The Horse and His Boy

The Horse and His Boy was pretty adorable. Very much a childrens book but I loved it way more than I enticipated. Highly recomended:)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

A classic for sure but not without cause.

The Magician's Nephew

"The Magician's Nephew" was amazing. A beautiful masterpiece of emotion and creation.

"Mocking Jay" by: Suzanne Collins

I've just finished the final book in the "Hunger Games" series. It was fabulous. A high action, well thought out story. A wonderful final book to an already exceptional series.

Though I do feel like the book was missing some essential emotion. Though the main character is very analytical; making it possible for her to live through the hunger games and the war that followed. I still felt that either the romance should have been completely left out of the story or there should have been a better, more emotional, ending to that romance.

Even so, Suzanne Collins is an incredible story teller and her final book was phenomenal.

"The Maze Runner" by: James Dashner

Over all The Maze Runner is a very entertaining and epic sci-fi novel. I honestly did enjoy it quite a bit but it wasn't till the very end that it really started to show a good storyline. I think that the Dashner's second book in this series really will have a lot more of a surprising unpredictable feel to it. Also, it did a good job with the character development.

I can't say I loved it but it was a very entertaining concept. I think the only thing standing in the way of me saying I loved it, is that it was so predictable. I think the author gave away too much information at the beginning so it didn't have a huge amount to grow, to the point that the ending wasn't too surprising.

It did however paint a beautiful picture of survival. The Maze Runner is about a boy who comes to in a place completely forgien, a giant maze and he is in the center of it, with a group of other teenage boys. As they try to discover the maze they are also forced to try to recall previous memories of how they got there, who had placed them there, the very point of it all and most importantly, who they are.

"The Hunger Games" and "Catching Fire" by Suzane Collins

"[The Hunger Games] is a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense. . .  i couldn't stop reading."- Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

  The Hunger Games is the best series I've read in a very long time. I could not put it down. I literally read The Hunger Games (book one) and Catching Fire (book two) in forty-eight hours. I've dreamed about it and all my thoughts have been bent on it. The story line and character development is truly phenomenal. I would recommend these books in the highest degree; ten stars for Suzanne Collins.

The Call Of The Wild

So, I have just completed my second book by Jack London "The Call Of The Wild". I've become very drawn to the way he writes. London has quite the talent for portraying feelings that are at the core of any species survival. My favorite passage in The Call Of The Wild is on life and the ecstasy one feels in living...

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This  ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry , straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy  of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that  was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move." Pg. 91

London creates the most beautiful moments of understanding between reader and animal.  The humanistic feelings that the main character experiences are all feelings (on some degree) that the reader can personally relate. Feelings of fear, passion in work, hate, survival, love, and above all; a connection with the raw earth, the woods ,the fields, the moon shinning off of fresh snow.

Its so refreshing to engage in such a beautiful writing style. With action, drama, love and all the wonderful things this life has to offer to fill our days with excitement, all with a happy ending.

"The Sea Wolf" and Jack London

Jack London really is a fantastic artist of words, of psychology and ideals. London was born in 1876 to Flora Wellman and William Henry Chaney an astrologer. With the given name of John (Jack) Griffith Chaney.

Not born into wedlock his mother later married John London. Because he was born into a working class family (with two younger sisters) he began working at only ten years old selling newspapers. "Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented."-- "What Life Means to Me" from Revolution and other Essays.

His life was a hard one full of challenges and trying times. His professions in his early life were unskilled labour positions. At the age of sixteen he borrowed money and bought the sloop Razzle Dazzle and worked as an oyster pirate in the bay. "Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of "prince" but this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats and thieves by whom I was called The Prince of Oyster Pirates"--(What Life Means To Me). When his vessel was pirated he decided that he had had enough. Homeless and wandering he found himself in many places he had not hoped to be; namely, begging the streets and "sweating bloody sweats in the slums and prisons".

Nothing could have shown him the disgust of the class system and given him a better perspective of honest human nature than to witness development of adventure in a crime filled setting. After he had hit this rock bottom of despair he began his quest for what he called "the frantic pursuit of knowledge". In 1895 he started at Oakland High School and later to the University of California at Berkeley but never finished as a result of inadequate funds. But it gave him just the head start he needed and he then began writing.

First he wrote Typhoon Off The Coast Of Japan then proceeded writing numerous essays, new items, short stories and novels. In 1897 he fell part of the gold rush. It was another monstrous challenge in the effect that he did not find gold and suffered scurvy in his now famous Klondike cabin. Where he continued to write and publish.

Back in Oakland he married Bess Maddern. Then had two daughters Joan and Bess. They divorced in 1904. The Sea Wolf was first published in 1904 and the novel was set in the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. I can't help but feel strong sorrow for London, The Sea Wolf has the most beautiful romance in it. To have the knowledge that he also was suffering through a marriage that wasn't doing well at the same time of writing about the soft wonders of falling in love. A love so pure and innocent, that just her hair being caught by the wind makes his heart flutter, also its not till the very end that his main character proclaims his love. Its about fighting together and becoming closer and more intimate through life experience, learning and stepping out of the comfort zone society has created; it is the real meaning of love, to find joy in the eternal progression with your other half. It's so powerful to me to know he was writing such beauty when he was suffering such pain.   

Yet he did marry shortly after to Charmain Kittredge in 1905. It is possible that the innocent love found in "The Sea Wolf" was the innocents of his own unproclaimed  love to Charmain.

He ended his life sailing all over the world then to exist on his ranch. His death to this day is a controversy. Some say that he committed suicide; while others say that that would be completely out of character. What we do know is the cause of death "Uremic Poisoning".

Jack London has an exceptional life story which I think was the key to his success as a writer (not to mention his talent). I still feel that it is kind of overwhelming how much he did with his life, even though his challenges where so great. I believe not only was he exceptionally well learned in philosophy but he was an amazing person and writer. The Sea Wolf is an outstanding classic.