King Solomon's Mines by Henry Rider Haggard

Here's another African adventure story by Mr. Haggard.  If I'm remembering my Wikipedia reading from a long time ago, this book was basically written as a response to Treasure Island.  After reading Treasure Island, Henry thought that he could write an adventure book such as that.  If I remember correctly, this book actually was more successful than Treasure Island.  I haven't read TI, yet, but I think this one was pretty good.


It begins with our narrator, a Mr. Allan Quartermain, being approached by someone, a Sir Henry, trying to enlist him on a search for his brother in the heart of Africa.  Allan had met the missing man before, and knew the area he had been heading toward.  An area said to contain inexhaustible diamond mines. He had actually been given a map by someone who had tried to get the treasure in the past.  A picture of the map can be found below.

From Wikipedia

Allan is an aging elephant hunter, and knew that the adventure he was being asked to embark on would almost certainly lead to his death.  He hadn't managed to amass any sort of fortune during his life, and has a son who was studying medicine in London.  When considering whether or not he would go on the expedition, he thought only of his son.  He knew that he wasn't likely to live much longer anyway, as he's far outlived the average lifespan of an elephant hunter, and Sir Henry was offering to fulfill any terms required to get Allan to go with him.  Given this opportunity to provide for his son, Allan agrees to go with Sir Henry.



The account of the adventure, written in the first person by Mr. Quartermain.  He mentions that he's a hunter, and not a writer at several points in the book, but I found it to be pretty well-written all the same.  Although, given that it is written in the first person, you know that Allan gets through the story alive.  He also mentions in the beginning that he is wealthy, which implies a successful expedition.  Although, given the terms he gave to Sir Henry, there are different levels of success that may have been achieved.



This book has quite a few similarities to The People of the Mist, which Haggard wrote later.  There's a lost civilization, which a member of the expedition happens to be from.  This civilization has access to incredible wealth.  And it can only be reached by an extremely perilous route (this time through the desert and over some mountains).  When the civilization is finally reached, the adventurers are taken for gods.  There's also a little bit of racism in the book, but it is treated very similarly.  There's the status quo that almost nobody questions, although the main characters don't really behave as racists.



I won't go into any more detail on the plot, or other events in the book.  I will say that some of the events seem a little too convenient.  Also, at one point, Allan details all the equipment they're taking with them.  Then later, the characters go and use something that wasn't on that list.  Not only wasn't it on the list, I can't imagine what possible reason they would have thought to bring the item in question.  This may just be a sign that it's the man's first book.  These issues aren't enough to diminish the quality of the read too much, however.


All in all, I really enjoyed this book.  It is a great adventure story and the pacing was good. I recommend it.



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The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker

It's been a while since I finished reading this book, so I apologize that I can't go into the detail that I sometimes do.

The book opens with the narrator being woken up in the middle of the night.  He's a lawyer who is summoned to a friend's house because her father was attacked.  There is no sign of the attacker, but it was obvious that they were trying to get into his safe.  While her father is alive, he appears to be in some sort of hypnotic state.  The narrator, the Dr., the police, and the daughter all work to solving the mystery.

Most of the book is spent working toward figuring out who the attacker was, and how they were managing to do so, undetected, despite two people being in the room when the attacks occur.  This is by far the strongest part of the book.  As answers are discovered, I feel like the book got weaker.

Since this is a Bram Stoker book, it's obvious that there is something supernatural going on.  Unfortunately, I feel like the book would have been much better if there wasn't.  If it were a regular crime/detective novel, I think it would have been a much better book.  As it stands, I feel like the ending was the worst part.  I feel like the characters were acting in a very short-sighted manner and I couldn't quite understand their motivation for throwing caution to the wind in order to achieve their goal.  Then it all ended with disappointment for me.

I want to make a couple of notes before wrapping up this post.  Firstly, before I lived in London, I would have found it very strange to read that the sun was rising slightly after 3am each morning.  However, during the summer, the sun does, indeed, rise that early in the morning.  Secondly, there are a lot of references to a star constellation they refer to as the Plough.  Apparently, this is what the British call the Big Dipper.  The more you know, right?

I was all set to recommend this book while I was reading it.  I really had to downgrade it once I finished, though.  I can only somewhat recommend this book.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This is a story about a good-looking young man who posed for a picture one day.  From that day on, his appearance never changed, but the painting did.  This is also one of the worst books I've read.  I contemplated putting it away but I didn't want to let it win.

