I gave up. Full confession. I tried, I really did. I even broke down and got an audio version to listen to during my commute to and from work. But I just couldn’t take it. I think it in part an effect of this little reading challenge project I set for myself. This was the fourth Jane Austen book in as many months for me. … Continue reading Jane Austen Read All-a-long Book 4: Emma
This is a “two-gasp” Jane Austen novel. While reading it, I gasped twice. Jane Austen has this way of suddenly throwing her reader for a loop with just a tiny slip of narrative so affecting it makes this reader gasp out loud. She is a master of plotting. My gasping came during the novel’s first half. First when young Fanny Price is forgotten by her … Continue reading Jane Austen Read All A-long: Mansfield Park
This is at least the third time I’ve read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, maybe the fourth. So I can’t really say it’s a “New Favorite Book” but I can say that it certainly holds up to re-reading. So that’s what I’m going to discuss here, the pleasures and perils of re-reading. There are some books that can be correctly understood in completely different fashions each time you read … Continue reading New Favorite Book/Old Favorite Book: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Two impressions: One, I’m surprised by just how much Jane Austen can shock me through effective plotting. I suspect that most of her fans will list her prose, her sense of humour and her characterization as the reasons why they love her, but she’s very good with plotting, too. There was a point in the final part of Sense and Sensibility that had me gasping in shock. … Continue reading Jane Austen Read All-a-long: Sense and Sensibility
This was at least the third time I’ve read The Mayor of Casterbridge. Could be the fourth. I was a big Thomas Hardy fan back in college. For years I’ve been haunted by that final image of the dead songbird in the cage sitting on the back door steps of the newlywed’s home. Forgotten and forsaken, like the bride’s father. Not quite how it happened, it … Continue reading The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Was it okay for Bernadine Evaristo to write this book? I ask this question in light of the ongoing controversy over cultural appropriation, specifically who has the right to write about whom. If you haven’t been following this issue lately you might want to check out Lionel Shriver’s keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival and Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s essay explaining why she walked out on … Continue reading Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo
How much do we really know about each other? C.J. and I will celebrate 20 years together late in 2016, but do even long-term couples like us really know each other? Halfway through Lauren Groff’s new novel Fates and Furies a secret is revealed, one so dramatic that it forces one half of a decades long married couple to reconsider everything long thought to be true … Continue reading Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
May Contain Spoilers 