nursenblack

Her hair was changed to brown. And even though she is pretty she pulls off the "plain Jane" look well.

I just saw the trailer for a new Jane Eyre film! It looks really good. Mia Wasikowska, who played Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland plays Jane. It is supposed to be released to theatres March 2011 and is rated PG-13. I'm pretty excited about this!

Sea by Heidi R. Kling (YA) Fifteen year-old Sienna is still grieving after three years since her mother died in a plane crash. But, on her birthday her father gives her a plane ticket and tells her she will go with him to Indonesia to be part of a tsunmai relief team at an orphanage. Sienna is terrified, but agrees to go. In Indonesia a hash reality awaits her. But so does adventure, romance, and self discovery. Sea is a beautiful, romantic, young adult novel. A fast read, but by no means shallow. I highly recommend to young adults and adults. This is Kling's debut novel and I'm looking forward to reading more by her.(5/5) I've started One Day by David Nicholls.

If there are specific books I want and I can get a deal, like free shipping, then I buy new. But I love going to thrift stores and finding a book I've wanted! It's like finding buried treasure!

I read this last month and enjoyed it pretty well. I'm curious to see what you think.

The Geration Dead series looks pretty good. It sounds like an interesting take on zombies. I think I'll put these on my wishlist. Do you know how many books are in the series?

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd Forty-something, married, Jessie returns to her childhood home on Egret Island to take care of her possibly insane mother and falls in love or lust with a Benedictine monk. The Mermaid Chair for me was underwhelming and not what I would expect from this bestselling author. It was sort of like reading a Nicholas Sparks' novel if Sparks were actually a good writer. I thought the novel started out rather well, but turned into a sickening sap fest. Don't know if I'll read anymore by Sue Monk Kidd. (2/5) Now, I'm reading the YA novel Sea by Heidi R. Kling

Welcome to the forum! Happy reading!

I have watched the premiere of The Walking Dead! You will not be disappointed, Weave. My eyes were glued to the TV! Plus, Andrew Lincoln's southern american accent is very good. I just love him.

I ordered two Debbie Macomber books for my grandmother. I also have a list of books I want my hubby to buy me.

I just can't get into The Host! It is confusing as well as slow. I've decided to start The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd instead.

The world of Harry Potter of course! I want to go to Hogwarts school and fly on a broom!

I've finally started reading The Host after it has sat on my bookself since it came out. I'm only a few chapters in and can't get in to it at all! I find it very confusing also. I think I'm going to abandon it. I've read a lot of good reviews, so it is just me?

Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice Review from Amazon.com "In the now-classic novel Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice refreshed the archetypal vampire myth for a late-20th-century audience. The story is ostensibly a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris. But a summary of this story bypasses the central attractions of the novel. First and foremost, the method Rice chose to tell her tale--with Louis' first-person confession to a skeptical boy--transformed the vampire from a hideous predator into a highly sympathetic, seductive, and all-too-human figure. Second, by entering the experience of an immortal character, one raised with a deep Catholic faith, Rice was able to explore profound philosophical concerns--the nature of evil, the reality of death, and the limits of human perception--in ways not possible from the perspective of a more finite narrator." I love the film version of this and didn't want to be disappointed. Very interesting novel, but dragged a bit from middle to end. I love the characters and the way Rice describes them. However, I don't think I'll read anymore of The Vampire Chronicles. (3/5) I'm going to start The Host by Stephenie Meyer. It's been on my shelf since it came out.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible - 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen- 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - 38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens- 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov- 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac- 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker- 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Inferno - Dante- 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 80 Possession - AS Byatt - 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - 87 Charlotte's Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Not great, but I have several of these in my TBR pile. I find it hard to say I've not read some of these because I know them so well from film versions. I had to stop myself from "bolding" a couple.

"I see..." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window. Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice

uuuhh. That hurts my very soul. I'll have to gently caress and whisper to my copy tonight. I really didn't like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Snoozer. To be fair I only made it to page 225, but that was far enough.

I'm not quite half-way through Interview With The Vampire yet, but when I finish I will have read 30 books this year! That's impressive for me. So, my realistic goal is to read six more books by new years eve. Next year I have to shoot for at least 40.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Synopsis from Amazon.com "In The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman has created a charming allegory of childhood. Although the book opens with a scary scene--a family is stabbed to death by "a man named Jack” --the story quickly moves into more child-friendly storytelling. The sole survivor of the attack--an 18-month-old baby--escapes his crib and his house, and toddles to a nearby graveyard. Quickly recognizing that the baby is orphaned, the graveyard's ghostly residents adopt him, name him Nobody ("Bod"), and allow him to live in their tomb. Taking inspiration from Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Gaiman describes how the toddler navigates among the headstones, asking a lot of questions and picking up the tricks of the living and the dead. In serial-like episodes, the story follows Bod's progress as he grows from baby to teen, learning life’s lessons amid a cadre of the long-dead, ghouls, witches, intermittent human interlopers. A pallid, nocturnal guardian named Silas ensures that Bod receives food, books, and anything else he might need from the human world. Whenever the boy strays from his usual play among the headstones, he finds new dangers, learns his limitations and strengths, and acquires the skills he needs to survive within the confines of the graveyard and in wider world beyond." I really loved this book. It is pure imagination. I need to read some more Neil Gaiman novels now. Highly recommend. (5/5)

No, I haven't read it before. It's my first Neil Gaiman book too. I always wanted to read something of his, but had never gotten around to it until now.

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury Synopsis from Barnesandnoble.com "ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT, eight trick-or-treaters gather at the haunted house by the edge of town, ready for adventure. But when Something whisks their friend Pip away, only one man, the sinister Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, can help the boys find him. "If you want to know what Halloween is, or if you simply want an eerie adventure, take this mysteryhistory trip. You couldn't ask for better than master fantasizer Ray Bradbury," raves The Boston Globe. Originally published in 1972, this handsome hardcover reissue celebrates its 35th anniversary. It's the perfect gift for fans of Harry Potter and Philip Pullman." I remember watching an animated film version of this when I was young and thinking it was wonderful. I would love to find that film. This is considered a children's book, but is really perfect for halloween. Yet again, I love Bradbury's writing style. (4/5) Now I've started Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson Synopsis from Barnesandnoble.com: "We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, is full of a macabre and sinister humor, and Merricat herself, its amiable narrator, is one of the great unhinged heroines of literature. Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic, burying talismanic objects beneath the family estate, nailing them to trees, and ritualistically revisiting them. She has created a protective web to guard against the distrust and hostility of neighboring villagers. Or so she believes. But at last the magic fails. A stranger arrives cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune. He disturbs the sisters' careful habits, installing himself at the head of the family table, unearthing Merricat's treasures, talking privately to Constance about "normal lives" and "boy friends." Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods. The result is crisis and tragedy, the revelation of a terrible ..." I love We Have Always Lived In The Castle! Such a strange tale with wonderful characters. I've only read Jackson's "The Lottery" before this, but I think she has the gift of UNFORGETTABLE. (5/5) Since this month is October and I have always loved Halloween, I'm going to only read novels that are spooky, eerie, scary, or gothic. I've checked out Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree and Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book from the library

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield Synopsis from Publishers Weekly: Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling-and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures.(Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. It took me longer than expected to get through this novel, but I really enjoyed it overall. It is mysterious, a bit gothic, and filled with numerous references to the Bronte sisters. The whole time I read it I keep thinking of The Sisters Mortland by Sally Beauman that has the same tone to it. (4/5) Reading Next: We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

I bought Clockwork Angel a couple of weeks ago, but had no idea it was a prequel to another series! I just knew it was book one and thought I was good to go.