Thursday, November 7, 2013
6th Grade
Ben Hur ****
Free Audio Book.
Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1st century. His old friend Messala arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions. They become bitter enemies. Because of an unfortunate accident, Ben-Hur is sent to slave in the mines while his family is sent to leprosy caves. As Messala is dying from being crushed in a chariot race, he reveals where Ben-Hur's family is. On the road to find them, Ben-Hur meets the Christ as he is on the road to Golgotha to be crucified. That day changes Ben-Hur's life forever, for that is the day he becomes a believer
Review: .Rachel N rated it 5 of 5 stars
INCREDIBLE! I found this book to be on the same par as Les Miserables. The story begins with the birth of the Christ Child and a detailed depiction of the journey of the Three Wise Men (what could have happened), and ends with the Crucifixion of Jesus. In between these two world changing events is the story of a man (Ben Hur) from a wealthy family who is deeply betrayed by a Roman friend. He ends up in the bowels of a ship as an oarsman – a grueling job. Ben Hur’s life journey is described in gripping and transparent detail. Ultimately, he is forced to choose revenge or forgiveness. And then, with the reappearance of the Christ – no longer a child – now a man, Ben Hur must come to terms with the fact that Jesus has not come as a political deliverer… the rest you must read on your own
Review:
Al rated it 5 of 5 stars
A fantastic story of love, betrayal, revenge, family and Christianity.
The story takes place from the time that Christ was born to a few year after his death, yet it follows a character named Judah who has been wrongly convicted as an assassin by the Romans, betrayed by his best friend no less. This is one amazing journey that the hero takes to carry out a plot to seek out revenge on his once close friend turned enemy.
One thin that stunned me while reading is how vivid Lew Wallace wrote the scenery, you could just see the details of the streets, hear the trampling of the horses, you would freeze at the shouting of "Unclean! Unclean!".
This book took me a while to read, but I am so glad that I picked it up. It is just as mandatory to read for a Christian as "Pilgrim's Progress". Just as I said before about how vivid it is, in the last sixty or so pages you will feel that you are witnessing the gospel before you, it is something special.
The story takes place from the time that Christ was born to a few year after his death, yet it follows a character named Judah who has been wrongly convicted as an assassin by the Romans, betrayed by his best friend no less. This is one amazing journey that the hero takes to carry out a plot to seek out revenge on his once close friend turned enemy.
One thin that stunned me while reading is how vivid Lew Wallace wrote the scenery, you could just see the details of the streets, hear the trampling of the horses, you would freeze at the shouting of "Unclean! Unclean!".
This book took me a while to read, but I am so glad that I picked it up. It is just as mandatory to read for a Christian as "Pilgrim's Progress". Just as I said before about how vivid it is, in the last sixty or so pages you will feel that you are witnessing the gospel before you, it is something special.
http://librivox.org/ben-hur-a-tale-of-the-christ-book-1-by-lew-wallace/
Penrod ****
Free Audio Book.
A timeless novel in the spirited tradition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn One of the most popular American authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pulitzer Prize winner Booth Tarkington was acclaimed for his novels set in small Midwestern towns. Penrod tells of a boy growing up in Indianapolis at the turn of the twentieth century. His friends and his dog accompany him on his many jaunts, from the stage as the Child Sir Lancelot, to the playground, to school. They make names for themselves as bad boys who always have the most fun. Nearly a century after it was first published to incredible popularity and acclaim, Penrod remains wildly funny and entertaining to adults and children alike.
Review: Brambly Hedge rated it 5 of 5 stars
I laughed out loud so much while reading this book. What a brilliant delight to read! This is the first Booth Tarkington book I've read, but I will definitely be reading more. He proves a superb storyteller with an exceptional command of language. The story is in the fashion Little Rascals or Sawyer and Finn stories, but the vocabulary and structure used is more extensive.
Care must be taken to acknowledge societal norms and ideas at the turn of the 20th century in the mid-west, especially as understood from the viewpoint of an 11 year old boy. These topics do not come up constantly but they are a part of the life of 11 year old Penrod Schofield, his friends, and family, and the author's life as well.
