I was driving around my town the other day with eight dollars in my pocket. My stomach was growling and I was looking for somewhere to eat, and as I drove around I passed a bookstore. My inner bookworm started nagging me. I had finished the previous book in the series I am currently reading and the next book was right inside. After weighing my options for about three seconds I made a quick turn to go inside the bookstore and purchase the book, which was seven dollars and eighty eight cents. I had no more money for food, and I didn’t care. I actually passed up food to get this book.

Now, the series that I’m talking about is probably only for the dedicated reader. If you can’t handle a book that’s longer than two hundred pages you’re not going to be able to handle this one. Each book in the series is about seven hundred and fifty pages long, give or take forty pages. The series is called The Sword of Truth and it is by Terry Goodkind. There are ten books in the series and I am currently on the fifth one called Soul of the Fire.

What type of book is this you may ask? It is a fantasy book, and is similar to J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Richard Rahl was a woods guide in his homeland, but fate thrust him into a completely new world where he is the ruler of the land, and must constantly stop his world from coming to an end. He experiences forbidden love, occasionally becomes hopelessly lost, and encounters situations that would stump Tom Cruise’s character in Mission Impossible, but not Richard. He has been named the Seeker of Truth, and always finds the right path in the end even if it is a path that couldn’t be predicted.

The amount of detail that Goodkind puts into these books is amazing, which is why I cautioned before: if you’re only an intermediate reader this is not for you. The amount of plot that is within the pages of each book is unfathomable. With some books, you can predict what is going to happen in the end by the hundredth page. With these books, you can’t know what is going to happen in the next twenty pages. It is so easy to become attached to the heroes in the series. Unlike many books, these heroes are human and each is flawed in their own way but those flaws make them more likeable. Each character has such depth to them that they seem like real, not fictional, characters by the end of the book.

This series is so good, that it’s on the New York Times bestseller list and has been made into a TV series called The Seeker. So if you’re the type that burns through books within a day of buying them, and you need something with more sustenance, The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind is something you definitely should check out. And what better time than right as winter break starts when you’ll have plenty of extra time on your hands to be able to actually enjoy the book you’re reading?

As the year begins to come to a close and we enter the holiday season I find myself taking solace from daily stresses in old favorites. I inhale and savor the scent of burning firewood, I’ve brought my winter coat out from the back of the closet, and at night, I wrap a knit blanket around my shoulders, curl up on an overstuffed chair, and read an old favorite book. Recently, I have been reading Edith Pattou’s young adult novel East, an adaptation of the Norwegian fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is similar to Beauty and the Beast.

Don’t let the young adult label discourage you from reading this fantastically written fairytale. It appeals to all ages as most timeless classics do. If you find yourself still shaking your head consider Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight and how it has swept the nation despite it being a young adult novel. Pattou’s words fit the fairytale theme and appeal to the hopeless romantic in all of us.

In this tale, the protagonist Rose is a young girl whose family is experiencing financial troubles and must move, but find themselves unable to as Rose’s sister is very ill. When there seems to be no hope left, a talking white bear appears at the door and offers the family good fortune. In exchange Rose must go with him to his castle in a distant land. Rose leaves with him and finds herself on an amazing adventure. Once at the castle, Rose befriends the white bear who is actually a prince that has been put under a spell by a Troll Queen. When Rose finds that she has lost her friend to the Queen, she decides to travel east of the sun and west of the moon to save the white bear.

This retelling of the Norwegian fairytale is exceptionally well done as Rose is stronger and more selfless than the old tale, and the story is told not only from Rose’s point of view, but also from the view of her brother, her father, the white bear, and other characters throughout the story.  I particularly enjoy this style of writing as we can form an opinion of the story without exclusively relying on the biases of one character.

If you’re looking for a fairytale story that goes a bit beyond the well known Disney style, then East is definitely a novel that you’ll enjoy. This is the type of book that can be read again and again but never grows old. Try reading only a few pages of East and it will definitely be added to your repertoire of favorite novels.

Does seeing a misplaced apostrophe make you cringe? Do you get sudden urges to break out a permanent red marker and vandalize shop signs that have gone comma crazy? Are you a stickler that can’t stand the ghastly abuse of punctuation that is occurring more frequently than ever in society today? If you are, great! If you aren’t, you should be, for there is finally a book that can motivate you to actually care about your punctuation. Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves is the last book you will ever have to read to finally understand where an apostrophe and the rest of its punctual comrades belong in a sentence. Unlike most instructional manuals, Truss’s witty rants and personification of the punctuation marks makes reading this book seem fun. She explains the history of the different punctuation marks, gives comical anecdotes about her interactions with punctuation abuse and misuse, and through all this makes it clear why proper punctuation is so important.

In her introduction, Truss does get a bit snooty and almost makes one want to stop reading the book if they themselves are not a stickler. She gives an example of bad punctuation and then says, “If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once.” Truss was wrong to say this, for the people who need help the most are the people who wouldn’t understand the difference. However, if you are one of these people who didn’t understand why the example she gave was so horrific, don’t put her book down under any circumstance.

You have to keep in mind that when Truss began writing Eats, Shoots and Leaves she had no idea that it would become a #1 New York Times bestseller. She simply thought it would be a book for punctuation sticklers to read and rally around as punctuation use sunk deeper into the point of no return. No one expected the large amount of people who actually wanted to know how to use punctuation, but weren’t taught. Of course that is a whole other sort of rant as to why people weren’t taught how to use punctuation; but the point of the matter is that people actually want to learn how to properly punctuate.

Punctuation is an endangered species that we can make into our next global cause. I can clearly see the public service announcements and in-your-face bumper stickers that may arise in the future as a result of this book. And even if my vision is only a dream, the main benefit of reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves is that your papers won’t come back with a storm of red marks correcting punctuation, and there will be no confusion as to the message you are trying to convey in your writing. Best of all, you won’t be just another dumb American that doesn’t know the basics of writing. And for those of you who simply can’t be seen with a book in your hands that doesn’t have pictures, Truss has recently come out with an illustrated edition with amusing pictures that match her witty words. This book is a must read if you want to maintain the image of an educated and functioning member of society.