Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 84

Joining the Old School Kidlit Reading Challenge 2018

I thought I wasn't going to join any more reading challenges this year, but... a lady can change her mind, right?  I'm hereby signing up for the Old School Kidlit Reading Challenge hosted by Read-at-Home-Mom.  I'm aiming to read 10 children's books published before 1980.  Junior fiction, mostly, and I know some of it will also count for my Classics Club list and/or for the Mount TBR challenge.  So yay!

Top Ten Tuesday: What Was That About, Again?

Top Ten Tuesday has moved!  It's now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.  This is my first time participating since the move.  This week's topic is "Books I Really Liked but Can’t Remember Anything/Much About."  These are all books that I liked enough to buy a copy of and keep on my shelves, intending to reread them one day, but which I really can't remember much about anymore.



Jack and Jill -- Louisa May Alcott  (Read this as a tween, no clue anymore what it was a...

Another LOTR Read-Along: The Breaking of the Fellowship (FOTR 2, 10)

This is such a sad chapter. Boromir falls under the ring's power entirely, and Frodo spends most of the chapter being afraid to do what he must. Gloom and doom, doom and gloom.

I was rather surprised that, when everyone is giving Frodo some thinking time, Legolas not only announces he wants the decision to go to a vote, but declares that he would vote for going to Minas Tirith! I had completely forgotten that, and it just... I don't know. It feels somehow out of character, to me. Legolas is us...

Another LOTR Read-Along: The Great River (FOTR 2, 9)

Oh my goodness. One chapter left and we'll be done with The Fellowship of the Ring!!!

Okay, anyway, this is NOT a favorite chapter of mine. And that's solely because it's where the ring begins to take serious hold of Boromir and he gets all weird. Muttering and biting his nails and arguing about everything. My poor Boromir! To quote Hamlet, "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown" (III, 1). Makes me all sad for him, being seized by the power of this evil thing.

Still, lots of cool stuff going...

Another LOTR Read-Along: Farewell to Lorien (FOTR 2, 8)

At the beginning of this chapter, they decide to leave. It takes them eleven pages in my copy to actually do so. Lothlorien must be a very charming place indeed!

I always feel so very sad for Sam here, because he missed out on learning how the Elves make rope. A completely missed opportunity, one he's obviously not going to have again, and one he didn't even have the chance of either accepting or rejecting. It's just, "Oh, you like making rope? Too bad we didn't know." Makes me kind of depress...

Another LOTR Read-Along: The Mirror of Galadriel (FOTR 2, 7)

So here we are at Lothlorien, hanging out, resting, learning about elves, mourning Gandalf, and seeing a bit of magic. Sam explains a little of why I probably wouldn't want to hang out at this particular Middle Earth location: "Nothing seems to be going on, and nobody seems to want it to" (p. 351). That's supposed to sound restful and contemplative, I think. To me, it sounds boring and wearisome. I actually like having things to do and getting them done.


Celeborn gets a lot more to say here th...

"The Torrents of Spring" by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway doesn't often make me laugh.  Not with his fiction, anyway.  Once in a while, he makes me cry.  But man alive, did I laugh over this little book!

On a whole, The Torrents of Spring reads like an inside joke.  Hemingway is poking fun at stuffy, pretentious writing, particularly that of his erstwhile friend Sherwood Anderson (so I've learned -- I wouldn't have gotten the Anderson connection without looking this book up online after I finished it).  It's elabora...

Another LOTR Read-Along: Lothlorien (FOTR 2, 6)

As you know, I love Rivendell. I think it sounds restful and quiet and calm -- like a library crossed with a woodland retreat center. But I don't love Lothlorien. It's a little too otherworldly for me, I think. Frodo thinks that "[i]n Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lorien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world" (p. 340). To be honest, that kind of creeps me out. My brain says that it'd be cool to be able to interact with ancient things and people, but my insti...

The Winners!

Congratulations to these four lucky people! We will be contacting you today to get your mailing info so we can send you your prizes.

Cloaked by Rachel Kovaciny -- Kendra L.

October by J. Grace Pennington -- Faith B.

Before it's Love by Michelle Pennington -- LaNique D.

With Blossoms Gold by Hayden Wand -- Mikayla H.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2017 Wrap-Up and 2018 Sign-Up

I did it!  I achieved my goal of "climbing Pike's Peak" by reading 12 books off my TBR pile as it existed before January 1, 2017.  (I read lots of other books I owned last year too, but they were ones I bought during the year, not ones I'd already owned before the challenge started.)  I'm really pleased by this.  My TBR pile isn't just a pile, it's a whole bookcase in my basement that is stacked to overflowing with books I haven't read yet.  Sometimes it makes me desp...