Gulliver's Travels

I'm going to preface this whole thing by saying this: if you are not an extreme bibliophile, you probably won't like this book.

Gulliver's Travels is split into four sections. In each of these sections, you learn about Gulliver's experiences with different groups of people: the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians, the Laputans, and the Houyhnhnms. He ends up in each of these societies when he is either shipwrecked or abandoned.

There are a lot of tough words (and I read this to my toddler), especially once you get to the fourth part. Swift used a lot of nonsense words that have to be defined in the book. It's also somewhat satirical about the British empire. It's not always explicit that he is making some sort of statement about the government of England, but they're there if you look deep enough (and know Jonathan Swift's works).

So, I'd mostly just recommend this to English majors and extreme bibliophiles. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I'm both an English major and a bibliophile.

The Path of Daggers

**Links: Prequel * Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3 * Book 4 * Book 5 * Book 6 * Book 7**

Book 8 in Robert Jordan's epic fantasy The Wheel of Time. I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Maybe because it was shorter than the last book, maybe because the story really sucked me in. I don't know. But I enjoyed reading this.

The weather has changed after Nynaeve and Elayne, along with Sea Folk Windfinders, other Aes Sedai, and a group of runaways and wilders called Kinswomen channeled into the Bowl of the Winds. Now, winter has struck across the entire world. It is a drastic change from the heat they had been suffering with.

Egwene and her army (and the rest of the rebel Aes Sedai) are traveling towards the White Tower, where they intend to bring down Elaida and gain control of the home base of the Aes Sedai.

Rand is really struggling. The entire world is against him, but he needs to live to see the end because the entire world depends on him as the Dragon Reborn. The question is, will he survive the end?

Perrin is on the tail of Masema, the Prophet of the Dragon. Masema is creating chaos wherever he goes, all in the name of the Dragon Reborn. Perrin has to handle this and bring Masema to Rand so that the killing and chaos can stop.

I'm kind of looking forward to going on and dreading the next book. Supposedly, book 9 is extremely slow, but we'll see.