Karl's Reading List

Published by One Tree House Ltd: New Zealand, 2021. A very easy book to read, The Tomo follows Phil Davidson, a New Zealand teenager who is sent to work on a sheep farm over the Christmas holidays when his father - sick with cancer - is undergoing special treatment. Phil doesn't want to go, and so the family allow him to take Blue, his dad's beloved dog, with him as a treat. When Phil arrives at the farm, he firstly meets Chopper, the grumpy farm manager who sets him to work on the most menial jobs, and then later meets Emara, a girl his own age who becomes his potential love interest. Emara is also quite environmentally savvy, and has discussions with both Phil and Chopper about ways to run the farm in a more environmentally-friendly fashion. A Maori farm worker, Toko, brings the Maori perspective to the story as well, making this a book which has clear study-able themes (should a teacher choose to do it with a class of English students).  Drama arises when Blue falls down a t...

Published by Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette: London, Great Britain, 2014. Book 1 of the 'Red Rising' series. Followed by 'Golden Son.' I have heard of this book series for a while, and had been curious to check it out. The cover suggests that it is a Young-Adult series in the vein of The Hunger Games or Ender's Game , while being set on Mars. There seems to be a school of some sort which the hero is going to fight their way through in order to be accepted into a future role - so, The Will of the Many ? Or even Harry Potter ? So far, so Young-Adult cliche. And, yes... to some degree it is. But, what was very unexpected (by me, at least) is how violent this book is! Our main character, Darrow, faces the execution of his wife in the first few chapters, before being executed himself (I didn't see that coming!). Then, after being saved at the last minute, he is enlisted by an underground network of saboteurs to be 'reborn' or 'upgraded' and sneak in...

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc: London, 2007. Sometimes for Silent Reading in class, I don't have a book in mind, so pick up something random, just to be able to role-model. Sometimes those books 'grip me' enough that I carry on reading them until they make it on this list. This is one of those books. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac starts, appropriately, with the protagonist Naomi Porter awakening to realise that she has four years worth of amnesia, following a bad fall down some icy steps. She is now 16, and 'feels' 16, but can't recall anything since she was 12... including the fact that her parents are divorced, or the fact that she has learned to drive, or that she has a boyfriend. There is no guarantee that she will ever get her memory back, and so she must begin picking up the pieces and figuring out who she has become, as well as if she still wants to be the person she has become. Naomi is quite easy to relate to, even when she makes decisions that...

Published by Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, 1996 (1994). First published 1858. Book 3 in 'The Chronicles of Barsetshire.' Preceded by ' Barchester Tower. ' Followed by 'Framley Parsonage.' The third Barsetshire book I've read, and the third in the series - meaning I've finally started going in correct chronological order! Doctor Thorne moves the focus of the series from the town of Barchester to nearby Greshambury, home of the Gresham family. Well-off and slightly snooty, the Greshams do however make room in their household for Mary Thorne, the niece of the titular Dr Thorne, and allow her to grow up with their children. Frank Gresham - the son and heir of the family - develops a crush on Mary, and gushes out an over-the-top proposal to her in a beautifully dramatic scene; Trollope is at his most comical in moments like this. However, Mary is from an unknown background, and (more shockingly) is poor(!) and Frank must marry rich in order to s...

Published by Zondervan Kids: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2016 (2005). Ezekiel has reached an age where he is asking for slightly longer stories, or stories from bigger books, and The Beginner's Bible - originally a gift from his Nana and Poppa - is one he has asked for often enough that we have now officially read the whole way through it. Rather than a 'full' bible, this is stories from the bible arranged in order of appearance, told in a simplified version and with colourful and cartoony pictures accompanying each. The text never embellishes the story beyond what the original contains, but the pictures have a little more license to add in humour - with Noah spotted pushing an elephant aboard the ark in one image. Generally, the stories that are selected are kid-friendly, with elements of death and killing minimised as much as possible. The exception, of course, is with Jesus, who does die on the cross - it would be foolish to try and either ignore or minimise that death! Simp...