This book is filled with obnoxious and nonsensical rants that go on for not just pages, but for chapters.  Sometimes it's one of the character's rants, sometimes it's the narrator's.  It doesn't matter who the rant comes from, they're all the same, really.  I take notes while I read the books, to remind me of things for when I write these entries.  I'm going to quote one of them now, "Oh, God!  It isn't over yet!".  I made that note after 3 other notes in the same chapter remarking about how much the author sounds like a raving lunatic on the street corner and I wish he would just get on with the story. If you find yourself reading this book for some crazy reason, you should probably just skip chapter 11, it's ridiculous.  To make it worse, every rant was chocked full of similies and metaphors that even a high school literature teach would have found them beyond tedious.

The worst character in the book is named Lord Harry Henry.  He's a bit of a know-it-all character who produces the most non-sensical statements, calling them facts.  He believes that he's an expert in everything because of his birth.  He's the type of guy who tries to influence people and meddle in their lives just to see what happens.  He thinks of it as conducting experiments.  While I found him to be the most despicable character in the book, I did actively hate pretty much every single person in it.

The book also ended in an entirely predictable manner. It was total crap from beginning to end and I highly recommend you stay away from this book.

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The People of the Mist by Henry Rider Haggard

Here's a book about a man's adventures in Africa, looking to make his fortune.  Luckily, he's more complex than your average generic treasure hunter.  His name is Leonard, and he actually grew up as part of a rich family.  In the beginning of the book, his father has brought the family to ruin. As a result, he loses his love and home.  During this stage of the book, you get a really good feel for how Leonard's life has been changed and have insight into his emotions.  The night everything they had owned is sold, he and his brother swear an oath to each other that they will leave England and not return until they win back their home.  So, they go to Africa seeking their fortune.

The years pass, and the book next focuses on the death of the main character's brother.  They're in a crudely constructed hut in their gold digging site.  The death scene really makes you sympathize with Leonard.  He lost his home, and led a hard life in Africa only to lose his brother as well.  Before he dies, his brother has a vision of him winning back their home with the help of a woman.  Leonard just needs to stay at the dig site for a while after he passes.

A while later, they discover a frantic woman who tells them that her mistress was kidnapped by slavers and begs bribes Leonard to help rescue her.  To entice him, she gives him a large ruby and tells the tale of her people who have many such gems.  She says she'll help him acquire those stones if he helps her.  Leonard agrees, and the adventure begins.

I don't want to get too much into the rest of the story, but I do want to mention that most of the primary characters have complex emotions.  I think it really added to the story, especially during the action sequences.  I constantly found myself wondering how they were going to get themselves out of that mess (and if all of them were going to survive it).  Which brings me to my first complaint about the book.  During some parts of the book, the author basically gives away part of the outcome of the scene.  I found that annoying, since it kills what would otherwise been a tense moment. 

Then there's a few times where the characters are having a good conversation that is abruptly ended by one of them proclaiming that they're going to sleep.  It just ended up being jarring and disappointing.  It's disappointing because you're learning some very important things and then all of the sudden, there's a poorly written stop to it.  Although, to be honest, those two things are the only problems I had with the book.

Since this is an old book, set in Africa, there's bound to be a bit of racism involved.  I actually thought it was all handled pretty well, really.  There was heavy institutionalized racism.  The European characters thought themselves superior to the African characters.  Most of the African characters also thought themselves inferior to the Europeans.  However, the way the characters were portrayed in the book, every one of them had their strengths and weakness.  The characters were well rounded and really cared for each other, regardless of race.  It wasn't awkward like in Lair of the White Worm.


I just want to mention one more thing.  I really didn't think the book would end the way it did.

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it.

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Where's the Book?

I'm going to come clean.  I've gotten a bit behind on my reading, and I don't have an update for this week.  So, because of this, I'll be taking a brief break from posting each week, and will return to the regular schedule during the first week of December.  Hopefully, I'll have enough posts queued up to not have to break the schedule again.

In the meantime, if anyone would like to write some guests entries, please let me know.  They can be about a new book, or what you thought of a book that I've already written about.  It's whatever you like.  If I can get a few guest writers, then I will still be able to have updates every week.  How awesome would that be?  And who would be bringing that awesome?  That's right, you!

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

I'm going to start off by saying that I knew basically nothing about this book going into it.  I never saw the musical or any of the movies.  So, I can't compare this to any of those versions.  I can, however, say that this book is pretty good.

Like The Three Musketeers, this book is written in the first person by someone who isn't connected to the events at all.  In this book, however, the author does note that they're recording a historical record, and have mentioned speaking with some of the characters to gather evidence.

It begins with the changing of management at the opera.  The old managers, as part of the hand-off, refer to the "opera ghost" and his instructions for the managers of the opera.  Naturally, the new management thinks that they're joking and don't take the instructions seriously.  This angers the ghost and he begins to cause mischief and drama in the opera (on and off the stage).  The managers still think that it's all a prank that the previous managers have taken too far.  Things only escalate from there.