Care must be taken to acknowledge societal norms and ideas at the turn of the 20th century in the mid-west, especially as understood from the viewpoint of an 11 year old boy. These topics do not come up constantly but they are a part of the life of 11 year old Penrod Schofield, his friends, and family, and the author's life as well.
Review: Brambly Hedge rated it 5 of 5 stars
I laughed out loud so much while reading this book. What a brilliant delight to read! This is the first Booth Tarkington book I've read, but I will definitely be reading more. He proves a superb storyteller with an exceptional command of language. The story is in the fashion Little Rascals or Sawyer and Finn stories, but the vocabulary and structure used is more extensive.
Care must be taken to acknowledge societal norms and ideas at the turn of the 20th century in the mid-west, especially as understood from the viewpoint of an 11 year old boy. These topics do not come up constantly but they are a part of the life of 11 year old Penrod Schofield, his friends, and family, and the author's life as well.
Care must be taken to acknowledge societal norms and ideas at the turn of the 20th century in the mid-west, especially as understood from the viewpoint of an 11 year old boy. These topics do not come up constantly but they are a part of the life of 11 year old Penrod Schofield, his friends, and family, and the author's life as well.
http://librivox.org/penrod-by-booth-tarkington/
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Free Audio Book.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (French: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax.
Review: Marvin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition
Shelves: science-fiction, kindle
Another book on my quest to rediscover the childhood joys of reading Jules Verne and to hopefully find some adult insights that were hidden from me as a child.
I think I may have loved it a little less as an adult but it is still a marvelous adventure travelogue. As a child, Jules Verne's colorful descriptions of undersea wonders opened my eyes and mind. Now I still think they are amazing but I see it as a 18th century costume adventure. Unlike a lot of readers, I found Verne's listings quite marvelous to read. Yet, this time I was also more aware of the relationship between Professor Aronnax and Ned Land, the Canadian harpooner. Each of these characters present opposites. Aronnax is sophisticated, learned, and a bit arrogant. Ned Land is uneducated, brutish, quick-tempered but comfortable with himself. But Aronnax is often wrong in his conclusions and Land is often right! In the early part of the novel, Aronnax is trying to convince the skeptical Land that a sea creature powerful enough to destroy a ship can exist. He sets out a formula showing how immense a serpent needs to be in order to withstand underwater pressure, to which Land exclaims, "Why they must made of iron plates eight inches thick!" And in fact Ned is right and Aronnax wrong. The sea serpent is not a live monster at all but a submarine with eight inches of iron plate! Often, Ned's practicability wins out yet I think Verne was often demonstrating that essences of both intellect and common sense need to work together in order to be victorious.
And of course there is Captain Nemo. He is and remains a cipher. He represents both nihilism and misguided idealism. Nemo wants a perfect world but is reduced to self-exile and perhaps even self-loathing. Nemo is the mirror in which the other character see themselves. He is both one of the most memorable personages in literature yet also one of the most mysterious and perplexing.
So Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea remains a wonderful sci-fi adventure tale even taking in its antiquity. But I also enjoyed the characters of this novel more the second time around and was able to catch the marvelous nuances which Verne placed on them.
I think I may have loved it a little less as an adult but it is still a marvelous adventure travelogue. As a child, Jules Verne's colorful descriptions of undersea wonders opened my eyes and mind. Now I still think they are amazing but I see it as a 18th century costume adventure. Unlike a lot of readers, I found Verne's listings quite marvelous to read. Yet, this time I was also more aware of the relationship between Professor Aronnax and Ned Land, the Canadian harpooner. Each of these characters present opposites. Aronnax is sophisticated, learned, and a bit arrogant. Ned Land is uneducated, brutish, quick-tempered but comfortable with himself. But Aronnax is often wrong in his conclusions and Land is often right! In the early part of the novel, Aronnax is trying to convince the skeptical Land that a sea creature powerful enough to destroy a ship can exist. He sets out a formula showing how immense a serpent needs to be in order to withstand underwater pressure, to which Land exclaims, "Why they must made of iron plates eight inches thick!" And in fact Ned is right and Aronnax wrong. The sea serpent is not a live monster at all but a submarine with eight inches of iron plate! Often, Ned's practicability wins out yet I think Verne was often demonstrating that essences of both intellect and common sense need to work together in order to be victorious.
