Random Musings of a Bibliophile

Bit has been a regular contributor of the blog since she was six and declared she wanted to write reviews of the books I read to her. Now for the first time she is being featured with a review she wrote on her own for a book she read on her own. The reading and writing part were required for school. She asked if I could put it on the blog too, so here it is: The Black Cauldron Reviewed by Bit (age 8) When I read The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander I sometimes had to fight back tears or laughter. When I thought about Taran and the sacrifices he made for his friends i smiled and cried at the same time. My favorite character was Eilonwy. I like Eilonwy because she is a lot like me. She likes cooking and cleaning and also likes adventures. Taran is my second favorite character. I think he kind and sacrificial. The search party Taran and Eilonwy are in is made up of good people. I think the bad person is very scary because he is making dead people alive again. The book to...

A prison that needs no guards because it regulates itself. A prison that once you enter you never leave so eventually the prison contains, not the original prisoners, but their descendants. Incarceron by Catherine Fisher has an almost irresistible premise. It is a unique setting for a fantasy novel and Fisher imported into it traditional fantasy tropes. There is a quest, a missing heir, plenty of ruffians who ambush our intrepid heroes, and an evil sorceress(?). Despite the prison setting there is also a journey (because it is required).  I really enjoyed how Fisher merged the futuristic setting with the traditional fantasy elements. Reading Incarceron was an intense and exciting experience.  Incarceron was created to be a prison, but also a a Paradise. All the undesirables were sent with a group of wise scholars into its mazes of ducts, streets, metal forests, and halls. Incarceron was programmed to provide all they needed and to regulate its world.  Now, ...

 It has been a while since I've done one of these.  I know I said there would be less time in between this one and the last but...the best of intentions and all that.  After doing the post on heroes , I said I would do villains next.  I don't feel like I can apply the word "favorite" to them.  They are, after all, unfavorable characters.  I am labeling them "most disturbing" instead. This time I put them in the order in which I was exposed to them in my literary life: Madame Therese Defarge I read A Tale of Two Cities  for the first time when I was seven.  It was this version .  Each page has an illustration.  The illustration that went with the climatic confrontation at the end of the book between Therese Defarge and Lucy is forever burned in my brain.  It was scary for a little kid to look at.  A deranged crazy lady attacking with a knife.  I loved the book and read it over and over and ...

Every time Ship Breaker popped up on my radar last year I saw words like "dystopian" and "futuristic" surrounding it.  Dystopian is not a genre I particularly enjoy so I decided to pass on reading it.  Then it won The Printz Award and I decided to go ahead and let this be my one dystopian read for 2011.  Given the award I expected to read a well crafted novel that I wouldn't enjoy very much.  I was not disappointed but I was surprised.  Ship Breaker is a finely crafted novel and I enjoyed reading it very much. Summary (from book jacket): In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota-and hopefully live to see another day.  But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life:  Strip the ship for al...

I am going to keep this spoiler free, just in case.  I mean, I can't be the absolute last person in the world to have read these books.  You won't find anything here about the plot  you wouldn't discover from reading the descriptions of all three books on the jackets.       In a future dystopian North America the country of Panem is controlled by the Capitol.  The people who inhabit the Capitol are, for the most part, useless gluttonous voyeurs who run around dressed like Lady Gaga.  There are 12 surrounding districts the Capitol oppresses.  When The Hunger Games begins it is 74 years after the end of a revolt from the districts.  The 13th district was destroyed, the other 12 surrendered.  As part of that surrender every year each district must send two Tributes, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12 and 18 to compete in a televised fight to the death.  Do you remember that story "The Lottery" ...