Karl's Reading List

Published by Oxford University Press: Great Britain, 1992 (1987). First published in 1894 (The First Jungle Book) and 1895 (The Second Jungle Book). I probably could have broken this "book" in half, considering that it consists of both "The First Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book", but as both Jungle Books are really just a collection of short stories - many of which (though far from all) are about Mowgli - they work together as one larger collection. Though, considering the whole collection as one book  did mean I messed up my reading challenge slightly (see the previous entry). What surprised me about the Jungle Books as a whole is that there are so many non Mowgli stories. We get a tale about a mongoose, a few from the perspective of humans that can't talk to animals, and even a few set in the Arctic region - which really stretches the idea of "jungle"...! Each of them feels a little like a folk tale or fable, and apparently some of...

Published by Macmillan Children's Books: London, Basingstoke and Oxford, 2014. I began reading this book in class when I was nearing the end of reading The Jungle Books , by Rudyard Kipling. I had selected The Jungle Books to fit the next category on the reading challenge I'm doing this year, and decided that I was near enough the end of that book that starting this one (which fits the   category after that one) was safe enough, especially since I would only be able to read this during silent reading times, and it would likely take a while. Whoops. I under-estimated how busy my home life would be, how slow The Jungle Books would be, and how quickly I'd get through this book, which probably took just over a week of class time! So, now, I find myself in the mildly annoying situation of having read a book that fits the 'robots or AI' category of the challenge, but - because of my self-imposed rule of doing them in order - not being able to use it. And I only finished i...

Published by Dragon Brothers Books, 2020 (2017). Audiobook released 02-10-21. Narrated by the author. Book 1 in 'The Dragon Defenders' series. Followed by 'Book 2.' This is definitely a children's book, with its short chapters, simple plot, the decision of the main characters to purposefully side-line their parents rather than getting their support in dealing with the main issues, and its mild obsession with getting shot in the butt. It is also the first book in 'The Dragon Defenders' series, and one that impresses me by not having any other title than 'Book 1' and the series title! I believe the rest in the series have similar titles... wow. The author, James Russell, is a New Zealander and narrates his own book - it was quite odd to hear a Kiwi accent the whole way through the story, though I suppose Elise is more used to that than I am due to my narrating most of the books we read together. He reads it fairly well. The story revolves around two ...

Published by Viking Press/Penguin Random House: London, UK, 2021. Audiobook by Penguin Audio. Released 16-09-2021.  Narrated by Lesley Manville. Book 2 in the 'Thursday Murder Club' series. Preceded by ' The Thursday Murder Club. ' Followed by 'The Bullet That Missed.' At the end of my review for The Thursday Murder Club I said "I will definitely be returning to this series." Voila. The Man Who Died Twice picks up soon after the events of Book 1, with our four heroes settling back into 'regular life' in their retirement community. However, the new peace is upended when Elizabeth's ex-husband, Douglas Middlemiss, arrives in the community incognito, hiding from a gangster who wants him dead. Elizabeth and the gang must try to protect Douglas, whilst also solving a few mysteries that arise during the proceedings. Meanwhile, Ibrahim - venturing out to town for an afternoon - is savagely assaulted by a local hoodlum, and the rest of the gang - ...

Published by Gollancz/Hachette UK: London, UK, 2024 (2023). The back cover promises a story that will appeal to fans of The Princess Bride, and that - along with being a stand-alone book that isn't over 500 pages - was enough to sell this as Elise's first exposure to Brandon Sanderson. Tress (whose real name is Glorf, but who prefers to be known as Tress due to her unruly hair) lives on a planet where the 'oceans' are made up of spores dropped from the various moons, each one a different colour and having a different (usually deadly) reaction to water. When her true love gets captured by the evil Sorceress of the Midnight Sea, Tress must sneak off her island home and set sail to rescue him. Along the way she encounters numerous characters to aid or hind her, from the talking rat Huck, to the chronically-poor-aim assistant cannonsmaster Ann, to Fort, a huge mute who can only communicate via a magical writing board. In true Sanderson fashion, each of these characters has ...

Published by Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd: Edinburgh, date unknown. First published 1823. Sir Walter Scott was an author who lived and wrote in the 18th and 19th century, and was one of the most popular authors of his day. He also was an author of predominantly "historical fiction," meaning that many of his books (this one included) were set in a far earlier time period than he was writing.  This makes reading his works doubly fascinating for me, because we aren't just getting a glimpse into the time period of the novel; we are getting a glimpse into the time period of the novel as interpreted by the time period that Scott lived in. Both are different from our modern culture, and they are individually different from each other as well. So, in Quentin Durward we get a tale of chivalry and honour set in 1468, with the norms of that time explained and justified by the norms of Scott's time - a setting and culture  doubly  removed from ours. What about the story, though? We...

Published by Knight Books/Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1979. First published 1956. Book 4 in the 'Adventure' series. Preceded by ' Underwater Adventure. ' Followed by 'Whale Adventure.' This fourth book in the 'adventure' series is a bit of an outlier in the series so far, in that it drops the idea of collecting animals altogether! Instead, as the title gives away, our heroes - the brothers Hal and Roger Hunt - join with a volcanologist, Dr Dan, to observe numerous volcanoes around the Pacific. The previous entry, Underwater Adventure, ended by suggesting that this was in order to figure out why a number of unusual eruptions had begun occurring in greater frequency, but the book ignores this. It doesn't really matter, after all! It was only an excuse to give the brothers a reason to begin this adventure; the point of the book is to tour a number of exotic locations and talk about the volcanoes within them, while giving some minor linking through ...