Tag: Brighton

Updates

July Recap 2018

Geoff W

We are done traveling (long haul at least) for the summer! I know most people would not be as excited about this as I am, but it is exhausting.

I put a photo recap down below under books and bookish things because most everything we saw was connected to books, except for my friend’s wedding. We drove over 24 hours in total while we were visiting and it was awesome because we saw parts of the country I’ve never seen except by train or plane. The above photo is our full trip with a photo of our northern post point Ben A’an and our southern most point Brighton.

We did so many bookish things that I’ll just include a slide show below and put a caption explaining what they are rather than write them all out. We didn’t even set out to do that many it just happened (mostly because Tim told me this was our last trip to the UK for some time). Continue reading “July Recap 2018” →

Book Group, Books

Book 362: Mansfield Park – Jane Austen

Geoff W

Lucky for you I’ve re-read this for our Jane Austen Book Club, so you get to hear about it again, almost exactly three years since last read Mansfield Park.

Following Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813) this was Austen’s third published novel in 1814 and it is a clear shift away from the whimsy and light previous novels. I talk about this in my last response, but I wonder if this has to do with feedback from the first two novels or if it’s her own personal experience and maturation as an adult. We already know that when Austen published Emma, her fourth work, in 1815 that she was comfortable with sassing her critics. She openly says at the start of Emma that she’s writing a character NO ONE can dislike, because so many people disliked Fanny, or Fanny’s decisions.

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ARC, Books

Book 327: What Matters in Jane Austen? – John Mullan

Geoff W

Neither a bad end to 2014, nor a bad start to 2015, this was well worth the read. It wasn’t all I thought it would be, but considering it was a galley I got ages ago (2012 I think) and never read (Sorry!) I’m glad I finally read it. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time with Austen this year. A few friends and I are doing a Jane Austen book club and I have quite a bit of non-fiction I’m looking forward to reading about Austen and her life. I hope everyone sticks with me throughout! I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and received nothing in return for my honest response.

What worked best for this book was the selecting of 20 themes and then talking about them across Austen’s novels. I’ve read all of her novels at least once and a few of them much more. You can look at the chapter titles to see the themes, but the ones that stood out most to me where when Mullan spoke about Austen’s mastery of novels and groundbreaking skills as a writer.

“She did things with fiction that had never been done before. She did things with characterization, with dialogue, with English sentences, that had never been done before.”

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