August 1914 by Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn

August 1914, as the author says in the beginning, '. . . comprises only the first part, or fascicle, of of a work in many parts. Therefore, it makes no pretense at completeness, even in the development of its characters: except for the operations of Samsonov's army, this is only the initial presentation of a larger work. The whole work, however, may take as long as twenty years, and probably I will not live to finish it. Given the difficulty of retelling history, I need, as the work progresses, the cooperation of readers who still remember the period. That is why I have decided to publish in fascicles, or a series of volumes'. This proves to be true, as it leaves several loose ends with characters and subplots, and I'm not quite sure what book comes next; it may be November 1916.

This book centres on the campaign of the Second Army, in the area of Tannenberg, Prussia, during, as the title indicates, August 1914. The Second Army is led by General Samsonov, a rather pathetic, plodding character from which reality is withheld by those below him in rank. A few characters are introduced near the beginning of the book who have nothing to do with the army, but are mostly peasants on the steppes. These are the loose ends of the book, seemingly forgotten throughout and reintroduced in the last few chapters. 

An officer from General Headquarters is sent to Second Army to assess the situation, a certain Colonel Vorotyntsev, who ties most of the very segregated subplots together. He is young and uncorrupted by rank and achievements, and belongs to a very small group of characters that can actually be related to. 

The campaign is quite complex and would take a more lengthy explanation than I can give, but Solzhenitsyn does it quite clearly, though it takes 622 pages, making August 1914 the second-longest book I have ever read, bested in length only by War and Peace. It is also one of the best I have ever read.

I will also note that my edition had a map of the area of Tannenberg as an insert, without which the plot would have been entirely lost to me. 

The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford

Don't get deterred by the name; this actually isn't a novel. It was written by a woman who was the governess for seventeen years to the two princesses of England, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose, the former of which is now Queen Elizabeth II. What apparently happened was Marion Crawford didn't get permission to divulge this information and I think they sued her. What I do know is that the royal family refused to have anything more to do with her, even though she was like a mother to the princesses, and didn't even send her family a wreath when she died.
The book itself was written by a ghost writer, but it was an amazing book. I got it for my birthday and read it all in one day. This might have been because Queen Elizabeth II is, to me, a fascinating person, but I think anyone would like it. It includes pictures of the little princesses through the years and has detailed accounts of their personalities. I believe it's out-of-print now, but there are many ways of acquiring it. Definitely a book to be read over and over again.

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss

I finished this book yesterday morning. It was extremely good, but not quite as good as Eats, Shoots and Leaves by the same author. Maybe because of the subject matter. This book was about how the public has gotten ruder as the years have passed, and how everyone now walks around in their own little bubble and don't pay attention to anybody else. It was quite clever, like her other books, but had less of the little sarcasms and more of her thoughts on the matter, which were interesting. I suppose I'm not as glowing about this one as her other book, but it was quite interesting and it was all very true.

The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Written in 1855, The Song of Hiawatha is an epic poem about an Indian named Hiawatha who is a great warrior and about his love for Minnehaha. I read it some time ago, and it was quite good. The meter of the poem was magnificent; I love trochaic tetrameter. There wasn't much of a plot that I can remember. It's amazing how a book in poem can be so interesting. I thought it would be a hard read, and in fact, it was rather easy. Hiawatha was immortalized, of course, being less of a character than a hero, but you liked him immensely, anyway. I'd never read an epic poem and this was extremely good. 

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

This was an excellent book. The hero, David Balfour, is a Lowland Scottish lad whose father died and is being cared for by a Campbell priest, who he very much respects. He sets off in the world to find his uncle who lives at the House of Shores (I'm not sure that I spelled that right). When he asks questions about directions, people give him strange looks and act like he's crazy; when he finally knocks on the door of his uncle's mansion -- in the middle of the night -- his uncle appears out of the window and tells him he has a gun and asks gruffly what he wants. David tells him who he is and is invited in. He's surprised that someone who inherited such great fortune lives so poorly. His uncle tells him that his share of the family fortune is at the top of an old tower, and David goes up the stairs in the middle of the night to find the chest of money. He gropes his way up the steps until, when lightning lights up the stairway, he realizes that he has been tricked and the stairs are not finished. If he had not seen that they were unfinished, he would have fallen to his death. He dashes back down and accuses his uncle, who acts innocent all the way through. The next day, his uncle tells him that he's got business down at the shore and that he should come with him. David complies, and is introduced to the captain of a ship. They go aboard, as the captain is apparently his uncle's old friend, and the uncle, unbeknown to David, leaves in a rowboat. He is kidnapped.
The rest of the events of this book are many and quite exciting. They all speak in faint brogue, which is a bit hard to read at first, but you get used to it. David is a wonderful character who is very normal, which is always good for a book, in my opinion. It has a sequel called David Balfour: Part Two, which I started and didn't like because it's all about some girl he starts following around.
Anyway, it was a great book and I hope to read it again someday.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

This clearly isn't a classic, but it's a great book. Originally published in England, it became a bestseller and moved on to America. There were too many British things in it, such as her saying 'jolly' as an ejaculation and the 'petrol' station, so they didn't change it a bit for the American audience. They also call periods 'full-stops' and parentheses 'brackets'. It was a book about punctuation and was tremendously funny. I couldn't help laughing out loud all the way through it. She's clearly a stickler for correct punctuation, and this is one of my favorite kinds of books. I wish she had written another about grammar. Unfortunately, it's a library book, and I'll have to return it someday......

