"No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home."

Finished #334, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz today and I absolutely devoured it. I read a total of 135 pages today. I couldn't put it down, or rather, I didn't want to. I have been such a fan of the film since I was a little girl and I played Dorothy in my elementary school production of The Wizard of Oz, but I've never read the book before. Shame on me, I know, because I'm an English teacher. But, now I've rectified that huge mistake and I can't wait to read the rest of the series!

There wasn't anything I didn't like, but one thing that was a little odd to me is that Dorothy is a rather flat character. Judy Garland gave her so much more to love than was included in the novel. Not that I didn't like Dorothy, she was just a little bit boring, much more boring than the rest of her companions. Even Toto was more interesting than Dorothy in some chapters.

Things I liked:

1. I loved the way Baum used color in the novel. I liked that each place that Dorothy went had a specific color associated with it. I also really liked that the Emerald City wasn't really green. It was an interesting twist that I didn't really expect. It was just another thing that made the people of Oz believe that the Wizard was this great magician that he actually isn't.

2. The irony of each of the companions wanting something they already have (brains, a heart, and courage). Each of those characters already have the thing they seek. The Scarecrow is constantly coming up with ideas to help the group, the Tin Woodman is very caring (he even cried and consequently rusts himself when he accidentally steps on a small bug) and the Cowardly Lion was always willing to protect the group.

While I was reading this book, I was reminded of a lot of details from Wicked (the novel). I have just started reading Wicked again and I am really excited to see all of the connections between Baum's original Oz and the expanded Oz that Maguire created.

I can't wait to read this book to my kids! Everyone should read this book!

"I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is."

This one isn't on my list, but I've wanted to read it for a long time since I'm such a fan of the movie. Last month I read, well listened to, Forrest Gump. It was just as endearing as the movie if not more.

Things I liked:

1. First of all, the man that read it did a great job in the dramatization. His southern drawl was excellent and he read as if he were an "idiot," in his words, not mine.

2. I loved all of the extra adventures that were in the book that weren't in the movie. Forrest gets to be an astronaut and live with a tribe of cannibals and play harmonica in a band and he becomes a chess champion and an actor and a professional wrestler.

3. I liked that Jenny's son was NOT Forrest's baby, but that she named him Forrest Jr. since they were such close friends.

4. I like that Forrest ends up playing in a band after he becomes a successful businessman. He has made it in the world and realizes he was happier just playing his harmonica, so that's what he does.

Things I didn't like:

1. Mostly that he had a potty mouth. I was kind of expecting the Forrest from the movie when I read it, but the book Forrest was quite a bit more vulgar than the film one.

2. Also, this isn't something I didn't like about the book, but now that I've read it, I wish the movie would have been more accurate and I wish it would have followed the book a little more closely.

Overall, I loved it. If you are a fan of the film, you should read the book.

As he spoke, his nose, long though it was, became at least two inches longer.

I finished Pinocchio this morning and it was really enjoyable. It was an incredibly quick read, I started it on Sunday, and finished it this morning (which is a Wednesday).

Things I liked:

1. The lessons it teaches. The Disney movie teaches that you shouldn't lie, yes, but the book is always better than the movie, right? There were so many great lessons about hard work and trustworthiness. If I have little boys, I will definitely be reading this book to/with them.

2. The brevity of the chapters. I think the longest chapter was 4-5 pages long, most were only 2-3. Also, each chapter had a heading telling the reader what was going to happen, kind of like the scriptures have.

3. How loveable Pinocchio is. He tries so hard to be good, but he just struggles. I think he is a great representation of people in general, but especially young people who know they should do certain things and obey their parents, but they are overcome with the need to rebel or do what they want instead. In that way, we see, in the end that Pinocchio is changed into a "real boy" because he finally does what he is supposed to do, he works hard and cares for others. What an excellent moral.

Things I didn't like, well, thing I didn't like:

1. The illustrations in this specific edition were way creepy looking.

This is a delightful collection of stories about a loveable puppet and I would recommend it to anyone!

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs

The basic premise of this book is that the people on a small island off the coast of South Carolina "worship" Nevin Nollop, the author of the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." They have a statue in town that displays the sentence, a letter per tile. What happens is that the tiles start to fall down and as the letters fall, the government prohibits their use. The people on the island are no longer able to write, read, or speak the fallen letters, if they do, they are severely punished and made an example of in town. The story's main character is a young woman named Ella Minnow Pea, who, along with her family and friends, is trying to come up with a way to make the government see that they are being irrational and that they should reinstate the fallen letters.

