The 306 Greatest Books #21 - Jane Eyre

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists. 

Continuing on through my grandfather's book collection I noticed there was a large number of books by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. And so I decided to sit down and tackle some of those books.
It has been so long since I have read Jane Eyre, I feel that I can't do it justice anymore. This is another of the books I need to go back to at some point. Our title character, Jane Eyre, starts off the story at an orphanage and eventually grows up to live with the famous Mr. Rochester. I almost feel like Mr. Rochester is more of a famous character in modern day society than even Jane Eyre is herself. The book is a fun romantic novel with an air of mystery that definitely deserves another go around for me.

The 306 Greatest Books #20 - Ivanhoe

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book Lists. 

Upon finishing Treasure Island, I searched through my stack of grandfather's books and picked out another book from my list. Ivanhoe sounded interesting. I had literally no clue what it was about before diving in. Turns out, it's Robin Hood. Or at least Robin Hood lite. Reading through the book the main impression I had about the book was this guy who would steal from the rich and give to the poor. Richard the Lionheart was even in the book! It is a medieval romantic novel that takes place in the 1100's about Sir Ivanhoe after he comes back from the Third Crusades. This was definitely a surprising book for me, since I had no clue what I was getting into. Overall it was a very enjoyable book and one of the few on the list that takes place in medieval England.

The 306 Greatest Books #19 - Treasure Island

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. This book can be found on the Sybervision and the BBC Book Lists. 

Upon graduating college, I was determined to better myself, and one of the ways I planned on doing that was by reading the 100 Greatest Books of all time. Treasure Island was my first official foray into reading all of those. Most of the book I read first were books that I incidentally had obtained from my grandfathers' collections but eventually I was able to afford some more books on my own. But this was my first real book on the list that didn't have anything to do with a class assignment. The one reason I picked this first was that it was fairly short. I needed to go on a plane flight and picked this book to take with me. The story was a fast paced, "swash-buckling adventure" stories about pirates and the seven seas. It didn't even last the whole round trip to read. I was done with it in a few hours but it was a lot of fun. The book was written as a bedtime story for the authors children. He would write a chapter at a time and read them to the kids. This allowed for the story to grow on its own and maintain a fairly quick pace throughout. The time that I had read the story was around the time I had seen the movie Treasure Planet as well, which followed this story fairly closely (with some obvious changes). Overall, this is a quick, fun read that I definitely recommend.