Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Short Story Review #1: Second Variety

     Second Variety is a short story by Philip K. Dick that was published in the May, 1953 edition of Space Science Fiction.  It is a post-apocalyptic story in which the United States and the Soviet Union are still at war. The United States have designed an implemented robots to help them in the war, but some of the robots have gone rogue.

     If you like science fiction, I think you might like this story.  You can download it for free at:    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32032

Tim's Rating:  ****
(Four out of five stars)

Blog Update

     It has been almost a month since a last posted a blog entry.  My health problems and being busy has caused that.  I have found it a little harder to read larger novels lately due to my health problems.  Because of that, I have decided to read shorter novels and short stories and write reviews of them in this blog.

     When I started this blog, I stated that I would include music and movie reviews, but haven't posted any yet.  I have decided to mainly do book reviews in this blog and may start another blog in the future for those reviews along with this one.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Book Review #5: Pollyanna Grows Up

     A little over two weeks ago I wrote a review of the book Pollyanna by Elanor H. Porter. I enjoyed that book so much that I decided to read the sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up. This book starts up a few months after Pollyanna arrives home from the sanitarium.  This book is divided between Pollyanna's life at a couple different ages.

     The first half is when she's thirteen.  Her new uncle is offered a position in Germany and want Aunt Polly to go with him. Aunt Polly will not go unless she knows Pollyanna has somewhere to live while they are in Germany. A nurse from the sanitarium hears about it and persuades her sister, Mrs. Carew, to take Pollyanna for the school year. Mrs Carew is a wealthy widow that keeps to herself in a large, dark house in Boston. Aunt Polly agrees to the living situation and gets Pollyanna enrolled at a girl's school near Mrs. Carew.

     After Pollyanna returns home in the spring, her aunt and uncle decide to return to Germany and take Pollyanna with them. The second half of the book takes place when Pollyanna is twenty and they come back home from Germany. Things have changed and they are trying to adjust to the changes.

     As in the first book, Pollyanna changes many people's lives, both new friends and old friends. I enjoyed reading it a seeing the types of changes she made in their lives.


Tim's Rating: ****
(Four out of five stars)