Showing posts with label T.A. Barron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label T.A. Barron. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

T. A. Barron's Adventures of Kate 20 Years Later Re-Reading

Here it is and here I go. Finally, finally doing a rereading (because I’m not great at doing so). Though this is a twenty-years-later type of rereading. While I won’t get into all these long “historical” details, I simply must express how–for whatever reason–I suddenly wanted to read T. A. Barron’s three Kate Gordon fantasy books. Two decades later, by the way. Anyway, I’ve held on to them for so long and am now ready to answer this strange calling. So… here we go…

The reading order is:


  1. Heartlight

  2. The Ancient One (my personal favorite/introduction and one I read for the first time years before the others)

  3. The Merlin Effect


So the month of May is dedicated to going on adventures with Kate again. From the distant planet in her physics journey in Heartlight. Her falling deep into the past wrapped in an indigenous-themed tragedy in The Ancient One. And, finally, the deep sea quest found in The Merlin Effect.


I’m not interested in examining how these middle-grade books that were published in the earlier 90s stand today. Nor gauged them for how much I’ve grown as a reader. I’m here for just pure, relaxing, fun, ADVENTURES.




Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Sweet 16 - Tentative High School Revisited Reading TBR


The first thing I thought when I woke up New Year’s Day was how in two months it’ll be twenty years since I turned sixteen-years-old. How. In. The. BLOODY. FUCKIN’. HELL! Did. This. Happen? No. Seriously. Where was I in the last twenty years?

Anyway, for whatever reason I kept thinking about this blind leap through time. And as I started grudging around looking for something to start the new year reading (while fussing and sipping coffee), I eventually slumped into nostalgia. I thought about how R. L. Stine's Fear Street Cheerleaders series introduced me to the Whodunit of reading. I thought about how much I grew from ages 13 to 18 being a loyal and dedicated reader to K. A. Applegate's Animorphs series from its debut in '96 to its end in '01.

Needless to say, the reflections on my teenage reading kept coming. I thought about how I tried to emulate many of my favorite authors by writing similar stories to theirs back then. And, well, I thought about time and how it goes by so fast. As well as how memories keep us warm and remind us how special our lives really are when things don't always seem so sweet in the here and now.

That's when I got up to create a TBR reflecting my readings back in and around 1999–give or take. Authors like Naoko Takeuchi [Sailor Moon], K. A. Applegate [Animorphs], R. L. Stine [Fear Street], and T. A. Barron [The Ancient One] all came to mind. Luckily, I’ve kept all my early readings and decided to pull a few out to compose a sort of Sweet 16 Tentative High School Revisited Reading TBR to take on between my regular reading.

Let's kill some cheerleaders with R. L. Stine, baby!

Total Pageviews