Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

4/10

I finished reading this to Mallory a little more than two weeks ago. I had been wanting to read a chapter book to Mallory for a while now and she got pretty pumped when I suggested this book because she is fairly familiar with the Alice story. She was really into it at first because she is mostly familiar with the start of the Alice story. But she certainly had moments of disinterest once it started getting to the more obscure parts of the story and the parts that are not in the movie. Plus, much of the story is super random, silly, and hard to follow logically that I also had my own moments of disinterest as well.

The book was so-so for me. I appreciated its originality/creativity and enjoyed a lot of the word play throughout but there are just a few too many over the top nonsensical moments for me to really get behind it as a whole. There sure are a lot of growing really tall and shrinking really small moments. Lewis Carroll, a.k.a. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, really is a super genius though. The word play antics were really quite something at times. One of my favorites is when the Duchess tells Alice this: "[A]nd the moral of that is - 'Be what you would seem to be' - or, if you'd like it put more simply - 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'" Ha ha. There's for sure some good, fun, light-hearted and enjoyable moments.

Also, I learned that Tweetledee and Tweetledum are actually in the sequel "Through the Looking-Glass" and not the original "Alice in Wonderland." Who knew?

I will now post the classic Alice in Wonderland quote:

"'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat."

Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Wilford Woodruff

9/10

I like this one. I taught a few lessons from this one when I was called as an Elder's Quorum Instructor while I was home for the summer from University.  Two of the lessons I taught was the missionary work chapter and the journal keeping chapter. Those were fun chapters because he is known as being one of the best missionaries ever as well as one of the most thorough journal keepers ever. I like this book based on his thorough record keeping. There are so many detailed and interesting stories taken from his journals. Glad he wrote all that he did because our knowledge of many of the early events of the church come from him.

One quote from the missionary chapter which shows why he was such a great "converter of souls":

"[N]ever attempt to tear down a man's house, so to speak, before you build him a better one"

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

4/10

This is a great book cover, one of my favorites. I read this over a decade ago. I didn't much like it. But when looking back I think I was overly critical of it. It was very different from the Frankenstein we know today (that is, the guy with a bolt through his neck who walks like a zombie; and no, there is no Igor in this story). The Frankenstein in this book is a super intelligent creation, which makes him scarier when you think about it. I think I would like this book much better if I read it today than when I read it ten years ago. Plus, props to Mary Shelley for creating a horror story and monster that has lived on for generations.

I have one quote to share which is from the Intro to the 1931 publication written by Mary Shelley where she tells about what led up to her writing this story:

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself."

A young Joseph Smith was teaching the same principle about the creation of the universe at about the same time period.

To Make Thee a Minister and a Witness

7/10

This is an old Priesthood/Relief Society book that was used way back in the day before they started doing the Teachings of the Presidents books. I acquired this and two other manuals in this group on my mission when a meetinghouse library was giving away free books to clear up some space. Unfortunately I only got Study Guides 2, 3, and 4. This is Study Guide 2. I posted Guides 3 and 4 previously in this blog. These books seem pretty good and it's interesting to see how some of the older manuals were structured.

Quote from Harold B. Lee:

"The most important of all the commandments of God is the one that you're having the most difficulty keeping today. If it's one of dishonesty, if it's one of unchastity, if it's one of falsifying, not telling the truth, today is the day for you to work on that until you've been able to conquer that weakness. Then you start on the next one that's most difficult for you to keep."

The Client by John Grisham

7/10

I finished reading this just yesterday. It is my very first Grisham book believe it or not. It was largely what I expected it to be - a quick and mostly entertaining read with a few flaws.

The book starts off very well and grabs the reader's attention with a suspensful first couple chapters. Unfortunately there weren't quite enough of these kind of nail-biter moments throughout the book. There is another similar moment but not until near the end of the book.

The main flaw of the book is pretty obvious. The 11-year old boy is told a secret about where a dead body is buried. He for some reason doesn't want to tell the police or the FBI. The explanation being that he is scared of the mafia. But if he just tells the police at the very beginning then the body would have been found before the mafia would have known what's what. Instead he keeps it a secret which allows the mafia to begin its intimidation tactics to keep him quiet. But obviously the story would have only been like 75 pages if he doesn't lie about it. Also, I feel like Grisham recognizes this issue and he tried to explain and justify the kid's reasoning several times throughout the book. I just chose to go along with it in order to not be too bothered.

Also, any time that the main character is a super mature young kid there is bound to be some cheesy moments. You just gotta roll with it.

All in all I actually enjoyed the book for the most part. And I'm sure I will read some other Grisham's some time down the line.