I found the beginning of the book a bit hard to follow.  This is due in part to my complete lack of familiarity with opera in general.  There is a lot of name-dropping of operas and singers (whether fictitious or real) and it just lost me.  The book also goes into several tangents. They're all related to the overall story, or at least necessary to establish the characters.  Luckily, later on, the book gets more focused on the main story.

The main story itself, consists of Raoul trying to win the heart of Christine.  She refuses to return his affections for unspoken reasons.  Raoul works tirelessly to find the reason, and this leads him to learn of The Angel of Music, also known as the opera ghost.

I won't spoil the story from there.  It does keep you on your toes.  It never answers questions too early and keeps you guessing.  I found the whole thing a very interesting story and was happy with the book as a whole.

While reading this book, I noticed several places which marked where an illustration should have been.  The problem with getting the free versions of books is that most of them lack the illustrations.  I was really curious about them, though, and have tracked them down.  As it happens, The University of Virginia Library has the complete text online.  Including the illustrations (albeit, the quality isn't great).  Hera are links to a couple of them.

One last thing, the opera, as described in the book, sounds like a vast and magnificent place. He describes it in a lot of detail as well.  As it happens, it is a real place.  It's now known as the Palais Garnier in Paris.  Here's a picture of it:

Photo by Peter Rivera (cc-by-2.0)

All in all, this book was pretty enjoyable.  I recommend it.

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The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco

I should really know better than to read a kid's book by now.  I'm not the target audience for them, and having never read them before, there's no sense of nostalgia when reading them now.  I know I'm not going to get the kinds of things I'm looking for in a story.

With all that being said, this book really isn't that bad.  It never tries to do anything that it can't accomplish.  There's no pretend drama, like in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Nor is it complete random like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  This is a just a nice, simple, cute story of a stuffed rabbit and the little boy who owns him.  Nursery magic is in full effect here, as are the feelings of children toward their favorite stuffed animals.

I would somewhat recommend this book.

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The Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker

I normally try to avoid writing spoilers here.  This time, however, I don't think I can provide a decent writeup of this book without some major ones.  I will try to give a general overview before heading into spoiler territory.  I do recommend the book.  If you think you might read it, I think you would enjoy it a lot more without me giving away some of the plot points ahead of time.

Like Dracula, this book is written as a series of journal entries and letters from several characters.  It starts off with some notes regarding the will of the writer's uncle. He also goes into his entire family tree which I found really hard to follow.  I felt like I had to draw it out in order to understand it all, but without a chart, I could only pretend I knew who everyone was.  As it turns out, very few of the family members were relevant to the book, so I'm not sure why so much time was put into it.

I did find reading this section a little annoying because this character is such a douchebag.  He is from a very wealthy family and they all act like complete ass hats.  For example, the guy's father fired one of the servants because she helped out his cousin, who is considered the black sheep of the family. He just couldn't stand such disrespect in his house or something.  Luckily, this character is pretty minor, because I don't think I would have gotten through the whole book if he was a more major character.  I think his presence is primarily there to contrast with the main character's personality.  I'm not sure his presence was really necessary, though.

The beginning of the book starts off very slow.  The end of the book is also slow.  I enjoyed the middle of the book sufficiently to not be bothered by the slow bits.  I must admit, though, that I considered putting it away because the beginning was bordering on too slow.  For some people, it may be.

Let's just cut to the meat of the story.  The main character, Rupert, travels to the Land of Blue Mountains in accordance with his uncle's will.  While there, he lives in a castle which he, and every other character in the book, fails to describe in any detail.  They each made it a point to say that they just couldn't describe it, which I found to be a bit of a cop-out.

The region has been known to have a ghostly woman appear in the sea above a coffin.  Before long, she finds her way to Rupert's room, soaking wet and only dressed in a funeral shroud.  She's freezing cold, and begs Rupert to help her get warm.  At dawn, she runs out in a big hurry.  She goes on to visit him a few more times, and he becomes infatuated with her.  His infatuation isn't even shaken when he finds her laying in a coffin in the crypt of an old church.

During this time, Rupert's aunt, who is also living at the castle, has been having some disturbing visions.  She believes that dark powers are trying to influence him.  He even thinks that his lady is a vampire, even though her visits seemed innocent enough.  This got me questioning what was really happening during her visits.  In Dracula, the victims didn't remember his attacks, it isn't much of a stretch to think the some vampire victims would think something else was happening.  Was what Rupert wrote even close to reality?  I found myself wanting to read a journal entry from his aunt to know more about her visions to gain some insight to what might really be happening.  As if that weren't interesting enough, a war was also brewing.  I got the impression that this lady was somehow involved with that, too.

