Back to the Classics 2016 Reading Challenge

Back to the Classics 2016 Reading Challenge

Books and Chocolate (sign up)

January - December 2016

I hope to read at least six books.

What I want to read for the challenge:

1) A volume of classic short stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. First published 1892. The copy I have was published by Penguin Random House in 2014.  [Source: Bought]

2) A 19th Century classic: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. First published 1894. The copy I have was published by Penguin Random House in 2014. [Source: Bought]

3) A classic by a woman author: Murder On the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. First published 1934. The copy I have was published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperColllins Publishers in 2011. [Source: Bought]

4) A fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian classic: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Published posthumously by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien, in 1977. The copy I have was published by George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd in 1977. [Source: Borrowed from the Library] Was considered both Tolkien's first work and his last, meaning, he could have written it before he died, but Christopher had to pick up the pieces.

5) Re-read a classic you read in school (high school or college): The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. First Published 1939. The copy I have was published by the Houghton Mifflin Company in 1989. [Source: School Book Review book].

6) A classic in translation: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. First published in serialization in La Gaulois from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910. Published in English in 1911. Originally published in French and titled Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. [Source: Borrowed from the Library]

7) An adventure classic: The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. First published by The Bodley Head publishing company in 1955. [Source: Childhood Gift]

8) A classic detective novel: A Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.

9)

10)

11)

12)

The Catagories:

1. A 19th Century Classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.

2. A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1966.

Just like last year, all books MUST have been published at least 50 years ago to qualify. The only exception is books written at least 50 years ago, but published later.

3. A classic by a woman author.

4. A classic in translation. Any book originally written published in a language other than your native language. Feel free to read the book in your language or the original language.

5. A classic by a non-white author.  Can be African-American, Asian, Latino, Native American, etc.

6. An adventure classic can be fiction or non-fiction. Children's classics like Treasure Island are acceptable in this catagory.

7. A fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian classic. Dystopian could include classics like 1984, and children's classics like The Hobbit are acceptable in this category also.

8. A classic detective novel. It must include a detective, amateur or professional. This list of books from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction is a great starting point if you're looking for ideas.

9. A classic which includes the name of a place in the title. It can be the name of a house, a town, a street, etc. Examples include Bleak House, Main Street, The Belly of Paris, or The Vicar of Wakefield.

10. A classic which has been banned or censored. If possible, please mention why this book was banned or censored in your review.

11. Re-read a classic you read in school (high school or college). If it's a book you loved, does it stand the test of time? If it's a book you disliked, is it any better a second time around?

12. A volume of classic short stories. This must be one complete volume, at least 8 short stories. It can be an anthology of stories by different authors, or all the stories can be by a single author. Children's stories are acceptable in this category also.

Doctor Who: Apollo 23

Apollo 23. (Doctor Who). Justin Richards. Based on the TV series created by Sydney Newman, C.E. Webber, and Donald Wilson. 2010. BBC Books. Pages: 248. [Source: Bought]

"Houston - we have a problem."

An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a busy shopping center. Maybe it's a publicity stunt.

A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon - beside her beloved dog 'Poochie'. Maybe it's a hoax.

But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just minor events in a sinister plan to take over every being on Earth. The plot centers on a secret military base on the moon - that's where Amy and the TARDIS are. - back cover.

Did I love Apollo 23? Not really, but I did like it. The characterization was beautifully done, whenever the Doctor spoke I could practically hear his voice speaking the words in my mind's ear. It was enjoyable and well thought out.

But there's a problem. I found the story to be quite slow at first. It wasn't until Chapter 10 that the action really began to pick up, while the first 9 chapters were focused on setting the scene. I've been studying how to set up the first few chapters of a novel when you are writing it, and I've found that the best way to catch a reader's attention is to ask questions, make them feel as if there's something not right with the situation, which would make them want to read more so that they can have their questions answered.

Yes, I had questions - but not enough questions. I often felt that the only reason why I kept reading was because I knew the characters and I wanted to read/see the 11th Doctor again (he's since regenerated into the 12th Doctor). I guess Doctor Who novels are not to my taste.

But the science-fiction-y, suspense, and boarder-line jump-scare was!

