Review: Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

What would you do if you met the Strange Men in the mountains?

Would you dare to pass the haunted tree in Sleepy Hollow at midnight?

Read about what happened to two men alone in these wild haunted places.

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Review: Pleasant Jim

Pleasant Jim by Max Brand
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The bounty on gunslinger Charlie Rizdal was high--eight thousand for bringing him in alive and five thousand for his corpse. Jim Pleasant remembered the difference just in time and stopped himself from putting a bullet through Charlie's heart. He'd take him in alive and collect the eight thousand dollar bounty. But soon after collecting the reward, Jim discovers that Rizdal's brother, Long Tom, has put a price on his head! Now, Jim is fair game to every outlaw in the territory.

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Review: The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nathaniel is a boy magician-in-training, sold to the government by his birth parents at the age of five and sent to live as an apprentice to a master. Powerful magicians rule Britain, and its empire, and Nathaniel is told his is the "ultimate sacrifice" for a "noble destiny."

If leaving his parents and erasing his past life isn't tough enough, Nathaniel's master, Arthur Underwood, is a cold, condescending, and cruel middle-ranking magician in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The boy's only saving grace is the master's wife, Martha Underwood, who shows him genuine affection that he rewards with fierce devotion. Nathaniel gets along tolerably well over the years in the Underwood household until the summer before his eleventh birthday. Everything changes when he is publicly humiliated by the ruthless magician Simon Lovelace and betrayed by his cowardly master who does not defend him.

Nathaniel vows revenge. In a Faustian fever, he devours magical texts and hones his magic skills, all the while trying to appear subservient to his master. When he musters the strength to summon the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus to avenge Lovelace by stealing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand, the boy magician plunges into a situation more dangerous and deadly than anything he could ever imagine.

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Review: Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.

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Review: Milo Talon

Milo Talon by Louis L'Amour
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Milo Talon knew the territory and the good men from the bad. He had ridden the Outlaw Trail and could find out things others couldn't. That was why a rich man named Jefferson Henry hired Milo to hunt down a missing girl. But from the moment Milo began his search, he knew something wasn't right. Three people had already died, an innocent woman was on the run, and a once sleepy town was getting crowded with hired guns. Suddenly, Milo Talon realized that there were still things he had to learn?about the woman he was trying to find, the man who had hired him, and the murderer who wanted him dead. But most of all, Milo had a few things to learn about himself. And he would have to work fast, because one mistake could cost him his life.?

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Review: The Young Forester

The Young Forester by Zane Grey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pearl) Zane Grey (1872-1939) was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and pulp fiction that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West. He became especially interested in the West in 1907, after joining a friend on an expedition to trap mountain lions in Arizona. Grey wrote steadily, but it was only in 1910, and after considerable efforts by his wife, that his first western, Heritage of the Desert, became a bestseller. It propelled a career writing popular novels about manifest destiny and the aconquest of the Wild West. a Two years later he produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912). He became one of the first millionaire authors. Over the years his habit was to spend part of the year travelling and living an adventurous life and the rest of the year using his adventures as the basis for the stories in his writings. His other works include: Betty Zane (1903), The Young Pitcher (1911), The Border Legion (1916), Wildfire (1917), To the Last Man (1922) and The Day of the Beast (1922).

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Review: The Deadly Hunter

The Deadly Hunter by Jude Watson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nobody knows her name. Nobody knows when she will strike. All they know is that she is a deadly bounty hunter--and her latest mission has taken her to Coruscant, home of the Jedi.

Her target: an old friend of Qui-Gon Jinn's.

Qui-Gon and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, make an attempt to catch her...and fail.

Now they are her targets, too.

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Review: The Warrior's Path

The Warrior's Path by Louis L'Amour
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Yance Sackett's sister-in-law is kidnapped, Yance and his brother Kin race north from Carolina to find her. They arrive at a superstitious town rife with rumors — and learn that someone very powerful was behind Diana's disappearance.

To bring the culprit to justice, one brother must sail to the exotic West Indies. There, among pirates, cutthroats, and ruthless "businessmen," he will apply the skills he learned as a frontiersman to an unfamiliar world ... a world where one false move means instant death.

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Review: The Road to Oz

The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Meet Dorothy's new friends, the Shaggy Man, Button Bright and Polychrome, as you travel with them to the Emerald City. Share their adventures with the Musicker and the Scoodlers. See how they escape from the Soup-Kettle and what they found at the Truth Pond. Find out how they are able to cross the Deadly Desert and finally get to the Emerald City of Oz.

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Walk

Ive been trying to walk more.

Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

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Review: Deceptions

Deceptions by Jude Watson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As an apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi is blamed for the death of another Jedi student. With the help of his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan must fight to clear his name. But even if he is found not guilty, he has gained an enemy for life--the dead boy's vindictive father.

Twelve years later, Obi-Wan is a Jedi Knight, with his own young apprentice, Anakin Skywalker. Anakin doesn't know about the secrets Obi-Wan is hiding. But as the past comes back to attack them, Obi-Wan and Anakin must fight deception with truth--and face off against enemies both new and old.

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Review: The Proving Trail

The Proving Trail by Louis L'Amour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

They tried to tell him that his father had killed himself, but Kearney McRaven knew better. No matter what life had dealt him, his father would go down fighting. And as he delved deeper into the mystery, he learned that just before his father died, the elder McRaven had experienced a remarkable run of luck: he’d won nearly ten thousand dollars and the deed to a cattle ranch.

Not yet eighteen, Kearney was determined enough to track down his father’s murderer and claim what was rightfully his. Now, followed every step of the way by a shadowy figure, Kearney must solve the mystery of his father’s hidden past—a past that concealed a cold-blooded killer who would stop at nothing to keep a chilling secret.

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Review: The Blue Fairy Book

The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Blue Fairy Book was the first volume in the series and so it contains some of the best known tales, taken from a variety of sources: not only from Grimm, but exciting adventures by Charles Perrault and Madame D'Aulnoy, the Arabian Nights, and other stories from popular traditions. Here in one attractive paperbound volume - with enlarged print - are Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltzkin, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Puss in Boots, Trusty John, Jack and the Giantkiller, Goldilocks, and many other favorites that have become an indispensable part of our culture heritage.
All in all, this collection contains 37 stories, all arranged in the clear, lively prose for which Lang was famous. Not only are Lang's generally conceded to be the best English versions of standard stories, his collections are the richest and widest in range. His position as one of England's foremost folklorists as well as his first-rate literary abilities makes his collection invaluable in the English language.

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