The Pathfinder (or The Inland Sea) by James Fenimore Cooper

This one took me quite some time to read, as I left off for a few weeks several times. But I just finished it yesterday, and it was quite a book, if somewhat predictable at points. The Pathfinder is a great character, honest and simple as you can get.
It begins with The Pathfinder and the Great Serpent, his Indian friend, leading a young woman, Mabel Dunham, and her uncle, whom they call Cap, through the forests near the Great Lakes. They meet up with an Indian called Arrowhead and his wife, Dew-of-June, and another young fellow named Jasper Western, but known by the Indians as Eu-douce. (Not quite sure what that means, but I'm sure they told me and I forgot). They go on to encounter many Indians and end up in a camp of British soldiers containing the person Mabel Dunham wanted to reach, Sergeant Dunham, her father. Then another twist of plot happens, throwing everyone into chaos, and it becomes very interesting.
It's a rather old book, so they use the word burthen instead of burden and such. It seemed rather long, but I couldn't quite tell, as it was on my Kindle and they don't tell you how long it is, but it was about the same length as the Cardinal of the Kremlin. Pretty long. But, on the whole, it was an excellent book, and I'm planning to read the whole series, if I can figure out which one comes next.....

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

The hero of this book is a boy named Diamond, named after his father's horse. He is a very young child when the book begins, but it never specifies how old he actually is. He hears a voice that wakes him and replies, and it announces that it is the North Wind. The North Wind wants him to come with her. He does as he is told and they fly about during a storm. She is 'sweeping the cobwebs from the sky'. This book is less about things happening than Diamond and the North Wind talking. She says things like "How many ways must I appear to you before you know me?". At this point, he hears someone mention something called the Back of the North Wind and asks North Wind if she can take him there. 

George MacDonald is a genius. I believe he wrote all his books in Brogue, so they had to translate them somewhat. I had never read a George MacDonald before and this one was excellent. 

Men of Iron by Howard Pyle

I finished this book just a couple of minutes ago. Howard Pyle is a wonderful writer, eloquent almost to excess. It was the sort of book where all the characters speak in old English, which is brilliant and fun to read.
The story is of a boy named Myles Falworth, the son of a blind lord who is hidden away in the countryside, living on the charity of others. Myles, of course, as a young boy, doesn't realize this, and thinks he is in the best of circumstances. He is sent off to the house of an Earl, where he learns all the services of a squire. But when he learns why his father is hidden away, and who is attempting to hunt him down, he must rise to the occasion and ready for the saving of the reputation of his father and of himself.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin

Jane Austin has never been my favorite author, as the regency era is not an interest to me, but this was a good book. It is the story of two sisters, the elder, Eleanor, a self-sacrificing, completely mature girl and the younger, Marianne, a fickle, immature girl who seems to care for nothing but herself. This is the setup for a lot of novels written about this era, in my opinion, but Eleanor is such a good character that you just have to love her. Of course, everybody likes books about self-sacrificing heroes (or heroines), but Marianne sets it off well to make a good book. I really enjoyed it and might read it again sometime, though I'm not much one to reread books. I would suggest it to anyone who wants to read a Jane Austin, as it was the only one I ever liked.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is a wonderful book. It begins and ends as one day in the life of an inmate in a Russian labor camp, something the author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, lived through. The one day fills up more than a hundred pages, a true stream-of-consciousness book. Throughout, the hero, Ivan Denisovich, known to some unknown purpose as Sukhov, lays bricks and tramps about it the snow, but it is extremely interesting all the way through. If you don't like stream-of-consciousness, I wouldn't advise it, as it has no plot, though I loved it. My only problem was that there were several bad words throughout the book.

How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn, is, in my opinion, one of the best books of all time. It's longer than you'd think by looking at it, about four hundred pages, but you don't notice so much. The way he writes it is genius, a sort of beautiful, poetic writing. The hero, a boy named Huw Morgan, begins at about age six, and, throughout the book, becomes a man. It goes through the process of a boy growing up, with a wealth of nostalgia and a child's thoughts on everything that is really a pleasure to read. There were a couple of scenes I thought might be a bit inappropriate, but were very vague. Huw Morgan is one of my favorite heroes of any book. My favorite line in the book is the last one, from where Llewellyn acquires his title: 'How green was my valley, and the valley of those that have gone.'

The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II by Ben Pimlott

This was a great book. I hadn't seriously read a biography before this one, and I can truthfully say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. She was a very interesting person, but I might suggest reading a shorter book before you dig into this one, as it was between five and six hundred pages long, though fascinating all the way through. Ben Pimlott is a great biographer, totally unbiased, wording everything extremely thoughtfully and clearly. This book was written before 1997, so it mustn't be expected to talk about Princess Di's death.
The royal family is not supposed to have opinions, so a personality of the Queen would be rather hard to describe, but I think that Pimlott did it quite well. Some bad words are used in quotes, but these are few and far between. On the whole, The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II was a wonderful book. In my opinion, she is an amazing woman, her life wonderful and inspiring fodder for a book such as this.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

As this is my first post, I'll start with an easy one. I've read this book eight times and plan to do so again soon. The hero, a boy named Milo, is tired. Not physically, but tired of life. As the first page notes, when he is one place, he wants to be elsewhere, and when he is elsewhere,  he wants to be one place again. When a large purple package arrives in his room, it begins a series of adventures, in which he meets several interesting characters and, more importantly, learns to live life to the fullest.
This is one of my favorite books of all time. It's an easy read, quite short, and has some of the most lovable characters you'll find anywhere. Most things in this book are metaphors, such as Milo getting stuck in the actual Doldrums, a place where everyone is lazy, sleepy, and doesn't think, and is accosted by a real 'watch' dog, a watch constituting its whole middle. In my opinion, Norton Juster is one of the cleverest modern children's authors, in this book at least.