Published by The Text Publishing Company: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2025. Book 2 in 'The Hierarchy.' Preceded by ' The Will of the Many. ' The sequel to one of my top books from last year , The Strength of the Few picks up immediately from where the previous entry ended, without even bothering to give the sort of recaps and reminders that many sequels do. Motivations, loyalties and betrayals must therefore be recalled from Book 1, which, fortunately, do come back to mind as the book progresses. Book 1 also ended in a very unusual situation, and one which made me curious as to how this second book could work. Mild spoilers for Book 1's ending fill the remaining review... So, our main character, Vis, ended Book 1 by being split into three distinct individuals in three distinct worlds! In two of the worlds - the Egyptian-inspired Luceum and the Celtic-inspired Obiteum - he has lost an arm, while in the original Roman-inspired world he is from - Res - he has been ...

Published as an audiobook by Hodder Children's Books/Hachette Children's Books, 2013. Narrated by Jan Francis. Book 12 in the Famous Five Series. Preceded by ' Five Have a Wonderful Time. ' Followed by 'Five Go to Mystery Moor.' First published 1953. The five go on holiday to Cornwall, where they are booked in to stay on the farm of Mr and Mrs Penruthlan. Mrs Penruthlan is a warm woman with a penchance for over-feeding the children, while Mr Penruthlan is unintelligible to the children due to not wearing his false teeth (though Mrs Penruthlan understands him perfectly). The children are befriended by a small local boy named Yan who follows them around whether they want him to or not. A local theatre troupe - the Barneys - also features, turning up and hosting a few nights' worth of performances in the the Penruthlan's barn. The mystery this time around involves a light being shone from an old tumble-down tower that was originally used by criminals to tri...

Published by Bethany House Publishers: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1992. Book 3 of 'An Emerald Ballad.' Preceded by ' Heart of the Lonely Exile. ' Followed by 'Sons of an Ancient Glory.' Careful readers of this blog will notice that it has been a long time since Elise and I finished any combined book other than a Famous Five entry . That is for a number of reasons, the most prominent of which is that we have been busy with our drawn out move and hunt for a new house. A secondary reason, though, is that we had two physical books on the go at once, both of which were quite long: this one, and a fantasy novel called Dragon Wing (technically, we also have the final few chapters of Rachel's Tears, but that is a book we haven't picked up in a long time, and might still be some time away from revisiting). Anyway, both reasons are finally shifting. As of this post, we have finished this book and we have moved into our new home (hooray!). In fact, the night we finish...

Published by Faber & Faber Limited: London, 2021. A few years ago I heard that Taika Waititi was developing this novel to be his next movie. It was filmed, and then delayed, and delayed again, and then nothing was heard about it. Recently, I wondered what had happened to the film, and then became curious about the book, which led to me getting it out from the school library last week. The next day, the trailer for the movie version was released . Perfect timing, right?! The book itself surprised me, in good ways. I didn't know much about it, and resisted the urge to find out, even when the book seemed to be headed in some fairly dark directions! Klara and the Sun is told from the perspective of the titular Klara, an "Artificial Friend" (robot) who is eventually sold to become the friend of Josie, a girl who is sick from some undefined (in the beginning) illness. Klara is innocent, though not naive. She sees much and takes in a lot, but her thoughts and feelings are al...

Published by Orbit Books: Great Britain, 2013 (1991). First published 1990. Book 1 in 'The Wheel of Time.' Followed by 'The Great Hunt.' This is the first book in a series of 14, a series that I was first introduced to by one of my cousins years ago. I read through every book that had been written to that point, but the series was unfinished, so I put it down and never revisited it. Since then, the series was finished (despite the main author dying before the end!) and it has also been made into three seasons of an Amazon TV show. Anyway, finding a copy in a bookswap library inspired me to give it another go. Let's start with the 'negatives.' It's quite slow paced. It IS an epic story, that would have required a lot of books regardless of pace, but there are times when it FEELS slow. The main characters spend over 100 pages of plot before leaving their home village, there are 300 pages before we get a different POV character for the first time, and the a...