Things I liked:

1. It is an epistolary novel (which means it is written solely in letters).

2. I learned so many new words, including the word epistolary, haha! I got to use my brain to figure out what some of the words meant.  I love his use of unusual words. A couple of my favorite words were piscivorous: which means feeding on fish (I figured this one out by dissecting the word, which I did often with other words while reading this novel) and aposiopesis which means suddenly breaking off when you are speaking (I just looked this one up because I didn't think my brain could even handle trying to figure that word out).

3. I don't want to spoil anything so I won't post details, but the ending was so good. The book was kind of boring, to be honest, but the ending was so cool. I got chills when I read it, and laughed out loud.

 Things I didn't like:

1. This book was not as exciting as I wanted it to be. The story was a little blah for me, I wanted to be invested in the characters more, but maybe the fact that it was written all in letters deterred me from being able to really get to know the characters, that and the fact that I didn't know anything about their lives prior to the letters falling, so I wasn't invested in the characters.

2. Towards the end when they had lost most of the alphabet, the characters wrote phonetically. I am fine with having to figure out some words phonetically, but I became a secondary teacher for a reason. When I was reading the correspondences in which the words were spelled out phonetically I just thought about my roommate from student teaching who taught first grade and how she constantly had to read phonetically to understand what her students were writing. In this novel, at first I kind of chuckled because I was having to read this way, but then it just became annoying.

Just an observation:

Very odd concept that the man, Nevin Nollop, who composed the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is the higher being for the people on this island. They literally say that he is omniscient and omnipresent and that "his will be done." To me it seems ridiculous becauseof my own religious beliefs, but in this fictional land, they believe an author is a deity. Interesting.

As an English teacher, I love words and have studied language in depth, so I had an easier time than other people might reading this book. If you are not a fan of big words or dictionaries, I don't recommend this book to you. But if you find words loveable, give it a try! 

(and i think i could i think i could yes i think i could)

Finished #32 Carrie by Stephen King last night. It was one of those books that I just couldn't put down.

Things I liked:

1. I know this sounds weird, but I liked the weirdness of her family. The story wouldn't have been nearly as interesting without her overly religious mother. Her relationship with her mother was so odd, too. I guess it was just like any teenager, one minute they love their parents the next their parents are ruining their life. But it was more than that with Carrie and Margaret White. Her mother was cruel to her because she believed that Carrie's conception was a sin and when she saw that Carrie had these special abilities, it just made it even worse, her mother believed she was of the Devil, and even planned on more than one occasion to kill her. There were many times in the book when an article would say that it would have been helpful if they could know more about Margaret White, and I wish there was more about her in the book. In the end we finally learn why she sees Carrie as such a huge sin, but it would be so interesting to learn more about her mental state. Carrie constantly thought ill of her mother, and of course she even killed her mother, but at the end, right before she died, she cried out for her mother, even after she had been abused her entire life. I think that is so interesting, maybe I should have studied psychology.

2. Miss Desjardins and the principal of the school both fought for Carrie. However, it took them a while to do it. I guess it took all of the girls in her gym class making fun of her for getting her period for the first time for them to do something about the fact that they had been teasing and abusing her since grade school. I especially thought when the principal went up against Chris Hargensen's father and said if they sued the school, the school would counter sue for abuse against another student. I think it took a lot of guts to do that, and I'm glad that he did. As an educator, it really made me think about what I would have done in a situation like this and I think both the principal and the gym teacher handled things as well as they could have, other than the fact that it took them so long to finally stand up to the girls that were bullying Carrie.

3. Sue and Tommy, well, at least they meant well. Sue is a character that I feel like high school students should know about. With all of the bully prevention programs that are going on in the world, people should know about Sue Snell. She is a good person, and she realized that when she decided to stoop to the level of her peers in the showers, she had made a huge mistake. I admire her for deciding not to continue bullying and for trying to make things right. Poor Tommy, poor, poor Tommy. Honestly, he was just trying to do something nice for his girlfriend and for this girl that had been picked on and abused her entire life. It's sad that he had to die, but I honestly can't really blame Carrie for wanting to take her revenge on everyone at the prom. Would I have killed them all? Of course not, but she was pretty mentally unstable, and had years of pent up anger, and had to make the book interesting, so I understand.

4. The very last "letter" in the book was so chilling. It made you worry that another child was going to end up like Carrie. Spooky

Things I didn't like:

1. The other students were so horrible to her. I couldn't even believe the way they treated her just because her mother was so religious. I'm so glad I was never persecuted the way she was for being religious in a different way than most people. It made me so sad to see the way she was treated.

