* 392.8

I’ve always loved fairy-tales, especially modern adaptations of them.  I got the Barnes and noble leatherbound copies of both Grimms Complete Fairy Tales andHans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales for Christmas a couple of years ago and I’m slowly trying to make my way through them.

I love reading books that have fairy-tale elements in them.  (Gregory Maquire’s “Wicked” books are some of my favorite!) I’m always surprised at how different the original fairy-tales are.  They don’t always have the typical “happily-ever-after” endings and I don’t think I would let my future young children anywhere near them until they were much, much older.  But then again, the version I’m familiar with is usually a Disney movie or some media knock-off. 

I’ve also become recently addicted to ABC show Once Upon A Time. Very different and unique versions of fairy-tale stories and the costumes and settings are amazing!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

★★★

"Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous."

* The Underground New York Public Library

Underground New York Public Library

“The Underground New York Public Library is a visual library featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways.”  This is an amazing project and a wonderful example of reading in unexpected places.  The website even tags the title / author or the books they are reading…such a great idea!

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

★★★

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

★★★★

"There's something disturbing about recalling a memory and feeling utterly cold."

Wow, that only took me ... what, 5 days??  Good thing I was on vacation from both work and school otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get anything else done :)  I don't think I've ever loved a book and hated the main characters so much at the same time.  Crazy ending ... Has anyone else read anything by her???  

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

★★★

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.  A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.  Or a garden planted.  Something your hand touched someway so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.  The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said.  The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

"There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a women stay in a burning house; there must be something there.  You don't stay for nothing."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

★★★

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly in to the past."

"I hope she'll be a fool - that's the bast thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."