Books

First of all: My apologies to Jessica because today's post was supposed to feature my bread pudding I made from her recipe. However, due to fast Sunday with Navajo tacos and baking about 4 dozen snickerdoodles I just didn't have time or the appetite. BUT I do have the ingredients and will be making it very soon! I wouldn't want the bread to go bad.

I love books. I really do! Much like my taste in music, my taste is books is extremely eclectic. I like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Jonathan Safron Foer, Mark Z. Danielewski, J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer (guilty pleasure), Thomas Hardy, Louis Sachar, Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Aeschylus, Homer, Arthur Conan Doyle, the Bronte Sisters, anyways you get the point.

My reading group finally got around to picking our read aloud book for the semester. And the winner is:

I was personally pulling for The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis, but it was ultimately the kids' decision. And the only reason I kind of didn't want to read this one was because I have already read it more times than I care to admit. Despite my unwillingness, I am pretty excited to hopefully recruit a few more Harry Potter fans!

This summer I made it my goal to read Les Miserables, the complete unabridged version. It may have took me the better part of three months, but I did it! I'm sure glad I did, too. Maybe it was a little bit unnecessarily verbose at times, but geez does that man know how to craft words. What really fascinates me is the fact that it was originally written in French, and even the translated English version is so beautiful you would never know it was not originally written in that language. It is not often that a book can make me cry. As a matter of fact, I can't think of any other instance where one has, but this one did. It is a beautiful story, and unlike most extremely long books, definitely worth the time and effort of reading.

That being said, the point of this post is that I am reading A Tale of Two Cities right now (the two are related because of the French Revolution themed plots). Well, to be precise I am rereading A Tale of Two Cities. I read it once my sophomore year of college, and I couldn't for the life of me describe the plot anymore; I'm not ever really sure if I knew what was going on when I read it. Therefore, I have decided to read it again. 

I really do love Dickens. I absolutely hated him when I was forced to read Great Expectations as a 13-year old freshman in high school. However, when I finally picked up another Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, about 5 years later I loved it. Since then I have read Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby, and A Christmas Carol. I have a running tradition of reading A Christmas Carol every year before Christmas day is over. 

Anyways, books are good! I highly recommend picking one up! I am also full of lots of good recommendations.