The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis

Continuing on in the Chronicles of Narnia series, the kids and I finished "The Horse and His Boy" tonight.  Again, what can you say, but how great these books are?  We're just loving them.  And I am loving watching the kids experience these stories for the first time, seeing their expressions as they figure things out and listening to their predictions about what is going to happen next.

We have a joke between the three of us about reading ahead when the others aren't there.  What I love is that Wesley is trying to do that too.  I often find him sneaking into my room to pick up the book to try to figure out what's going to happen next.  On his own, this book is way above his reading level, but he uses the pictures and tries to read the chapter titles to figure out what's going to happen.  I just love that.  It's getting him passionate about reading and that's what I want.  He hasn't always shown a lot of interest in reading, so seeing him this excited is fun for me.

This story focuses less on the Pevensie family (they're very minor characters in this one) and more on Shasta, a young slave boy who runs away with his horse to prevent being sold to a crueler master than the one he's had.  He lives in the land of Calormen, near Narnia, and he and the new master's horse (a Narnian talking horse who had been captured by Calormenes) decide to try to get to Narnia together.  They meet lots of interesting people and have some amazing adventures along the way.  Shasta discovers his true identity and a future he never imagined.

While we loved this story, the language in this book was a bit more challenging for the kids than in the two previous books.  There are a lot of queens and kings who speak in very formal, old fashioned ways and the kids had some trouble understanding that.  We often had to stop so I could summarize what had been said, or to define some words for them.  So we felt like this one took us a bit longer to get through than the others.  But once they understood what was happening, they loved each scene and all the fun characters.

Prince Caspian, here we come!  We watched the movie this weekend, so now we're ready to see how much better the book is.

Longbourn by Jo Baker

Every time I read some author's take on Pride and Prejudice, I always get frustrated and say that I will never read another one.  Then, after a few years a new book will come along and I'll get sucked in again.  And I get frustrated again.

I thought this was going to be the book that broke the pattern. I was wrong. This is my book club's selection for March.  Sadly, that was on my recommendation.

Hailed as "Pride and Prejudice" meeting "Downton Abbey" I thought I couldn't go wrong.  I love P & P.  I love Downton.  What a perfect combination.  It just didn't deliver for me.

This book takes the events of P & P and retells them through the eyes of the servants of Longbourn, specifically Sarah, the housemaid.  I think they did an OK job, for the most part, of using the familiar storylines as the backdrop for the new story.  I just didn't find the characters or their storylines to be very interesting.  It took me a couple of weeks to get through the book, because I was never interested enough to read more than a few pages at a time.  If it wasn't for my two long train rides over the weekend, I don't know when I'd ever have finished it.

As always, I don't want to give away major plot points, so it will be a bit hard for me to explain exactly what I didn't like about the book.  Let me say this: if you are going to use a very familiar and very loved story, DON'T CHANGE IT!!!!  There is a major storyline in this book that is very different from P & P.  That bothers me.  If you've read it, or you do read it, let me know and we can talk about it.

One final rant.  I feel I know the original story pretty well.  It's no secret that I love it.  My daughter is named Darcy, after all.  I also feel I have a pretty good understanding of the characters.  I guess the biggest problem for me in reading another author's take on these characters is that their understanding of the characters is often different from mine. There is a section at the end of this book that takes place after P & P finished and it shows Elizabeth living at Pemberley as Mrs. Darcy.  She comes across as insecure at times and at others she is rude to the servant who has been with her since her youth.  I can't be alone in thinking that that is not how Elizabeth would have been.

So, if I ever tell you that I'm going to read a new take on P & P, please stop me.