"The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells

This book is really an interesting take on invisibility for having been written in 1897. Sure, most of the science is out there, but something makes you want to believe this is a possibility, even if the probability of this version of invisibility working is slim to none.

As you can see on the cover, the Invisible Man isn't entirely invisible- he becomes visible with clothes, and during certain other circumstances that are relevant to the book's plot.

The Plot:
Griffin is an albino and science student who has discovered the secret of invisibility. The problem? No one can believe they're not hallucinating him, or are so scared they can barely comprehend he was ever a man just like them. Will Griffin be able to share his achievement, or will he succumb to the temptations of his newfound powers?

What really makes this book is the novelty of the idea: if you were invisible, what would you do? Would you tire of the loneliness that comes with invisibility? How tempting would it be to use your powers for your own benefit?

Although I've never read Frankenstein, this book reminds me of the plot I've seen portrayed in the movie versions of it, mostly because it is good intentions gone bad, or science gone awry. Griffin tries his best to live like any other man, but once he went invisible that became more difficult. It becomes clear as the novel progresses that invisibility is truly an inner morals issue, because who can police you if they can't see you?

The Invisible Man is an easily readable classic, despite being over a hundred years old. But besides the novelty of invisibility, there really isn't a lot to the plot, and the characters don't stand out much. If you're looking for a quick classic to read and find the idea of invisibility fascinating, I recommend The Invisible Man.

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars for a great classic, if you like the novelties of invisibility.

Content: Ages 14+ for violence.

Page Count: 214 pages in my large print paperback edition.

Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge: Participation Announcement

I've been meaning to join the main Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge (hosted by Mom's Small Victories, I'm Lost in Books, and Savvy Working Gal) since I participated in the Readathon in September, but I am a constant procrastinator (tomorrow will always be another day). I thought I'd better put this up before the new year, given I tend to forget about things during the hectic holidays where I eat, bake, and craft much of my time away.

The “Rules” (From the Challenge Post at Mom's Small Victories)
And the “rules” are simply this…YOU choose your own adventure! These are your goals but you can change them any time.

1. Determine length of time you will participate in the challenge. Just one month, An entire season, a year or 5 years?

2. Determine how many countries you would like to read about during your adventure. What criteria are you using to determine the number of countries you read about (ex. book setting, author background or both)?

3. How will you track the countries you visited in books? You could create a map in Google Maps, track on your blog or on a Goodreads shelf.

4. Determine your book list or genre if you like. Will you be listing specific books you would like to read? Do you aim to read fiction, nonfiction or a mixture of both?

5. Link up your posts. Linkies will be available for sign up/goals, wrap up, and a linky for each continent for you to add your book reviews whenever you are ready.

6. Please follow each of our 3 hosts by at least one social media or bloglovin, RSS, GFC so you can keep informed of news, updates and events regarding this challenge.

My Goals:

-Read 15 books set in a different country from mine (I live in the U.S.) or by an author from a different country than mine. For my beginner challenge, I'm going to set the timeline to be from now until January 1st, 2016 (which seems so far away!). And then I'll also try to review those books on this blog.

-I have no set number of countries I'd like to 'visit' but I will try to do at least five different countries. I have so many the-pile and the-invisible-pile books set in England or the UK that it's absolutely ridiculous.

-I already made a Google book map with help from Guiltless Reader's tutorials, and have been adding my recent reads. I'll try to keep it updated, but I occasionally fall behind.

-I'll be reading books from my the-pile (unread physical books I've gathered) or the-invisible-pile (unread ebooks) shelves on Goodreads, but have documented the applicable ones from my current the-pile below. I won't be reading any specific genre, as I have everything from urban fantasy to memoirs/biographies in my piles of books I bought as a thrift shop junkie.

These are the massive amounts of current selections in my pile:

Fiction Set Mostly in Britain or Wales
From Left to Right, Top Tier to Bottom Tier:
An Old Betrayal (Charles Lenox Mysteries #7) by Charles Finch (Historical Mystery, England)
Dark Angels by Karleen Koen (Historical, Mostly England)
The Giant, O'Brien by Hilary Mantel (Historical, England)
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (Historical, England)
The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1) by Jasper Fforde (Urban Fantasy, Great Britain)
Wideacre by Philippa Gregory (Historical, England)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (Historical, Mostly England)
Schooling by Heather (Historical, England)
The Master by Colm Toibin (Historical, Mostly England)
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (Historical, England)
The Quincunx by Charles Palliser (Historical, England)
Meridon by Philippa Gregory (Historical, England)
The Chalice and the Blade by Glenna McReynolds (Historical/Fantasy, Wales)
A Sundial in a Grave: 1610 by Mary Gentle (Historical, Mostly England)

Fiction Set Mostly in France
An Army of Angels by Pamela Marcantel (Historical, France)
Rashi's Daughters: Joheved by Maggie Anton (Historical, France)
Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst (Historical Spy Thriller, Paris, France)
The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser (Historical, France)

Fiction Set in European Countries Other Than Mostly England or France
The Watchers (Angelus Trilogy #1) by Jon Steele (Thriller, Mostly Switzerland)
Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross (Historical, Mostly Italy)
Poison by Kathryn Harrison (Historical, Mostly Spain)
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean (Historical, Mostly Russia)
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco (Historical, Italy)
Queen's Own Fool by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris (Historical, Scotland)
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières (Historical, Cephalonia Greece)
The Sign of the Eagle by Jess Steven Hughes (Historical, Italy)
A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis (Historical Mystery, Austria)
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland (Historical/Art, the Netherlands)

