous Five. And then like Heidi and Anne of Green Gables. And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not ...
I came across this again when sorting through my sons' bookshelves. I remember reading this to both of them when they were little and them loving it.
It's a lovely book to read with young children as they soon start joining in because o...
"He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever."
And with those words I was hooked.
I don't know what to say about this book. I'm left feeling ... nonplussed.
I disliked the narrator/protagonist, but didn't care enough to actively hate him.
I loved the ideas and the strange little details.
Overall I admire it, but I ...
I devoured this book over a period of three hours (apparently with a smile on my face all the way through) after picking it up on a whim because of the words on the cover:
"A wave of terror comes over me. there are no places to hide, n...
A fantastic idea, mostly well executed, but I struggled somewhere around the middle of the book as it ... dragged. Not enough to allow me to put it down and give up, but enough to make me stall at the end of each chapter, wishing it woul...
Beautiful, a joy for the senses. I liked the changes to the original fairy tale, but ultimately it didn't quite hit the spot for me.
SO MUCH FUN!
It's been a long time since I enjoyed a book so much that I forgot I was reading and just threw myself into the story. It was just like being a kid again. Joyous!
This was a tough book to read. In one sense it was easy: I breezed through it in a day. In another...
I felt intense dislike for Lia and it worried me that I could not empathise with her. Perhaps it was simply that our relationships wit...
I absolutely loved this and couldn't put it down. It made me laugh out loud, get a bit misty around the eyes and gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling I first got reading about Jo March reading and eating russetts in the attic
The best kid's...
Disappointingly not up to the standard of the two preceding books in the series. This one felt a bit laboured; The bad guys were two-dimensional and not very memorable, and there were a few (I felt) pointless characters. Maybe the point ...
A beautiful short story that manages to pack in so many things and reminded me of earlier years, before I had children, when the thought of travelling the stars was my obsession.
It made me feel the same way that looking at the night s...
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