Before I go on, I want to address the apparent vampire romance angle this book is seeming to take.  Unlike in modern vampire romances, the man is not a vampire.  Nor is he some desperate, misunderstood "teenager" full of angst (who is actually a really old pedophile).  The vampire isn't portrayed as some romantic ideal.  Rupert even acknowledges that his soul may be in danger because of his love.  He just doesn't care.  In short, all the cheesy cliches of modern vampire romances aren't present in this book.
Now I'm going to move on to spoiler territory.

Darth Vader is Luke's father.

I mean...

E.T. goes home.

Errr....

Kevin Bacon secures the right to dance.

There.  That should kill enough space for people to not accidentally see something.  Rupert's romance with the vampire-lady results in a midnight wedding.  There's a lot of strange ritual in a very dark church.  It plays out very similar to a vision his aunt had a while back, where she saw death.  That really ratchets up the creepy factor in the story.

Shortly after the wedding, word comes to the castle that the daughter of the country's ruler has been kidnapped.  Rupert instantly organizes search parties to rescue her, and even leads a party himself.  Along the way, he learns more about the kidnapped women.  It turns out, that she is the woman he married.  So, she isn't a vampire at all.  Before the book had started, she had fallen ill, and appeared to die.  She awoke during her funeral (dressed in a funeral shroud, of course).  It was decided that she had to appear to be deceased as a service to her country (I didn't actually follow the reason why, but was satisfied with that angle).  She was kidnapped so the invaders would eventually have a claim to the land.

During her rescue, the book switches to the point of view of another rescuer.  I thought this worked well in creating a tension that I don't normally find in books written in the first person.  I found myself wondering if something were going to happen to Rupert during the rescue.  He faced numerous dangers, and not just from the kidnappers.

Once that rescue is complete, it is discovered that the woman's father has also been kidnapped.  He has been taken to a tower, since it is easily defended with few people.  This complicates the rescue, but, fortunately, Rupert has an airplane and can rescue the man in that.

When the airplanes were first mentioned, I felt like the book may have been taking a few liberties with technology, since it takes place in the early 1900s and the first Wright Brothers flight wasn't much earlier, in 1903. From the context, though, I think that the airplanes may have actually been blimps, which were invented in 1880.

After that sequence is when the book slows down a lot with a bunch of politics and diplomacy and remains slow until it finishes.  I did find myself wanting some sort of conflict or treachery to appear occur.  Sadly, it never did.  I didn't find it too hard to get through the ending, though.

All in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit.  The slow parts were a bit annoying, but not too bad, when looking at the book as a whole.

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The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

I think we all knew it was just a matter of time before I would be able to make a Kevin Bacon reference on this blog.  It took a little more the 6 entries, but that's not Kevin Bacon's fault.  My 3rd and 4th posts are by the same author, though, and this is the 4th post on a book by that author, so I think that qualifies.

Unlike that Kevin Bacon movie, however, this book is actually pretty good.

Since I have read so many books by H.G. Wells, I've noticed that most of them are a bit heavy on the geography, this one is no different.  It isn't nearly as heavy as War of the Worlds, luckily. I don't think you're really missing out if you don't know the streets of London very well, either.  It is sort of nice to have an idea of where some things are happening, though.

The book begins with the Invisible Man arriving in the small village of Iping.  He's wearing a "disguise" which hides all of his invisible parts.  This leads people to think that he's disfigured, which is basically the effect he wants.  From the very beginning, you can tell that the Invisible Man is a rude, selfish, and impatient man with a short temper.  He seems to struggle to give the basic levels of decency he is giving to his hosts at the inn.  As time goes on, it becomes apparent that this is a losing struggle.

Eventually, his gig is up and the village finds out that he is invisible (and dangerous).  Everyone freaks out and he is forced to flee the town.  Outside of town, he meets with a drifter and tries to recruit him to his cause.  Since the drifter can't see the Man, and only hears his voice, he is very understandably terrified.  In fact, everyone's reaction to the invisibility is very much the same, and I found to be very believable.

Later in the book, the Man tells his story to a former colleague of his.  During this story, it becomes apparent just how selfish he is.  He feels a sense of entitlement to things.  His invisibility just amplifies this feeling.  He feels like he can, and should, be able to do anything that he wants without any consequences.  He doesn't see a problem with this outlook at all, even when his former colleague is taken aback by his story.

I really found the character of the Invisible man to be really well developed.  The story was quite interesting as well.  This is a book I recommend.

