Lynna's First Climb up Pike's Peak

[Lynna]

I'm looking forward to starting my first climb. I have so many books to read but I read quite a few from the library and keep buying new ones so that the older ones keep getting pushed further back and forgotten. I thought this might be an incentive to get some of those read. Thanks for the challenge :-)
Lynna

[Carolyn]

I joined pretty much for the same reasons (the catalyst was seeing you join so thanks!) We can do this! :D

[Lynna]

1. Far From the Madding Crowd

Finished my first book from my own shelves of the year :-)

[Carolyn]

So glad you loved this! FFMC is tied for my second favorite book of all time😁

[Lynna]

I loved it....I had a hard time getting into it but once I did, I literally could not put it down. So what is your all time favorite book?

[Carolyn]

I probably felt the same. Well the book FFMC is tied with for second I think is Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (a few months ago I would've said Room with a View by EM Forster but the more I thought of DD after reading it, the more I loved it and it was an amazing reading experience at the time). My favorite is another tie between North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 😄💕📚

[Lynna]

Those are all on my TBR....glad to see they come so highly recommended :-) Now I can't wait to get to them...lol...but there are so many things ahead of them ;-)

[Lynna]

2. read in Jan. 2018
3. read in Jan-Feb 2018
4. read in Feb. 2018

[Lynna]

Thank you :-)

[Lynna]

5. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

[Carolyn]

Awesome that you read Ben Hur! What did you think?

[Lynna]

I loved it. The characters and scenes were so real. So many historical details told with vivid description. I love almost any classic book set in this time period. Fabiola Or, The Church of the Catacombsand Quo Vadis and a really old book titled Lucius Flavus being 3 of my all time favorites with Rome as a setting. I could see myself reading Ben-Hur every year and getting something new out of it each time. I'd highly recommend any of these.

[Carolyn]

Lynna wrote: "I loved it. The characters and scenes were so real. So many historical details told with vivid description. I love almost any classic book set in this time period. [book:Fabiola Or, The Church of t..."

Oh excellent! I've been tempted to read Ben Hur since the first time I saw the Anne of Green Gables film because there is a scene where Anne is reading the chariot race scene in class and gets in trouble haha.

[Lynna]

6. Anne of the Island

[Carolyn]

So good! This one is tied with AOGG for my favorite of the 4 books in the series that I have read so far😍. What did you think?

[Lynna]

So far I have read Books 1-3 aloud to my kids and they love them. When we finished Book 3 yesterday there was lots of cheering and clapping. (Not because the book ended but because of the beautiful ending~lol) We really felt like we got to know the characters and feel what they were going through....it's like they were real people.
How is book 4? Is it getting into more mature subjects that might not make it a good read aloud for kids?

[Carolyn]

Lynna wrote: "So far I have read Books 1-3 aloud to my kids and they love them. When we finished Book 3 yesterday there was lots of cheering and clapping. (Not because the book ended but because of the beautiful..."

Aww that's great! Hmmm I'm trying to think how best to describe book 4...there's nothing too romantic in it if I recall (Anne does write love letters at a few points but LMM was so cute about it cuz she would say "two pages have been redacted from this letter" lol). There is an uncomfortable love triangle which leads to a very shall we say "backstabbing" moment but while it is like watching a train wreck you can't look away from, I don't remember any inappropriate language or anything. If y'all do read it and I've missed something, I apologize but it still felt wholesome like the others overall
😁

[Lynna]

I can't imagine anything unwholesome in any of her work especially the Anne of Green Gables books. The boys love Anne as much as the girls but they are wanting a "boy" book next. So for our daytime read-aloud we are starting Journey to the Center of the Earth next. We're working through the Oz books in the evenings. :-) I will definitely be reading through all the Anne books eventually though.

[Carolyn]

Agreed 😁. That's awesome that your boys like Anne too and I think Gilbert is fantastic because he's such a great male character to be included, and boys and girls like him same as Anne. Yay for Journey! I have to warn you though, make sure yours is the translation with Lidenbrock and Axel. I did a book report on it for a French lit writing seminar in college and thought all the translations were the same so mistakenly ended up with the abridged, altered one that calls them Hardwigg and Harry and cuts out some pretty climactic chapters towards the end, it was pretty awful (I have since acquired the correct translation from B&N but have yet to read it, I need to do that). And yay OZ! I have a box set of the first 3 that I really want to start because I never read them as a child. Happy Reading 😁

[Lynna]

Just read the first 2 chapters of Journey to the Center of the Earth....thanks for the heads up on editions. Thankfully I have a Puffin Classic with the correct names. :-) Don't you hate it when they do that? What are they thinking when they go messing with books like that? Such a pet peeve of mine and I hate it when they abridge books :-/

As for the Oz books, we really enjoy them. We literally could just keep rereading the series (14 books) and always find something new to love.

[Carolyn]

Oh good! Yes and the strange thing is that translation was just the second English translation from 1871 only a few years after the first one came out so I just don't understand it. I'm glad you love the Oz books! I'm not a fan of the Dorothy portrayals in pop culture so I hope I love her in the books :)

[Lynna]

Oh don't even get me started on pop culture portrayals....I can't stand what they do to my beloved characters....yet another literary pet peeve...lol

[Lynna]

7. Don Quixote

[Lynna]

8. Journey to the Centre of the Earth

[Carolyn]

how did you enjoy Journey?

[Lynna]

We really enjoyed it. It was a read-aloud and the kids were always excited to read the next chapter to see what would happen next. They definitely want to read more Jules Verne :-)

[Lynna]

9. The Green Ember

[Lynna]

10. The Black Star of Kingston

[Lynna]

11. The Last Archer

[Lynna]

12. The Saturdays