Athena the Brain by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

I finally finished a book for my Mythology Reading Challenge! It is a middle grades read and is the first book in the Goddess Girls series. The 4th and 5th grade girls at my library love this series and keep recommending it, so I definitely wanted to give it a try.

Aladdin

The first book revolves around Athena, who learns she is the daughter of Zeus and that he wants her to attend the Mount Olympus Academy. Athena is sad about leaving her best friend Pallas, but is also excited about attending the school and meeting the famous godboys and goddessgirls. She makes both friends and enemies and takes on a heavy school load, but with her brains and wisdom, she finds a place to fit in with the other students.

I loved the elementary take on the Greek gods and goddesses and some of the more famous mortals of the time. Athena befriends Pandora, Aphrodite, and Artemis, finds an enemy in Medusa, and is annoyed by Poseidon and his trident. I love how the authors use parts of the myths to tell the story, but also give them their own twists, like how when Athena first meets Zeus, he has a headache and she learns the headache is her mother inside Zeus's head as a fly. Some of the more R rated stories are amusingly recreated as G events, like Medusa crushing on Poseidon, and how Athena accidentally gives Medusa her snake hair, instead of Medusa and Poseidon doing naughty things in Athena's temple and Athena cursing her. Even the take on how Athens is named is close to how the actual myth takes place, without the temper of Poseidon and Athena rearing its ugly head. One of the weird things is Zeus is the principal, therefore an adult, but his brothers Poseidon and Hades are just preteen boys. I haven't seen Hera in the series, so I don't know what they will do with that, since we have been introduced to Athena's mother in Zeus's head and this is an elementary audience. Hera may be left out completely.

This is a good series for upper elementary students who are not quite ready for Riordan's novels, but want a bit of Greek mythology. The writing style is modern, so the characters speak in modern slang and a bit juvenile, but this is perfect for the intended audience. It was an interesting read and one that I will probably booktalk. 4 cups of cocoa and I will probably read a couple more of the stories at a later date.

Booking Through Summer Reading Challenge signup post

This is hosted by kimberlyfaye reads and BookNerd Betsy and you can sign up at this link.
The hosts want to make this a bit like the BookIt program that kids used to participate in in the summer. No free pizza, but lots of prizes and mini-challenges to reward you for reading during the summer. Since I will already be reading some this summer, I definitely want to participate in this. I will update this post with books once I finish reading them. Good luck to everyone and thanks to kimberlyfaye reads and BookNerd Betsy for hosting!

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

This was my To Be Read book for May and is also my first book finished for the Fairytale Reading Challenge.

HarperCollins

Sophie has always read the fairytales written by the Storian each year, when the books magically appear in the bookstore. She dreams one day of being abducted and taken to the School for Good, but in the meantime she does her good deeds, which include befriending Agatha, a girl who lives in a graveyard, who Sophie thinks is destined for the School for Evil. Agatha only wants to stay with her friend Sophie and her cat. When the Schoolmaster comes to still away two children from their town, Agatha tries to protect Sophie and the two are whisked away to the School for Good and Evil. However, Sophie is thrown in Bad, while Agatha is taken to Evil. Both girls believe there is a mistake, Sophie believes she is in the wrong school and Agatha just wants to go home and take Sophie with her. Sophie decides that maybe Agatha is right and they should try to go home, until she sees Tedros, son of King Arthur, and decides he is the prince for her. She wants her happy ending at all costs, but the Schoolmaster and the Storian have other plans for the girls. It is up to Agatha to try and save the day, but when the Storian starts their fairytale, the only way out is to finish the story and the usual way is death for one of the main characters. Can Agatha save the day or will one of the girls pay the ultimate cost?

I ended up really liking the story and the School. The characters at times bothered me, as Sophie seemed too damsel in distress and Agatha seemed too attached to Sophie. I also did not like Tedros at all. He was the typical jerk prince who felt he needed to save "the princess," who could not possibly save herself, even though she had saved him on more than one occasion. I did like the relationship between the two girls and was surprised by the ending. I managed to finish most of the book in one day and even stayed up late finishing it. I like Soman's writing style and world-building and did come to like the two main female characters as well as some of the secondary characters. The School and magical world were well developed and I feel like the characters will be more developed as the series progresses. I definitely want to read the rest of the series and see where he takes the story. The ending is not necessarily a cliff-hanger, but it does kind of leave things open. 4 cups of cocoa and a good twist on the ideas of Good and Evil.

