A Cup of Tea & Biscuits

Day 10:  A Favorite Classic Book Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter seems to be a good choice if not the perfect one for me - I would've picked a Jane Austen novel, but for want of having a wider selection of books on this list, I concur to the letter 'A'. This is one of the few classic American novels I've read and I've liked it since. A lot of the psychological depth was lost on me when I first read it as a twelve year old, though I did understand the social impact of such writing. The theme of 'sin' is something everyone can identify with. People and their reactions, not so much. I held Chillingworth with contempt and anger, Hester with pity and a just amount of admiration, Pearl and Dimmesdale with silent liking. One of the main attractions of this novel is the non-conformism of Hester. Who gives society's rules and regulations a thought when you have your own life to live? This is me being the silent feminist. It remains one of my favori...

Day 9: A book I thought I wouldn't like but ended up loving Charles Dickens was forced upon me as a child. I believe it was my grandfather's doing. The Adventures of Oliver Twist was a favorite, Little Dorrit , A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield were others that I read on my own. I drew the line at Great Expectations and so was rather wary when I picked up A Tale of Two Cities . I loved it. It's a bit of a drag, but luckily for me, I was reading about the French Revolution at the same time I began the book. I liked the characterization - still do - and the history that is in this novel. Charles Darnay and Sidney Carton, though not my favorite fictional characters by any means, still remain embedded in my memory if only for their lives and the ending. Book the Third: The Track of a Storm is my obvious favorite and I'm not sure I would've liked to have read it in its original form of weekly installments. While I still look upon this book as one that forced me...

Day 8:   The Most Overrated Book I read my first Dan Brown novel before The DaVinci Code came out and the whole world wanted to jump onto the bandwagon. Digital Fortress , Angels & Demons were the first two I read and Deception Point followed The DaVinci Code. I was duly fascinated by the history and inventive stories, the attention to cryptography (I was a big time computer networks nerd at the time), and the fast pace of the novels, but all of these are, possibly, the same reasons I now think they are highly overrated. The story gets old, told to you by the same author in different situations but in the same way. By the time I read Deception Point, I was fully aware of who the bad guy was going to be and what the protagonists would do! Which is also why I read The Lost Symbol almost two years after it came out. I am well aware that 'thrillers' are generally exactly how Dan Brown writes, and he does provide a good read, but it is my belief that his books are highly ...

I await, with bated breath, this movie. Its trailer had me sighing (swooning and drooling too - for Thorin Oakenshield ) because I can go back to Middle Earth!! Yes, it's The Hobbit !!! And the dwarves sing!! Which is the whole point of this post :) Here's the complete poem , as written by Tolkien and below is what appears in the trailer of The Hobbit. Far over the Misty Mountains cold, To dungeons deep and caverns old. The pines were roaring on the heights, The wind was moaning in the night, The fire was red, it flaming spread, The trees like torches blazed with light. The Hobbit Making Of The Hobbit - Trailer

Day 7: The Most Underrated Book I'm going with Hans Keilson 's The Death of the Adversary ( see my earlier review here ). Set in the time of World War II - the beginning of, actually - it tries to answer the questions ripe in everyone's heads. Why did so many people succumb to the tyranny that Hitler brought upon the world? To Germany and the Jews? We know of the fear and the hatred people held for him, but what about individuals who were just content living their lives? This book is very anonymous, in that the 'adversary' is never named, but we all know his identity because we know history. It is designed to try and explain to you the simplicity of it all. The path of a human life in a time when it was questioned.

Day 6:   A Book that Makes Me Sad It took me a while to think through which book might possibly qualify as one that makes me sad.  Villette by Charlotte  Brontë wasn't foremost on my mind, but it does make for this category. Lucy, though not my favorite protagonist, is one to be reckoned with. The themes of the book, the loneliness, repression, and the intense feminist theme that's familiarly Miss  Brontë, keep you glued to the pages. Without giving away too much of the story, I must say that it would be the ending that made me think of this book as a sad one. The story has its plot twists and a very literal ambiguity to it, and will keep you hooked.

Once you've read the Twilight series , you know what to expect from a Stephanie Meyer book. The Host is definitely, in my opinion, much better than the tales of vampire love, probably because it's just one book that takes you through the life of a Soul inhabiting a human body. It's a quick read - took me less than two days to finish it - and an entertaining one. Wanderer, a silvery centipede-like alien, is implanted into the body of a human host, Melanie Stryder, with the hope that she will be the key to finding the human resistance that lies hidden and seems to be, in some way, fighting the invasion from these peace-loving creatures. Now living in the body of another, Wanderer finds that she cannot suppress Melanie. Her memories are too strong, and Wanderer begins to turn... human. She falls in love with the people that Melanie loves, and turns against her own kind to find Jared and Jamie. At first, she isn't accepted, because she is, after all, an alien. No one is a...