But since summer draws to a close, I
figured it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on what I have
been reading over the course of May through August.
1. The Hound of the Baskervilles by
Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
I've always really enjoyed Sherlock
Holmes since I was a kid. Growing up, I read a short story here or
there, watched adaptations on Wishbone, passively enjoyed a weekday
morning cartoon that placed him in the 22nd Century,
things like that. And since then, I have loved the BBC's current
adaptation, and have found myself pleasantly surprised by the films
starring the incomparable Robert Downey, Jr. So this year, I managed
to track down a few of the books and read them. Honestly, these two
books could not be more different from each other. The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes is a collection of some of the short stories, and
each one is quick, direct, and concise. It's not bad, but sometimes
it feels like the story ends just as it gets interesting. The Hound
of the Baskervilles, on the other hand, wonderfully takes its time.
There is a sense of enjoyment that comes from just the nature of the
narration, the way words flow together and describe things in such a
slow, lush way. This novel definitely takes the reader along with
it, which stands in stark contrast to the short stories often
featuring an arrest long before most of the evidence is even shown.
I did enjoy both books, but it is not a stretch for me to recommend
The Hound of the Baskervilles much more highly.
3 and 4. Kingdom Hearts volumes 1 and 2
by Shiro Ama
Not everything I read this summer was
high literature. In this case, some of it was a manga adaptation of a
popular video game franchise. In this case, it was Kingdom Hearts, a
JRPG video game crossover between Square Enix's blockbuster Final
Fantasy franchise and assorted Walt Disney films. If that sounds like
an odd choice of things to crossover, it is. But the games work well
due to enjoyable gameplay and beloved characters. You kind of lose
the first half of that with a manga adaptation, though. But I can't
really give this much of a review, since manga is a difficult medium
for me to really get into. The way storytelling moves along in often
cluttered pages is not something I find easy to read, at least when
it comes to action series. But fans of the games and manga
enthusiasts might have a different take on this.
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by
Lewis Carroll
I've been meaning to read this for the
longest time, and I am quite glad I did. It was a very enjoyable
read. It's always an interesting experience reading something that
you know only from adaptations. I was surprised to find that Alice
was not as sensible and blameless in things happening as some
versions have suggested. Altogether it is a very fun children's
book, and it can be read as a very interesting study on
post-modernism, regardless of what the original intent was. Hey, I
never said I wasn't pretentious.
6. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry
Pratchett
Though I read a number of good books
this summer, if it came right down to it, this would be my favorite
of them. I adored this book from beginning to end, and I had
troubles putting it down. When the final page ended, I went back and
read the publication information, praise blurbs, and every single
other word in the book, just so that I didn't have to stop reading
it. I could get into the plot, but that would take so long, and there
are probably many other places that can summarize it coherently. I
can say though that the characters are fantastic, the plot is great,
its interpretation of Revelations is really interesting, and it is
extremely funny when it tries to be funny, incredibly exciting when
it tries to be exciting, and incomparably heartwarming basically all
the time. Read it, you fools!
7. The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya by
Nagaru Tanigawa
This is the seventh book in a series of
Japanese light novels that I am thoroughly enjoying. There are
actually somewhere around ten books in the series, but they are being
officially translated into English and released gradually. In any
case, this was probably the best entry in the series since the fourth
book. The pacing was good, and I was pleased to see almost every
character get some development over the course of the book. A lot of
the books will focus on just a few characters, or feature stories
that really only develop one, but this novel managed to grow the
roles of each main character and even one of the minor characters. A
lot of questions are answered in this volume, and more than a few
more are raised. This is definitely a great book in a great series.
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