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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

I must confess, when I started reading this book, I thought it was 20,000 leagues down, not total distance traveled.  I blame having no concept of a league.  So, just to let everyone know, 1 league is about 3.4 miles, and 20,000 leagues is about 69,046.8 miles.  For comparison, the circumference of the Earth is about 24,901.6 miles.  That makes this journey the equivalent of nearly 3 times around the Earth.

With that out of the way, on to discussing the book.

The book starts off with the hunt of a massive sea monster.  The narrator, Professor Aronnax, is on the ship charged with hunting the creature. It's decided that the monster must be incredibly fast, since it had been seen in very different parts of the world in a very short amount of time.  There first few chapters are dedicated to this monster, and it's pursuit.  During that whole time, I kept wondering why no one every had the thought that there might be more than one sea monster.  I guess that doesn't matter, though, since (sorry for the minor spoiler) there was no sea monster.

I'm just going to skip to the undersea journey, now.  M. Aronnax is taken aboard Captain Nemo's Nautilus, an extraordinary submarine completely powered by the wonders of electricity. Amazing stuff, that electricity.

The journey consists of a lot of marine animal sightseeing.  So much, in fact, that I felt like I needed an encyclopedia of marine life.  In a way, this book can serve as an encyclopedia.  There are several sections that are just a list of the plants and animals seen at the time.  Very long lists.  Lists that will make absolutely no sense unless you are an expert on marine life.

In order to get the most out of this book, you also need to be an expert in geography, or at least have a world map handy.  The narrator frequently states the position of the submarine in latitude and longitude.  I was often totally lost as to where the Nautilus was while reading.  For that reason, I've linked to some maps of the journey at the bottom of the post.

Aside from all the expertise needed, there is a bit of a fun adventure in this book.  The Nautilus visits Atlantis, the South Pole (almost....I think Jules Verne assumed Antarctica was much smaller than it really is), a volcano, and several other locations.  There are fights with giant animals, as well as the mystery behind Captain Nemo and the construction of the Nautilus.  Unfortunately, the heavy bits far outweighed the good bits for me.  So, I can't really recommend this book.

Image from Wikipedia

Image from Wikipedia

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

This is two books for the price of one!  Actually, it's two books for the price of none.  That's great value!

Both of these books are about some bad-ass kids.  Kids who seem to have an unhealthy obsession with dead animals.  Tom Sawyer is a shorter and lighter read.  Huckleberry Finn is harder to read, but much more illustrative of life in pre-Civil War America.  One of the things I found most amusing in these books was reading about the superstitions of all the characters.  It's funny what some people believed back then.  I'm sure the same thing could be said for modern superstitions, but I found nearly all of them to be way out there.

Tom Sawyer is written in the third person and is, as one would expect, all about the adventures of its title character.  I found Tom to be quite a likable child.  Sure, he's a bad-ass kid, but he still has a certain innocence about him.  He's also got a very quick wit and a very active imagination, which makes him more endearing.  His adventures range from trivial and strictly imaginative, to quite heavy with large implications for other people.  The book made me question several times how he would handle the mess he got himself into and stayed enjoyable to the end.

Huckleberry Finn is written in the first person, from Huck's perspective.  Huck's language isn't as easy to read as the narrator in Tom Sawyer (identified in this book as Mark Twain, himself).  I feel like Twain also paid more attention to the regional dialects of the characters.  As a result, some of the characters' speech is somewhat hard to follow.  That doesn't prevent the book from being enjoyable, however.

I should point out that I was forced to read Huck Finn during my sophomore year of high school.  As with all assigned reading back then, I resented it, and didn't care for anything that I read.  Huck Finn was far from the worst assigned reading, but I don't remember enjoying it either.  As a matter of fact, I didn't remember much of anything about it at all.  That probably helped me enjoy it this time around (as if I were reading it for the first time).

Huck Finn starts off where Tom Sawyer left off.  It's more than just Huck's adventures, though.  It is also about his thoughts.  He was born into a society where slaves were owned and blacks were thought of as inferior people.  These are views shared by Huck.  This causes an internal conflict when he begins his adventure down the Mississippi with a runaway slave.  He feels bad for helping the man escape, yet doesn't have the heart to turn him in.  I found it interesting how Huck handled all the situations he found himself in during his journey.

I do want to point out that I think some sections of Huckleberry Finn were missing.  There were a couple of places that had very strange transitions.  After each one, I became very confused and had to read and re-read the sections following the transition, as well as the transitions themselves to try and make sense of them (and I still couldn't).  This is most likely a result of when the books were transcribed for the (free) Kindle edition of the book.

These books are recommended.