Published by Zaffre/Bonnier Books UK: London, 2021. Another book from my parents' book-swap library, this one is outside my usual genres of interest, but it still gripped me. I suppose that makes sense, as the genre in question is thriller. The set up is great. In the first chapter, our main POV character, Ellen Devlin, is sitting on the train when a woman with a baby asks to sit in the empty seat next to her. Before too long, the woman has to answer a phone call, and asks Ellen to look after the baby for a few minutes. The woman then gets off at the next station, and Ellen is left with the baby, and a note that says: Please look after Mia. Don't trust the police. Don't trust anyone. I mean, what would you do?! Ellen is a complicated character, something that we learn more about as time goes on. She is recently separated, and her ex-husband is expecting a child with his new partner. Ellen, who is barren, has wanted a child for years, and is drawn to looking after Mia, even ...

Published by Simon and Schuster Ltd: London, 2022. The same day I put Roger Moore's autobiography, My Word is My Bond , into the Book-Swap Library outside my parents' house, this book was in it. Thinking it was another similar style biography - and having enjoyed the earlier one for what it was, with some reservations - I decided to give this one a go as well. I was not prepared. Although Pocketful of Happiness is indeed another memoir, written by a respected England-based actor, who had a role in Spice World (the main point of overlap between the two actors I noticed), it is mostly focussed on the year in Grant's life when his beloved wife, dialect coach Joan Washington, was dying of lung cancer. And it is heart-breaking. Grant adores his wife, and they had 35 years of marriage together - a rarity in Hollywood circles. The love he has for her, and for their daughter Olivia (called "Oilly" by both parents, in a reference to Olive Oyl from Popeye), permeates this ...

Published as an audiobook by Hodder Children's Books/Hachette Children's Books, 2013. Narrated by Jan Francis. Book 11 in the 'Famous Five' series. Preceded by ' Five on a Hike Together. ' Followed by ' Five Go Down to the Sea. ' First published 1952. On occasion, Elise and I have noted that a particular Famous Five story might take a while to get on to the mystery itself. Five Go Adventuring Again is the first one to spring to mind in this way. However, Five Have a Wonderful Time takes this idea to the next level! Although the five are camping, and encounter some suspicious 'Fair Folk' whom they wish to befriend, the actual mystery or adventure element doesn't really kick in until literally over half the book has passed. At that point, the Five, along with returning character Jo from Five Fall Into Adventure , finally notice something suspicious in the ruins of a nearby castle - a face at a window! - and set out to find out how the face is ...

Published by Little, Brown and Company: Great Britain, 1999. A book that makes it clear from the title what it will be about, The Year 1000 is an easy read about life in the Year 1000, specifically, England in the Year 1000. The authors have taken a 'work calendar' from the era, decorated with images from everyday life, and have used those images as a launch-pad, letting each chapter be based on a 'month,' and a 'theme.'  We get looks at the Church, at farming, at trade, and even at the roles of women, which turn out to have been a lot more 'equal' than we might stereotypically think such an era would have been! For example, the authors point out that various wills from the era show that women could own and inherit property, with examples including: "Aelfflaed, a noblewoman [who]...had supervised the farming of many acres with apparent success, while Wulfgeat of Donnington clearly found nothing unusual in leaving his lands to be run by his womenfolk...

We have been living in my parents' house for two months now, and they have a lot of picture books here. As a result, we have been reading a lot of new stories to Ezekiel, and it feels only right that I should do another picture-book entry to acknowledge some of them. Keeping the list to only ten has been tricky, particularly as I also wanted to include two books we read when we went to a friend's bach at the lake a few months ago. Aside from those two, I have limited myself to books that belong to my parents, knowing that the ones we own will still be with us the next time I do one of these. As is now usual, each of these books has their own page, meaning that you can easily skip all ten if you want to just move on to the next 'proper' book on my list. Karl's List First Flight ; Good Night, Alice and Other Stories ; Skarloey ; Swiggo ; Minny Car Elise's List Just Me and My Puppy ; Dogs ; Who's Driving? ; Mosan Mouse ; I've Lost My Kisses Previous Book ~...

