Mrs. Kefauver's Summer Reading 2015 discussion
4th Summer Read and Beyond
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Kathleen
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Jun 04, 2015 09:36AM
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This YA title was recommended to me several times last year. "Panic" is the name of an annual contest amongst high school students to win a large cash prize. To win, students must complete various challenges, many of which are life threatening. The book kept my interest, particularly because the many main characters were well-developed and each took a turn narrating the story.
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Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, wrote this novel in 1860, and its antiquity makes it a challenging read. It is also 600+ pages long. However, the book is worth reading for its literary significance as it is regarded as the first mystery novel ever written. The book features two amateur detectives: a mild school master and a witty, but ugly old maid, who together uncover the identity of the woman in white.
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I have read several books by this author and consider them mirror reads -- I can see myself in her words. Like me, the protagonist is a working mother with a dry sense of humor. I usually quite enjoy Weiner's sarcastic, witty writing, but this particular novel is not one of my favorites as the heroine's tone struck me as being overly whiny due to continual complaints about her less-than-perfect marriage. For me, the novel lacked substance.
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Was it a quick read?
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Fantastic Read! This book contains parallel plots surrounding an insane asylum. One story is set in the present day and concerns Izzy, a 17-year old foster child whose mother is institutionalized for shooting her father. At the same time, the reader learns the story of Clara, a beautiful rich girl from the Jazz Age (1920s). Clara's cruel father has her committed to an awful mental hospital to punish her for falling in love with the wrong man. The two stories overlap in ways that are tragic and full of surprises. The absolutely beautiful ending left me in tears. I highly recommend this one.
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I finished this novel in a day! Suspenseful story of marriage and murder. Warning -- contains some graphic adult scenes reminiscent of last year's best selling book Gone Girl.
I've met my reading goal of 10 books of the summer. I'm not done reading for the summer though
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Excellent, Kelsey! Happy continued reading! Have you read any titles in books 4-10 that you would particularly recommend?
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I was lucky enough to travel to Florida for a week at the beach. While there I enjoyed a couple of romance novels (Rock Chick series), a short story collection by Stephen King (Full Dark, No Stars -- very creepy and violent), and a detective novel by Jonathan Kellerman entitled Evidence. All four were strictly pleasure reads -- perfect for vacation!
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This anthology, compiled and introduced by President Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, was a quiet joy I read watching the sun rise over the ocean while on vacation. I particularly enjoyed the mix of contemporary and classic poems in the book. Kennedy divided the poems by categories of interest such as love, motherhood, growing old, etc. I would particularly recommend it to someone who needs to add a bit more beauty to his or her life.
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A friend of mine recommended the author Nelson Demille to me, so I picked up this lengthy book. I always like to read novels set in a place unfamiliar to me; The Gold Coast is set in Long Island, New York, a stretch of land that housed almost all of our country's billionaires around the turn of the century until the Great Depression. This intriguing book is set in the 1970's after the area started to crumble and many of the mansions were plowed under to create subdivisions. Adult in tone, the book concerns a family full of marital woes resulting in murder.
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My best friend's husband recommended the author Jonathon Tropper to me. If you saw the movie, This is Where I Leave You, he is the man who wrote the book upon which it was based. Tropper writes for an adult audience and his books contain mature language and scenes. However, I loved this book as it contained sarcastic humor, crazy family situations, heartache and hope. In the book, a man struggles with his feelings for his best friend's widow, a job he hates, and an epic-ally awful father who reenters his life at a particularly inconvenient time.
My fourth book I've read this summer was called The Hunt for the Seventh by Christine Morton-Shaw. It's about a boy who ends up having to help lay these ghost children to rest by finding the seventh child in line to die and try and put a stop to it. But in order to do that he has to watch how each of the children died because after each flashback they leave a clue. It is one of my favorite books out of all the books I have ever read and would definitely recommend this to anyone
I've decided to cram another book in and the sequel is yet to come. but my 5th book for this summer is Dorothy Must Die. it goes by the story we all know and love of the wizard of oz. but there's a twist, Dorothy came back but on terrible terms. she's turned oz into a wasteland and she's become a dictator. and the only person who came stop her is another lonely girl from Kansas named Amy. remove the tin woodmans heart. steal the scarecrows brain. tale the lions courage. and then- Dorothy must die! now I'm onto the second book The Wicked Will Rise
I read thirteen reasons why after I read the cellar because the cellar was a creepy book and I didn't want it to end so I tried finding a book I thought would be like it. However I didn't like thirteen reasons why I wasn't really interested in reading it. I sort of had to make myself move along in the book. Not that it's not a good book it just wasn't for me. I wanted it to be over with so bad the whole time I was reading it. I finished it on July 17th
I stopped reading for a while this summer because a lot of stuff was going on And I got super busy but I picked up miss peregrines home for peculiar children by ransom Riggs, and I'm so glad I did it was such an amazing book. It is definitely one of my top 10 favorite books I've ever read. It is so interesting and such a twist on the way we might look at things in the world. I would recommend this to everybody, literally anyone who wanted a book. There is a second one I will probably start when school starts back up and I can't wait. I'm so excited to see what happens next but then again I don't want to start it and it not be as good as the first book and leave me Unsatisfied, I'm sure it will be great though. I finished this about a week and a half ago.
Mrs. Kefauver's Summer Reading 2015
Books mentioned in this topic
Everything Changes (other topics)Gold Coast (other topics)
She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (other topics)
The Girl on the Train (other topics)
What She Left Behind (other topics)
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