I really wanted to find the biggest picture that I could of the Nintendo DSiXL 100 Classic Books game to give you the best idea of what it would look like. Hopefully this particular picture gives you some idea of the reading experience you can expect to have, courtesy of a Nintendo DSi XL screen! Now the lovely ladies here at 5 Minutes for Books were each given an opportunity to read from this 100 Classic Books game on the new Nintendo DSi XL. As any of you who know me through my book reviews, you know that I like reading with an actual book on my hand. Reading a book on a game console is ...
Category Archives: Classics
Classics Book Club: The Princess and the Goblin
Attention classic book lovers everywhere! I have a news flash for you! Get this: It is now hip to be square. Yes, indeed, it’s true. Thanks to the 100 Classic Books “game” for Nintendo DSiXL, we who love all things classic can not only be hip but I have to tell you: I’ve also been the envy of at least two young gamers in my circle of acquaintance (who also happen to live with me). I'll freely confess that I’m pretty much old school, like most fans of classic literature, but I really enjoyed the convenience of having so many great novels at the tip of the fingers (or my stylus, as the case may be). Since I was branching out and reading a book in an electronic format, I decided to also choose something a little different ...
Sense & Sensibility: Insight Edition
As a Jane Austen fanatic, I've never thought her novels could be improved. The wonderful folks at Bethany House proved me wrong with the Insight Edition of Sense and Sensibility. Packed full of wonderful tidbits of pop culture trivia from the film versions, Austen's life, and the historical & cultural details of the era, this book made me feel like I was reading alongside an old friend. The editors did an outstanding job of compiling fun and educational information. I particularly enjoyed the ongoing ranking of the novel's most frustrating characters, as well as the comments on the characters and plots. If you're not familiar with Sense and Sensibility, it's the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. As different as night and day, each sister seeks love and handles rejection in ways that completely confound the other. ...
Readable Classics
Before I started my own blog in January of 2007, I followed several blogs daily (yes, I was a lurker). One of the blog topics that always captured my attention was books/reading. I love to read, so I enjoyed following along with reading challenges and blogs about books. As soon as I started my own site, I jumped into the reading community by participating in challenges; and eventually, I became a contributor at 5 Minutes for Books. I have always been a reader, but reading challenges and my work with 5 Minutes for Books have helped me to expand my horizons in a very specific way: I now read classics—for fun. I first joined the classics scene by reading all of Jane Austen's books (it seemed that everyone in Blogland adored Jane), and since then, I ...
Classics Bookclub: Link up your reviews!
Have you been reading the classics? Have you read any since we announced our "pick-your-own" sort of bookclub? I set some goals, loosely hoping to read one per quarter, or at least four over the year, and here we are at the end of the first quarter, and I'm cramming. I have not finished my book, but I am reading it. I'm fairly sure I'll be able to link up a review by sometime tomorrow. And though the traffic will probably slow down, there's no time limit. I would say if we get too far into April you should save that review to link up the next 5th Tuesday (June 29). This is our first quarterly posting of the linky that invites you to post up all your reviews from the last quarter (from January 1 on). The ...
On Reading: Reading Great Literature
For many years, I walked right past the Classics section of the bookstore. There was a good reason for this--I was so traumatized in high school from being assigned The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick, that I promised myself I would never again open a book that was considered Great Literature. And I never break a promise. But last year, something happened to change all that. Maybe being firmly ensconced in middle age and acutely aware of my own mortality, I began to consider the things in life that I had missed out on. Reading Great Literature topped the list. I knew there must be a reason the Classics have stood the test of time. If only I could lift the fog of verbosity, repetition, and arcane words, something of value certainly lurked there. After all, I thought, I’m not an ignorant person. I have a Masters degree, and although ...
The NEW Classics Bookclub — Sign up!
We've made a lot of changes to the Classics bookclub over this year to try to make it easier for people to participate. We've reduced the frequency, we've added in some non-classics, we've selected an author instead of a specific book to give people some leeway -- and it's still been slow going. We don't want to dump it. We know that there are some of you out there who love to read the Classics and love to be able to do so alongside other booklovers. And then there are those of you (like me!!), who want to re-read some of those classics that didn't mean as much as they could've because we read them when we were 16 years old. There are also books that we never got around to that we feel like we really "should" read someday. So ...
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Jennifer Donovan
Managing Editor -
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