An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

I don’t remember what a wrinkle in time was about but I remember loving it as a kid. I have to re-read it because I’m not enjoying An Acceptable Time as much. I don’t think it’s because I’m older. It’s because the characters are not believable and don’t connect to each other which makes it impossible for me to connect to them. The story seems chopped up and doesn’t flow. I like religious fiction but this one was too preachy and predictable.

Young adult science fiction -

Polly takes some time from her large family and is spending the autumn with her grandparents. Zachary Gray comes to visit, a troubled college student whom Polly met in Greece and dated the year before. Then, while walking near her grandparents' Connecticut home, Polly travels through time, three thousand years ago, meeting druids Karralys and Anaral and a warrior named Tav.

The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien

Húrin defies Morgoth and a curse is placed on his entire family. We see the life of Túrin, his son, on his journey through life in Middle Earth.

This is my first Tolkien read and that was a mistake. This is a very dark tale, too dark for me. I wasn’t expecting a happy ending but I was not prepared for the amount of despair present in this story. The writing style is very similar to The Lord of The Rings. It is recommended that one reads other Tolkien books like the Silmarillion before giving The Children of Húrin a try.

My favorite thing about the story was the fact that individual characters take on different names depending on what they were going through in life.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

I don’t know where to begin. This book is extraordinary. It touched me on so many levels. The story centers on deep rooted racism seen through the eyes of child, it is written in the voice of a very wise nine-year-old girl known as Scout. The story takes place around the 1930s in a small town in the Deep South and touches on the law, justice, the jury, racism and rape, how children see the world they live in and what they are taught by family and the people they come in contact with.

After reading this book, unfortunately I feel that things have not changed much when it comes to racism. I feel that no one group is hated and dehumanized more than the black man. In chapter 26, Scout makes an observation. How can it be that her teacher hates Hitler and what he is doing to the Jews, but see nothing wrong with the way they treat Negros in America.