Scary Books

Sometimes it sucks that the library only lends out books for three weeks. Because when you're reading list looks like this...

...it can be a little difficult to deal with.

It doesn't seem too much and if it were everything but one it would be no problem, but there sitting on the library shelf all blue, red, pretty and newly recovered by Bloomsbury, was Jane Eyre. I don't know too much about this book, other than that it was written by Charlotte Bronte and in an attempt to include more classic literature into my reading diet, I checked it out.

I know we're not, technically supposed to judge books by their covers, but I am quite a cover-

based reader. I won't read a book just because it has a nice cover (though I have before), but it's the first thing I notice about it, and it can help set it apart on a packed shelf. 

This is why I started reading Pride and Prejudice, as well. I saw it on the shelf and had been meaning to read it so I checked it out, regardless of the fact that we owned a copy at home. The reason for this was because if I got it from the library I was more likely to finished it because I had to return it in three weeks. It was with the same logic in mind I picked out Jane Eyre.

The problem this time is that a whole bunch of books came in at the library for me (when I started BEDA a put a bunch of Maureen Johnson's books on hold). Jane Eyre is a hefty 450 pages, with tiny print, and it takes me a lot longer to read classics, because the style is unfamiliar and it's just hard. So I should be able to read it in time if I read

15 pages a day and renew it twice. Who knows, maybe it'll be extremely gripping like Celia Rees said and I'll devour the entire thing in a week (I'm going to say that's the minimum).

So along with my fifteen pages of Jane Eyre per day, I'm also going to be reading approximately one MJ book per week, so I don't have to renew them. The other books on the shelf (which I will list in a moment) I will get to when I can. I want to read Romeo and Juliet so maybe that will be my next project after Jane Eyre. And the other books in the picture are just their. 

So here is my reading list:

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2. The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson
3. Devilish by Maureen Johnson
4. The Key to the Golden Firebird, by Maureen Johnson
5. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
6. A Room With a View by E.M. Forester
7. Looking for Alaska by John Green (and too that were recently assigned to me... along with others that I can't remember...)
8. Tithe by Holly Black
9. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

It's manageable, right?

On another note it's Earth Day today. Feels like any other day, but it isn't. Has anyone read The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss? It's a really great picture book about de-forrestification (spell check?). It's also been banned, which is another good reason to read it.*

*Although once at a book club during Banned Books Week, I saw this book that I was actually glad it had being taken off shelves. It was a picture book that graphically showed a story where a dog bit the hand of a post carrier and dragged them through the mail slot and proceeded to eat the person. It was graphic and disgusting and deeply scarring (there was an illustration of the dog chewing on an eyeball---eew). I'm not a huge fan of censorship but why would anyone write something like that for children in the first place?