2017 Fall Flurry of Holidays Challenge -- October Reviews and Discussion

[Nicole R]

Karin wrote: "Well, I started my October Halloween book in November, so will have to post it in the Wrong Month. Will that be okay? It's Frankenstein. I don't love it, so it will take a while to get through it."

Please post it here in the appropriate monthly thread.

[Karin]

Nicole R wrote: "Karin wrote: "Well, I started my October Halloween book in November, so will have to post it in the Wrong Month. Will that be okay? It's Frankenstein. I don't love it, so it will take a while to ge..."

Will do! Thanks :)

[LibraryCin]

I only finished this today, but it was 1/2 read in October and 1/2 read in November. It's a long one! I'm adding it here for Halloween, anyway.

It / Stephen King
4.75 stars

When Bill is 11 years old in the late 1950s, his younger brother is murdered. He and his group of friends are being bullied, while kids, in general, are disappearing from their small town of Derry, Maine, in way too high numbers. Although the results are obvious to everyone (the disappearance of kids), it seems only the kids can see some of what’s happening.

I listened to the audio, narrated by Steven Weber. He is very good; he did so well with all Richie’s voices! One thing I didn’t like (though it’s a small thing), and it’s only due to the audio, is with the back and forth in time – only close to the end – it was sometimes hard to tell if it was the adult characters or the kid characters we were following. In the print book, it should be easy enough to figure out. To reiterate, throughout most of the book, the back and forth in time was easy enough to follow, but there was just a little bit near the end where I had a bit of trouble.

The other thing I didn’t like (possible spoiler, though I’m still trying to keep it vague): (view spoiler)[Bev! What are you doing!? Why!? You’re 11 years old! (hide spoiler)] Overall, though, I loved the characters, and except for the two small things, I loved the book! It was a reread. I read it in high school, and remember loving it then, too.

[LibraryCin]

Shelf updated Nov. 10/17

[Karin]

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
1.5 stars rounded up

The basic plot of Frankenstein is too well known for me to write one here--Frankenstein makes a humanoid creature and then makes him come alive. This book is not like any of the movies, naturally. I did not like it, and not simply because I don't care for the story. I am rounding it up from 1.5 stars.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote this when she was 19, and to me that shows. It's not that she wasn't able to write prose or that 19 year old people can't write excellent novels (rarely that early but it certainly has happened), but there is a great deal of youthful immaturity in this book. When I read how this book came to be started, that made a lot of sense. Sometimes I wanted to knock more sense into this novel. On one hand, I think that what she was trying to do could and would have been done much better had she been older when she wrote it. There were so many great things she could have done with this had she done that. Not that I would have loved this book, but I might have actually liked it.