KDanae Reads

So, I have been trying so hard to finish reading Vanity Fair. I still have about 400 pages to go. I just don't have the time to focus on it lately. Due to a crazy amount of work hours and wedding preparations, my reading time has been cut drastically. But I am still working at it. And hoping that I will finish it before the wedding. I definitely want to finish reading it before the summer because I have found myself greatly intrigued by the history of England lately. Especially the history of the Royal Family. And then tonight, I spent almost 3 hours watching TLC and their spotlight/recaps of the wedding of William and Kate. One of the shows was about the history of the Royal Weddings dating back even before Queen Elizabeth's. It was so interesting. Seriously. They talked about the various traditions and changes. Especially in regards to the bride's dresses and the greatly expected kiss on the balcony. It was so cool to hear just a piece of how those stories and traditions

Today the folks at Broke and Bookish ask us to list your Top Ten All Time Favorite Characters In Books. So here are my Top Ten Characters:    ASLAN  ELIZABETH BENNET JO MARCH LAURIE LAWRENCE LORD ARAGORN LEGOLAS KIRSTEN LARSON LEANA MR. DARCY LUCY PEVENSY

When I was younger (okay, okay... even today as a 23 year old), my favorite birthday present was when my mom would drive me an hour to the nearest Barnes and Noble bookstore and allow me to spend the entire day and my birthday money in the store. One year I bought the Chronicles of Narnia complete collection (the one where it's all 7 books as one book) and another year I bought my much loved and used copy of Little Women. My mom always went with and just sat in a corner while I roamed to my heart's delight. My last birthday happened to fall on a great sale weekend at Barnes and Noble and I got The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Vanity Fair and Leaves of Grass (a collection of Walt Whitman's poetry) for one awesome low price. I was one happy birthday girl. I have always been one of those readers who loves to go to a store and browse for hours the same shelves over and over again. I usually find myself in the classic, biography, travel or children's sections. Every time.

I am not even a third of the way through Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and I have been working on it for almost 3 weeks. Frustrating and challenging to say the least. I know part of it is because I have been busy with work schedules, wedding plans, church visits and an unwanted visit by Strep Throat. But another part is that I am finding the book to be incredibly boring.  I made the mistake of watching the movie a few months back and so wasn't sure what to expect. The movie was alright. Definitely not worth watching a second time. And the book is the same. I am just not able to get into it (much like the Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo which I read last month). I am finding the writing style to be mediocre. The punctuation and basic grammar atrocious. The characters are incredibly shallow. The storyline has no clear rhyme or reason. I know all that may be due in part to the time, culture and audience to which it was originally written for. But that still does

Let me just say that I have never written a review on a book before. I have written academic critiques. I have written basic book reports. But never just a review. And never for a book read for fun. So, I am a little unsure of just what to write and how to write it. To start off, I just finished reading Mine is the Night by Liz Curtis Higgs. It is the 6th book I have read by her (I read 4 of them last year while on my internship and the last 2 in the last week and a half). And I loved all of them so very much! It is the sequel to Here Burns My Candle and is set in 18th century Scotland. All of the books I have read so far by Liz Curtis Higgs have been historical novels set in Scotland. And at the end of each them she wrote about how much study she put into making her novels as realistic, as well as historically and culturally accurate. Another thing about her books is that the two series are based on Biblical stories. The first four (which I read last year) are based on the story

The 5 books I read in the month of March: The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo  Revolution of Missions by K.P. Yohannan Get Your Hands Dirty edited by Doug Priest The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott (this was a re-read) Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs The number of pages I read in the month of March:  1,522 The number of pages read year-to-date (middle of December 2011 - end of March 2012):  5,304 Average number of pages per month:  1,768  Currently reading :  Mine is the Night by Liz Curtis Higgs (the sequel to Here Burns My Candle ) Next on the list:  Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (a Classics Club pick) I am a fairly quick reader but unable to read more than one book at a time (unless it's for school -- which is no more since I graduated in December!). I just feel like I am cheating myself and the books I am reading if I try to read more than one at a time. And yes, I know the books don't h