Search Results for : stephen king

Beach Party by R.L. Stine

 in Book Reviews / Books by

Summary

Karen invites her friend Ann-Marie to stay at her dad’s apartment over-looking the beach. They plan to party all summer, enjoying the sun, sea, and sand. The fun starts for Karen when she meets two new guys. But which one should she choose, Jerry who is so handsome, or Vince, so deliciously dangerous?

-Amazon.com

Review

I personally don’t like R.L. Stine. A lot of younger readers enjoy it because it gives them a scare and a thrill. But for me, a teen, I find that these books border on horrible. They have no story line, no point to them, and don’t scare the reader. The Goosebump series is in the juvenile section of my library, but the other books by R.L. Stine (The Babysitter series, Point Horror series) are in the YA section. But these books are definitely for the younger end of YA, like the 12 year olds. If you pick this book up hoping for a scare, you should just put it down. This book is not worth your while. If teens want a really good thrill, try reading Stephen King. I read Misery and if you want scary, Stephen King is the thing for you. They are what I would call horror. These books are not. They don’t have anything scary happening. The book is also really easy as I read it in about 5 hours (not even).

Younger readers might find this book “scary” as they have not read a lot of things like this. But once you get to YA and you have read all of the other books out there, and have watched those scary movies, you don’t get scared at all and it is just a read. Yes it may be a good beach read because you don’t have to concentrate and it is quick.

There are people who like it but I am just not one of them. This is a good book for reluctant readers because it is easy and it would keep them interested.

But this is my opinion. Pick it up and give it a try if you want, but this is not a book for scares.

Tell me what you think.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

 in Book Reviews / Books / Fiction / History / Interesting / Otherworldly by

Summary

In this 114 year old novel, Bram Stoker tells the horrorfying story of a century old vampire terrorizing Mina Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, Jonathan, and many others. This story is about the fight of the fittest. The fight between the Immortal and the Mortal. Between the Dead and the un-Dead. With Dracula loose in town there is no telling what will happen, when it will happen, where it will happen. This is no bed time story – and there is no happily ever after.

Review

Finally, after many hours of reading this book it is finished. I think that this is the only book that took me about two months to read. You might be wondering why it took me so long to complete this novel. It was because of the writing. This book is written in proper English. Not  simplified, modern-day, easy-to-read English. You might think that reading Stephen King is hard because it is adult writing, but if you compare Bram Stoker to Stephen King, King is so much easier. This is because this book was written 114 years ago and the writing style was very different then. So, if you are planning to read this book be prepared for longer sentences (I mean like paragraph long sentences with lots of commas, semi-colons, colons  and so on), complex ideas, complex words and smaller print.

Also this book was not written in the third person but in different views. It was written like a journal of all the characters mushed up. It is hard to explain how it was written but it was an interesting style. You will have to read or look at the book to understand what I am saying.

Bram Stoker did a very good job writing this book because it was exciting, and things happened which you didn’t expect. I am not going to say that it kept you turning pages because sometimes I just did not want to turn the page because it felt a little boring in places. I was dragging this book out. When I said that it was “boring” and  my mother heard me say that  she said that I found Dracula “boring” because most YA books are so packed with action. It is like boom, boom, boom one thing after another. Like movies in 3D, lots of action and noise to keep you going. Books today have much shorter sentences. You don’t have to concentrate so long. Just compare a Dan Brown paragraph to a Bram Stoker paragraph, then you will see just what I mean.

This book was a gift from my Secret Santa from the Holiday Swap and as soon as I opened the box in December and I saw that book I was like, “GOT TO READ IT.” My mom warned me that it was going to be different. She warned me that it was going to be harder. But being the person that I am, I ignored her. Now that I look back, maybe I should have listened and waited a bit. Now that I have finished this book, on my vacation, I am going to have a Dracula Movie Fest and watch all of the Dracula movies. The one with Bela Lugosi, the Mel Brooks spoof, and any other one which I am allowed to watch. Let’s see who does the best version. Stayed tuned for more!

I hope that there are a few brave souls (don’t want any sole-less people reading this now do we?) out there would will embark to read this book. If you do, enjoy, and if you do not, I hope that you do read it one day.

451 Challenge – 451 Fridays

 in Blog Events / Book Events / Books / Fun / Interesting / Library / Loving Language / Young Adult by

 I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 at school and we just finished watching the movie today and the last scene of the movie got me thinking. What happened was the “Book People” are walking around reciting the books which they had committed to memorize. If you have read the book then you will understand what I am talking about and if you have not then it is tough luck for you. You will have to read the book to find out.

This last scene then reminded me of a blog which I had come across. 451 Challenge. This blog is no longer in use as far as I can tell because there has not been a post since April of 2010 but I think that I would like to try and continue on this little idea. What you have to do is choose a novel and commit to memorizing it. I think that I am going to try and memorize Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Night by Elie Wiesel or the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  I know that this is a lot to commit to doing but even if you just memorized a part of a book. Like if a book is put into parts try to memorize the first part of the book. I think that this is a great idea. So leave your name and your blog in the Mister Linkey thing or if you do not have a blog leave your name in the comment section. I would really like to get a lot of people to do this because it would really be fun.

