Lee's Library

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was really good. Although I must say that I, once again, thought that too much got cut out. The book is, of course, better and is filled with a lot more information than the movie. I know that the movie people are separating the 7th movie into two parts. They probably could've done it with this book too.

I have finally seen this movie! My verdict is.....eh. It was..okay. They left out a lot of material that I found important. Take for example Carlisle's background. Um, hello?! That is important further on into the series. I do see why they took it out, but I just don't know. Next is Alice's background as told by James. Now, I do agree that it really wasn't too relevant to the plot of the movie, but I still found it important because that is one of the reasons why Alice wants everything to be perfect for Bella. If Alice remembered her human life, she may not be how she is now. Another thing I noticed is that they didn't show the cross in the Cullen's house. I believe that is important because of Edward's view of his soul. As you know (if you've read the series) Edward's and Bella's view on a vampire's soul are completely different. I find that if the cross is in the Cullen house, that means that all the Cullens apparently don't agree with Edward's view.

Something that really bothered me about the movie is the make-up on the Cullens. I know they are vampires, but seriously! They couldn't have made them any more white. It was just too much. And what's up with Bella? She isn't a vampire in this movie. Can't they give her some color? Seriously! You really couldn't tell who was a vampire and who wasn't.

I've read and heard a lot of people talk about the acting and how much they disliked it. What was wrong with the acting? I liked all the actors and actresses. A lot of people came down hard on Robert Pattinson. I don't see why. I mean, think about it. He's playing a vampire who has to act human. That's probably not the easiest part to play. So in my own view, Robert as well as all the others did a perfectly good job.

I'd have to watch the movie again to find out what else they missed that I thought needed to be there. It's been probably over a month since I've seen this and can't remember all that was missing. I do know that I talked for quite some time about everything that should have been done but wasn't. So, if I get to watch this again soon, I will put a continuation post.

I do have to say though that if you have not read the book / series, then the movie was pretty good. I am now looking forward (somewhat) to the movie version of New Moon. We'll have to wait and see if the movie goes as slow as the book. The next movie I'll be reviewing will be the new Harry Potter. I can't wait for that!

I am incredibly behind on updating this so I am going to be condensing these posts and combining more than one book for each post. So without further ado, let's review some books!

This incredibly short post tells where the photos that I've used below have came from. Since I forgot to credit them in their original posts, I'll say them here. The Maximum Ride photo comes from http://www.max-dan-wiz.com/. All Twilight images come from Stephenie Meyer's website, http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/.

New Moon is the second installment in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I must start off by saying that the first half of this novel was a bit of a disappointment. It lacked the fast-paced writing that Twilight has. The second half is so much better than the first. This book is more focused on Bella and Jacob rather than Edward.

*****Spoiler Alert!
Edward takes an "extended leave" and leaves Bella to take care of herself. If you don't know, Jacob is a werewolf.
End Alert*****

Okay, sorry about that but I'd rather not ruin it for the people who have not had the chance to read this novel. I know I would not want it ruined for me, so I try not to ruin it for others. Let me talk about Alice for a minute. I love Alice! I think she is awesome. She always wants everything to be perfect and will go through pretty much anything to get it, especially for Bella. You never can surprise Alice though, with her power and all, that's really hard to do. I quite enjoy Emmett too because he thinks that almost everything is fun especially fighting. I said in the last post that I would talk about Rosalie so I'll talk about her here. Rosalie seems very "stuck up," but really she just has her own issues. She feels as if Bella wants to throw away all of her human life just to be with Edward. Let's get back to the first half of the book, shall we? Like I've stated before, the first half was very slow. It had just enough action / drama in it to keep me interested. The story does come back to Edward in the second half and the writing speeds back up and possibly goes even faster than Twilight. Overall, this is not the best novel that I've read. One thing that is interesing is that the Volturi show up once again. I do like Jacob, but at the same time I'm quite fond of Edward by this point. I think introducing Jacob was necessary, especially because he becomes quite a large charater in the later novels. Something else that happens is that Victoria comes back to Forks. So far, this is all I'm going to talk about for this novel.

I thought a good place to begin is with some of my favorite authors. The first that comes to mind is James Patterson. If you like suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat writing, buy one of his books. I read his novels incredibly fast because I can not put them down once I begin. An awesome series to get into it the Maximum Ride series. Max, the fifth book in the series, just came out last March. I'll talk about that in my next post, but I will say that it did not disappoint. When you read Patterson's books, you never know whats coming. Sometimes things are "thrown in from left field," just out of nowhere, yet that is what makes his novels really good. If you want a good book of his, I would consider Beach Road. It shocked me toward the end. I won't say what happens of course, but I didn't see it coming at all.



To another author - Mary Higgins Clark. I found her not too long ago and I can't stop reading her novels. They are suspenseful as well and really good. You can kind of see what could happen to her characters, but you never really know what is actually going to happen. The most recent novel I've read by her was The Cradle Will Fall. As with the other ones I've read before, this was just as good. I'll talk about her novels in the future because I've got a few I still have to read.



J.K. Rowling is a popular author that a lot of people know about. If you don't know, she wrote the Harry Potter series. I really enjoy those novels. I plan on re-reading them, and probably will more than once. They are well written and you can connect with the characters easily. I must say though, that I enjoy the novels more than the movies.



Now, most people have heard of this next author. C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia series. Yet another great series to read. And yet again, I enjoyed the books more than the movies. What I found interesting is that The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe was written first, but Lewis wrote another novel, The Magician's Nephew, as a prequel to the series. I need to re-read those because they are so good and I haven't read them in quite a while. If you liked the movies, get the books.



I'm sure that there are other authors out there that I would really enjoy and just haven't found them yet. I will mention here, other authors that I like. One is Gregory Maguire who wrote Wicked. I will be talking more about The Wicked Years series later on. Maguire writes quite interesting stories. One thing that he does is write about fairy tales, but not the way you are used to them. He tells "the other side" of the story. Take Wicked for example, this is about the Wicked Witch of the West and her life-her side of the story. It is incredibly interesting to read, but more on that later. Edgar Allan Poe is...interesting to say the least. Sometimes you have to find the meaning of what he writes. As you probably know, his writings are very dark. I'm currently reading in the middle of The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. How can you talk about writing if you don't mention William Shakespeare. Now that is some text that you have to decipher. I currently in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. That is coming along slowly because I take breaks in between his stories and read other novels. He is a good writer though when you can understand it. Now I have to mention Stephenie Meyer because I have just finished Twilight and loved it. I have not seen the movie yet, but I plan to. I will still probably like the book better, but we'll have to wait and see about that. I will talk about Twilight in my next post, so I won't say anything about it here.



So, there you have it. These are the authors I enjoy reading. I know I've probably left some people out, but as I think of them, I'll let you know. Next post will be about Max and Twilight and possibly New Moon. That's what I'm currently reading.

Well, as you can see the title of this is "Lee's Library." I love books so needless to say, I read a lot of them. If you haven't guessed by now, I will be talking about books that I have read, am reading, or want to read. So there you have it. Short, sweet, and to the point. Keep an eye here because I'm sure another post will be soon!