The Adventures of a Constant Reader

     Today has been a fairly lazy Sunday.  My husband and I did manage to get most of the downstairs of our house clean so that made me feel a bit productive.  It's feeling no a little cooler today so we've got the windows open to catch the breeze and I've been catching up on some reading for book club.  This week we started reading The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and The Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones.  It's an interesting read so far.  Stay tuned for my review in a couple of weeks.      On a sunny day when I'm reading with the windows open I like nothing better than to have a nice candle burning.  I told you I'd do some reviews of companies who make bookish products and, since I have no finished books to review right now, I think it's a good time to do so.  Today I'm burning a candle from Frostbeard Studios      I have a few candles from Frostbeard Studios and I've also bought some tarts for my melts warmer.  So far

       I’m going to start this review by saying that I’m a huge Tolkien fan.   The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series are some of my favorite books.   I also loved The Lord of the Rings movies, but thought they ruined The Hobbit by trying to make a fairly short book into three three-hour long movies.   I had no idea that Beren and Luthien was being published until a member of my book club nominated it to be one of the books that we read.   While I greatly enjoyed the book, it’s probably best for people who are looking to learn more about Tolkien’s writing style and how his stories grew and changed instead of people who are looking to sit down and read a good story.   I say this for multiple reasons.             1. The beginning of the book contains a rather lengthy (about 40 pages) section detailing the back story, talking about Tolkien’s habit of changing and revising his stories, and describing the difference between elves, men, dwarves, and gnomes.   The only thing the

                Interestingly enough I never had to read Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea for school.   Maybe it’s because I focused more on Medieval lit than American lit.   At any rate, one of the members of my book club wants to read more classics so this is one that she nominated for reading.   I’ve also been interested in reading more American Lit so I went out and got the Barnes and Noble edition because it also has The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls in it.  I'm a sucker for the Barnes and Noble editions because they look really nice on a book shelf.                 The Old Man and the Sea is Pulitzer Prize winning novel.   It details the story of an old fisherman, Santiago, who has lost his luck with catching fish and is determined to go out and catch one more big fish.   He goes out alone, travels farther out than he typically does, and ends up snagging a large marlin.   The rest of the novel revolves around his at

I recently finished up The Maze Runner by James Dashner.  Dashner is an American young adult novelist who typically writes in the survival and science fiction genres.  I may be well past the young adult age group, but I still love to read young adult fiction.  They tend to be short, easy reads and they’re perfect for vacation or when you don’t have a lot of time to devote to reading but still want to read something.  Dashner tends to write series.  He’s written several including The Morality Doctrine, The Infinity Ring Series, and The Jimmy Fincher Saga.   My sister let me borrow her copies of the Maze Runner Series a few months ago and I finally started reading a couple of weeks ago.  Typically it doesn’t take me long to read a book of this size but I’ve found this one hard to get into.  I don’t know yet if it’s because of the writing itself, or because I’ve already seen the movie and the movie stuck fairly close to the plot of the first book.  For those of