Fiction Friday #10 - The Oddest Books
"You read the oddest books!"This was the exclamatory remark I received from my co-worker Carla today when she asked what I was reading and was shown the cover of The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes Volume I.Now, I argued that Sherlock Holmes is a classic and most definitely not odd, though I doubt I convinced her! I find the Sherlock Holmes stories I've been reading to be quite interesting.I also pointed out to her that I have been reading plenty of young adult books with my students lately and wanted something a little different for this weekend.As I look back at the books I've read in the last few weeks since spring break, I realized that it is a bit of an odd collection. However, most of them have been thoroughly enjoyable!
My best friend Kelley found me a great set of all but one Little House on the Prairie books while I was off in Springfield for spring break, so reading them seemed like a great option as soon as I got back. Now, I read Little House on the Prairie back in November as part of my kids classics binge and truly enjoyed it. I don't remember reading these books as a kid, but I'm loving them as an adult. I have just read Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. If you have lived your whole life under the same rock I apparently grew up under and don't know anything about these books, they are the semi-autobiographical stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura Ingalls and her family lived off the land wherever they lived the big woods, the prairie, the banks of plum creek, or the shores of silver lake. What I loved about Little House in the Big Woods was the chapter that talks about Sugar Snow. It's all about how late season snows can cause maple trees to produce large amounts of sap. Well, about a year ago, my cousin wrote a blog post about how they had just had a sugar snow, and I so badly wanted to read the Little House book she referenced so I could fully understand what she was talking about! Now I have! It was fun to think of my family that still does this while I was reading about how they used to do it in the late 19th century.
Farmer Boy takes a step away from Laura's family to tell some stories from her husband Almonzo Wilder's life as a young boy growing up in the woods of upstate New York in the 1860s. I was constantly amazed by how the Wilder family completely and totally provided for themselves. They bought virtually nothing! They had money to buy goods, but they preferred to live off the land, make everything on their own, and save the money they made from selling many of their excess goods. In a world where it's hard to find people who bake from scratch (after purchasing the ingredients), it was fascinating to read about how they used to do it! It almost makes me want to cut all ties to the modern world and live off the land out in the woods somewhere, but not quite. I'll just be proud that I can still bake!Sidenote: The Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum is located in Mansfield, MO about an hour from Springfield. I desperately wanted to go back in November when I read Little House on the Prairie, but it was closed for the winter. I'm hoping that I will be able to get through the rest of these books before too long, so I can hit up the museum when I'm in Springfield this summer!!
A few of my kids at school have been reading a series entitled On The Run by Gordon Korman. The six-book series follows siblings Aiden and Meg Falconer as they escape from a juvenile detention farm (where they have been wrongly placed) to find evidence to prove that their parents aren't guilty of selling national secrets to terrorists. Chasing the Falconers, The Fugitive Factor, Now You See Them Now You Don't, The Stowaway Solution, Public Enemies, and Hunting the Hunter track Aiden and Meg from Nebraska to Chicago, from Boston to LA, from a ship out on the open sea to Denver as they fight for their family. They struggle to find breadcrumbs to piece together what got their parents caught up in the trouble they are in and struggle to stay free of cops long enough to find what they're looking for. The story contains some pretty unpredictable twists and some predictable points, but it was a quick, fun read overall. I'm excited for my kids to get through all of them so we can chat about them.
The other day at work, we started doing some testing with the kids, which meant a lot of down time for me to read. I wanted to read something fun and interesting, but also something I had read before so it didn't matter if I was being interrupted frequently. I settled on reading the Harry Potter books again. Let me just say that in the few years that have passed since I read them all, I forgot not only a lot of the details but also how great the stories are. This week I read through books one and two: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. These first two books spend a lot of time acclimating you to the fictional wizarding world that J.K. Rowling created. She did an amazing job of weaving important details into the story in a manner that made them feel almost insignificant until it came up again later, which is nice because so many authors beat you over the head with their fore-shadowing that the end of the book has no excitement. The Harry Potter books have such great characters, themes, and stories that it's hard not to like them. If you have some time on your hands and you're looking for something interesting to read, I would highly recommend checking these ones out. (Disclaimer: If you're wanting to read these with your kids, I would recommend reading ahead of your kids because the later books have more mature themes that might be too much for young kids.)As much as I enjoyed these books, by the end of the week, I was ready to read something actually aimed at adults. Which is why I went back to reading The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes Volume I. I got this for Christmas and have been slowly chipping away at it one story at a time! I promise I'll let you know what I think of it when I'm done!