Last week, I was in Detroit for a teacher's conference. We actually stayed in the hotel in the Renaissance Center (more affectionately known as the Ren Cen)! How cool is that! Here are a few pictures I took on my walk from the convention center to the hotel.

This is the Mariners' Church, built in 1849.

This is from the inside, looking across the river at Canada.

I had such high hopes for this book. I actually set it aside after the first fifty pages because I didn’t want it to go by too quickly. This was a book I wanted to savor.

At least, I thought so.

The Little Book follows Wheeler Burden as he somehow travels from 1988 California to 1897 Vienna. He has to learn how to orient himself and figure out who it is safe to befriend. How involved can he become without changing the course of history? Of course, that question is not easily answered.

It’s also a question that is extremely common if you’re reading a book about time travel. Edwards does handle it well, giving bits and pieces away that only all make sense at the end. But what really sets this book apart is Vienna. The Little Book is an ode to turn-of-the-century Vienna. Selden Edwards clearly loves this city in the time period. There was certainly a lot of research that went into the writing of this book. And that is what drew me in so completely in the first fifty pages.

What lost my interest as the book continued, however, is that not much happened. There was a lot of talking. A love affair. Lots and lots of flashbacks. An occasional plot twist. But really, nothing happened. It turned out to be kind of a boring book. I’m really sorry to say that, because there were pieces of it that were brilliant. And I did love experiencing Vienna in its golden age. But by the end, I didn’t care that much about the characters and I was tired of waiting for something to happen.

I guess this is just one of those books for which I loved the potential, but not the reality.

Find it on: Goodreads  |  Amazon  |  Better World Books

I tweaked this week's topic a bit. I'm Lutheran, which doesn't mean that I don't celebrate Halloween. It just means that October 31 is also Reformation Day, complete with a rousing rendition of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." Since I've never been one for scary reads, I decided instead to compile a list of Reformation reads for this week's Top Ten Tuesday!

Kitty, My Rib by E. Jane Mall (This is the story of Martin Luther's wife. When I discovered this book in middle school, I literally read it five times in a row. I'm not exaggerating.)
Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed the World by Paul L. Maier (A picture book about Luther.)
​Luther & Katharina by Jody Hedlund (Historical fiction about the Luthers. This book was just released earlier this month. I can't wait to read it!)
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland H. Bainton (The classic Luther biography)

The Reformation:​ A History by Diarmand MacCulloch (A great general overview of the Protestant Reformation)
Reformers in the Wings by David C. Steinmetz (Let's not forget about all those lesser known reformers!)
The Betrayal: A Novel on John Calvin by Douglas Bond (It's always fun to learn about an important historical figure's life through fiction.)
Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings by James R. Payton (This sounds like a fun way to learn more about the Reformation.)

We had a short school week last week, but that's because all of us teachers spent Thursday and Friday at a conference. Conferences are always inspiring, and this one was no exception. It's also tons of fun to spend time outside of school with your fellow staff members. However, conferences are also exhausting! I ended up taking a nap Sunday afternoon. Hopefully I can recover for the full week of school ahead!

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams (This book was fascinating and amusing. I loved it.)

America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great by Ben Carson (He has some really fascinating ideas - and an incredible life story!)
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde (I've started reading/listening to Lady Windermere's Fan, the second play in this collection.)

The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko (Time for the blue book for my Color Coded challenge.)

It's looking very autumnish here in Michigan (although it also snowed a bit last Saturday). Here are a few pictures of what it looks like around me. God does such a great job painting the world for fall!

I read (more or less) three books on Saturday's 24-hour readathon. I had every intention of being a good little blogger and writing my reviews right away so I wouldn't get too far behind. Yeah, didn't happen. Reading was much more fun than writing reviews. But I don't want to ignore the books altogether, so I thought I would try some more two sentence reviews.

