Reviews
-
My Reading Month: April
April definitely felt like the longest month I have experienced in a while. I’m a little overwhelmed as I go into May, but looking back, I can also say I took full advantage of the last month in terms of reading. In terms of trends, I can see my attention span was lower – I read more graphic novels and short books, and it took me FOREVER to finish the longer, more dense books I was reading. However, that makes a lot of sense to me. This has been a weird time, and sometimes we need quick bites of respite when we are dealing with big things like a global…
-
A Jane Austen Re-read: Persuasion
Hello, I’ll be back in the next few days with a few other things, but today, I bring you the last of Jane Austen’s books, Persuasion. This short and sweet book is a great one, and I have been looking forward to it! 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 Persuasion is the story of 27 year old Anne Elliot, the second daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, a spendthrift landowner who ends up having to relocate to Bath to reduce expenses. Anne is sensible, quiet and reasonable,…
-
A Jane Austen Re-read: Emma
Hello everyone, The fact that Emma is so popular means that it took me an extra week just to make it through the sheer volume of Emma’s many adaptations, and I didn’t even get to them all – however, I am here now, and I have to tell you that you are in for a treat! I approached this book with some dread because when I first read Emma, I did not like it all that much. I thought Emma was annoying, and the central relationship between Harriet and Emma was grating, and many of the characters felt a little more one-sided than in some of her other books. I…
-
My Reading Month: March
Well, March is (finally) over, and I can’t say I am sorry to see it go. Spring is a necessary thing for my mental health at this point, and while snow will continue to fall for the next few weeks, snow in April never lasts long enough to keep me from hiking! Social distancing (I would out money on this as the “word of the year” from dictionaries at the end of 2020) continues to be an interesting adventure, as my housemates and I balance our mental health, work and relationships within a limited amount of space. To say that I have used reading as an escape this month would…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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!…
-
My Reading Month: October
With the year wrapping up, I have been trying to tackle the last books on my Around the Year in 52 Books challenge, which has been difficult as many of them have be delving into the “classics”, which is a realm I dread. Sometimes these books lead to surprising and wonderful discoveries, but quite often I end up bored, and frustrated by archaic world views and writing that (at least to me) doesn’t hold up in today’s world. I feel like this is a challenging point of view, and I want to make it clear that there are classics that I absolutely LOVE, so this is not a blanket statement.…
