The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart

This is the second book in the Mysterious Benedict Society series.  I read the fist one more than a year ago and even though I liked it, I read the second one just now.  This book starts a year after the Mr. Benedict recruited four children to help thwart the evil plans of Mr. Curtain at the institute.  They meet each other again because Mr. Benedict has a big surprise for them.

Things do not go as planned and the children are thrown into a long and dangerous chase that involves solving puzzles (main draw of this series for children), taking advantage of their individual talents, and showing courage in the face of danger in order to save Mr. Benedict who was kidnapped by Mr. Curtain.  While the first book confined the children to the institute, this one takes them to a remote island via trains, bikes, ship and plane.  There is that word journey in the title after all. Elements of peril are primarily the Ten Men, Mr. Curtain's henchmen who have no problems harming children, and the crafty Mr. Curtain himself. 

Because this is a series for children, Mr. Benedict did get rescued and all is well for the meantime.  Mr. Curtain escaped and I expect he will be a more dangerous villain in the third book.

Book #3 for 2014.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Filipino Friday 3: Reading Habits and Book Formats

Image
Reading Habits and Book Formats . Where and how do you read? Can you read anywhere and everywhere, or do you need a certain place/mood/state of mind to get reading? Do you read more in the morning or at night or any minute that you can? Where and how do you usually read? Are you exclusively for print, or do you go for ebooks more than print? Have you ever tried audiobooks? I am old school.  Even as most books now have digital versions, I still prefer the physical, ink-on-paper variety.  I like holding a real book, flipping the pages and being able to see my progress based on the thickness of read/unread pages.  Somehow, I feel more engaged and focused reading a physical book vs. from a gadget. I very rarely reread books so most of my collection just sit on the shelf after I'm done with them.  I feel it's a waste of precious trees if they are not shared with others.  So I started a Google doc at work where the team can list down their collections and anybody interested in
Read more

Trivia and Reading

Image
I am currently reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and I am inspired.  It’s about the author’s year-long quest to be happier.  It’s purposeful and practical and has lot of tips that I can apply or have started doing. Rubin focused on different areas every month and for May, it was Be Serious About Play.  The author was trying to go back to activities she enjoyed as a child. This led me to also think about a favorite childhood pastime, which was collecting trivia.  The Philippine Daily Inquirer used to run a trivia section by Bong Barrameda and I would religiously cut and paste them onto scratch papers, which I would then collate and read again and again.  Nerd zone! Not only that, I also kept a trivia notebook where I researched and wrote down interesting information like areas of study, capital cities, historical figures, scientists and discoveries, everything!  That was fun for me.  I was about to say they were useless info, but not really.  Because of this intere
Read more

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Image
There is something to be said for collective recommendations like bestsellers list.  I found this title on such list at Fully Booked, read a few pages and decided to buy it.  I was intrigued by the theme of the book which is memory, specifically, how the author started as a journalist covering the US Memory Championships and ended up as a contender in the finals of the same competition one year later. It claims that with proper training, one's memory can be improved to be at par with the top mental athletes of the world.  Memory training has become an esoteric discipline because we practically do not need to remember a lot these days.  Information is very easy to retrieve from electronic devices and what not.  You just need basic search terms and the Google provides the information you need and more. Photo from Rainy Day Books I have to admit I rely on external memory a lot.  I can recall birthdays of my very close family members but outside of that small circle, I have to
Read more