The Parting Review

I recently read The Parting, the latest of Beverly Lewis' Amish books. Admittedly, I was predisposed to liking the book before it even touched the shelves. As usual, Beverly Lewis did an excellent job of portraying the Amish lifestyle. It left me in anticipation of the next book in the series.

In an earlier post, I shared the summary that Mrs. Lewis provided on her website.

Mary Leaves Little House Cover

They finally released the cover for Mary Leaves Little House! I see that they have changed the author's name from Elizabeth Cody Kimmel to Elizabeth Kimmel Willard in order to keep the book in the same section alphabetically as the others.

I've noticed some dispute between book sites about the actual publication date; December has been listed as well as January.




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The Lily Adventures

I just recently read the first two books in The Lily Adventures series by Lois Gladys Leppard. Both Secret Money and Suspicious Identity are pretty slow paced until the end, which goes by much too fast. The resolutions of both books occur in the last few pages and leave little room for explanation. I like the ideas of the two plots, but they are not well developed. There are two more books in the series, Accidental Dreams and Mysterious Revelations, but the library system doesn't have them. Alas, I may never know how the mystery turns out. It seems to me that Mrs. Leppard could have combined the books into one because the overarching mystery is left unsolved. I would prefer a more compact, better edited version.

The books focus on the mystery surrounding the death of Lily Masterson's father. In Secret Money, Lily receives an urgent message telling her to return home to her ailing father. When she arrives, she is told that her father was killed a few weeks earlier in a horseshoeing accident. However, the death does not appear to be an accident at all. In Suspicious Identity, Lily is now living in her Aunt Janie Belle's house because her property was foreclosed. She discovers an old letter from her mother to her father telling of valuable jewelry. The jewelry is found when she sneaks into her old house to look for it. The mystery of her father's death is yet unsolved.

The Last Battle...at last!

On Friday, I finished reading The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis. Now I can say that I have read the entire series. Though it wasn't my favorite book of the series, I did enjoy it.

It begins with a seemingly innocent prank by Shift (the ape) to convince the Narnians to do their bidding by pretending Puzzle (the donkey), dressed in a lion skin, is Aslan. The prank begins to spin out of control when the Calormenes and a few wicked creatures join in. Soon, Narnia is no longer in the control of King Tirian. Jill and Eustace are transported to Narnia to help fight. When all hope of victory seems lost, Aslan comes to lead his people into paradise.

I was shocked in the end to find that Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmond, Lucy, Eustace, and Jill were all killed in a train wreck. It saddened me to see Susan scorn Narnia. Even though she was a bit of a bore, I still felt a connection to her. The end left me a bit melancholy. I knew that this new Narnia was better, but I would still miss it.

The Magician's Horse or The Boy and His Nephew

Or maybe I should say, The Boy's Nephew and The Magician and His Horse. How about The Boy's Horse and The Magician and His Nephew? Okay, I'm really talking about The Magician's Nephew and The Horse and His Boy.

I read these two books for the first time this weekend. *gasp* To be honest, I'm not sure why I haven't read them before this. After all, I do own the entire series and loved the first four books.

The Horse and His Boy is unique from the other books in the series because it takes place solely in Narnia. Shasta and Bree (a talking horse) try to flee from Calormen to the north. On the way, they meet Aravis and Hwin (also a talking horse) that are also fleeing. They escape some close calls and end up saving Archenland and Narnia from the Calormene envasion. I have to appreciate the imaginative names, though I doubt I could pronounce them correctly. It was nice to see Edmond, Lucy, and Susan again.

The Magician's Nephew is bound to become one of my favorite books in the series. It is ultimately about the creation of Narnia and how humans first came to know about other worlds. Digory and Polly are forced into traveling to the Wood between the Worlds by Digory's Uncle Andrew. Once in another world, Digory unknowingly sets loose a witch who eventually becomes the White Witch. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Digory and Polly are exploring the attic tunnel and end up in Uncle Andrew's study.

I can't wait to read The Last Battle now!

Nellie Excerpt

The new Little House book, Nellie Oleson Meets Laura Ingalls, came out almost a month ago now. I have not gotten around to reading it yet, but I did find a long excerpt of it on the Harper Collins site. Here is the beginning:

It was a mild winter, but Nellie hated it anyway. Soon after Christmas an icy-cold rain blew in and washed away all the snow. It rained for days and days. The streets in town were muddy swamps, and it seemed as if every bit of that mud got tracked into the store and scraped all over the floor. Nellie got soaked to the bone every time she stepped outside—when she went to the pump for water, when she walked to Sunday school, when she was sent to look for letters at the post office. She felt like she spent half of the winter standing by the stove, shivering and dripping and trying to warm up, with her flat wet hair plastered to her head instead of shining and curly as it should be.

I'm not sure if I really sympathize with Nellie after reading the excerpt. Honestly, I don't think she was that stuck up. Before I make a judgment, I should read the book.

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