Just Readin'

I was first introduced to The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff by the movie version of the book, The Eagle . The Eagle was a great movie, mostly because it involved face paint and Channing Tatum. So, after I saw it, I decided to read the book, and, after I read the book, I hated the movie, because the book was so much better. The Eagle of the Ninth tells the story of a Roman centurion, Marcus, stationed in Roman Britain. Marcus comes from a long line of soldiers. His father marched with the Ninth Legion, which disappeared in the old Roman province of Valentia. Marcus is haunted by the memory of his father's legion and longs to lift this shame from his family's name. After Marcus is injured in battle and forced to leave the army, he decides to journey north of Hadrian's wall to try to recover the lost Eagle of his father's legion. What follows is a stunning adventure that spans the length of Britain. The story is that the author actually based the book o...

So, the other day I was on Facebook, you know, like your typical college student with three billion pages to read a night, and I found one of those list challenge where you go through a list of things and mark all the things on the list you've done. Anyway, I found one that was called '50 Books to Read Before You Die'. Anyway, I read a lot, so I thought it I would try it, but out of 50, I'd only read 19, and, while most of the books on the list are famous and well known and note-worthy, I don't think my life would be significantly different if I hadn't read Frankenstein. Which, by the way, was like the dullest book I've ever read. I don't really like this whole idea of list of "necessary" books. It's hard to create a list of books that everyone should read before they die because, obviously, not everyone likes the same sort of thing. That's not to say that I don't think dark or boring books can be valuable. For examp...