Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 22

"Beauty" by Robin McKinley

Well, now I know why people love this retelling of Beauty and the Beast so much!  It is wonderful!  An absolute treat!  I really loved it, and I'd like to have my homeschool co-op lit class read it next year.
I love that Beauty isn't outwardly beautiful to begin with, but already inwardly beautiful.  She's so sweet and helpful and nice and hardworking -- everything I love in a fictional character.  I love how well she gets along with her family.  Her sisters aren't horrible in this version!  In f...

"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman

I do really enjoy Neil Gaiman's imagination.  So quirky.  Dark and murky here and there, but with hope and light filtering through always.  At least in the five books of his I've read so far.  I haven't tried his adult fiction yet.
Coraline absolutely enchanted me.  The epic quest its heroine goes on is just right for its audience, creepy without being nightmarish, desperate without being depressing, and so short you can get to the happy ending pretty quickly.  
Coraline steps through a magical do...

"Swamp Water" by Vereen Bell

My goodness, what a change of pace this book was!  It's a coming-of-age story set in and around the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.  It's also a musing on the way people treat each other.  And a fairly deep look at stubbornness and how that character trait can be used for good or for bad.  
Nearly-grown Ben Ragan chases his dog Trouble into the swamp even though his father has forbidden Ben to ever go in there.  Ben encounters a lot of scary things in the swamp, his journey turning kind of mythical ...

"To the Far Blue Mountains" by Louis L'Amour

This second book about Barnabas Sackett was a lot of fun.  But I don't think I liked it quite as well as Sackett's Land , mostly because this one had more exciting adventures and less downtime to get to know the characters.  I commented to my husband a couple of times that L'Amour tosses his characters into one thrilling escapade after another so quickly that the reader really never has a chance to catch their breath between one set of heroics and the next.  Each adventure that befalls Barnabas w...

"Until We All Share Joy" by Heather Wood

I've been wanting to try Heather Wood's books for a while now, and even have three of them on my TBR shelves!  Until We All Share Joy is a novella that takes place at the same time as another of her books, and now that I've met the main family she writes about, I'm looking forward to her other books even more!
Until We All Share Joy begins at Christmastime when a young medical student, Titan Dinsmore, spots a young lady sitting alone at a train station in Chicago.  Night is falling, and he knows ...

The Bookworm Tag

Samantha at Bookshire did this tag recently, and she invited anyone who wanted to do it to consider themselves tagged, so I am!

The (very simple) Rules: -answer the questions -make up new ones -tag people

Samantha's Questions and My Answers:
1. Hardback or paperback? 
I tend to prefer paperbacks.  They're cheaper, they take up less space on my shelves, and I can pack more of them when I go on trips.
2. Did you have a favorite comic book or graphic novel as a kid, and if so, what was it? 
As a kid, I lo...

"The Truth Will Set You Free" by Samuel L. Hoard

This autobiography was a wonderful read.  It shows so beautifully how a person's religious beliefs and their behavior can and should meld together.  And it has some really good discussion of the doctrine of vocation, what it means to live out the different roles God calls you to.
Black minister Samuel L. Hoard details his struggle to get accepted to a Lutheran seminary in the 1940s, his work during the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s, and his stint as a military chaplain serving in Vietnam du...

Top Ten Tuesday: And Then a Heroine Comes Along

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Favorite Heroines."  I've decided to list mine in alphabetical order by first name because I am late getting this post finished and I don't want to take the time and mental energy to figure out whom I like best.  I'm also going to list a few attributes I associate with each of them, though, so you can get an idea of what they are like!

Anne Elliot in Persuasion by Jane Austen -- shy, quiet, sensible, loyal, kind, tenacious, bookis...

"A Tangled Web" by L. M. Montgomery

I'm going to enjoy this book a lot more the next time I read it.  This time, I was so terribly worried about how some of the storylines were going to turn out that I simply had to finish it as fast as possible, which was not exactly relaxing.  Next time, I will be secure in the knowledge of whose storylines turn out happily (and nearly all of them do), and I can just laugh at all the sarcasm and acidic wit, and at all the completely ridiculous human foibles they're aimed at.
Two huge old Canadian...

The In or Out Tag

Spotted this at both Deborah Koren's blog and Cindy's Book Corner and thought it looked like too much fun to pass up :-)
Unlike most tags, there are no rules about thanking people or tagging people.  If you want to fill it out, you can!  If you don't, then don't!  

Reading the Last Page First -- OUT.  I can only remember doing this once, and it was for And Now Tomorrow  by Rachel Field.  I did it that time because the first section of the book made it sound like the book was going to end differentl...