Published by Scholastic Press: Lindfield, NSW, 2012 (2007). Set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, I've Lost My Kisses stars Matilda, a little cow who fears that she has 'lost her kisses.' This is especially an issue for her as her Poppa is going to arrive at the airport soon, "And the first thing he always says it "Where's my big smoocheroo?" I just have to find my kisses!" Despite her mother's reassurance that "They'll be there when you need them" Matilda spends the book looking for her kisses in such places as her room, the garden, and the supermarket. In each location, when someone asks her what kisses look like, she says that she doesn't know, but that she knows what they feel like, or taste like, or sound like. Eventually, Matilda, still without having found her kisses, goes to the airport, quite upset. However, when her Poppa arrives she finds her kisses within her, and learns her lesson that they will always be there...

Published by Daan Retief Publishers: Pretoria, 1989 (1988). Also published in Afrikaans as Moesan Muis. This is a weird little picture book, which somehow makes more sense when its South African and Afrikaans origin is taken into account! Mosan Mouse, the head of his family, is hassled by his wife for not providing enough food. She asks him whether he is a man or a mouse, to which he replies: "Wife," said I, "in this house I am the man and the mouse." He then proceeds to go through the house, facing off in turn with the cat, the farmer, the farmer's wife and the farmer's daughter. Each one in turn is knocked unconscious or otherwise side-lined, leaving Mosan Mouse free to help himself to the food they have on offer. At the end of the story, he returns home and tells his wife that "now it is up to you" to go with the children to collect the food, "And never shout at me again, for it should really be quite plain: in this house I am the man and t...

Published by Western Publishing Company, Inc./A Golden Book: New York, 1985. This 'Little Critter' book tells the story of the titular Little Critter swapping a baseball glove for a puppy, and the subsequent ways in which he plays with and 'trains' his pet. Little Critter books always have an element of humour in the drawings, even when the story is being told matter-of-fact, and this exists in Just Me and My Puppy as well. As an example, on one page the narration states "My puppy is a big help around the house. He's a good guard dog." Meanwhile, the picture shows Little Critter's mother pulling the puppy away from the mailman, who has fallen on the ground, with letters everywhere. As Elise observed, the fact that the mailman is an anthropomorphic dog adds another level to the humour. Just Me and My Puppy is sweet-natured, fun, and light, with great illustrations. And it talks about dogs, a topic that Ezekiel is becoming more fond of (see also Dogs ). ...

Published by Little Mammoth/Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd: Auckland, 1993. One of two books on this list that we found at a friend's bach and read to Ezekiel while staying there (the other being First Flight ) this book actually contains three short stories, the titular story of which was by far our favourite. Briefly, the other two stories tell of a meal where Alice - a small child - exclaims "Yuck" to a lot of foods that are offered to her (not something we really wanted to inspire Ezekiel to do) and then an 'imagination game' story where Alice pretends to be a number of different characters, and gets her family to join in (more fun over all, but just ok). The titular story is the strongest, and goes through a typical bed-time routine, with Alice being read to, sung to, having some milk, saying good night to her family... all good 'wind-down' activities. There is a moment where Alice tries to stay up rather than settling down, and her mother cautions her that...

Published by Happy Cat Books, Bradfield, Essex, 1999 (1997). First published by Little, Brown and Company, USA, 1987. One of two books in this entry that we found on a shelf at a friend's bach and read to Ezekiel repeatedly over the few days we were there (the other being Good Night, Alice ).  This particular entry, written in first person, tells of a small boy taking his first flight without parents. The story outlines the steps involved: going to the airport, watching the planes arrive, boarding, having a meal, using the toilet, etc. This is all told very matter-of-factly, and would be a good book to help prepare a small child for a similar flight. It even ends with the child's grandparent collecting them from the airport after the flight. Meanwhile, the illustrations for the story add in a fun subplot that is not mentioned at all in the text: the boy is seen carrying a teddy bear with him through the airport, and yet as he boards the plane the bear becomes a real bear, who s...