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The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Sir James Knowles

What do you think of when you think of King Arthur?

• Merlin?
• Camelot?
• Round Tables?
• A sword in a stone?
• Killer rabbits?
• Excalibur and a lady in a lake?
• Love affairs?
• The Holy Grail?
• So many Knights and Kings that it's basically impossible to keep them all straight?
• So much smiting (on the left, and the right)?
• The Knights who say Ni?
• Legendary adventures, such as King Arthur becoming the emperor of Rome?

All of those things, except a few, are in this book.  It sounds pretty good, in theory, but it's actually a very hard read.  These legends are old.  Really old.  And this book is basically a compilation of all the different legends placed more or less in chronological order.  They are different stories, though, and there is no continuous plot between them.  Because of its age, it's written in a very different English than that of today, making it hard to read.  It also name drops so many kings and knights that I stopped caring who was who.  Doing so just makes it even more confusing, I'm sure.  For instance, some characters show up in some of the later stories that I could have sworn were killed in earlier stories. Maybe they weren't really the same character.  There's just too many names to keep track of.

If you're really interested in these stories, I would encourage you to read them.  However, since it's a pretty hard read, and not horribly entertaining, I can't really recommend it in general.

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The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

Let me start off with a quote, "The creature had exactly the mild but repulsive features of a sloth..."  Let me stop right there.  He just called sloths repulsive!  WTF is wrong with this guy?  He's calling this gentle creature repulsive:

These animals:

As you can see, they are far from repulsive.  I can't recommend this book for that reason alone.  In all seriousness, while I think that I should have found this book a somewhat interesting read, I just didn't.  I didn't care about the characters, the animals, or the plot.  It was empty reading.  In the book, Dr. Moreau creates hideous monstrosities of men out of animals.  Unlike in the Island of Dr. Hibbert, Moreau isn't creating these ban-beasts out of people, he's making them out of animals exclusively.  It's a horrible thing to do, but it doesn't get me caring.  Of course, eventually one of the tortured animals goes crazy, which leads to all the animals going crazy.  Not even this added danger to the human characters interested me, since I didn't care about any of them.

So, not recommended for multiple reasons, but mostly because he insulted sloths.

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Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker

So, I was playing some poker the other day (not really), and the first card on the table ended up being the race card.  Any time that card shows up, you have to wonder who it's being played against.  In this instance, I think it might have been Bram Stoker.

I've read plenty of books with racist characters in them before.  I really expect that sort of thing in older books.  Racism and sexism was kinda the norm back in the day, sadly.  Anyway, I don't think I had ever read a book where the 3rd person narrator seemed a bit racist.  Did the character from Africa really have to be a "devil of a man?" (that's not a real quote, btw)  The narrator also use the n-word quite a few times.  I know it was the 19th century, and that was probably common language back then, and I'm probably just reading too much into it, but it was a bit jarring.  Of course, the main character's 200 some-odd racist bones didn't bother me so much.

But enough about the dreaded race card, what about the rest of the book?

It was a little interesting.  A guy moves from Australia to be near is elderly and childless uncle.  He becomes friends with one of his uncle's friends who studies the various myths and legends of England.  There's a monster (a white wormy thing) that was supposed to have lived in that area.  And with that, you got a bit of the set up.

The way it plays out doesn't actually make a lot of sense to me.  There's entire chapters that seemed to have pretty much no point at all with regards to the greater story.  After having finished the book, I have got to say that they had pretty much no point at all with regards to the greater story.  There's just a whole lot there that doesn't really go anywhere.  For instance, there's a chapter or so talking about how the area became swarming with birds that just wouldn't go away.  No reason is given as to why they're there.  They do become a very big problem for the comunity, which leads to the local duke, prince, or whatever (I'll pretend that duke is correct) to create a kite shaped like a hawk to scare them all away.  If I remember correctly, the book dedicates several more chapters to the duke's obsession with his kite.  Admittedly, the kite is slightly significant to the story, as it relates to the all-too-convenient ending.  I was really wondering how the story was going to resolve itself in the few pages that were remaining and then BANG, it just kinda ended in a nice pretty package.

It's okay, but not great.  I can't recommend it.

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Beauty and the Beast by Marie Le Prince de Beaumont

This short story is pretty much the story you expect it to be.  A young girl named Beauty meats a young beast name Beast and one thing leads to another....

Well anyway, it's not a bad story.  It's not a great story either.  It's really short, though, which is why I don't have much to say about it.

If you have a little bit of time to kill, you can do worse than reading this story.  Somewhat recommended.

