Read about Fiction
Esquivel’s “Like Water For Chocolate”
To tell the truth this was one of the few books that I entirely disliked the style they were written in. It was not the magical qualities of the story that made it bad, the story was nice, but the style was distracting and scatter-brained. It felt like I was reading a normal book and every other paragraph I looked at a line from a cookbook. In most areas the recipes were not even seamlessly brought into the story, instead they were just stuck in a few sentences here and there. Overall I think the book’s style reflects the way a person with severe attention deficit disorder thinks. The story itself was nice but parts made no sense at all, and if anybody handed in a paper with the same lack of coherency it would receive a nice big red F.
Thoughts on Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley
In the course of this article the ending of the story and many other spoilers will be revealed. This is your only warning.
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
This Pullman trilogy is technically for children, but as recent books such as Harry Potter have shown us, the children’s section doesn’t mean it is childish writing. While anyone can appreciate the story in these books, I think only an adult can truly appreciate what is happening on so many levels and the subtle nudges towards our own world that Pullman litters throughout the book.
The story itself is about a young girl growing up privileged in a world where each person has their own daemon (literally their soul), these daemon take the from of animals and are a persons constant companion their entire lives until eventually they both die. As with all stories something changes and the heroine is thrust into a “save the world” role which she was previously unprepared for. As a result we the reader are able to follow her through her trials and tribulations meeting creatures not of this world, but without taking the typical fantasy route and giving the reader elves and dwarfs.
