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Book Report
Jun. 16th, 2012 08:07 amIt's already time for another book report.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – I listened to an audio version of this classic book from the 19th century, partly inspired by a friend having recently reviewed it on her book report. The voice actor was incredible, managing a huge number of voices and accents with aplomb. Given that this novel is a classic, I feel a bit funny reviewing it; it’s obviously lasted far longer than anything I’ll ever write, so I think it would take some gall of me to critique it. But I have to say that as I listened to all six CDs, my mind wandered and I could rarely focus on the book or the plot. I’d listen to a CD and then go to Wikipedia to see what I had missed. I just feel that given the setting and the plot, I should have been glued to the storyline, but I wasn’t. Since it’s a classic, I won’t give it a grade; I’ll just say that it wasn’t the best novel I ever listened to but certainly wasn’t the worst either.
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick – You’ve seen this photo before, right? The fifteen year old girl in the foreground is Elizabeth Eckford, and she is trying to enter a school in Arkansas in 1957, after desegregation has been ordered. The fifteen year old white girl in the background with her mouth open is yelling racial slurs against her; her name is Hazel Bryan. The national guardsmen in the background, by the way, are not there to help Elizabeth but rather serve to keep her out of the school – and Elizabeth, at the time the picture is taken, is realizing that not only will she not enter the school that day but that the mob following her might lynch her. I’ve seen this photo before and kind of wondered about these two women, their lives, their surroundings, and how this photo impacted the Civil Rights Movement. So that’s what this book answers. I didn’t expect to be completely captivated by this subject matter, but I was. I read this book in just a few sittings. It only gets more intriguing the more you get into it; something happens between these two women 40 years after the photo is taken, and it’s something you won’t believe. Grade: A
More behind the cut.
( Read more... )
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – I listened to an audio version of this classic book from the 19th century, partly inspired by a friend having recently reviewed it on her book report. The voice actor was incredible, managing a huge number of voices and accents with aplomb. Given that this novel is a classic, I feel a bit funny reviewing it; it’s obviously lasted far longer than anything I’ll ever write, so I think it would take some gall of me to critique it. But I have to say that as I listened to all six CDs, my mind wandered and I could rarely focus on the book or the plot. I’d listen to a CD and then go to Wikipedia to see what I had missed. I just feel that given the setting and the plot, I should have been glued to the storyline, but I wasn’t. Since it’s a classic, I won’t give it a grade; I’ll just say that it wasn’t the best novel I ever listened to but certainly wasn’t the worst either.
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick – You’ve seen this photo before, right? The fifteen year old girl in the foreground is Elizabeth Eckford, and she is trying to enter a school in Arkansas in 1957, after desegregation has been ordered. The fifteen year old white girl in the background with her mouth open is yelling racial slurs against her; her name is Hazel Bryan. The national guardsmen in the background, by the way, are not there to help Elizabeth but rather serve to keep her out of the school – and Elizabeth, at the time the picture is taken, is realizing that not only will she not enter the school that day but that the mob following her might lynch her. I’ve seen this photo before and kind of wondered about these two women, their lives, their surroundings, and how this photo impacted the Civil Rights Movement. So that’s what this book answers. I didn’t expect to be completely captivated by this subject matter, but I was. I read this book in just a few sittings. It only gets more intriguing the more you get into it; something happens between these two women 40 years after the photo is taken, and it’s something you won’t believe. Grade: A
More behind the cut.
( Read more... )