2. The only other thing was there was too much sex.

Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.

Last night I finished #54, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. I was really excited about reading it because it has gotten such high praise by almost everyone I know and even most critics. This post contains SPOILERS.

Things I liked:

1. I felt like I was reading a book written from the perspective of a person with Asperger's Syndrome. Haddon's voice for Christopher was spot on. I loved his way of deciding whether it would be a good day or a bad day because of how many yellow or red cars he saw. Just little things like that.

2. All of the pictures and diagrams. I liked that the author allowed us to visualize many things the way that Christopher did instead of the way I would see it.

3. His mother chose her child over Mr. Shears the second time around. I'm glad they ended up being able to work out a way to all live in the same town and even though his parents weren't together anymore, he still had both of them close.

4. The way they showed that they loved each other. Christopher didn't like to be touched, so instead of giving a hug, they would put out their hands and spread their fingers and then just touch fingertips. I thought that was really touching that even though he didn't want hugs or kisses from his parents, they found a way to show their affection.

5. All of the British slang and words that I kind of had to figure out what they meant as I was reading. A lot of them I knew, but it was still fun to decipher a little bit.

Things I didn't like:

1. I found it to be a little bit flat. The story was interesting, but the pacing was too slow for me. I got bored and sometimes went a couple of days without reading it, which is how I can tell that I don't LOVE a book.

2. The way his father handled just about everything. He hit Christopher, he took his "book" and hid it from him, he killed the neighbor's dog, and, oh yeah, he told him his mother was dead. Sorry Ed Boone, but don't expect any father of the year awards anytime soon. Now, his son does have special circumstances, but I'm just gonna put it out there that when your kid feels like they need to have an open Swiss Army knife in their pocket because they are afraid of you, you did something wrong.

Overall, I liked it OK. It wasn't one that I want to read again, but it was good. I don't know that I would recommend it because of it's HEAVY use of the Lord's name in vain and the F-bomb, but if you are interested in knowing how the mind of a child with Asperger's Syndrome works, you should definitely give it a read.

"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

Just finished #228. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and I really liked it. That means I've read 45 of the books now!

I went into reading this book not knowing anything about it other than what I saw on the preview for the movie, which really isn't much. The only thing the preview tells us is that this kid is in high school and he's probably not the most popular guy around.

It was a really easy read first of all, I think I read it in a total of 3 sittings. It probably took me between 5-6 hours. It was one of those books that you sit down to read and time passes but you don't realize how quickly. One night I read for two hours and it felt like 5 minutes. That is most likely due to the formatting of the novel. The entire book is letters from Charlie, a 15-year old guy who is really scared to start his freshman year of high school because his best friend killed himself and he doesn't have anyone else. He makes friends with some seniors that are in a "rougher" crowd, but absolutely loves them and they feel the same way about him. Basically, these letters are chronicling his freshman year and all of the experiences he has with his new friends.

Things I liked:

1. Charlie's whole entire world felt so realistic. There were so many details of his life that teenagers would be able to relate to. Personally, I didn't really relate to the character, because I didn't have the experiences he did, but I thought about how many of the students I saw at Mesa High could definitely relate.

2. I liked that at the end, Charlie was alright. He tells the reader not to worry about him, that even if he doesn't always feel good, eventually, he'll be fine again. 

3. That his friends Patrick and Sam really loved him for who he was. He didn't have to change to impress them. Even though he did change because he was with them, they never forced him to do anything.

and my favorite...

4. He loved his English teacher and all of the books that he assigned him to read. I like that his teacher was there for him. I want to be that kind of teacher.

The things I didn't like:

1. I know that it was all part of his journey, but I hated that he started drinking and smoking and doing drugs. It's just the teacher in me, but I thought it was so sad to see such a bright person go down that path. It was hard to see what it did to him as well. When he woke up from his LSD trip, that was just really scary. I know it happens to real kids in high school, I just hate that it does. 

2. His aunt. All through the book you think that she is this cool awesome lady that he really looks up to and loves because she always gets him two separate presents even though he was born on Christmas, but in the end, she is most likely the reason for his mental instability. I felt so horrible for Charlie, not only because he was sexually abused by his aunt, but because he still idolized her. He didn't know how to deal with what she did because he was so young. It was just heart breaking. 

Now I just need to see the movie. I like reading the book before seeing the movie because I like being surprised in books. Plus, then I can see if I agree or disagree with the way the characters and experiences were portrayed, which is fun for me. I just don't know how I feel about Emma Watson playing Sam. I kept trying to picture it, but it was hard. But, we'll see!