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Dan Frontier by William Hurley My rating: 4 of 5 stars I decided to end 2013 by re-reading one of the first books I ever read on my own. (And because I was one book short of meeting my 2013 Reading Challenge, a children’s book was a sure way to get there.) I’m not sure…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people. Click here to…

The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens My rating: 3 of 5 stars Charles Dickens gave us some of the best books ever written in English (David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol). He also gave us a few clunkers (Old Curiosity Shop), and some middle-of-the-road stories. The Cricket on the Hearth is one of those…

A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd My rating: 3 of 5 stars There isn’t much I can say that hasn’t already been said about this book here on GoodReads. I enjoyed it, though it lacks the cohesion of the movie A Christmas Movie, which I think is one of the best Christmas movies ever. A…

Summer of Night by Dan Simmons My rating: 2 of 5 stars I wanted to like this book a whole lot more than I did. It had been a while since I read a straight-up horror novel and I wanted that visceral experience, that suspense, that fear of the unknown. But what I got was…

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak My rating: 5 of 5 stars Oh. My. Gosh. This is an amazing book. Just amazing. I don’t think I’ve had such an emotional reaction to a story since my first reading of Where the Red Fern Grows, and that was about 35 years ago. Our narrator, Death, wastes…

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles My rating: 5 of 5 stars Another year of reading Oedipus Rex with my AP Literature and Composition students. As always, the play was a hit. Who can resist a story about a dude icing his daddy and making babies with his mama? The kids’ favorite line is always the one…