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Let me start by talking a little about the Professor.  He's not character writing the story, but he's the one who wanted to go on the journey.  He's a very learned man of science, but seems a little too eager to take all sorts of matters on faith.  He took it on faith that the temperature wasn't going to get much hotter closer to the center of the Earth.  He took it on faith that they would find plenty of fresh water under the Earth.  Maybe he's just so knowledgeable that he knows what to expect, but I don't know how he could be.  He never explains why he thinks the things he does.  Since these things run counter to logic, or at least the logic of the narrator, some explanation would have been nice.

The book itself was fairly interesting through a good chunk of it.  Not a lot happens for a long while, but I didn't really mind.  It is a bit science heavy, particularly geology, which makes sense, since the characters are men of science.  I took some geology in college, but a lot of the stuff still went way over my head.  Toward the end of the book, it seemed like Jules Verne was running out of ideas, and didn't really have a resolution planned out.  The last few chapters just made me think, "Really?"

If you're a science-y type person, then you might enjoy this book.

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The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

This book has it all: sword duels, adultery, war, political intrigue, adultery, religious commentary, murder, adventure, camaraderie, adultery, romance, lies, royalty, lust, and, did I mention, adultery?  I don't think there's a single female character who is faithful to her husband in this book.  That being said, none of them are portrayed in a negative fashion for their infidelities.  It's not really even considered a character trait of note.  The Three Musketeers (and d'Artagnan) are courting these women, some of whom happen to be married.  The husbands are treated more as obstacles than a moral dilemma.

Here's what you need to know about this book:

The King of France counts two people as his most trusted advisers.  The Cardinal, and the captain of the Musketeers.

The Queen of France is in love with the Duke of Buckingham.  He loves her in return.

The Musketeers are loyal to the King and Queen.  They server as the King's bodyguards and are basically elite soldiers. They also frequently get into scuffles with the Cardinal's guards.  There's a bit of a not-quite-friendly rivalry between the two groups.

The Cardinal wants to discredit the Queen of France.  I don't actually remember why.  He's basically the villain of the book, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have the King's, or France's, interests at heart.  His actions just go against the interests of the protagonists.

d'Artagnan, is a very impulsive young man who wants to become a Musketeer who frequently gets himself into trouble.  He serves as the main character of the story.  Somewhere along the way, he falls in love with one of the Queen's servants who is helping her and the Duke of Buckingham hook up.  This lady gets abducted by the Cardinal and d'Artagnan is highly motivated to find this woman and do some hooking up of his own.  He serves as the book's main protagonist.

The Three Musketeers are d'Artagnan's friends and help him get out of the trouble he gets himself into.  They also help him in his quest to help his lady-friend.

Now, I'm not a fan of the writing style.  It's written in the first person by a narrator who has no relationship to the characters or events.  It's also written in a conversational style that kinda gets on my nerves from time to time.  All in all, though,  I did find the book interesting throughout.

This is one book that I do recommend.

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

This is the classic story of the headless horseman.  Or, I thought it was, anyway.  He only shows up on a few pages during the whole thing.  Instead, this book spends way too much time setting up the scenery and the setting that it forgets to get to any plot.  I zoned out countless times while reading the long-winded paragraphs.  I usually only do that for a book that's particularly hard to read.  This wasn't hard to read, just boring.

Save your time, don't bother reading this book.

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I've never been a big fan of Alice in Wonderland, or any of its various spin-offs, to be honest.  I can't say that I've seen Disney's, or anyone's version all the way through.  I've only seen bits and pieces of them.  It might be a good idea to keep that in mind when reading my review.

I didn't particularly care for this book.  This may be because it's a kids' book. The writing didn't appeal to me.  The plot was incoherent and went from random thing to random thing.  There really wasn't any drama, or character development, either.  I think a lot of it was just Lewis Carroll trying to prove how clever he is.  I can see how it would appeal to a younger audience, though.

If you're interested in it, by all mean read it.  Otherwise, I'd give it a pass.

As I side note, I am planning on going on the tour at Christ Church in Oxford eventually.  Even though I didn't enjoy the book, I'm quite certain that I would enjoy seeing some of the things that inspired it.

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

It's been a bit of time since I've read this book.  Honestly, I can't remember much of anything about it.  It was kinda boring and not memorable in the least.

Reading this did make me constantly think of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, though.  It's loads more entertaining than this book, and you should watch it instead of even thinking about the book.



This book is not recommended.

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

I'm just going to go out and say it.  I like the movie better than the book.  Before you get all stabby on me, let me explain.

