Book Review: Peter Pan

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

I'm assuming you don't need a summary of this one, right? If you haven't seen one movie version of this, you've probably seen another. Or a spin-off movie, like Hook or Finding Neverland (both of which, I would argue, are better Peter Pan adaptations than any movie of the original story).

But how many of you have actually read the original book?

If there is a single message I want to convey in this book review, it is this: no movie or other adaptation has done this book justice. The original is delightful, magical, insightful, and beautiful in a way that I was completely unprepared for, despite the fact I've seen nearly every movie version.

In short, it is SO GOOD.

The Book Blab: Introductions (Episode 1 Show Notes)

Our first episode of The Book Blab premiered last night, and it was so much fun for me! If you missed the show but are still interested in getting to know me and Amy a little bit better, and have a spare thirty minutes right now, feel free to watch right here! Show notes are below.

Random Tidbits

I am thick in the season of writing my term papers, and my brain feels like it is being squished to mulch right now. I am so focused on writing coherent things about Ben Jonson and Daniel Defoe and modern feminist literature that I have nary a leftover brain cell for writing coherent posts here. But I do have a collection of random thoughts rattling around that you are welcome to peruse.

Big Exciting Announcement! (Mark Your Calendars)

Do you guys remember my friend Amy from Sunlit Pages?

That friend who was just a virtual friend, who somehow found my blog (I can't remember how) and we bonded over book blogging and just sort of knew we were kindred spirits, and I feel like I link to her or reference her all the time, but now I've realized that I didn't actually ever write about how we met up over the summer, even though that was the best thing ever (how did I forget to blog about that)?

We both wore stripes. Kindred spirits, or kindred spirits?

So anyway, now we are real life friends! And she's really super awesome and fun. For the past few weeks, we've been working on a super fun little project that was entirely Amy's idea, but you can better believe I jumped on this bandwagon as soon as she suggested it.

Drum roll please...

Speed Reading vs. Slow Reading

Source

In college I took a speed reading course offered through my university's writing center. Being an English major with super long reading assignments every week, I thought it sounded like a good idea to increase my reading speed to help power through the homework.

The course was a miserable experience for me.

Have you ever taken a speed reading class? They give you metronomes and set the speed way up and tell you read an entire line within one beat and just keep your eyes moving and don't look back and never reread but just go, go, go. My comprehension plummeted, I found it incredibly frustrating, and I came away from every class with a massive headache.

Books I Read in October

October was crazy. School work started heating up in a big way (major project due today, now I get to move on to writing those term papers). We had massive amounts of rain nearly every weekend, which put a damper on things (pun intended). And then there was Halloween.

Continuing our tradition of children's book themed family costumes, this year we went with Curious George and the CUTEST little Man in the Yellow Hat of all time (do you see those delicious thighs?). To round out the theme, my husband and I "dressed up" as H.A. and Margret Rey, but our costumes were hardly photo-worthy.

Seasonal Reading: Dracula

In theory, I really love the idea of reading seasonally appropriate books, like founding father biographies in July, or snowy winter tales in January. But in practice? My reading is generally far too haphazard and unplanned to make seasonal reading work. I don't remember to request the right books at the library in time, and therefore usually end up reading my cozy fireplace reads on the beach.

But this October, I decided it was time to give seasonal reading my best effort. The problem with October seasonal reads, however, is that I'm super not in to scary/horror stories. My horror genre absolute limit is at right about Sixth Sense level, and even then I can only handle it if someone has assured me beforehand there is a measure of a happy ending. So I decided my safest bet for a good Halloween read would be to go classic. Thus, I chose the father of the horror genre: Dracula by Bram Stoker.