And of course there is Captain Nemo. He is and remains a cipher. He represents both nihilism and misguided idealism. Nemo wants a perfect world but is reduced to self-exile and perhaps even self-loathing. Nemo is the mirror in which the other character see themselves. He is both one of the most memorable personages in literature yet also one of the most mysterious and perplexing.
So Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea remains a wonderful sci-fi adventure tale even taking in its antiquity. But I also enjoyed the characters of this novel more the second time around and was able to catch the marvelous nuances which Verne placed on them.
Review: Werner rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition
Verne's works are difficult for an English-speaking reader to evaluate fairly, because he wasn't well-served by the English translations of his day --which are still the standard ones in print, which most people read. The translators changed plots and characters' names in some cases, excised passages they considered "boring," and generally took a very free hand with the text; so you never know how much of the plodding pacing, bathetic dialogue, and stylistic faults (for instance, what passes for "description" here is usually simply long lists of marine species whose appearance most readers have no idea of) to blame on them and how much on Verne. In any case, those characteristics are fully in view in the translation of this novel that I read, in addition to the basic 19th-century diction which will be off-putting to many modern readers anyway (my wife chose not to finish the book). The success of the book when it was written, in my opinion, owed much more to the novelty of the premise than to the execution of the finished product; and today, where submarines and undersea travel are commonplace, that factor doesn't operate. (This is a pity, because Captain Nemo is actually one of Verne's more complex and memorable characters, and deserves a better literary medium for his story!)
http://librivox.org/search?title=Twenty+Thousand+Leagues&author=&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=complete&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=alpha&search_page=1&search_form=advanced
Call of the Wild
Free Audio Book. First published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.
Review: Moses Kilolo rated it 4 of 5 stars
Bucks story is a beautiful, multilayered tale that shows the basic plot of the journey towards the call of destiny. There is what we are all meant to be, and if we but hear the call, then our duty is but to obey.
Like happened to Buck, the dog, there is ever a process, ranging from our familiar comforts to our deepest defeats, to our highest achievements – all of which we must transcended in our journey to being free and self accomplished.
Though Buck was comfortable in the Judge’s backyard, playing with the judge’s sons, his world was crushed when he is sold off. From thence begins his journey – where he learns what he is, what can be, the possibilities, - of survival.
The voice comes, but challenges prevent him from heeding it. First his position as a sledge dog, then the hardship of training, the preliminary victories, the love of man - - found, and lost) and his own doubts.
But finally he lets go, and now Buck is head of the pack of wolves, and his exploits are well known. Just as the depth of his own freedom, and the found power.
The writing is good, the book is short, and the lesson profound.
Like happened to Buck, the dog, there is ever a process, ranging from our familiar comforts to our deepest defeats, to our highest achievements – all of which we must transcended in our journey to being free and self accomplished.
Though Buck was comfortable in the Judge’s backyard, playing with the judge’s sons, his world was crushed when he is sold off. From thence begins his journey – where he learns what he is, what can be, the possibilities, - of survival.
The voice comes, but challenges prevent him from heeding it. First his position as a sledge dog, then the hardship of training, the preliminary victories, the love of man - - found, and lost) and his own doubts.
But finally he lets go, and now Buck is head of the pack of wolves, and his exploits are well known. Just as the depth of his own freedom, and the found power.
The writing is good, the book is short, and the lesson profound.
http://librivox.org/the-call-of-the-wild-by-jack-london-3/
Swiss Family Robinson ****
Shipwrecked passengers on a deserted island: how will they survive? After their ship founders at sea, the Robinsons—father, mother, and four sons—find themselves stranded in an uninhabited, idyllic land. Young readers will enjoy watching them handle every crisis with cleverness and skill.