[This novel counts towards what I've read/watched for the 2016 Sci-Fi Experience that runs until the end of the month :) ] Geronimo! 

Winter Shinanigans - Slip'n'Slide

So, this afternoon, I decided to walk down to the dollar store while I waited for my mother’s hair to be done at the hairdresser. My mother needed a few things from the dollar store, and I knew that it was going to take a while, because Mom needed her hair cut, coloured, and styled.

It’s only a couple of blocks between the hairdresser and our local Dollarama, so I set out, glad that I had decided to wear my sneakers even though snow was sticking to the balls of my shoes. There’s a street, a parkinglot, an alley, and another parkinglot I have to walk across before I can reach the store.
I set out, confidant I would get there gracefully and compitantly and within a reasonable amount of time. But I hit trouble once I reached the boundaries between the alley and the last parkinglot.

This parkinglot runs up beside the Dollarama and serves to be the dollar store’s parkinglot. There is only one way to get into this parkinglot on foot if you don’t want to risk walking on the side of the road and go the long way around because there’s a metal pole fence that runs the parimeter of the parkinglot. The entrance to this parkinglot is barely wide enough to drive a super-duty pick-up truck through.

When I reach this entrance with its empty sign holder (it was probably a grocery store in the past), a pick-up truck backs out of its parking space within the parklinglot. And to my right a jeep pulls off the road and onto the alley Im standing in. Now I’m holding up two vehicles, which are waiting for me to get out of the way.

I look down at the entrance way, remembering that this parkinglot is notorious for having pool-sized potholes in the summer (though I don’t know why, but it being unpaved and covered in gravel may have something to do with it). I note that there are two potholes sitting side-by-side.

I realize I have to make a decision, and fast. The pothole on the left is a massive crater, and coated with black ice, giving it the appearance of a pit that leads to oblivion. Or death. And I can’t go around it because the little bit of snow between it and the fence is too narrow for my feet, and its the same before the little bit of ground between the potholes.

Now, the pothole on the right was just as wide as the one on the left but not as deep and was covered in snow, not ice. And the ledge between it and the fence on its right was big enough for my feet, so I decided to pass through there.

But as soon as I stepped on that ledge, it was like I was standing on a finely polished skating rink, and I began to slip. I’m pretty sure that the show I gave the passengers and drivers of the two vehicles turned out to be something like this:

I was so embarressed! But then I started to smile after I walked into the store. Yay, for winter shinanigans! lol!
(Didn't go down, though. Never slipped like that in my life.)

The Time of the Doctor

The Time of the Doctor. Christmas Special 2013. Original Airdate: December 25 2015.

I guess this could count as a movie for the Christmas Spirit Challenge I'm participating in this Christmas. Note to self: add "The Time of the Doctor" to 'Films I've Watched So Far' on my Christmas Spirit Challenge post.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings with this episode - not because it wasn't good. It was great, even! But "The Time of the Doctor" is the episode where we say goodbye to the 11th Doctor and say hello to the 12th (though we only see Peter Capaldi's Doctor for less than a minute before the episode cuts to credits).

Now, as a reminder, if you haven't watched "The Time of the Doctor" yet, I suggest you read no further. I don't want to spoil it for you!

This is a curious episode/movie/thing, whatever you want to call it. It opens with Clara Oswald (my favourite companion to date) ringing the doctor on his phone (which is located outside the TARDIS, in space) Apparently, her mother, father, and grandmother are coming over for Christmas dinner - and somehow, some way, Clara let it slip that she had a boyfriend (which she doesn't).

So in her panic, she calls up the Doctor, who's in space hovering above a strange planet surrounded by almost every alien the Doctor has had to face. (Okay, this makes this the second 2016 Sci-Fi Experiance appreciation post about a ton of aliens over a planet involving the Doctor in some way, lol).

The Doctor abandons his spot amongst all the alien ships and his TARDIS appears in the field next to Clara's apartment building.

