Books I’ve Read

August Edition

Fablehaven:  Keys to the Demon Prison by Brandon Mull

I’m so happy to say I finished this series.  I liked it, but I didn’t love it.  Listening to the audiobooks was probably a bad call.  Some voices I loved, others I hated.  I often felt like I was trudging through a Sunday School lesson, and I couldn’t believe that Seth kept making the same stupid mistakes book after book after book.  Having said all that, though, I think they are a great series for those in the tweener age range.  Megan (14) loves them, and I think Ian (11) would love them if I could get him to take the plunge.  (He’s not a big reader of anything. )   The last book was action packed, not at all boring, and I loved how the ending wrapped up all the loose ends that had been developed over the first 4 books.  I’m glad to say I finished the series, but once was enough for me!

  Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

This was our book club pick for August.  A friend of mine has been trying to get me to read this for years, so she finally picked it for book club, so I would be forced to finally buckle down and get it done!  It’s a fictional telling based on a myth (not widely known) that back in 800’s there was a woman Pope.  It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book of this magnitude and her research on the Dark Ages was thorough and educational.  The book was extremely well written.  The plot was plausible and believeable.  What I didn’t really like was Joan’s character.   How she handled some situations bothered me.  But I think I was in the minority on this point, and almost everyone LOVED everything about the book.  I would love to get my hands on a copy of the movie version that was made a couple years ago, but it’s not available in DVD in the US.  If you buy it on Amazon, you have to have a special DVD player that will play DVD’s coded for Europe.  Weird, no?