Review: Amy Barth rated it 5 of 5 stars
The Swiss family, Robinson, is headed to settle land in another country when the shipwrecks and the family are left stranded on the boat. The family, after much preparation, succeeds in making it off the boat and to land nearby. They build a series of houses and barns, and they cultivate the land around them. William is the father of the family, and he is married to Elizabeth. The couple has 4 sons: Frits, Ernest, Jack, and Francis. The family endures many obstacles; surprisingly they decide to live on the island forever.
The book uses great details that literally suck you into the struggles of the family. I have read the book many times because it always entertains me. The author artfully displayed Christian values such as prayer, repentance, and faith. I love how the family was always penitent to the Lord; in the end, everything seemed to turn out just fine for the family. This is a lesson that can be very impactful and Wyss explained it so artfully. After, reading the book, I felt a little let down that they stayed on the island, but in all honesty, they were happy on the island. The book actually uses the novel Treasure Island to describe how they would go about certain situations. The book was written by Johann to teach valuable lessons to his 4 sons that they could understand. I think the overlying theme of the book is standing fast in faith; while always looking for the better in situations, and truly relying on God. I love this book; it appealed to the survival mode I discovered in myself. It was empowering to watch the family survive off nothing to thriving on everything.
The book uses great details that literally suck you into the struggles of the family. I have read the book many times because it always entertains me. The author artfully displayed Christian values such as prayer, repentance, and faith. I love how the family was always penitent to the Lord; in the end, everything seemed to turn out just fine for the family. This is a lesson that can be very impactful and Wyss explained it so artfully. After, reading the book, I felt a little let down that they stayed on the island, but in all honesty, they were happy on the island. The book actually uses the novel Treasure Island to describe how they would go about certain situations. The book was written by Johann to teach valuable lessons to his 4 sons that they could understand. I think the overlying theme of the book is standing fast in faith; while always looking for the better in situations, and truly relying on God. I love this book; it appealed to the survival mode I discovered in myself. It was empowering to watch the family survive off nothing to thriving on everything.
The Cricket on the Hearth
Free Audio Book.
Jack and Jill
Free Audio Book. When best friends, Jack and Jill, tumble off their sled, their injuries cause them to be bedridden for many months. Their parents fill their days with the joys of Christmas preparations, a theatrical production and many other imaginative events.
Review: Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars
Jack and Jill is a charming, lesser-known story by Louisa May Alcott, and it is absolutely full of her wisdom and philosophies about education, parenting, and character. After good-natured Jack and spirited Jill are injured in a sledding accident, their devoted mothers and schoolmates come up with gentle, creative, wonderful ways to keep the two involved and engaged while they are bedridden.
Once Jack and Jill are recovered enough, they spend a summer full of quiet play and wild adventures at the sea to further their healing. My very favorite part of the book is at the end, when their wise mothers decide that good health, good education and good character are their three priorities in raising their children and begin to "homeschool" their children in the great outdoors instead of sending them back to school.
This is a wonderful glimpse into the mind of Louisa May Alcott, one of the people I admire most, and it is a wonderful story to read aloud as a family.
Once Jack and Jill are recovered enough, they spend a summer full of quiet play and wild adventures at the sea to further their healing. My very favorite part of the book is at the end, when their wise mothers decide that good health, good education and good character are their three priorities in raising their children and begin to "homeschool" their children in the great outdoors instead of sending them back to school.
This is a wonderful glimpse into the mind of Louisa May Alcott, one of the people I admire most, and it is a wonderful story to read aloud as a family.
The Adventures of Hickleberry Finn
Free Audio Book. Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley - a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor.
Review: Nathan Eilers rated it 5 of 5 stars
Hemingway said American fiction begins and ends with Huck Finn, and he's right. Twain's most famous novel is a tour de force. He delves into issues such as racism, friendship, war, religion, and freedom with an uncanny combination of lightheartedness and gravitas. There are several moments in the book that are hilarious, but when I finished the book, I knew I had read something profound. This is a book that everyone should read.
Review: Jacques Bromberg rated it 5 of 5 stars
Ever hear people talk about wanting to write the "Great American Novel"? Well, it's already done, and this is it. This novel is one of my longest standing favorites. It's a profound meditation on the nature of freedom, full of clever Southern folk wisdom, deeply sensitive and insightful.
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