Winter imaginatorium

    To quote Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd; "Times is hard, Times is hard". Granted she had the worst pie shop in London so I can understand her sentiments. Yet often times, making it through the winter months can be excruciatingly painful. There's cold, there's wet, and there's darkness. I love my boots and my coats but oftentimes, curling up with a book and doing nothing is precisely what cures the winter blues. Getting enough motivation to blog about them is an entirely different story. So since we're quickly approaching May and the onset of Spring, it is thus time to close out those winter months, not dragging it out any longer but quickly saying the best and the worst of my choices.
     February was Young Adult fiction which I believe is pertinent and should be read no matter what age you are. All were decent choices, the best were Dodger by Terry Pratchett and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I love all things British and I love Charles Dickens' character of Dodger. What was brilliant about the book was Charles Dickens was a character and someone who took Dodger under his wings. It's a good read and an interesting one as Pratchett revisits and reconfigures the character of Dodger quite artfully.
    Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was unique and combined story and still photographs, photographs which, at the outset, look a little to good to be true but within the realm of the story, they worked perfectly. Super creative and the photographs added an eerie yet interesting twist to the story.
      Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick is the finale to the Hush, Hush series that I ranted over the atrociousness of about a year ago. It was still bad, still really bad but the redeeming factor was that she killed characters and she made her battle scenes legit so for that, I give her props. If you're looking for a companion to Twilight that's not Twilight, give it a read but if you're not, just stay far away.
     For March, I decided to size up my stack of books and see what I found. What I found was a lot of Orson Scott Card material I had yet to read. All were very interesting and it was interesting to see how Card's view of the world, religion, and politics are put into all of them, although Treasure Box was the least political of the four I read. Xenocide is the third book in the Ender series and I enjoyed it heaps better than Speaker for the Dead. It was interesting and it kept my attention the whole time.
   Treasure Box I also enjoyed because it wasn't just straight up sci-fi but grounded in our world with the characters fighting the spiritual forces of evil. It was intriguing his take on the spiritual battle and the way the spiritual realm worked.
    Memory of Earth and Pastwatch were both good but towards the end of both of them, my attention was waning a bit. The conclusion drawn about Christopher Columbus in Pastwatch is a bit of a leap and I don't think I really agree but I can see how he drew his thesis to come up with the idea. I won't spoil his hypothesis just in case you do read it. But on a whole, I do like Orson Scott Card's novels and writing style. I have a few more on my shelf still but they will have to wait.

The winter was long. There was lots of reading but not a lot of motivation to do other things. But alas, the sun is beginning to shine and there is hope for warmth and more imaginatorium of the creative side. With the month of April, I've chosen to read some best sellers but stay tuned for my choices! I promise it won't be another two months!
Happy Reading Imaginatorium!

Finale- Becca Fitzpatrick

The Orphan King- Sigmund Brouwer

Dodger- Terry Pratchett

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs

Daughters- Joanne Philbin

 

Xenocide – Orson Scott Card

The Memory of Earth – Orson Scott Card

Pastwatch- The Redemption of Christopher Columbus – Orson Scott Card

Treasure Box – Orson Scott Card