Reviews

I don’t quite remember exactly when I grabbed this book. It would’ve been sometime at the beginning of 2015; I was looking for fiction that specifically was centered around mushrooms. That may sound a little off-kilter, but I have a fascination with fungi, especially using them in written work. They’re interesting as a subject matter, truth be told.

Anyway, aside from two eBooks I had found, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet popped up on Page 1 of searching. Unlike most of the “guides” that were popping up, this was clearly fiction. And it seemed to be aimed at a younger audience, so that won points with me as well. Lastly the idea of a “mushroom planet” did appeal to me, so I now naturally curious about the world inside the book.

I added it to my cart and waited for it to arrive. Arrive it did. Admittedly I didn’t read it right away, but when I finally got around to it, I was glad I did.

Our story begins…

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Well, its time I start doing this again.

A little over a week ago, I was approached by an author by the name of Sophia Ahn with a request; to give an honest review about their book in the style of my regular book review. While this is something I didn’t really start to consider till recently, I happily obliged. I did need to restart my content and this was definitely a welcome assignment to do something different!

So, with that said, let’s get started and take a look at Sophia’s book.

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This is yet another book that should’ve been read in a month, but with my style, stared at it for six months then decided to read it one night when I was not in the middle of an Overwatch or Supreme Commander match.

I’ve always been a fan of Lemony Snicket’s work; I was familiar with a few of his A Series of Unfortunate Events books while growing up, though I hadn’t kept tabs on him after I turned 16. While browsing the bargain shelf in the young adult section in Books-A-Million during May, I ran across this book. At $4, who was I to argue?

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So this review is nothing too detailed, but is one of my longer review yet. I’ve been carrying this book around and trying to get the time to just sit down and make the review on this; this book has pretty much been everywhere wherever my bag has been during this entire summer.

Wishbone books are novelizations of an old TV show that used to be aired by the same name (you can find a few episodes on Youtube, I hear). In essence it was a Jack Russell terrier called Wishbone that had a personality, living with his owner Joe (a fourteen-year-old kid) and often got wrapped up in happenings with Joe’s two friends, Samantha (Sam) and David, who are of similar age range.

Most of the time some real-life thing would occur such as a mean principal, missing items or friend problems. While this happens, Wishbone would draw some parallel between a popular written work, such as Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood or some other literary tale. Both stories would be told at the same time as Wishbone would insert himself as the main character of said literary work, adding an interesting dynamic to the already iconic tale.

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**NOTE: This review does contain spoilers. While I certainly believe its up to you to discover what’s inside a book, there are people who just want to know if their book is worth the money, or make sure its good enough for their kid/partner. Or there are even those people who just need to know the plot of the book for some other reason beyond the synopsis. I try to to fill that gap with a bit more detailed information with my book reviews. If you don’t want the book spoiled, move on or just scroll down to the bottom part.

The last of my “time travel” reviews that was backlogged, the final book to take this spot is The Time-Traveling Fashionista: At the Palace of Marie Antoinette. I actually had made an error when purchasing this book; apparently there’s another book in the series that I kept trying to put in the cart, but this is what arrived when I ordered. And while reading I discovered that this wasn’t the first book in the series. Oh well. I’ll continue to look.

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When I started to collect books in 2013, I had bought a batch of “books” loosely related to my interests at the time. When I was looking for time travel books for kids, this somewhat prominent book from the 90’s appeared in my search results from Amazon. It’s name? The Switching Well.

The story follows two girls, Ada and Amber. Ada is from 1891, while Amber is from 1991. Each girl is fed up with their current time; Ada wants to live in a future where women have more freedom and are appreciated, while Amber wants to live in a past where kids aren’t shuffled around with their parents, where moms were only allowed to be moms living in big houses. Both girls find a magical well in a patch of woods, throwing down a coin and making their wish. Amber gets whisked to the past, Ada to to the future.

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Getting back on track with these, thankfully.

This was an “interesting” book that I had read back in the day, before I had even started using the Internet and visiting bookstores. Back when I would make frequent trips to the Greeneville Library, it got to the point that I would just pick out books by shelf, going through each one till I found one I liked. Running out of Time was one of those books.

I had randomly happened upon it, the older version with the traditional art cover with half of Jessie wearing her 1800s dress and the other half wearing modern clothing. This intrigued me immediately, borrowing it and taking it home.

The original cover of the book that I had read back in 2002.

The original cover of the book that I had read back in 2002. I love these soft-toned oil-painting covers!

The modern, paperback copy I got in 2015, for comparison.

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Congratulations! I’m reviewing an eBook today! It’s the first time I’m doing one, so let the good times roll. (Supreme Commander reference, though it may have come from somewhere else).

For March, I’m actually going to go with a theme this time around instead of random items. All are books, all are timeslip/time travel books. Good? Okay! For our first week, we’re going to take a peek at The Far Journey.

This was an eBook I bought on impulse (okay, not really impulse. But it wasn’t a thought-out, deliberated purchase) while looking for some satisfying time travel stories dealing with the Wild West. I didn’t hit my craving for people from the past ending up in modern times that night, but I found plenty of people ending up in the past. This seemed like more of the hands-on sensible types, so I gave it a go.

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**Note: This is a bit more of a recollection like a Storytime as it draws some parallels from the review. If you want info on the book, scroll down. Otherwise, enjoy the read.
A long long time before super-modern tech of 2010 existed, people were battling to find the giant squid. Moreso, actually see a living one and real pictures.

I was no exception. Even since 2003, I remember trying to Google the giant squid. It was on the level of a creature from cryptozoology for me, and I was desperately trying to find any sort of picture and information about it.

My search didn’t really give me anything concrete. Just some white carcasses in 200px pictures, and one badly written web-page from theshadowlands.net (still surprised these guys are around 13 years later!)

Then The Search for the Giant Squid showed up in my local library.

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The Magic Tree House was a book series I never really got into until I picked one up in BAM (my shorthand for Books-A-Million) around 2006 or so. Back then my family would travel to Knoxville almost every weekend, and we’d visit bookstores or Sam’s Club. I’d dread the latter (it was a bland store back then), but the bookstore was like a library, except a lot more recent books.

Why am I giving a review about a randomly numbered book out of Mary Pope Osborne’s series? It’s because it was my first Magic Tree House book. It was the first one that got me hooked on her series, and it was the first book I bought of her series years later. That one has stuck with me throughout the years especially.

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