Chapter Twenty-Three: Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-Gazer

What an excellent novel!  As you may infer from the title, this book is very loosely based on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: Or, The Great White Whale, although I feel this novel by Sena Jeter Naslund can very easily be read and enjoyed without having read Hawthorne's whaling epic.  (I've read Moby-Dick, back in high school, but my memories of it are pretty vague, now.)  Anyway, to return to the excellence of Ahab's Wife, I thoroughly enjoyed this long, epic, fictional auto-biography of a woman mentioned only briefly in Moby-Dick.  I absolutely loved the titular character, Una--she is such a strong, resilient, and very real and human character.  She leads such a wondrous life, with both the thrills and terrors of adventures and the joys and sorrows of 19th-century domestic life.  I found it easy to immerse myself in her narration and become absorbed by her recounting of her life.  Moreover, in addition to this stellar narrator/main-character, the plot is fantastically paced, ebbing and flowing like the ocean that so permeates the book, encompassing both fast-paced plot twists and calmer, stiller moments of bliss, sorrow, and acceptance.  To top it all off, the writing itself is beautiful: it is delightfully reminiscent of the best aspects of 19th-century style while avoiding the less pleasant, harder-to-read aspects of it.  This is a fantastic novel, and it is well worth the time it takes to journey through this ultimately uplifting and affirming tale.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Alchemyst

I bought this novel, the first of a series by Michael Scott called The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, about six months ago while I was home for winter break.  I'm not sure exactly what prompted me to buy it, other than its advertisement as a best-selling YA fantasy sort of book.  Yet after buying it, it sat on the shelf (I didn't even bring it to school with me--why?) until now, when I finished re-reading the Harry Potter series and was too despondent about it to go to the library.  But I felt like reading something new, and here this was, conveniently waiting for me on my shelf.  The first few pages didn't really capture me and draw me in, but I decided to persevere to the end of the book (which only took a day), and I'm not convinced it was worthwhile (nor am I convinced it wasn't worthwhile).  During most of my reading experience, mostly due to my emotional resistance to the main teen characters (it's not that I disliked them, but I didn't find myself caring too much about them) I found myself thinking I wouldn't bother reading the sequel(s).  But in the last third or fourth of the novel, I found that the main characters had grown on me somewhat, and--I'll admit it--I'm something of a sucker for a cliffhanger ending, which this book certainly has.  So I might get the next book from the library (but not immediately).  We'll see if my interest matures with time or not.  In the meantime, I think one of my main issues with this book is that, even though my knowledge of world mythologies (or any mythology) is sadly limited, especially for someone who enjoys fantasy and sci-fi, I felt like, rather than being based on historical and mythological characters, this novel ends up using them as stock-characters, often--the villains, especially, seemed flat in this way.  Basically, even if I do decide to read the sequel, I'll probably donate my copy of this first book in the series and get the next one(s) from the library.  Basically, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

Chapter Twenty-One: Harry Potter (the whole series)

I deliberated over posting separately for each of the seven books in this series versus posting once about the whole group, but as I really feel they make such a cohesive unit, and as the story line really runs its course from the first installment to the last, I decided to review the series as a whole.  (If you want my thoughts on each installment individually, check out my account on goodreads.com.)

Writing about the series as a whole, I have to say that I love this series whole-heartedly, with no reservations.  I don't know how many times I've read any of the books--why bother keeping count?--but they are superb.  I love the characters and the way Rowling develops them; I'm impressed by the way the larger plot is woven through all of the books so that minor details from earlier books are mentioned again and even become important in later books (this is especially noticeable and pleasing when rereading the series); I notice new things each time I read the books; and there's some quality to her storytelling (I've never been able to figure out what, which is probably part of the books' huge pull over me) that absolutely sucks me in and holds me captive so that, no matter how many times I've read the books, each time I read them I become obsessed with them all over again.  (If I wanted to make a bad joke about Rowling's magical ability to enchant her readers, I'd do it here--but I'll spare you.)

Anyway, I can't even begin to describe how enormous a part of my life these books have been.  I was lucky enough to grow up as the books were being published, so I really feel I've grown up with Harry & co, aging roughly as they aged.  Reading them--and rereading them--and waiting for the next installment, and talking and speculating and wondering about them with friends, and pretending that we were characters in the books--they've played (and, thank goodness, continue to play) a huge role in my life, probably more than any other books.  If you've never read them, I strongly suggest that you do so, because they're solidly excellent.

Chapter Twenty: The Casual Vacancy

I was finally able to get a copy of Rowling's first non–Harry Potter book from the library, and it was well worth the wait. I'm glad I read it now that I'm on vacation because I didn't want to put it down, even after I finished reading it! My only complaint is that, in this fairly dark read, there were a few moments where I felt like Rowling goes a bit overboard in her emphasis of the horrible aspects of life to the point where I wondered if she isn't trying a bit too hard to show that this is a book for adults (whatever that means--and of course Harry Potter has its dark moments as well, but nothing like what's in The Casual Vacancy). However, one thing Rowling does particularly well here, as in HP, is making very real a large cast of primary characters and successfully investing my interest in all of them. They really kept me reading, and I'm still wondering what will happen to them after the end of the story (although I don't expect a sequel and I don't think this story calls for one). 

Chapter Nineteen: The Great Gatsby

I read The Great Gatsby in 11th grade, but I didn't remember it very well so I wanted to reread it before going to see the new movie. I'm glad I did! I really enjoyed reading it--like many others, I really enjoy Fitzgerald's prose. The book was darker than I'd remembered, and the movie was even darker than I'd expected. Nonetheless, I enjoyed both book and movie (unsurprisingly, I preferred the book).