Woo! Stuff happened in this chapter! What do you think of our young wizard in this chapter? the celebration? The interactions between Sparrowhawk and Jasper? And, what do you think of the Shadow?!
The Princess Diarist is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming. Carrie Fisher dusted off her old diaries she wrote while filming the first Star Wars movie in 1977. Like everything in her life, she is brutally honest about what she saw and what she did and tells it with a biting sense of humor. Reading this a year after her untimely death is definitely after bittersweet as she was more or less correct about her own obituaries would say and what pictures they would use. The bulk of this memoir is focused on her affair with costar Harrison Ford, who as you know played Han Solo. Passages of her diary talks of her struggle to deal with the knowledge she is having an affair with a married costar and how she is falling in love with him even after telling herself that she wouldn’t. She also talks about how she struggled on the set, being told to lose weight and hours in hair and make up and keeping up the facade that she was more experienced than she actually was and of course the awkward promotion of the movie after the release. Carrie Fisher became Princess Leia in this diary and the transition wasn’t smooth. There was a lot bumps and bruises along the way but she eventually found peace with her alter ego. Honestly, we are lucky to have had Carrie as our Princess Leia and as our General Organa.
Kate and started this book by listening to it on audio book. Carrie reads the book while her daugher Billie Lourd reads her diary passages. I finished the book as an ebook and even though I was reading it instead of listening, I could hear her voice in my head. Ebook or audio book, Carrie distinctive voice came through.
Before there was Hogwarts, there was the School for Wizards on the island of Roke. What do you think of the town of Thwil? What do you think of Jasper and Vetch? How about the archmage’s raven? And, what do you think of all of the things he’s learning at Wizard school? Would you be as frustrated with the curriculum as young Sparrowhawk is? Do you think he will heed the warnings he’s been given?
Summary behind the cut!
As you may know, Ursula K. Le Guin died in January of this year at the age of 88. Over the next few weeks, I thought I would post a small round up of links and videos so that we can get to know the author and the influence that she’s had on the world. First up is the video of Le Guin’s acceptance of National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014. This video is only 6 minutes long, but in it she comments on why speculative fiction, fantasy and science fiction is important.
In the comments below, tell us why you think science fiction and fantasy are worth reading. What have they brought to your life? Why do you keep coming back to these genres?
Welcome to the second discussion thread for A Wizard of Earthsea! This is for chapter 2 of the book! What do you think of Ogion the Silent? What do you think of magic in Earthsea? There are only been two women in the book so far, the witch in the village and the little girl? What do you think of them?
Summary behind the cut!
Welcome to our first summary post for a Wizard of Earthsea! I am so excited, I want to dive right in! We want to hear your thoughts! What do you think about the characters? The world we’ve just been introduced to? Do you like books/series/worlds that include their own map? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
Summary of the chapter behind the cut.
Join us for the next five weeks and read a Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is a short novel about Sparrowhawk, a young man who becomes a wizard. It’s listed as being for grade levels 7-9. It is a classic and I am so very excited to share this reading experience with all of you! We will post two summary discussion posts a week, starting Wednesday! The posts will be on Wednesdays and Fridays. There will be other posts related to the reading on other days. If you’re not reading with us, and are worried about spoilers, we’ll keep them behind a cut! (Also, if you’re not reading with us, you can look forward to other reviews, as I have a backlog of at least three things to review.)
So ends the Falling Kingdoms series. It’s been quite a ride. What started as a power struggle to verb who rules all of Mytica turned out to be an all out fight against magic itself. With the Kindred powers of Fire, Earth, Water and Wind have manifested themselves into real bodies and threatened to recreate the world to their liking and forcing former enemies into allies. Magnus, Cleo, Lucia and Jonas must find away to work together to defeat the kind reds and save the world. First they all have to reunite. Not as easy as it sounds in this series that often sends its characters all over the place for seemingly no reason. It’s also seems like everyone gets a redemption story even if they don’t deserve it. King Gauis who is no longer under the spell of his mother finally comes to his sense and realizes what a terrible father he has been and we are so to forget all the things he did to get us into this position in the first place. He was the one who set everything in motion by kidnapping Lucia in the first place. Amara killed her entire family to gain power but she grows a conscience the last minute so she isn’t so bad? This kinda drives me crazy about these kind of novels. Why can’t they let bad guys be bad guys? Also while I always root for happy endings but that doesn’t mean that all the main characters have to survive to make that happen. How many near death experience does one character or multiple characters deserve before it loses its impact? This is a series that has a high body count but still was too afraid to go there when it could have made a real impact on the story. All in all it was an enjoyable series. I just wish at times it was braver than it was.
Read by Carrie and her daughter Billie Lourd.
2 Women, So Many Books 