Category: Books and Reading
If you’re participating in the Aubrey-Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Schedule, then you have just reached the end of The Mauritius Command, the fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. With the end of book four we are now one fifth of the way through the series. Jack Aubrey is in the prime of his naval career, and his family is growing. Dr. Maturin’s career in espionage is bearing great fruit for the Crown, but his personal life is not what he would hope. What did you think of The...
With the completion of David Copperfield yesterday, I successfully met my Classics Club Challenge of reading fifty classics in five years! I began the challenge on my 50th birthday in 2016 and finished the final chapter of the final book on the eve of my 55th birthday in 2021. Much has happened in the last five years. I became a grandfather, transitioned from elementary teacher to school principal, began hosting reading challenges, traveled to Europe for the first time, and lived through a pandemic, to name just a...
Yesterday was the final chapter of David Copperfield in this year’s Chapter-a-Day Read-along schedule. This post is the place for you to leave your thoughts about your experience in reading Dickens’ own favorite novel of his. What did you gain from reading it? What challenged you? What uplifted you? What surprised you? It had been over twenty years since I last read the novel, and I was very pleased to discover that it was still as enjoyable and moving as the first time. I had no very clear...
Here we go! Tomorrow we begin the final book of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along and the first book of the 2022 Chapter-a-Day Read-along: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. There’s not much to prepare for in getting ready for the The Three Musketeers except to buckle up and get ready for a wild ride! Try to put any preconceived notions aside, tuck away any memories you have of movies or TV shows you may have seen, and simply let yourself sink into the prose of Dumas’ historical fiction....
This is the official sign-up post for the 2022 Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-along! You’re invited to join me in reading one of the great adventure series of all time, the D’Artagnan Romances. Each chapter averages about 8 pages, so you should only have to dedicate 10 to 15 minutes a day to reading. And if you get behind, you can catch up pretty easily. Wait, what? 2022? It’s only October, so why am I already announcing next year’s chapter-a-day read-along? There’s a special reason, and it goes all the...
If you’re participating in the Aubrey-Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Schedule, then you have just reached the end of HMS Surprise, the third book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. By this third book, we are well into the story of Jack and Stephen and all the other established characters. Battles, duels, heartbreaks, HMS Surprise has some of the most memorable scenes in the entire series. This post is for you to post your feedback about the book and the series. What did you think of HMS Surprise? Leave your thoughts,...
As the bells of Notre Dame cathedral begin to echo and fade away, we get ready to close the book on the story of Quasimodo and Esmerelda and pull the next Chapter-a-Day Read-along book off the shelf, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I have read several Dickens novels, and of them all I have the warmest feelings toward David Copperfield. But it has been almost twenty years since I last read it, and I have forgotten most of the story. I have carried these fond feelings with me...
If you’re participating in the Aubrey-Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Schedule, then you have just reached the end of Post Captain by reading a chapter a week for the last fourteen weeks. Combined with our twelve-week reading of Master and Commander, we are exactly half way through the first year of our four year odyssey through the Aubrey-Maturin books. Congratulations! As much as I enjoy Master and Commander, I feel like Post Captain is the real beginning to the series. Because Master and Commander is mostly a naval...
Today is the final day of reading Quo Vadis, the second book of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along. If you were able to adjust to the little schedule mix-up, then today is the day for reading the Epilogue and finishing the story of Vinicius and Ligia. This post is the place for you to leave your thoughts about your experience in reading Henryk Sienkiewicz’s classic. What did you gain from reading it? What challenged you? What uplifted you? What surprised you? I’ve read Quo Vadis a few times already,...
We’re only three days away from beginning Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the next book in this year’s chapter-a-day read-along. Published in French in 1831 and English in 1833, it was originally titled Notre Dame de Paris, referring to the great Notre Dame cathedral. Reading it this year is my tribute to the cathedral, which suffered a devastating fire in April of 2019. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I own an old paperback of the novel that I purchased new about thirty years ago that...
For those of you who are reading Quo Vadis as part of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along, there is an important revision to the schedule. The original schedule was based on the freely available translation by Jeremiah Curtin which has 73 chapters and an epilogue. If you are reading Curtin’s translation then you have nothing to worry about. But if you are reading the translation by W. S. Kuniczak that I recommended, the original schedule will not work for you. Kuniczak broke the longer chapters into smaller segments, so...
Today we have reached the final chapter of The Divine Comedy, the first book of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along. For the past 100 days we have accompanied Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and it has been quite the journey. I have to admit that this was one of the most challenging chapter-a-day read-alongs for me. There is so much depth to Dante’s poetry and there were so many footnotes that I feel I just scratched the surface of the poem. A daily read-along is probably not the...
