I cannot recall how many times that I have read this book. However, it has been a few years since I last picked it up. Even though I knew the plot I still felt like I was reading the book anew.

I had forgotten how dynamic the plot was. The fight scenes were very vivid with a lot of action. It is no wonder that this book has been remade to both tv and movies.

Through all the horribleness and evil, the book is really about the innocence of childhood. It felt like a timely message for me.

The Night Olivia Fell was an ok read for me. There was good writing and strong characters. I was just hoping for a more dynamic plot. It is less a thriller and more a story of personal growth. Except, the personal growth story line felt a bit flat for me as well.

The topic of the book is a bit hard to read about also. The book starts out with the MC getting a call that her daughter is in a coma, then the MC tries to reconstruct the events leading up to the night that Olivia fell. The irony is that the reader is given more closer than the MC.

Bleak House is my least favorite Dickens novel to date. I did not find the characters very engaging and the plot lacking. I had near everything figured out well before it came to conclusion, and I spent the last couple hundred pages wondering why they had to be included. Usually I find a great satisfaction in Dickens' writing. I love the way that he combined words to make them beautiful. Even when I am not engaged with the plot I an enthralled with the actual writing. This was not the case with Bleak House.

I did not find Esther's "I'm so insignificant" attitude to be all that charming. It seemed to go beyond a personality trait and into a statement on women behavior. While I understand that this is a product of the time, I still do not have to enjoy it. There were other personalities that were just as disagreeable, such as the man child. Although, at least with him there is some minor satisfaction at the end of the novel.

Out of the Silent Planet is very old school Sci-Fi. I really enjoyed this aspect of the novel, and you could see where C.S. Lewis was attempting to be theological about the whole alien inhabitants of another planet and the mythic of the cosmos in general.

However, I felt entirely disconnected from the characters. A huge part of this was the way Lewis presented the translation of the language. It pulled me away from the story. I walked away thinking that I did not specifically care about what I just read. I will continue on with the series, but that is entirely because of the notoriety of the series rather than a real desire to know what happened next.