Books
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Small Literary Joys
One of the things about loving storytelling for me is that I love seeing the joy in others when they are super excited about something. I was reminded of this this week when something lovely popped up on a social media feed – Patrick Stewart reading sonnets! I don’t love sonnets, but I do LOVE Patrick Stewart, so I immediately had to watch this. As his beautiful voice started to read a poem I had never heard before, I found myself focusing not on the words as much the pure joy and enjoyment that he was projecting! Take a look at one of his below, and if you like them,…
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A Jane Austen Re-read: Mansfield Park
I promise I’ll have more to write about than Austen here at some point soon, especially as I am temporarily out of work due to events out of my control. In the meantime, I do promise that Austen is worth re-reading! Why not pick up Pride and Prejudice, and start reading along with me? The next book I will be reading is Emma, which is probably the second most popular Austen book, and is a very different flavor from Mansfield Park. There are spoilers below. If you haven’t already read this book or watched one of the movies, this post likely isn’t going to make much sense anyway. Rereading The…
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Time to “Catch Up”?
Well, I have to say that my day to day job running a daycare has meant that I have so much less interest in addressing the current pandemic on my blog. I have spent the last week and a half trying to manage a round of furloughs, find alternative forms of cash to bring in and find ways to help parents who are completely unused to entertaining toddlers all day stay sane! That being said, it definitely appears that Covid-19 is going to upend everyone’s lives and it is impossible to not address the effects it will have everywhere, including here. While this could feel like a boon to a…
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A Jane Austen Re-read: Sense and Sensibility
Well, since I last wrote, we have entered a very different world! And what better time to explore the classics? They are available free online, you don’t need to leave your house, and after you read the book you can watch hours of Regency movies in all your free time. The next book in this series will be Mansfield Park, the story of poor relation Fanny Price who is taken in by her rich cousins. There are spoilers below. If you haven’t already read this book or watched one of the movies, this post likely isn’t going to make much sense anyway. Rereading The Book This installment, I read Sense…
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A Jane Austen Re-read: Pride and Prejudice
Moving forward, I will be doing these books in order of publication, with Austen’s first book, Sense and Sensibility coming next. However, since it has the most movie adaptations ever, and since it is by far Austen’s best known work, I started here. There are spoilers below. If you haven’t already read this book or watched one of the movies, this post likely isn’t going to make much sense anyway. Rereading The Book I had so much fun revisiting the world of Longbourn and Elizabeth Bennett. Austen’s books are the frameworks for much romantic fiction to come, but they are also so much more, and their depth and complexity is…
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Bookish March Madness
If you are anything like me, the level of mania that surrounds college basketball in March is bemusing. I don’t really understand March Madness, but I do appreciate the fun bookish events that it brings with it! There are multiple more local March Madness events hosted by libraries throughout the country, but my favorite one is below. The Rooster: Tournament of Books Every year, The Rooster hosts a super fun tournament of books, in which some of the most popular books of the past year are pitted against each-other and judged by authors, writers, and editors throughout the book industry. The criteria for judging is pretty much up to individual…
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A Jane Austen Re-read: Introduction
Pretty much every year, I end up rereading a series of classics from my childhood. This usually happens when I hit my first “reading block” of the year, and I always love getting to fall into old, comfortable stories! This year, I treated myself and bought a beautiful set of Jane Austen’s books to reread, especially since I realized that while I have read them all throughout the years, I didn’t actually OWN any of them. This is a fun reread for me because I read all of Austen’s works at such different ages that they hold very different places in my mind and heart, and I am excited to…
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My Reading Month: February
Hello! I “slowed down” this month in terms of reading, mostly meaning I listened to a few more audiobooks, and made it through fewer actual books. This was because I hit a slump with a few books that were tough to get through, and because it has just been a busy month. I have also been struggling because the political events of the past few months have left me feeling very raw, particularly as I look at who the media and the powers that be seem to want to tell stories about, and how blatant that can be and still be considered to be acceptable. I will likely have more…
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My Reading Month: January
Last year, I started slow, but a stressful fall meant that I leaned into reading to keep myself sane, and I ended up finishing over 100 books in 2019. I don’t say this to brag because I do sometimes worry that the quantity of what I read can decrease the quality of my enjoyment. I feel ambivalent about it all, but the truth is, if I love a book, I love a book, no matter how quickly I read it, and that has to count for something. That reading momentum also meant that I finished the year feeling jazzed and motivated about reading, which is a wonderful feeling to have!…
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2020 Updates
Whoops, I’ve fallen off over the last few months, and for that I apologize! This year, one of my goals is to take the time to make this blog a little more regular, and to find a few ways to amplify even more voices. I wanted to update you all a little on my reading/story goals for 2020, and keep an eye out for some award updates (I’ve missed quite a few!) and book posts coming in the next few weeks Reading Goals: Every year, I participate in the Goodreads book challenge and in another challenge called 52 Books Around The Year that has a group on Goodreads. While they…
