Reading Along (with a smile on my face)

I created this collage for my blog's Facebook page. I like it
because it encompasses my two favorite authors and
subsequently the two authors I geek out the most about. :)

I felt like I had a pretty good week of reading. I finished a book and made some progress in others. Can't ask for much more, especially as school isn't letting up. Spring break is this week but with company and preparing for a test, I don't know how much reading I'll get done. 

First off, I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray and you can read my review here. While I encourage you to read my full review, I'll just say here that I did very much enjoy and recommend it. It's not a book you can read lightly but one you have to be actively thinking about. 
 

Goodreads synopsis: The tale of a youth whose features, year after year, retain the same appearance of innocent beauty while the shame of his abhorrent vices becomes mirrored on the features of his portrait.

I've also finished listening to Anthony Trollope's The Warden. I enjoyed listening to it while out walking as the weather has decided to warm up now. :)
Goodreads synopsis: The book centers on the character of Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity, whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. Young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he considers to be an abuse of privilege, despite being in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. The novel was highly topical as a case regarding the misapplication of church funds was the scandalous subject of contemporary debate. But Trollope uses this specific case to explore and illuminate the universal complexities of human motivation and social morality. 

I'm finding The Children of Húrin quite engaging so far. It's a lot like reading The Silmarillion but a little easier to read like The Lord of the Rings. So imagine a cross between them and there you have it. I am enjoying reading about Túrin Turimbar immensely, though I already know of the tragic ending that will be coming. Geeky moment, but I think Túrin Turimbar would be a really great baby name don't you? And his sister's name "Nienor" is really pretty too. If I had twins I could name them Túrin and Nienor! Yeah... My family tells me they hope I marry someone with brains who won't let me name my kids after Tolkien characters. But how could I marry anyone less than a Tolkien geek? Anyways...

Goodreads Synopsis: Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous and standalone story, the epic tale of The Children of Hurin will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, dragons and Dwarves, eagles and Orcs, and the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien. There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turin and his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves. Their brief and passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of forest hiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, the Dark Lord and the Dragon enter in direly articulate form. Sardonic and mocking, Glaurung manipulated the fates of Turin and Nienor by lies of diabolic cunning and guile, and the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled. The earliest versions of this story by J.R.R. Tolkien go back to the end of the First World War and the years that followed; but long afterwards, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, he wrote it anew and greatly enlarged it in complexities of motive and character: it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final and finished form. In this book Christopher Tolkien has constructed, after long study of the manuscripts, a coherent narrative without any editorial invention.

So that's what is going on in my reading world. I doubt I'll start anything new this week but we'll see. Recently I've been trying to have one audiobook, one "real" book, and one eBook going. The Picture of Dorian Gray was my eBook but I normally read those when I'm at school (so I don't have to add yet another book to my already too full backpack) and since I won't be at school this week I doubt I'll start a new eBook. The Warden was my audiobook so I'll be starting up another one of those soon. Probably a Shakespeare. :)

Just a note, I finally got my review for John Piper's Don't Waste your Life up... link here. 

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