Fiction Set Mostly in Asia
The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly (Historical Mystery, India)
One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian (Historical/Contemporary, Mostly China)
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Historical, China)
Peony in Love by Lisa See (Historical, China)
Out by Natsuo Kirino (Mystery/Thriller, Japan)

Fiction Set in the Rest of the World
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay (Historical, South Africa)
The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots by Tamar Myers (Historical Mystery, Congo)
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman (Historical, Australia)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Contemporary/Historical, Afghanistan)
Resurrection by Tucker Malarkey (Historical, Egypt)
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (Fiction, Haiti) Author is also a native Haitian
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley (Historical, Greenland)
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Historical, Chile)
The Romanov Prophecy by Steven Barry (Thriller, Russia) Not sure why I didn't put it with Europe.

Classics (Various Countries)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (Historical, England)
The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene (Historical Thriller, England)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (Historical Thriller, Vietnam)
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (Historical, England)
The Romance of Tristan by Béroul (Historical, England/Ireland/France)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Historical, England)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Historical, England)
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (Historical, India)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (Historical,
Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore (Historical,
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (Historical, Bosnia)
Cheri and the Last of Cheri by Colette (Historical, France)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (Historical, England/Europe)
Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad (Historical, Congo)
The Moonstone by William Wilkie Collins (Historical, England)
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott (Historical, England)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Historical, Mostly Russia)

Nonfiction/Biographies/Memoirs (Various Countries)
Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe by Nancy Goldstone (Nonfic, Europe)
Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel (Biography, Italy)
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell (Biography, Europe)*
The Lady and the Monk by Pico Iyer (Memoir, Japan)
Catherine the Great by Zoé Oldenbourg (Biography, Russia)
Dear Theo by Vincent van Gogh and Irving Stone (Autobiography, Europe/France)

*One of the Mitford sisters ends up becoming an American, but given they all began in England and there are five others who end up somewhere in Europe, I decided to include this book.

As you can see, I have a lot to choose from, and that isn't even including my ebook selection. I think I'll have plenty of books to complete my first year-ish challenge.

                        Until Saturday,

Month in Review for November... Christmastime Already???

It seems like yesterday I had my jack-o-lantern attacked by savage neighborhood squirrels, but apparently a month has already gone by since then. As you can see, I've already put up my tree and am sprinkling Christmas throughout the house. Christmas season also means I'll be occupied with baking things most people can't pronounce: krumkake, hopefully some lefse, and maybe some finska kakor, if I'm lucky. The easier to pronounce favorites include: Christmas Thumbprints, Norwegian Kringle, and Chocolate Pinwheels, in addition to the classic cutout cookies. I have food fully on my mind this time of the year, having been raised in an environment where it isn't Christmas without a tableful of Norwegian-ish specialties packed with butter, eggs, cardamom, almond extract, and lots of sugar.

Statistics:
 Total Posts: 18
  Total Critiques: 10
  Genres:
    Dystopia: 1
    Fairy Tale Retellings: 1
    Fantasy: 2
    Historical: 2
    Out of Orbit: 1
    Paranormal Romance: 1
    Sci-Fi: 1
    Urban Fantasy: 2

Most Popular Posts of November:
SFF: The 5 Books You're Most Grateful For (2014)
"The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield
Feelin' Crafty: the-pile TBR Jar Project
"The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)" by Suzanne Collins
"Trinity (The Koldun Code #1)" by Sophie Masson
Confessions: Staying Safe on the Wild Wild Web

Pageviews for the Month: 630
Comments: 6

Blog Schedule and Features: Critiques on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On Sundays, I rotate between the Sunday Fun Five, and Confessions of an Insomniac Book Devourer (or Not Quite a Confession).

The TBR Lottery for December

Since I didn't manage to read either book I drew last time (although I'm halfway through Legacy, and both I drew were 500+ pages), I'm only going to draw one book in hopes I'll catch up. This month, I did a blind draw (not picking any specific genre based on color), and picked out:

Possibly the smallest print ever. This will take me forever to read.

Nonfiction/History
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (447 pages, 3.97 star average on Goodreads)
Basic Plot (From Goodreads): 'Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that 'The Devil in the White City' is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.'

I find it highly ironic that I manage to draw some of the bigger books in my pile first, but then again, I have always loved larger books and therefore acquired them ceaselessly for my pile.

Upcoming Reviews

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
I've been reading short and sweet classics lately, to up my numbers in Goodreads's 2014 Reading Challenge. I was kind of impressed at how easily readable this one was, as contrasted with my attempts to read Wells's The War of the Worlds (which I never finished).
Genres: Classics, Action/Adventure, Sci-fi, Horror, Historical

The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott
This is an interesting book, because it was written when Alcott (author of the famed Little Women) was only 17. It was never intended to be published, but eventually was posthumously, Considering those facts, I found it pretty good, if a little melodramatic.
Genres: Classics, Historical, Romance

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
I read this as a teen because of its pretty cover. One of my first dystopias, How I Live Now details the adventures of a fifteen year old girl who lives in the countryside in England when war breaks out and power systems fail.
Genres: Dystopia, Sci-fi, Action/Adventure, Young Adult, Romance