The list is really long but the books are all really good choices. If there is a really good novel that is not on this list tell me what it is and I will add it to the list. Also poems are a good thing to start to memorize to practice because they are smaller (usually) and you can memorize a bunch of them so if you do not want to commit to an entire book, try to commit to a few poems. But try to do classic poems.

Also if you do join in, please share a link on your blog to my post. Thanks.

  • 1984 – George Orwell
  • A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
  • A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
  • A Confederacy of Dunces – John O’Toole
  • A Solitary Blue – Cynthia Voigt
  • A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
  • Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
  • Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
  • Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
  • Ashes in the Wind – Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
  • Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
  • Atonement – Ian McEwan
  • Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
  • Blake’s Poetry & Designs – William Blake
  • Blindness – Jose Saramago
  • Call It Sleep – Henry Roth
  • Calvin and Hobbes – Bill Watterson
  • Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
  • Centennial – James Michener
  • Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
  • Collected Poems – Robert Frost
  • Collected Poems – William Butler Yeats
  • Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Cry, The Beloved Country – Alan Paton
  • Demonology – Rick Moody
  • Devil in the White City – Erik Larsen
  • Diaries of Anais Nin – Anais Nin
  • Different Seasons – Stephen King
  • Dr. Seuss’s ABC – Dr. Seuss
  • Dr. Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
  • Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
  • Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
  • Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
  • Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
  • Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise – Ruth Reichel
  • Geek Love – Katherine Dunne
  • Going After Cacciato – Tim O’Brien
  • Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
  • Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
  • Greengage Summer – Rumer Godden
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
  • I Am America and So Can You! – Stephen Colbert
  • I Am David – Ann Holm
  • In This House of Brede – Rumer Godden
  • Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
  • Islandia – Austin Tappan Wright
  • Izzy Willy Nilly – Cynthia Voigt
  • Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
  • Jitterbug Perfume – Tom Robbins
  • Julius Ceasar – William Shakespeare
  • Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling
  • Legends of Pensam – Mamang Dai
  • Les Miserable – Victor Hugo
  • Little Boy Lost – Marghanita Laski
  • Little Women – Louise May Alcott
  • Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
  • Long Day’s Journey Into Night – Eugene O’Neill
  • Love You Forever – Robert Munsch
  • Macbeth – William Shakespeare
  • Mary Poppins – P.L. Travers
  • Maus – Art Spiegelman
  • Maus II – Art Spiegelman
  • Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis
  • Middlemarch – George Eliot
  • My Invented Country – Isabel Allende
  • Night – Elie Wiesel
  • Night at the Circus – Angela Carter
  • Nursery Rhymes – Mother Goose
  • Out of the Silent Planet – C.S. Lewis
  • Paco’s Story – Larry Heinemann
  • Paradise Lost – John Milton
  • Parthian Stations – John Ash
  • Peace Like a River – Leif Enger
  • Perfume – Patrick Suskind
  • Persuasion – Jane Austen
  • Piercing the Darkness – Frank Peretti
  • Pitch Dark – Renata Adler
  • Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
  • Quarantine – Jim Crace
  • Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
  • Rasero – Francisco Rebolledo
  • River’s End – Nora Roberts
  • Roots – Alex Haley
  • Sam Bangs and Moonshine – Evaline Ness
  • Sea Glass – Anita Shreve
  • Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 – Nathaniel Philbrick
  • Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
  • Silence – Shusaku Endo
  • Small Gods – Terry Pratchett
  • South Riding – Winifred Holtby
  • St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
  • Summer of my German Soldier – Bette Green
  • Ten Tales Tall and True – Alasdair Gray
  • Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights
  • The Autograph Man – Zadie Smith
  • The Awakening – Kate Chopin
  • The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Beginning and the End – Naguib Mahfouz
  • The Best Christmas Pageant Ever – Barbara Robinson
  • The Blindfold – Siri Hustvedt
  • The Blue Castle – L.M. Montgomery
  • The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
  • The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
  • The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
  • The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Complete Works of Shakespeare – William Shakespeare
  • The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexander Dumas
  • The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court – Peter Irons
  • The Double Helix – James D. Watson
  • The Dragonridgers of Pern – Anne McCaffrey
  • The Family from One End Street – Eve Garnett
  • The Far Pavilions – M.M. Kaye
  • The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
  • The Giver – Lois Lowry
  • The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
  • The Golems of Gotham – Thane Rosenbaum
  • The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
  • The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
  • The Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling
  • The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
  • The Hiding Place – Corrie ten Boom
  • The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
  • The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkein
  • The Hours – Michael Cunningham
  • The Iliad – Homer
  • The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
  • The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
  • The Joy of Cooking – Rombauer, Becker, and Becker
  • The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
  • The Lions of Al-Rassan – Guy Gavriel Kay
  • The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  • The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkein
  • The Love of a Good Woman – Alice Munro
  • The Magic of Ordinary Days – Ann Howard Creel
  • The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
  • The Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux
  • The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
  • The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
  • The Ring and the Book – Robert Browning
  • The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 – Sue Townsend
  • The Shadow of the WInd – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  • The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
  • The Sleep Book – Dr. Seuss
  • The Stand – Stephen King
  • The Story Girl – L.M. Montgomery
  • The Story of a Mariage – Andrew Sean Greer
  • The Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffinegger
  • The Way of Herbs – Michael Tierra
  • The Worst Hard Time – Timothy Egan
  • The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon
  • This Present Darkness – Frank Peretti
  • Time and Again – Jack Finney
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
  • Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
  • Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
  • Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
  • We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
  • We the Living – Ayn Rand
  • We Were the Mulvaneys – Joyce Carol Oates
  • Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein
  • Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson
  • Women in the Wall – Julia O’Faolian
  • Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig