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I read this one for the Classics Challenge and it fits the category of 20th Century Classic.

Scribner

I have read and reread The Great Gatsby, so I decided I wanted to try another of Fitzgerald's books. Since this one is billed as semi-autobiographical I wanted to see what Fitzgerald thought about growing up in the period before the roaring Twenties and then see how much of his perspective changed between this novel and The Great Gatsby. This could be a bit of a spoiler, because I am having trouble summarizing without telling most of the story.

The story follows the life of Amory Blaine, Fitzgerald's counterpart. Blaine is brought up by a frivolous, hypochondriac mother, who abandons him for a couple of years when he becomes ill and she still wants to travel. Due to her upbringing and focus on his education, Amory believes he is better than everyone else and struggles with focusing on his studies. He is fairly smart, but not motivated and this shows in his academy and college years. He lives a carefree lifestyle only influenced by Monsignor Darcy who tries to win him to the faith, but also sees in Blaine, his former youth. Blaine dabbles briefly with the army and this doesn't really seem to have an impact on him, except making him focus more on himself in a more serious manner. Then comes his attraction to Rosalind, a counterpart to Zelda, whom Fitzgerald has loved and lost at the time of the novel. Rosalind is the only creature at the time that Blaine loves more than himself and when she cruelly chooses to marry for money, he drifts for a bit, before truly learning who he is.

This has the same doomed love affair as Gatsby, but Blaine is just not as likable as Gatsby. I think Fitzgerald felt a bit out of sorts with himself, due to his sole focus of winning Zelda back. You can see that this is definitely autobiographical, while still fiction. I now want to read a bit more of Fitzgerald's background to see how closely related to his life this is. I have looked up a bit and have read some about Zelda and Fitzgerald's relationship and this does seem mirrored in Amory and Rosalind.

I did like the book, not as well as the Great Gatsby, but since that is one of my favorite classics, that is not surprising.
I loved some of the quotes including, "The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last-the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't."
Also, "to hold a man a woman has to appeal to the worst of him."
"People make money in books and I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do."
"They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won't see that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children are going to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle."
 My favorite is by far, "'I know, myself,' he cried, 'but that is all.'" Really this is an important thing and really one of the main things that matters. I give this 4 cups of cocoa and was worth the read.

Bout of Books 13 Day 6 and 7

 

 Wrapup: I did participate in both Twitter chats and completed the first mini-challenge, so not too bad there. I didn't visit any blogs this time, so I will have to work on that for Bout of Books 14. I finished True Grit, so I completed that goal and overall I read 377 pages. Not bad for a busy week!


Day 6: Participated in the Twitter chat. I didn't read at all. We went out with friends and spent the night, so that we could be ready for the baptism bright and early the next day.

Day 7: I started reading when I got home and managed to read 96 more pages of Suite Francaise

Bout of Books 13 Days 3, 4, 5 Update

Day 3: Nothing. I had a horrible sinus headache that turned into a migraine and I could not even stand hearing an audiobook. The sounds echoed inside my head.

Day 4: I just did not have anytime at all to read. I worked late and then had a long work phone call when I got home. I did listen to a bit of Harry Potter, but only like a few pages worth of it.

Day 5: Did better today! I had a 2 hour drive to my conference, so I listened to Suite Francaise all the way there and for about an hour of the way back. I then realized I had not finished downloading the next part, so I switched to Harry Potter. Looking in the print copy, I covered about 137 pages in Suite Francaise and about 50 pages in Harry Potter.

Bout of Books 13 Day 2 Update

Really busy work day! So far I have only managed to read a little bit.
I could not fall asleep last night, so I read and was able to finish True Grit! I can see why it is considered a classic and I loved the narrative style.

Pages read: 78 pages in True Grit and finished!, 12 pages in Suite Francaise