Oh, my goodness, if only there were really such a thing as the book genie! Wouldn't it be amazing if we could just rub a lamp and get every bookish wish our heart desires? Ah, well. Here's what I would wish for if a book genie popped into my life today:​

My reading stats are going to look pretty good this week, thanks to Dewey's 24-hour readathon on Saturday. This is one of my favorite days of the year. Can we all just agree that we should spend every Saturday like this? :​)

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (I posted my thoughts about this last week. Suffice it to say that it was not my favorite book ever.)
The Real Boy by Anne Ursu (I didn't love it as much as Breadcrumbs​, but I did enjoy it very much!)
Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride by Peter Zheutlin (She went around the world on a bicycle (more or less) at the turn of the century. Interesting look at women's rights at the time.)
The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland (I devoured this one on readathon day!)

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams (Machu Picchu is high on list of places I want to travel someday. This book is a very informative and entertaining look at it.)
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde (I read & listened to The Importance of Being Earnest as part of my readathon reads. Now I just have to find the time to do the same with the other four plays in this book!)

America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great by Ben Carson (This is our book club book for October.)

Today is the readathon! I've gotten everything out of the way that I could (except for laundry), and I am ready to read! Bring on the books!

And for the first time, I'll be tweeting! I just created a Twitter account on Thursday, so I'm definitely new at this. You can follow me at @SmilingShelves.

Time spent reading: Five hours and 43 minutes
Number of pages read so far: 338
Number of books finished: Two (Around the World on Two Wheels by Peter Zheutlin & The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland)
Book I'm just starting:​ The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (I'm listening to an audio production of it while reading along. Should be fun!)

Time spent reading: Seven hours and 3 minutes
Number of pages read so far: 385
Book I'm reading/listening to: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (Although it turns out the book I have is the original version, and the recording I'm listening to is the revised version. That makes this really confusing occasionally!)

Time spent reading: Nine hours and 24 minutes
Number of pages read so far: 473
Number of books finished: Three (Finally got through the confusing-ness of The Importance of Being Earnest.)
​Best snack so far:​ Cinnamon-sugar cider donut!

Time spent reading: Eleven hours and 7 minutes
Number of pages read: 561
Book most recently read from:​ Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams
Number of books finished: Three (Around the World on Two Wheels by Peter Zheutlin; The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland; The Importance of Beiing Earnest by Oscar Wilde)
Number of times my eyes have closed involuntarily in the last hour:​ Too many to count

Sadly, I think I'm going to have to call it a night. I'm loving the book I'm reading, but I just can't keep my eyes open anymore. It's crazy how fast this day always goes. But as always, I had a marvelous time, and I can't wait for this next round in April!

I really didn't know much about this book before I read it. I knew William Faulkner was one of our great American authors, which is why I added this book to my Classics Club list. I knew he used a stream-of-consciousness writing style. And that's pretty much it.

Maybe it would have helped if I knew more about it before I read it. But if I had known more about it, I probably never would have read it at all.

There are many people out there who will disagree with me, but I have to be honest about my reaction. I strongly disliked this book, and I don't understand why it's a classic.

The stream-of-consciousness thing wasn't so bad. It did make the first chapter hard to follow, although that was more because it was narrated by mentally challenged Benji, who really didn't have a clear idea of what was going on anyway. (Sidenote: That made it extremely hard to figure out who was who at the beginning. Especially when a character I thought was male was suddenly referred to as "she." What?? At least that made sense eventually, as I kept reading.)

The stream-of-consciousness style was interesting. That wasn't what troubled me about this book. My problem is that this book is essentially about incest. Why would you feel a need to write a book about that? And is that supposed to be the part that's so profound that this book becomes a classic? The family's troubled. I get it. But that didn't make me feel attached to them or want to cheer for them. It made me want to yell, "Get it together already!"

There's a quote from Malcolm Cowley on the back of my copy. It says, "Faulkner performed a labor of imagination that has not been equaled in our time. . . First, to invent a Mississippi county that was like a mythical kingdom, but was complete and living in all its details; second, to make his story of Yoknapatawpha County stand as a parable or legend of all the Deep South."

A parable of all the Deep South? I think if I lived in the South, I would be highly insulted at the idea that this book represents me. That probably just means that I didn't really understand the depths of this book at all. But really, I'm okay with that.