Count of This Years Books

 in Books by

Now that the year is now over and we are in 2011 – the year of the rabbit – it is time to count just how many books I have read and tally up the pages. It was a lot more than I though I was going to read and now see what I have read and try and work your way through my list. I enjoyed almost all of the books and I have reviewed almost all of the books too. If there is a book on here that is not reviewed yet, let me know, but I will try and get around to reviewing them all. Enjoy and Happy New Year!!!!

  1. Traces: Framed       Luke Harding FI     by Malcom Rose     223 pgs.
  2. The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan    375 pgs.
  3. Spy High    Mission 1     by A.J. Butcher      196 pgs
  4. ODD and the FROST GIANTS by Neil Gaiman    117 pgs.
  5. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen    292 pgs.
  6. The Bridesmaid by Hailey Abbott 266 pgs.
  7. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz 234 pgs.
  8. Warrior The New Prophecy     Dawn by Erin Hunter 335 pgs.
  9. Warriors The New Prophecy     Moonrise by Erin Hunter    287 pgs.
  10. Point Blank     by Anthony Horowitz    215 pgs.
  11. The New Prophecy       Warriors       Starlight by Erin Hunter 352 pgs.
  12. The New Prophecy       Warriors      Twilight by Erin Hunter 352 pgs.
  13. Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz 336 pgs.
  14. Super Edition   Warriors    Bluestar’s Prophecy 554 pgs.
  15. Super Edition    Warriors Firestar’s Quest 544 pgs.
  16. SilverFin by Charlie Higson 352 pgs.
  17. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K Rowling 784 pgs.
  18. Power of Three    Warriors    The Sight by Erin Hunter 400 pgs.
  19. Night by Elie Wiesel 120 pgs.
  20. Max Cassidy  ESCAPE FROM SHADOW ISLAND by Paul Adam 304 pgs
  21. Power of Three    Warriors    Dark River by Erin Hunter 352 pgs.
  22. Scorpia by Anthony Horowitz 400 pgs.
  23. Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz 326 pgs.
  24. Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz 388 pgs.
  25. Power of Three    Warriors     Outcast by Erin Hunter 352 pgs.
  26. THE STONE HEART TRILOGY    Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher 510 pgs.
  27. The Princess Bride by William Goldman 450 pgs.
  28. Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson 272 pgs.
  29. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown 372 pgs.
  30. Percy Jackson  The Sea of Monster by Rick Riordan 304 pgs.
  31. Power of Three    Warriors   Eclipse by Erin Hunter 352 pgs.
  32. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer 544 pgs.
  33. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer 576 pgs.
  34. Nightshade by Andrea Cremer 528 pgs.
  35. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer 649 pgs.
  36. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer 768 pgs.
  37. Angels and Deamons by Dan Brown 608 pgs.
  38. Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes 240 pgs.
  39. Da Vinchi Code by Dan Brown 608 pgs.
  40. Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko 240 pgs.
  41. The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancy 339 pgs.
  42. Animal Farm by George Orwell 141 pgs.
  43. Misery by Stephen King 352 pgs.
  44. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart 512 pgs.
  45. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly 352 pgs.
  46. Mortal Instrument Series   The Infernal Devices   Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare 476 pgs.
  47. Alex Rider #8 Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz 400 pgs.
  48. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 208 pgs
  49. The Invisible Order – Book One – Rise of the Darklings by Paul Crilley 333 pgs
  50. Mortal Instrument Series         City of Bones       by Cassandra Clare 485 pgs

Total Pages Read This Year – 17,609 pgs.

That total might not seems like a lot but when you look at how big the books are, it is an enormous amount. Also the total is slightly under because I went to Amazon and looked at their page count and they did not have same edition I read. So I have more that 17,609, but it is close enough. 🙂

October Is Mystery Month

 in Book Events / Books / Interesting by

There is nothing better than a good ‘who done it’. Everyone loves a good mystery whether it is Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, Stephen King or Jonathan Frazen.

WHO?

Jonathan Frazen.

Who is he you might ask. A writer of some merit, but not YA or children’s books. He is a writer of literature. Adult literature. And he is famous for having offended Oprah by refusing to appear on her show, or something like that. Anyway, it seems that while attending a book signing in London someone stole his glasses.

Right off his face!

Imagine that, right off his face. Creepy if you ask me.

And they left a ransom note
What kind of a person does this?
Someone who doesn’t like his books?
Who ever said the literary world was dull?

M.O.M.