And guess what? Clara's apartment building doesn't posess an elevator, meaning that whoever wants to visit her, or if she wants to go anywhere, they have to climb an almost never-ending staircase. And Clara's apartment is halfway up the building! I can just imagine the dread she must feel after every long school-day. Her feet may be sore and she is faced with having to climb all those stairs before she can have a chance to relax! I makes me grateful that I only have eight stairs to climb before I get to the back door of the house I'm in now.

This episode induced a lot of bittersweet feelings inside of me. There was humor and there was war. We learned that the planet he had been hovering over before Clara called him was, in fact, Trenzalore, the planet where Clara jumped into the Doctor's time stream and scattered herself all over time and space in order to protect him from the Inteligence, but way back in time before it was converted into a planet-sized graveyard.

And because the Doctor was there, defending the town called Christmas, Trenzalore probably never became that graveyard.

Points I liked about this episode:
- We got to see an almost fatherly-side of the Doctor because all the children in Christmas looked up to him.
- I got a chuckle out of the wooden cyberman with the flame-thrower strapped it its forearm. Well, that was smart - not. lol
- It tied up a lot of mysteries - we found out why the TARDIS suddenly exploded in "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang", where the Silence came from, and why Trenzalore was so important.
- I liked Handles, the cyberman head. Handles was the Doctor's closest "friend" for three hundred of the years he was on Trenzalore. He got to see one last sunrise and reminded the Doctor to patch the phone through the TARDIS' console before he finally died.

Points I didn't like about this episode:
- Seeing the 11th Doctor so close to death from old age. He was the first Doctor I was introduced to, so he was my favourite. Props to the makeup department for making the character's age look so real on the actor!
- The fact that the "Church of the Papal Mainframe" considered itself a church when all it seemed to be was a nudist colony ship that was militaristic in nature and used religious-themed codewords. They are also the Silence, and I never really liked the Silence anyway (since they were trying to kill the Doctor, caused Time to explode, and terrorised practically everyone since no one could see them and remember them once they looked away).

Other than that, is was a pretty good episode/movie. Now I can finally watch the escapades of the 12th Doctor!

The Pandorica Opens & The Big Bang

Last night, my family and I figured out how to hook up my Wii U to our netflix account, and we spent some time watching Doctor Who before my brother had to go to bed.

This is a short appreciation post for the two episodes I watched in the light of the 2016 Sci-Fi Experiance.

For the longest, longest time I wondered what was up with the episode "The Pandorica Opens". And for the longest time, I wondered why the Doctor kept calling Rory Williams "Rory the Roman". I finally got my answer last night.

Now, before you read any further, if you don't want to read any spoilers or if you haven't watched anything to do with the 11th Doctor yet, I would suggest you don't read any farther. After all, it's spoilers, sweetie.

"The Pandorica Opens" opens with Vincent Van Gogh writhing on the floor of his room, on death's door, screaming. Turns out, he had a dream where he saw the TARDIS exploding, heralding the end of reality. It both terrifies and confuses him. And he paints it as what seems to be his last painting. (I don't know very much about Van Gogh's role in the Whoniverse, honestly).

This episode was facinating, and together with "The Big Bang", paints a story of how they got Rory back after he fell out of the universe in a previous episode (which I must have skipped, because I have no recollection of Rory being erased from reality). One day, when me and my family have unlimited internet again, I am going to rewatch 11th's era again. Or, at least, I will watch the episodes I haven't watched yet.

"The Big Bang" explains how they fix reality after the TARDIS explodes. In "The Pandorica Opens", it showed how the Pandorica (I think it was the Pandorica) controled the numerous Roman soldiers which Rory had brought under Stonehenge (where the Pandorica was) and Rory as well, revealing that Rory and the Romans were actually plastic replicas of themselves and that they have guns in their hands. Guns in their hands.

The Pandorica manages to gain control of Rory and makes him shoot her with his hand-gun, so she dies. The Doctor's been locked in the Pandorica because, as it turns out, it was built to lock him away. But...well...if you've watched the episodes, you know how it turns out, and if you haven't...well - spoilers. If I told you the whole story, then you wouldn't want to watch it then, hmmm?

