Finally got "Shen of the Sea" finished. Took about a month. Not to say it wasn't mildly entertaining and enjoyable. But I think because of the nature of what it was -- a bunch of short stories -- it never really gained any momentum to make me want to push through to the end. Just 5-8 pages of a story, the end, the beginning of the next one. Anyway, it was alright. And if you were buying this book in 1926 (the year that it won the Newbery Medal, you'd probably be pleased to get so many stories for the price of one book. You could pace yourself and have enough stories to last you for a good, long while. Now in the age of libraries packed full of books that you can read for free, maybe the quality of the individual stories would need to be a little better. Or maybe it just wasn't my cup of (Oo loong) tea.
In any case, I've moved on to another Newbery book, "A Wrinkle in Time". It wasn't my intention to read another Newbery back-to-back like this, but I've been wanting to re-read the whole series for a while, and I can never find this, the first in the series, at the library when I'm browsing. And then I end up taking home Pet Sematary even though I'm not super excited about it. So when a friend mentioned this book recently, it reminded me to put a hold request in for it.
After a couple weeks of waiting (high demand? low supply? both?) it showed up last week to my local branch. Now that I've got it, I figure I better get through it before it has to go back to the next person who puts a hold on it. Also, because late fines are getting steeper. Used to be 5 cents a day. Now it's 10 or 15.
As I was saying, my original plan was to read at least one non-Newbery book in between each medal winner, but I'm setting that aside for now to focus on this one. As I mentioned, this is actually a book I've read before. At least 2 or 3 times. But I can't seem to remember many of the details. And I always remember that I really liked the 3rd book in the series ("A Swiftly Tilting Planet") a lot, and would like to read it again (which means I'll probably also want to read "A Wind in the Door" again, which I remember approximately nothing about. And now there's a 5th book in the series. I know, right? Since when could authors keep writing more books in a series, after you thought you'd read them all?
Anyway, this series could move to the forefront of my reading list for the next little bit. But maybe I'll still try to mix in some other things. I've got at least one more book that I already checked out and am interested in reading.
1 comment:
I think I actually remember the most about Wind in the Door (mitochondria and farandolae) but I think I remember liking Wrinkle in Time the best.
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