I don’t think I’d read Persuasion by Jane Austen, before. I have seen versions as movies. But I hadn’t read it. Now that I have, the only one left is Mansfield Park. Synopsis: Anne Eliot is a lonely, isolated almost-spinster at 27. She was engaged, 8 years ago, to a man she loved. But that…
I have a lot to say about Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. So I’m going to fly through the reviews as best I can. Synopsis: Loved Demon Copperhead. Made me look back and realize I actually like most of the Pulitzer-winners that I’ve read. (The Goldfinch had me feeling…
Do I need to give a synopsis for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie? It’s a classic. Well, I will anyhow. Ten people across England get an alluring message from a Mr. and Mrs. Owen asking them to come to an isolated island off the coast of Devon. After they arrive, a disembodied…
It’s summer! Or it will be this month. Some of you have already moved into summer schedules and others are soon to follow. I have a week left of driving my son to school, but I am beginning summer read #1 tomorrow (finishing up another book today). Personally, I like my summer reads to be…
“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.” -first line of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilder, a…
Finally, a Neil Gaiman book that really agrees with me. Everyone else seems to admire his work so assiduously, but me… it either wasn’t my flavor (American Gods) or I thought it was not very good (The Ocean at the End of the Lane). While I had no idea what was coming to me with…
The genius of Jane Austen aside, I have to admit that this story held very few surprises for me. Thanks to movies, cultural allusions, and adaptations, I read this book feeling very much like I had read it already. Several times. And yet… There is a reason Austen’s six novels (she died too early!) are…
It seems obvious that I would have read all of Jane Austen’s books. In reality, I’m not entirely sure I’ve read any of her books except Emma, at least until this week. (I am a fan of many of the movies, including the Sense and Sensibility from the 90s: one of my all-time favorites.) Now…
Perhaps this is a crazy undertaking for me as a blogger, since it would be a little crazy for you as a reader to attempt what it will imply: reading a book a week for the year. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—or with other people, for that matter—that lists and attempts like this…
If this were an adult fiction book, it would be considered a novella. At 132 pages formatted for a middle grades reader, this is a very slim novel. Perhaps that is one of the many reasons it is one of my son’s favorite books. Not that anything is missing in this novel. It’s all there:…
I wasn’t going to make a best books list for philosophy or for classics, but then I received a comment on my last best books list (religion and Christianity) that got me thinking. Philosophy books and classics—genres that I have read a lot of—were included in the very first best books list that I did,…
I have this feeling that my review of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy has to be super long, like in accordance with the length of the books. But are the books really that long? Let’s do a little comparison. Each of the books (The Hobbit and then the trilogy…
I was reluctant to read Old Yeller by Fred Gipson to my son. I had never read it, but I knew, just from being an observant American, that it was not going to end well. My son loves books with boys in nature, especially involving animals and coming-of-age, but we had already endured Where the Red…
I was looking forward to reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (for us, bound in one volume) out to my son, because I remember having enjoyed them in high school. To this day, one of my very favorite poems is “The Jabberwocky,” from Looking Glass. What I found, unsurprisingly,…
I used to have a story for why I picked The Scarlet Letter up at the point in time I read it (2017). I am still reviewing from my backlog, however (though I have also been reviewing as I read: double-timing it) so I don’t remember all of the circumstances. I remember buying The Scarlet…
I must have been writing this review in my head while reading this book, because I feel like I already wrote it. I looked on the blog, I looked in the blog drafts, and I even searched through my Word file. Nothing. Must have been in my head. Why? Because this book is so surprising.…
When I saw the charming movie preview for the newest The Little Prince adaptation, I knew it was time to add it to the summer reading list. I like to read a book, timing it with an exciting movie release. Plus, I had been meaning to read The Little Prince for years and years. It’s…
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, the translation by Joel Carmichael published by Bantam Books in 1981. The original was published in 1877. This is a solid book. It’s one of those real classics that fully deserves to be a classic. And, amazingly, it’s pretty great reading for the modern reader, as well. You do get…
the starving artist 