Books

Book 893: His Perfect Christmas Gift – Ali Ryecart

I’m legitimately holding my breath for the producers at Hallmark, Netflix, Hulu, etc. to discover the depth and breadth of MM Holiday Romance novels that are already out there ready to be adapted into made for TV movies. I mean GET ON IT.

This is one of those perfectly canned books that could be turned into a movie really quickly. It would require two big sets at most and not a large cast and it’s fully contained within a week. it’s seriously written explicitly to be adapted!

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Books

Book 675: Mr. Darcy Forever (Austen Addicts #3) – Victoria Connelly

I think what I like about this series more than most of the others is that it pays as much homage to the cult of Austen as it does to the original Austen works. Each of the books in this trilogy (maybe the series?) take a lead from one of Austen’s original novels, but then move away from it diving into the fantastical world of the Janeites. Connelly once again dropped a tidbit of Austen-dom knowledge I wasn’t aware of in the Austen Authors website, which was a neat discovery, but seems to have undergone a major change since it was originally mentioned in this book. [Edit 10.24.2022 and apparently no longer exists, leaving the link in case it comes back up.]

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Book Group, Books

Book 382: Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

For our fifth installment of Jane Austen Book Club we read Sense and Sensibility (S&S). Not only is this book the penultimate book of this year’s book group, it is my last Austen re-read for the Classics Club! That makes it my 42 Classics Club book and I’m glad to still be slowly chipping away. Goodreads reminds me I’m 29 books behind schedule from my original Classics Club start date, but I abandoned the five-year plan ages ago. I figured I should enjoy the Classics when I want to enjoy them and not force myself to meet some arbitrary time limit.

Like all of Austen, I’m confused why I haven’t re-read this in so long. Obviously, there are so many other books to read, but it went by so fast and the story is just so great that I really should make an effort to re-read more than just Pride and Prejudice (P&P) every so often!

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ARC, Books

Book 348: In Youth Is Pleasure & I Left My Grandfather’s House – Denton Welch

The publisher, Open Road Integrated Media, reached out to me with this book as I’d previously read Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies, and she is even mentioned in this work.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hesitant at first as Bowles’ work was very well written but I just didn’t like the characters. Thankfully, Welch’s characters were a bit more accessible for me. This is two shorter stories so I’ve separated my response into two parts. The publisher provided a copy of this book and I received no compensation for my honest opinion.

The one over-arching them the two pieces have in common is the idea of sexuality, specifically homosexuality, before it was commonly talked about and/or accepted. I tried (aka did a brief google search) to find out about Welch’s sexuality, but again this was a long time ago before our out and proud mantras of today. Welch died young, he was only 33, and there is only speculation outside of his written works which in today’s society seem pretty explicit. Regardless, I enjoyed both of these snippets of the past for completely different reasons.

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