Points I liked about these two episodes:
- River Song managed to convince a whole leigon of Roman soldiers that she was Cleopatra (even though Cleopatra was dead by the time the majority of the first episode took place).
- The oldest words in the universe turned out to have been written by River Song. "Hello Sweetie".
- Turns out River Song and the Doctor can ride horses at a full-on gallop. Amy - not so much.
- I loved, loved, loved, loved the fact that Rory waited for Amy for 2000 years! The mythos built around him and the Pandorica was practically romantic!

Points I didn't like about these two episodes:
- The promotion of the Big Bang.
- How lonely Earth seemed without stars in the sky.

The Pigpen Cipher

As I have heard - and have been told many, many times, research is a good thing when you want to write a novel. Most of the time, I go, "Pfft, yeah right," and plung right into building my story and writing it.

Recently, I have been sucked into the Sherlock fandom, though I've only watched the first three episodes and don't have the money to buy any more through the Google Play store on my phone. The only reason I think I caved and started watching the show was because I kept hearing that it was very well done, and that I heard that Steven Moffat had something to do with it. I like what Moffat did to Doctor Who, another one of my favourite shows, so curiosity eventually got the better of me, especially after I saw production photos of Sherlock and John Watson dressed up as their Victorian counterparts.

Anyway, I'm getting to my point. On Sherlock's website, http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/, based on the website Sherlock has on the show, the world's only consulting detective has been being plauged with hidden messages, two of which I couldn't even hope to answer despite the hints that were hidden in the message.

I was finally able to solve the third message, the most current one, which was comprised of a series of shapes and dots. This is where the Pigpen Cipher legend I have displayed on this post comes in.

"SHERLOCK I HAVE FOUND YOU."

 

Talk about ominous, or what? Makes me wonder if Mr. Anonymous is after Sherlock for more than amusement through bugging him...

 

Anyway, I've come to alert you to the wonders of a cipher I've never heard before! If I can ever get my behind in gear, I might just get to use this cipher in a mystery novel before I die. :P

Introducing: The Mysteries of Eldûr - Adelle Baker and the Missing Title

"The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."

~ Albert Einstein

 

So, I come to you with the news of a new idea for a novel - one borne of my sudden re-obsession with The Hobbit, and Middle-Earth in general. Inspiration hit me like a tsunami while I was watching The Hobbit: the Unexpected Journey.

 

Suddenly, I found myself sucked into the deep recesses of my mind, where I was walking down the street of a town like Bree - but it was decidedly not Bree. I remember wondering what it would be like if there was a mystery to solve in a fantasy world, one without help from magic...

 

And just like that, I was back in reality with a new idea that's slowly been growing. Let me introduce you to a few characters that have come knocking to my mental door:

 

Adelle Baker - protagonist - age: 24 - denizen of Earth. Adelle somehow finds herself in the world of Eldûr, a world similar to Earth and bound by nearly all the same laws of physics. She has a Bachelor's Degree in creative writing and has training in office administration, and is down in her luck in her search for a job.

 

Côlter Dénéde - deuterotagonist - age: undetermined - denizen of Eldûr. Pronounciation: (call-ter day-nay-de). Occupation: undetermined, hovering over the choice of 'ranger'. Côlter is half elf, half man from a settlement called Eldain, which was somehow destroyed when he was twenty (still contemplating how it was destroyed).

 

Thorain Xildûrn - extra character - age: undetermined - denizen of Eldûr. Pronounciation: (Thor-rain Zeel-dern). Occupation: undetermined. Thorain is a dwarf from the dwarf kingdom of Unaline in the north, and the trusted welder of Moljnir, the hammer of the line of Xiline.

Note: Thorain popped into my head when I contemplated the silliness of what monkeywrench would be thrown into my story if a character with 'Thor' in his name had a hammer named 'Moljnir'. lol

 

King [name yet to be found] - extra character/unsure that he's going to be in book/might be mentioned - king of kingdom-yet-to-be-named, which is where the novel takes place. He may be mentioned... but for some reason he looks like Benedict Cumberbatch in my head.

 

The plot of the mystery is still under development, but it might have something to do with a large diamond roughly shaped like an apple, or maybe a crown that was stolen... yep. Still in development.

 

I'll provide frequent updates if this idea gets off the ground. And I hope it will because I really like the idea.