Percy Jackson and the Olympians

In my senior year of college, the very last thing I wanted to do was work. Senior semester was even worse. I didn't have a lot of classes and the only one I really paid attention to was my Research Seminar aka Senior Thesis. If I wanted to graduate on time (and oh boy, did I ever!) this was the one class I really had to pass. But the sun was out and I wanted to not worry about grades and classes. 

I picked up Taliesin by Stephen Lawhead and got lost in the re-imagined Arthurian Legend. I found it at a used book store and promised myself I would only buy one at a time. I made so many extra trips out of my way before and in-between classes that semester! No one spins a British legend the way Stephen Lawhead does. I mean, yes okay, Tolkien created a masterpiece that no one can touch. No one. Full stop. Sometimes, I think of Lawhead as the modern Tolkien, doing what he did on a slightly smaller scale, but just as good. You feel like you are reading a history when you read Lawhead's books. Thing is, his books are 400+ pages. They are worth it but it is an investment to finish a series. I think I got through the first three books before graduating. I bough the fifth but never picked it up. It is sitting on my shelf, all sad and lonely, because I know that if I want to understand the story, I'm going to have to start at the beginning again. 

The Pendragon Cycle is probably the last long series of books I started but never finished. After that, I kind of wrote off series. Who has the time to finish them? I was convinced that I was never going to finish all the books I wanted to read if I kept reading series with a bajillion books in them. 

Until Percy Jackson. 

I have been wanting to pick up The Lightening Thief for a while, but kept putting it off because of the series thing. The Pendragon Cycle isn't my only unfinished series and I was worried that I was starting a bad habit of starting books and not finishing them. Coffee, chocolate and books: if I start them, I must and will finish them. It's just what I do. 

I was innocently browsing in the public library and there it was, sitting in a summer reads book display, front and center. I'm not all about signs and things but after weeks of checking the shelves and not being able to find it (or forgetting to look for it...) I figured now was my chance. 

I finished it in two days and knew that I probably was going to need to read the whole series, even if it took me forever. But it didn't! Actually it took me less than two weeks to read all five...

Guys, I loved this series! It was like Harry Potter in reverse; instead of anxiously awaiting the school year to be with his friends, Percy Jackson attends Camp Half-Blood during the summer. And when I say "attends Camp Half-Blood" I mean he starts his summers there. He usually ends up, well, anywhere but camp by the end of the summer.

Rick Riordan does a fun take on classic mythology, bringing the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus to life in a hilarious way. I mean, when you have Poseidon in khaki shorts and flip-flops, it kind of changes the way you view the gods. I keep wanting to say that the gods are humanized, but I realize how that sounds. I think maybe a good way to explain it is that Riordan infuses them with color and vitality that we lack in some of the more traditional stories about them. 

Percy Jackson was my fun summer read and I am sad that I'm finished with the series. I know there are more Riordan books about the Olympians out there. Maybe I will save them for next summer! 

P.S. This post is SO LONG OVERDUE. I apologize. I'm hoping to have more posts up soon. Reading has been slow these days because it's knittin' season, ya'll!

Simple reading & Slowing down

According to Goodreads, I am 10 books ahead of my reading schedule and 55% done with my challenge. I'm really excited about making progress with this years challenge, but right now, I'm going to take a bit of a break.

I still have at least 5 books I need to review to be totally caught up, but I'm not going to do that right now. Right now I'm going to tell you a little bit about my relationship with books.
I already told you a little about how I fell in love with books last year. How that one book and the simple act of rereading it brought me into this crazy world. When I was in sixth grade, I read Gone with the Wind. I was inappropriately proud of this accomplishment because it was HUGE. I mean, seriously. This book is like 800 pages. And I read and understood it, mostly. I think that is when I fell in love with BOOKS. Not just books "oh how I love to read" but "it's huge and I'm gonna read it all and I'M BETTER THAN YOU because I can."
So, okay, a bit of an attitude problem there. I think I'm over that now, but I still get an insane sense of accomplishment when I finish a book over 400 pages. I love detailed stories that NEED that many pages to tell a story. 

Stephen Lawhead wrote a series called The Pendragon Cycle. It is five books long and even though each book is only about 450 pages (as a comparison, books 3-7 of the Harry Potter series are anywhere from 400-700 odd pages), it takes FOREVER to get through. In fact, I still haven't finished. I think I just got my hands on Pendragon (the fourth book in the cycle) around senior semester and didn't get very far.
I hear you saying, "Well okay, Harry Potter is seven books and by your own admission the last few books are huge. How does it take you forever to read a cycle of five books that have fewer pages?"
And this is when I tell you about the brilliance of Stephen Lawhead. He takes the story of Arthur and Camelot and pulls it back at least three generations. Before Arthur, before Merlin--long before any of them. He writes with such attention to detail and story. When I describe his writing, I usually liken it to Old English tales, like Beowulf. Sometimes it is hard to get through, but when you do, it is worth it.

And yet, sometimes, that is not what I need to read. I love ... and the only word I can think of here is "trudging" through a long series. The word choice alone shows that at times it is a bit of a chore. And that is part of the reason why I think I love young adult literature. The writing style is at times simple, (not stupid) but the content is not. Plus, as a rule, I can blaze through them in no time at all. Enter John Green novels. 
But unlike some adult series, young adult novels (especially John Green) speak to the reader in a very real way. The Pendragon Cycle is a good story; An Abundance of Katherines speaks to me about love and loss. I think that by nature, no matter how story driven Young Adult novels are, they always tell us something about ourselves. See also, Harry Potter. I think that is something you tend to lose in adult fiction. 
I almost went this entire post without owning up to my Nicholas Sparks weakness. Oops. There it is. 

At the end of the day, I love reading books that make me think. Books that make me USE the very expensive four year degree I earned. But sometimes, I need a break. And sometimes, that looks like young adult books, Nicholas Sparks books, and lots and lots of TV. 

PS I've finally finished Eureka. If you haven't seen the show, please. Do yourself a favor. Go watch it. It is hilarious.