I Really Like Books

Hi! I'm Charli and I'm here to blog. Here's a little bit about me to start: I am married to a nerd (a really cute one) who loves all things technology. We have a tiny girl we named Alice who is always smiling. We live in a hundred year old house that we are always improving and making our home (in small and very inexpensive ways... lets be honest home improvement adds up!) I love chocolate, Dr. Pepper, and sweet things in general. I am not a writer or even a real blogger, but I do really like books. I was the kid in elementary school who got in trouble for reading during class. My teachers would confiscate my book and explain that while reading isn't bad there is a time and place... I always hated that lecture. These days I still do quite a bit of reading. I especially love to read to Alice. She is nine months old and she gets excited about reading her board books- she even knows how to turn the pages as I read. I love that.

She was only 5 months old here.

Anyway, enough about that adorable girl. I'm here to talk about books. I have devised a very technical rating system to use as I blog:

For this first post I thought I'd just give you an idea of how I would rate some well known classics. Let's start with my lowest rated.

My F Rating: The Odyssey by Homer

I won't bother summarizing the plot of this or any of the other books I review today, I think they are fairly well known. This was a tough read for me. I didn't enjoy it enough to want to wade through it.

My D Rating: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I had to read this for a class in High School. It's just not my kind of book. I don't have a lot to say about books I don't like... They will not be my focus in these reviews.

My C Rating: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I like the story, I've seen the movies, and I enjoyed the book when I read it. I'm not a hard core Jane Austen fan and reading it once was enough for me.

My B Rating: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This was another assigned reading in Highschool, except I liked this one. A lot. The plot is well known, but if you've never actually read it, you ought to.

My A Rating: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

 
Far more people have seen the movie than read the book. I love the movie, but it is nowhere near as good as the book. It's over 1200 pages long, but it's worth the time. The story is woven together seamlessly. Dantes's revenge is much more intricate in the book than the movie would ever have had time to portray. I linked to my favorite translation of this book (I've read three). Do yourself a favor and read it!

In future posts, I will summarize plots for you and my reviews will be a bit longer. I just thought it would be good to go over the rating system for a start. I'm excited to continue sharing the books I love with you! I have linked to Amazon for a few reasons: 
1. I love Amazon. I buy a lot of things (including books) through them. Prime shipping is basically the best thing ever (I order and get it two days later. Love that.) 
2. When I hear about a new book, I like to use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to get an idea of whether I would like to read it.
3. I just signed up for their affiliate program. What does that mean? Well, imagine I link a $10 book on here and you think "This book is great! I want it!" So you click on my link and order the book and then Amazon gives me a credit to use on their site. That's right, for your purchase I would receive 40 cents. You heard me. The step after this is that I feel incredibly grateful for whoever purchased that book and gave me my 4% credit. I then use my 40 cents toward buying books to review for you. Win-win-win.

If any of you have a book you would like me to review or any other suggestions for me, send me an email at ireallylikebooks@gmail.com