Revisiting The Challenge

Jay Writes -
The more eagle-eyed among you (or anyone who's looked at the masthead lately) will spot that Luke's 50 book challenge was to read and review them by Christmas, and it's now the end of January. So what's the story, morning glory?
Luke was really upset not to have finished the list in time. He's tried so hard and persevered with some books he'd hated - as well as those he loved - instead of reading his normal style of books. It was so dispiriting to have read 41 (and reviewed 39 of them) but not achieve his goal.
I told him not to worry: do what students and professionals have been doing for centuries when faced with a deadline ... request an extension.
Before we started this project, there were loads of books we were unfamiliar with on the list and we weren't entirely sure what we were getting ourselves into.  Now we've had a look at what Luke's achieved (which I hope you'll agree is LOADS) and what is feasible for him to achieve in the coming months and we've made some changes.
1. Timescale - Michael Gove's comment, which sparked this whole thing, was to read them over a year. So, the challenge will run until the end of March, a year from starting it.
2. Substitutions - There are some books on the list that Luke has really hated.  In general, they've been an unhappy combination of a literary style that doesn't suit him and a subject matter he doesn't care about.  To give him 3 wild cards seemed fair.  He could chose 3 books from the list that he really couldn't face and swap them with books his dad and I agreed would be suitable alternatives
3. Tolkien  - The original list featured The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy as one choice.  Luke ploughed through over half of The Fellowship Of The Rings with little enjoyment. We agreed, in the face of more elvish poetry than one could shake a stick at, to go with just reading The Hobbit. That's still 400 pages and a rollicking good read to boot.  We'll leave LOTR til he's a little older.

Luke's made a good start. He's reviewed the 2 books he'd read before Christmas and he's tackled one of the book he was most dreading. He's also a fair way through The Hobbit. He's got 8 books to do in 8 weeks, which will be hard, but I've got faith in him.
And anyway, he played a Wild Card to ditch Little Women, so I know he can do this!

Swallows and Amazons

I cannot say with all honesty that I was looking forward to reading this book. It was big, it was in that time where everyone is perfectly delightful and worst of all it had that thing where instead of writing tomorrow like a normal person they write to-morrow with doesn't make any SENSE! But as it turns out it wasn’t that bad. 

How were the characters? OK. How was the storyline? OK. How was the ending? OK. 

If someone asked me “Hey Luke can you sum up the quality of swallows and amazons in one word?” I would reply “Eh” The book overflows with mediocrity. Nothing is noticeably horrible yet nothing makes me fill with happiness or burst out laughing. 

This is the kind of book that you read when you just got nothing better to do. I hope that in future this book will mean more to me but for now it will just sit on my shelf until I lie on the floor groaning with boredom. 50/100.             

Carry On Jeeves

The Jeeves and Wooster series is a fantastic set of small stories written by PG Wodehouse about a rich man named Bertie Wooster and his new butler Jeeves and their experiences in New York and London. 

These stories are very entertaining and interesting. The character design is excellent, the story lines are great and the made up words that the author uses are really weird and yet very good. But while the made up words are funny they really have to said out loud in order to understand them. 

As well as that there is also the continuing joke that Jeeves always throws away one of the items of clothing that Bertie has. At first it was pretty funny but after that it got a little repetitive. 

Over all it is agood book with funny jokes and strange words but to really get the feel of the book you have to read it aloud. 79/100           

how to be topp

I found how to be topp:
stupid, insane, badly spelt, really not funny, boring, ridiculous, brainless, deficient, dense, dim, doltish, dopey, dull, dumb, foolish, half-baked, half-witted, idiotic, ill-advised, imbecilic, inane, indiscreet, insensate, irrelevant, laughable, ludicrous, meaningless, mindless, moronic, nonsensical, obtuse, pointless, puerile, rash, senseless, simpleminded, slow, sluggish, stolid, stupefied, thick, thick-headed, trivial, unintelligent, unthinking and moronic. 

I must thank thesaurus.com for the majority of these words.

I HATE THIS BOOK EVEN MORE THAN THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, AUTHOR? WHY DID YOU MAKE ME READ THIS? DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE!

 Ok, taking deep breaths. Listen people: this book is terrible! It tries to be funny but it isn’t. Curse It! The little rich brat telling the story cannot spell. The bad spelling is supposed to be a joke but when he does it I just think “?” All Molesworth does is say weird stuff about his posh school for boys and pretends he is a spaceman/cowboy/hero. What kind of a storyline is that? In order to even understand this book I would have to be in the upper class 5 generations ago.  Makes stupid jokes and has a horrible story line. For pure stupidity and suckiness this book is cursed with
0/100.   

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a series of short stories told from the point of Dr John Watson, Sherlock's friend and companion in his investigations.
I am very fond of these 'shorts.' Each one had a different storyline and is full of excitement. The formula is that someone comes to Sherlock Holmes with a problem and tells his story. Sherlock Holmes says 'of course,  will solve this,' goes off and does strange things that no one understands and at the end Holmes catches the killer/thief/criminal and explains to everyone in the room how he solved the mystery. My only criticism is that in some stories when he is catching the killer/thief and explains what he'd done, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. That and in some stories I had to ask my mum what they meant when they said so and so or such and such.
My favourite story was The Speckled Band but that was just because I loved the killer's method.
A really good set of stories based on the phenomenal character of Sherlock Holmes. 77/100

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

This is an interesting book because instead of having normal chapter numbers this book's chapters go up in prime numbers like this: Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 5, Chapter 7, Chapter 11 and so on.
This book is told by a 15 year old boy named Christopher who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and hates touching people.  His mother dies in a hospital and he lives with his father. When he finds his neighbour's dog speared by a garden fork he decides to conduct a full investigation.
His father has other ideas and tells him to "Stay the f**k out of other people's business." So Christopher stops investigating. Then he talks to Mrs Alexander who sheds some interesting light on his mother's death. After that Christopher discovered that the person who killed the dog was   (not telling)     so he runs away from them and gets into a LOT of trouble.
This was a good book with a great storyline and a fantastic character design. I loved Christopher's way of seeing the world. This book earned a 99/100

Stormbreaker

The has got to be one of the best books for 12 year olds around. Certainly one of the best I've seen - and I've seen a lot. Stormbreaker has everything from teenage spies to deadly jellyfish. If you like books full of adventure and near death experiences READ THIS BOOK NOW. If you are reading this review stop reading, shut down the computer and pick up the book. This is the most important decision of your lifetime so choose carefully.
Will you
A. Shut down the computer and read the amazing and sinister story of teen spy Alex Rider and his quest to save the world
B. Read the rest of this review and then go and read the Alex Rider story of creepy scarred men and psychopath millionaires
C. Stop reading the review and go and play Scrabble with your family

If you chose A then Go! Read the story, your life will improve, HURRAY!
If you chose B then fine, enjoy your mediocre life/
If you chose C then get out. You have your short sad life so stop wasting it.Goodbye!

99/100 for awesomeness