Laurel’s Comments (group member since Aug 06, 2013)

Laurel’s comments from the I Read Therefore I Am group.

Yeah, I really like it but it does get bogged down in detail in the middle. But I was invested enough in the characters and the story by that point so pushed in through and the last few books pick up again. I really want to know how it ends - have read them all except the very last so am re-reading before I read the ending :) This is book 5 (the series runs to 14 in total)

Aww, it's a bit belated really I suppose if I'm right in assuming that it's her we see on your profile pic?

Nice, I am too scared to listen to audiobooks in the car - I don't concentrate as it is! (Yes I am that person who is too busy singing to watch the road properly:S)

Welcome to the group Lee's cat! Feel free to join in any of the discussions, will be interesting to have a feline perspective ;)

I'll pick this one up from the library next trip but kind of want to finish M&D first. I like sci-fi though so looking forward to it.

It's great Holly - hope you enjoy it. I've got a massive annotated version with background info and trivia to read this time so I can be a total Dracula geek!

I love Dracula - this will be my 3rd read of it! But haven't started yet, my brain was tired and I needed a break so have been reading The Fires of Heaven which is the 5th Wheel of Time book instead.

I only listened to part of it but have to bookmarked to listen in full another time - sounds great!

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4A...
they announce it at the very beginning and Orson Welles does an intro bit but then it goes into news bulletins so if you missed the beginning you would probably have been a bit confused!

I've not read this one before, thanks Hilary! I think Edgar Poe was a bit of an odd bird so not really very surprised to hear he'd always been the same.

Welcome to the group Holly! Good luck with the A-level's and sorting out your place at Uni :)

I finished this yesterday, enjoyed it although not what I was expecting (thought it could have done with been scarier as it was more of a historical mystery). That said, it was good fun if you didn't take it seriously.

I read Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig yesterday - absolutely brilliant, even better than the first one in this series! I'm about halfway through To the Lighthouse as well which is beautifully written and I might start Dracula later.

Yeah that would be so much better - I keep trying to learn French but it won't go in. Lol, maybe I can only learn dead languages!

Cool, I will check it out! I really liked The Woman in Black and The Man in the Picture but didn't think The Small Hand was as good as those two.

Yeah Old English is Anglo-Saxon - it's absolutely fascinating but so different from modern English, especially at first! Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is Middle English too but it's a different dialect from Chaucer and there was a lot more regional variation in those days so it's really difficult! In a nutshell, Chaucer's London English ended up becoming modern English and the regional dialects pretty much died out leaving only a few bits and bobs so he is easier for us to read than the Gawain poet is!

You sound crazy to anyone listening but it does work for some of it - but you can probably get editions where there is the middle English on one page and the modern translation on the facing one which helps as well. I did a course in Old English at Uni so middle English seems quite easy after that luckily!

Yeah and they get more remote as the poem goes on - so you don't even have to be present for the 4th one and just not do anything for the last! My thought was that he didn't really like the mid 20th century (forgot cold war to be honest) and that something or other would kill people living then! You know, like all those pessimists who are always focusing on the things about modern times that are dangerous/bad?

Yeah, I've heard good things about Jhumpa Lahiri as well so looking forward to The Lowland.

Ha ha, that's pretty harsh! Obviously Brock was not very happy about his times :S

It is Middle English - I always found it's easier if you say it out loud - then you suddenly hear what it is supposed to be, but not always!