Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

From Goodreads.com:
   The old wood-carver Geppetto decides to make a wonderful puppet which can dance and turn somersaults, but by chance he chooses an unusual piece of wood. The finished puppet can talk and misbehave like the liveliest child. But Pinocchio is brave and inquisitive as well as naughty. After some hair-raising adventures, he earns his hearts desire.

   A children's classic, Pinocchio is much darker than I would have thought. I could tell it was written in a different time. The morals were not as veiled as some are now, as is made obvious by the above quote, and there are many more as Pinocchio continues his quest to become a real boy. This book is much darker than the story I remembered.
   I vaguely remembered watching the Disney movie when I was younger, but reading this I kept thinking, "boy, I don't remember this happening in the movie." Well I watched the movie again and was surprised it actually followed the book relatively well, minus a key recurring character that was a large part of the book, the Fairy.
   If you like to read classics don't miss out on Pinocchio. If you're looking for a scary bedtime story for your little boy, this would be perfect! Seriously, it would be if you're into that. I kept thinking, "this is a children's book!?" I really enjoyed reading Pinocchio though, and I think you would too.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

From the paperback:
  When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objetivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special Afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead. As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero-and about those who try to destroy him.

   The Fountainhead was our first randomly drawn Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge book. It was a great way to kick off such a list. It was told in four parts each concentrating on a different character type. I admit it was slow going during a couple of them, reading this took a little longer than I anticipated.
   I loved Roark. I love his courage to unflinchingly stick to his beliefs. I love that he has no care of most people's opinions. I love that he's so incredibly sure of his self and his passion. I think that one of my favorite things about this classic is that our hero is actually an atheist, but an atheist with a belief in something. A belief so strong that he lives his entire life while staying true to this uncommon and misunderstood belief.
   A person's beliefs are extremely personal, no matter what they may be. I like that Ayn Rand created this strong, nearly perfect man, who does not conform to a more traditional belief system. I think that belief in something is important, to have some guide for your personal morals and I liked that Roark's wasn't based on a belief in a higher power. Instead it was something he felt within his self to be right.
   There's a great reason this book has become a classic. I'm sure it could be and has been dissected in a hundred different ways, but as a pleasure reader I liked most of the characters, and loved to hate one particular character. I enjoyed going along with Roark on his life journey.

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge Book Jar

   A friend and I have been reading books together for about a year, just randomly choosing books we both wanted to read. We found the idea of a book jar on Pinterest and loved it. No more choosing at random (well relatively speaking.) We just had to decide which books to put in our jar. 

   Pinterest is my favorite way to find book lists, so I started looking. I saw a list of the 339 books mentioned or referenced during the seven seasons of Gilmore Girls. Perfect, I used to watch Gilmore Girls and introduced her (years later) to the beauty that is Gilmore Girls, the quick dialogue, the mother/daughter relationships, growing up, and the literary and movie references. All 339 titles are now in our book jar. 

   After talking about it we decided that we couldn't have it truly random, neither of us wanted to get stuck reading a lot of nonfiction or classic after classic after classic, so I color coded the titles. Nothing too specific, and it's probably not as accurate as it could be, but for our purposes it'll work just fine. I just used some Mod Podge to stick the key on one side of my jar to help us when drawing our next read. 

   The first book drawn is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Some of the books look dreadful (A Monetary History of the United States anyone?) but we plan to give each book a chance.