Don't get me wrong, the book is okay, for a kids' book, anyway.  But there's just something about Dorothy's adventures wearing the witch's silver slippers that just didn't inspire me.  Yes, in the book, the slippers are actually silver.  That's not why I didn't enjoy it, though.  Even though Dorothy and her friends encountered loads of problems along their quest, there was never one that wasn't solved by the first thing they tried within just a few paragraphs.  There was no tension or anything.  It kinda bored me.  Now, I haven't seen the movie in a very long time, but I seem to remember a bit more drama, and tension in it.

If you're interested in reading this, by all means give it a go, otherwise, I'd recommend giving it a pass.

Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

What's this?  More vampires?  More Dracula?  Could it at least be as good as Dracula?

Sadly, no.  This is actually a collection of short stories, published after Bram Stoker's death.  Only one of them is related to Dracula.  All in all, the stories are okay.  None of them are great, and I thought a few of them were kinda crap.  Sorry I can't go into more detail about these stories.  Most of them weren't very memorable at all.

If you love dark stories with dark themes, you'll probably enjoy a lot of these stories.  If that's not your thing, you'll probably hate a lot of these stories.  I'm not so into them myself.  So I can't say that this book is really worth reading.

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The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

In the year 2000....humanity will be split into two groups.  One group will be comprised of soft-skinned little people who not only live a life of luxury, but are also highly amused by matches.  The other group will devolve into some barbaric ape-like creatures who live underground and fear the light, even matches.

Actually, Mr. Wells doesn't say what year this will all occur.  It doesn't really matter, though, because I thought the whole thing was kinda rubbish (to use the British term).  He had the unlimited possibilities that a time machine provides, and came up with little people and hairy apes.  He also came up with giant crabs for a bit later. It's all a bit boring, to be honest.

The explanations he offers for why things are this way do make a bit of sense, I admit.  That is, except for the crabs, they were random and really seem kinda pointless in terms of the story.  It seems like he just wanted to show off how smart he was and how imaginative he could be, but the result just wasn't very good.  At least from a modern perspective.

I can't recommend this book.

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The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

In this book, aliens from Mars decide to travel to England and party like it's 1899.  Their math was a bit off, though, and they landed a few years early. This makes them a bit upset, because they can calculate how to shoot themselves off Mars and land in England, but they don't know what year it is. So they do what any angry alien would do in their situation, they started melting people and blowing crap up.  Why are aliens always such drama queens?

All in all, this book is pretty interesting. I'm not used to reading science fiction set in the past.  I think I found the book more interesting because of that.  I enjoyed reading about England and London from back in the day.  The alien invasion was interesting, too.  It's such an overused plot device these days that I don't think it would have been as enjoyable if the defense of Earth wasn't so different from what I'm used to.

If you decide to read it, be advised that it's a bit heavy on the geography side of things.  Specifically English and London geography.  I live in London and I had a hard time following everywhere the characters went.  Maybe it's a good idea to have a map handy (I didn't, though.  I just pretended I knew where they were talking about).

If you feel like reading an old-school alien invasion story, I'd recommend this one. If you're not so interested in it, I'd give it a pass.

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Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

This is the story about a mad scientist who, with the help of his hunchbacked friend, create a monster from corpses and lightning.  This monster then goes on to terrorize...actually, I'm lying to you.  It's totally not that story.

There is a "monster" that's created, but it's never specified that corpses were used.  Lightning certainly wasn't.  Mr. Frankenstein (not Dr.), created this creature in his apartment.  He then freaked out and left it to wander around his college town and the countryside by itself.  It later learns how to speak perfectly and is apparently a tortured soul who wants a monster wife.  I won't bore you with further details.  If you want to be bored, you can just read the book.  There really isn't a whole lot to the plot, and the book takes forever to get there.

It's not an easy read.  It goes on forever.  It isn't interesting.  I can't recommend this book.

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

Checklist time!

• Creepy stalker vampires?  CHECK
• Girls who are into creepy stalker vampires?  NO
• Romance? CHECK
• Romance involving vampires?  NO
• Set in a frequently cloudy area? CHECK
• Teenage angst? NO
• Vampires involved in their community? CHECK (in a manner of speaking)
• Glittery-ness? NO

Now that that's out of the way, about the book:

The book is written as a series of journal entries.  At the beginning of the book, all the entries are written by one character.  It later branches out and there are entries written by several characters.  Not all of the entires appear in chronological order, so  I did get confused a few times as to which events were happening when.  Even so, it wasn't hard to follow, and was a pretty easy read.  There was a point in the book where I think the behavior of the characters wasn't very believable.  They knew a lot about what was going on, and behaved as if they didn't (I don't want to be too specific, here).

If you want to read a vampire book with a really good story that keeps you interested until the end, you should read this book.  If you want to read a vampire book filled with bad writing and a stupid plot, you should seek professional help.

I definitely recommend this book.

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